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Robots face the future

Matter and energy from Science Daily Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 5:50pm
Researchers have found a way to bind engineered skin tissue to the complex forms of humanoid robots. This brings with it potential benefits to robotic platforms such as increased mobility, self-healing abilities, embedded sensing capabilities and an increasingly lifelike appearance. Taking inspiration from human skin ligaments, the team included special perforations in a robot face, which helped a layer of skin take hold.
Categories: Science

3D-printed chip sensor detects foodborne pathogens for safer products

Matter and energy from Science Daily Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 5:50pm
Researchers have developed a new method for detecting foodborne pathogens that is faster, cheaper, and more effective than existing methods. Their microfluidic chip uses light to detect multiple types of pathogens simultaneously and is created using 3D printing, making it easy to fabricate in large amounts and modify to target specific pathogens. The researchers hope their technique can improve screening processes and keep contaminated food out of the hands of consumers.
Categories: Science

3D-printed chip sensor detects foodborne pathogens for safer products

Computers and Math from Science Daily Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 5:50pm
Researchers have developed a new method for detecting foodborne pathogens that is faster, cheaper, and more effective than existing methods. Their microfluidic chip uses light to detect multiple types of pathogens simultaneously and is created using 3D printing, making it easy to fabricate in large amounts and modify to target specific pathogens. The researchers hope their technique can improve screening processes and keep contaminated food out of the hands of consumers.
Categories: Science

Marsquakes may help reveal whether liquid water exists underground on red planet

Space and time from Science Daily Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 5:49pm
If liquid water exists today on Mars, it may be too deep underground to detect with traditional methods used on Earth. But listening to earthquakes that occur on Mars -- or marsquakes -- could offer a new tool in the search.
Categories: Science

$1m prize for AI that can solve puzzles that are simple for humans

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 12:00pm
Deducing the correct pattern that links pairs of coloured grids is relatively easy for most people, but relies on skills that artificial intelligence models lack. A new $1 million prize hopes to encourage the development of an AI that can solve such puzzles
Categories: Science

Why our location in the Milky Way is perfect for finding alien life

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 12:00pm
Our arm of the Milky Way is filled with older, metal-rich stars. New research suggests these might provide the best conditions for life to form on their planets
Categories: Science

Do We Now Have an Accurate Map of Nearby Stars?

Universe Today Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 11:14am

If the Sun has a stellar neighbourhood, it can be usefully defined as a 20 parsec (65 light-years) sphere centred on our star. Astronomers have been actively cataloguing the stellar population in the neighbourhood for decades, but it hasn’t been easy since many stars are small and dim.

Even with all of the challenges inherent in the effort, astronomers have made steady progress. Do we now have a complete catalogue?

In a new article in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, a pair of researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, Germany, try to understand how complete or incomplete our catalogue of the stellar neighbourhood is. The article is titled “Do We Finally Know all Stellar and Substellar Neighbors within 10~pc of the Sun?” The authors are Ralf-Dieter Scholz and Alexey Mints.

If all stars shone as brightly as main sequence stars like our Sun do, it would be easy to catalogue the stars in our neighbourhood. But they don’t. Some are so small and dim that they’re considered failed stars. We call them brown dwarfs or substellar objects.

When we look up at the night sky with the unaided eye, our view is dominated by main sequence stars and giant stars, many of which are far beyond our stellar neighbourhood. Many stars are too dim to see, like red dwarfs and brown dwarfs. In fact, Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf and our nearest neighbour, wasn’t discovered until the early 20th century.

Proxima Centauri. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

In the early days of astronomy, measurements of proper motions showed that some stars that appear fixed in place are closer than other stars. All stars move and have proper motion; it’s just not always noticeable in the span of a single lifetime. High proper motion surveys of stars led to the selection of certain stars for measurements of their parallax, which helped locate more stars correctly in space. Then, in the early 20th century, as astronomy and photography were used in conjunction, photographic astrometry triggered a wave of discoveries of our solar neighbours. Those efforts showed that our nearest neighbours are red dwarfs (M dwarfs).

In the 1990s, as technology advanced, infrared sky surveys found more dim stars. “A second wave of discoveries started in the late 1990s with the advance of infrared sky surveys,” the authors write. Missions like the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) gave us a new, unprecedented look at the sky. It found M dwarfs, brown dwarfs, and substellar objects like L, T, and Y types, and even minor planets in the Solar System. (Definitions of brown dwarfs and other substellar objects overlap.) By the year 2,000, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey came online, strengthening our catalogue of the sky.

In 1997, Henry et al. published an important paper on the solar neighbourhood titled “The solar neighborhood IV: discovery of the twentieth nearest star.” It showed that the discovery of LHS 1565, about 3.7 pc from Earth, spelled trouble for our census of the neighbourhood. “It ranks as the twentieth closest stellar system and underscores the incompleteness of the nearby star sample, particularly for objects near the end of the main sequence,” Henry et al. wrote. “Ironically, this unassuming red dwarf provides a shocking reminder of how much we have yet to learn about even our nearest stellar neighbours.”

Since about 1997, there’s been a burst of discoveries of stars within the Sun’s neighbourhood. The authors say that these seem to have filled in the gaps in our 10 pc neighbourhood. But some of the knowledge was still based on two assumptions. The first was that the survey out to 5 parsecs was complete, and the second was that the density was uniform out to 10 parsecs. “The first of these is not true, and the second is in question,” the authors write.

Where does that leave us? Up to 90 star systems could still be missing.

An artist’s conception of a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are more massive than Jupiter but less massive than the smallest main sequence stars. Their dimness and low mass make them difficult to detect. Image: By NASA/JPL-Caltech (http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/image/114) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

“Using all neighbours the luminosity and mass functions and the star-to-brown dwarf (BD) number ratio can be studied,” the authors state. Astronomers don’t fully understand the ratio of brown dwarfs to other stars, but two recent papers (1,2), in particular, have continued the work to better understand and catalogue our stellar neighbourhood’s dim members.

Earlier this year, Kirkpatrick et al. published a study claiming that a complete survey of nearby stars is possible, largely thanks to Gaia data. They found 462 objects (including the Sun) in 339 systems within 10?pc. of the Sun.

In previous work, the authors of this new paper added 16 more stars to the list. These were late M-dwarfs, some of the coolest and dimmest main sequence stars, and brown dwarfs. They also discovered a new white dwarf companion to an existing M dwarf.

But how complete is this newest survey?

The problem lies in the difficulty of detecting dim stars like brown dwarfs and late M-dwarfs. The further we look, the more difficult they are to detect. They’re also more difficult to detect in the direction of the galactic plane.

Dim objects like brown dwarfs are more difficult to detect when looking toward the galactic plane because that’s where most of the Milky Way’s mass is. Image Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC

The authors say that our neighbourhood stellar catalogue is still likely missing 93 stellar systems, “… corresponding to a deficit of ?21.5%,” they write. In terms of individual stars, it’s not much better: “…138 missing objects corresponding to a deficit of ?23.0%,” they write.

They broke it down even further to individual star types. We’re probably missing 28.1% of AFGK stars, -31% of white dwarfs, and ?27.8% of M-dwarfs. There’s also a higher deficit for late M-dwarfs. These deficits are higher than expected. What does it mean?

“The estimated deficits of systems and individual objects within 10?pc exceed expectations, in particular for the well-known AFGK stars,” the authors write. They conclude that the general assumption of a constant stellar density in the solar neighbourhood is incorrect. They say that small-scale density fluctuations can at least partly explain the deficits.

“Our statistical estimates show that the probability of these discrepancies being caused by random fluctuations is around 40%,” the authors conclude.

We clearly have more work to do.

The post Do We Now Have an Accurate Map of Nearby Stars? appeared first on Universe Today.

Categories: Science

A Combination Drill and Gas Conveyor Could Simplify Asteroid Extraction

Universe Today Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 11:04am

Collecting material from an asteroid seems like a simple task. In reality, it isn’t. Low gravity, high rotational speeds, lack of air, and other constraints make collecting material from any asteroid difficult. But that won’t stop engineers from trying. A team from Beijing Spacecrafts and the Guangdong University of Technology recently published a paper that described a novel system for doing so – using an ultrasonic drill and gas “conveyor belt.”

So far, three missions have successfully taken samples from an asteroid: Hayabusa-1 and -2 and OSIRIS-REx. Both Hayabusa missions used a projectile to impact the asteroid and collected the debris from that impact. OSIRIS-REx used a system called the Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), which touched down briefly on Bennu, the mission’s target asteroid, and then pulled away with a sample of its regolith.

Another mission, Rosetta, attempted a more involved sample collection process that involved anchoring to the asteroid itself. However, its lander, Philae, didn’t successfully attach to the asteroid and never managed to return samples to the Rosetta orbiter. Its collection mechanism known as the Sampling and Drilling Device (SD2) was the most similar to conventional sample collection here on Earth, and utilized a drill.

Fraser and Pamela discuss what all goes into a asteroid sample return mission.

That concept of drilling is at the heart of the new proposed system. It utilizes an ultrasonic drill to break up the regolith into small chunks. It’s pretty standard stuff and nothing to write home about, as robots have been doing so on celestial bodies for decades. However, in this case, the drill is surrounded by a system that utilizes gas to push the tiny grains of dust created by the drill up into a sample collection system.

In the paper, the researchers describe it as a “gas conveyor belt,” which pushes the small particles hard enough to allow them to float in the asteroid’s microgravity environment. According to the authors, the proposed system has several advantages. These include low cost, low power consumption, and adaptability to different sample collection site environments.

Another significant advantage is that the probe that utilizes it doesn’t need to be entirely securely anchored to the asteroid. This was the problem for Philae, but the physics of the ultrasonic drill made it possible for the probe to be lightly tethered to the asteroid without having the system for the probe away from the surface.

Visualization of how the gas and drill work together in the system.
Credit – Zhao et al.

In addition to the modeling and theory behind the development of the system, they also built a prototype. They tried it on various regolith simulants in a vacuum and under pressure. Since the experiment was only on a benchtop, they couldn’t test it in the microgravity environment. The ultrasonic drill, which has a “percussive” function similar to a hammer drill used in construction, made neatly drilled holes in a sample rock on the benchtop.

However, some work remains, including more comprehensive system testing, microgravity, and more theoretical modeling of the system’s efficacy. The authors believe this system could be integrated into China’s upcoming asteroid exploration and sample return missions, which they think will happen soon. If they do, they might get a chance to prove this novel piece of technology and move us one step closer to solving the technical challenge of asteroid sample return.

Learn More:
Zhao et al. – Gas-Driven Regolith-Sampling Strategy for Exploring Micro-Gravity Asteroids
UT – Finally, Let’s Look at the Asteroid Treasure Returned to Earth by OSIRIS-REx
UT – Asteroid Ryugu Contained Bonus Comet Particles
UT – OSIRIS-REx’s Final Haul: 121.6 Grams from Asteroid Bennu

Lead Image:
Images of the prototype drilling system in different test configurations.
Credit – Zhao et al.

The post A Combination Drill and Gas Conveyor Could Simplify Asteroid Extraction appeared first on Universe Today.

Categories: Science

Dangerous mpox strain spreading in Democratic Republic of the Congo

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 10:10am
A new strain of mpox transmitted mainly by heterosexual sex has emerged in a mining town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is now spreading to other towns
Categories: Science

AI can turn text into sign language – but it’s often unintelligible

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 10:00am
Researchers have developed an AI model that can translate text into sign language, but experts in Deaf culture and sign language say the translations range from semi-comprehensible to “really unintelligible”
Categories: Science

How big is the universe? The shape of space-time could tell us

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 9:55am
We may never know what lies beyond the boundaries of the observable universe, but the fabric of the cosmos can tell us whether the universe is infinite or not
Categories: Science

Jesse Singal takes Scientific American to task for saying that the world sucks worse than it used to

Why Evolution is True Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 9:40am

There is a subset of people on both Left and Right who are invested in thinking that the world is constantly getting worse. These are the same people who go after Steve Pinker, who has argued that things are getting better on average, even though he notes that there are blips and that he can’t predict whether there may be a hug “worsening” in the future—like a nuclear war or global warming that can’t be overcome. But I’m constantly surprised at how people, in the face of the data, still think the world is on a serious moral and material downslide. Would you rather live in 1880 than now? If so, you might already be dead from a tooth abscess.

In his latest column (click to read), Jesse Singal takes these people to task, especially our old friend Scientific American, which has apparently climbed on the “things are worse” bandwagon, which may now have become one aspect of the woke mindset.  Singal gives some data to counteract these claims, and you can see his article for free by clicking on the headline below (his link to the Sci. Am. article is one he found archived).

An excerpt and some corrections given by Singal:

The other day I came across a Scientific American article headlined “We’ve Hit Peak Denial. Here’s Why We Can’t Turn Away From Reality.”

The article, by a pair of researchers at Stanford University and York University, attempts to argue that we are living in increasingly terrible, violent, chaotic times.

Is this true? It’s a widely held belief, particularly among academics and media, as well as an interesting horseshoe coalition of far-left (capitalism has destroyed everything) and far-right (multiculturalism and the collapse of traditional values have destroyed everything) thinkers and, perhaps more often, “thinkers.” Steven Pinker wrote The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, published in 2011, in part to rebut this sort of thinking, which is endemic in his own circles.

So, the article: it’s bizarre. Let’s unpack it. The framing presents the thesis as an obvious, established fact, and immediately sets out to describe deniers as Part of the Problem and to explain their false beliefs. The subheadline: “We are living through a terrible time in humanity. Here’s why we tend to stick our heads in the sand and why we need to pull them out, fast.”

What is particularly terrible about these times? According to the authors:

If it seems like things are kind of off these days, you’re not alone. Recently, more than 100,000 people liked a post marking the start of the pandemic that said, “[Four] years ago, this week was the last normal week of our lives.”

Objectively speaking, we are living through a dumpster fire of a historical moment. Right now more than one million people are displaced and at risk of starvation in Gaza, as are millions more in Sudan. Wars are on the rise around the globe, and 2023 saw the most civilian casualties in almost 15 years.

These are all terrible events, and every one of the lives represented in these statistics is a real-life human person whose death or injury affected others. But at a zoomed-out level, none of this is remotely unusual in human history, and the authors don’t present any evidence — here or elsewhere in the piece — that things really are worse. “The most civilian casualties in almost 15 years” doesn’t mean much. It’s actually 13 years, according to the headline of the linked-to Guardian article. Let’s take a look at the top of that piece:

Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a monitoring group, said 33,846 non-combatants had been killed or wounded during 2023, an increase of 62% on last year, and the largest amount it had counted since it began its annual survey in 2010.

Again: Every one of those is a real-life human. But still, the question at hand isn’t “Is it bad when people are killed or maimed in war?,” but “Are we seeing some sort of scary historical rise in the number of people killed or maimed in war?”

No. Not even close.

There follows a lot of data about deaths in war that far exceeded 33,846, like massive killings in Cambodia, Germany, and Iraq (I’d add Syria). Then Singal says this:

That doesn’t mean that the plight of Ukrainian, Gazan, and Sudanese civilians isn’t horrific, or that the progress we’ve made is permanent. Maybe the 2024 figures will be worse. Maybe all-out war will break out between Israel and Lebanon, China will get more aggressive about Taiwan, NATO will get fully pulled into the Ukrainian-Russian war, and all sorts of other shit will hit the fan. It’s entirely possible! Humanity has never enjoyed permanent peace and it would be delusional and hubristic to think we can get there. But the point is, numerically, the only way you can claim that we’re in some particularly dark era, as this Scientific American article does, is by. . . well, not revealing the numbers.

The authors of the Scientific American op-ed,  and , also claim that “the second biggest covid surge occurred this winter”. (The article was published on June 18) Singal gives graphs of both hospitalizations and death rate to show that this isn’t true.

Singal gives a theory, which he says is not his, that we’ve evolved to pay attention to bad news, and to be very anxious, because in our long 6-million-year history before civilization that mindset was adaptive. And that, he says, is why we get so much Chicken-Little-ism now, and why so much denial of a palpably improving world. I’m not sure about that theory as there’s no way to test it, but Pinker has noted that bad news always gets more airplay than good news, and I suppose Singal’s explanation of this is as good as any.

Singal’s peroration includes this:

But overall, it’s remarkable the progress our species has made, however you slice it, at least in terms of people’s ability to live longer lives, have the food they need to eat, and have shelter. We haven’t solved these problems, of course, and in many instances the political dysfunction frustrating our attempts to do so is agonizing, but perspective still matters a great deal. It’s hard to build a mostly stable, mostly prosperous civilization. It really is! That’s why we only just got around to it recently, and why the job is unfinished.

. . . . . Anyway, I wish Scientific American were a better magazine these days. This was an exceptionally weird article. But I’m not going to pretend it’s the end of the world or anything.

I’ve bashed Scientific American enough that I needn’t do it again here. Singal has done the work for me. It was once an excellent popular science magazine, with explanation of new scientific developments written by scientists themselves and no intrusion of ideology. I don’t know if it can ever return to the earlier format.

Categories: Science

Smiling robot face is made from living human skin cells

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 9:00am
A technique for attaching a skin made from living human cells to a robotic framework could give robots the ability to emote and communicate better
Categories: Science

Are space and time illusions? The answer could lie in black holes

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 8:00am
Whether space and time are part of the universe or they emerge from quantum entanglement is one of the biggest questions in physics. And we are getting close to the truth
Categories: Science

What would happen if Earth was the centre of the solar system?

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 7:56am
Geocentrism, the idea that everything in the universe revolves around Earth, has long been disproven, but this episode of Dead Planets Society is bringing it back with cataclysmic consequences
Categories: Science

Amherst decides not to divest from Israel, but its policy still violates institutional neutrality

Why Evolution is True Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 7:30am

Amherst College’s Board of Trustees has issued a rather confused statement responding to the call of many Amherst pro-Palestinians to divest from companies supplying military equipment to Israel.  The Board decided not to divest, but seems to reserve the right to do so if there is a lot of agreement in the college community on political or ideological issues.

Moreover, the Board emphasizes that it has in the past taken sides and issued statements on such issues, including “apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Sudan.” The bizarre aspect of their statement—and one that nullifies any pretense of institutional neutrality—is that it appears to condition official statements by the Board on whether or not there is “broad and deep agreement” in the Amherst community.  That, of course, raises the question of how broad and deep the agreement must be before the board decides to take sides.

Clearly, Amherst doesn’t fully embrace the Kalven Principles held by the University of Chicago, in which investments occur absolutely independently of outside pressure from and of the extent of agreement in the University community. Chicago has never responded to pressure of this sort.

You can read the Amherst Board’s response by clicking on the link below:

Early in the report, the Board says that their actions are governed by both the economic welfare of Amherst (which investments are supposed to uphold) and the degree of agreement of the community on a political, moral, or ideological issue.  The latter, of course, violates institutional neutrality (bolding is mine):

In our discussions, two principles have guided the trustees: first, as a fiduciary, the Board has a legal responsibility to act in the best interests of the College for both the short and long term; and second, as an agent of an institution comprised of many individuals with a wide range of backgrounds and opinions, it must consider and respect the perspectives of all members of our community. Accordingly, actions taken by the Board should either directly relate to the preservation and advancement of the College’s educational mission or, in rare cases lacking that connection to our purpose, should reflect a broad and deep agreement among Amherst’s students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and should not otherwise harm the College’s interests.

The Board has taken action on issues where disagreement exists—including, in recent years, legacy admissions, support for undocumented students, and advocacy for increased federal and state financial aid—on questions directly related to the fulfillment of our mission as an educational institution. Very rarely, the Board has also taken action responding to global events unrelated to the College’s day-to-day operation—apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Sudan—but only when there was clear agreement in our community, supported by a consensus of the federal government and international organizations.

I’m sure I’d agree with the Board’s stand on South Africa and Sudan (I was arrested for protesting apartheid), but that’s not the point. The Board should not be taking such stands, for they chill the expression of those who may dissent, stifling the lifeblood of a college: free discussion, untrammeled by fear of offending the higher-ups.

At Chicago, official statements can be made and actions taken,on issues that directly affect the working and mission of the University, including the DACA program supporting undocumented students. It’s the part above in bold that is problematic, allowing the Trustees to take stands on issues with no direct bearing on the College’s mission. And on those issues, including South Africa and Sudan, that the Amherst Board of Trustees did indeed take action. It’s not clear from the document whether that action involved divestment or making official statements supporting one side, but either action violates institutional neutrality.

Apparently, the degree of disagreement about the war in Gaza hasn’t risen to Amherst’s level of agreement (bolding is again mine):

With regard to divestment related to Israel’s campaign in Gaza, perspectives in the Amherst community are both deeply held and extremely polarized, as was demonstrated by opinions shared in the faculty meeting on divestment; in meetings held this spring by the administration and trustees with students, faculty, and alumni; during and after the protest at Reunion; in countless formal and informal discussions and venues throughout the year; in the Amherst Student; and in petitions, open letters, and emails to the Board and the administration.

. . . The Board believes that this state of profound disagreement, both as to the action to be taken and its propriety, is very different from the two previous instances when the College took endowment action reflecting broad and deep agreement both on and beyond our campus in response to events in South Africa and Sudan. While the recent resolutions approved by the AAS Senate and the faculty received majority votes of those present, a substantial minority exists among students and faculty that opposes these resolutions—and many alumni have expressed opposing positions, as well. The Board respects that these resolutions were approved through deliberative processes that resulted in the approval of the majority. It also feels an obligation to listen carefully to and consider the significant minority that opposed them.

This leads one to ask this: “If condemnation of Israel were nearly universal at Amherst, would the board then be justified in disinvesting, or taking other actions?”  They imply “yes,” but, to add to the confusion, later on they emphasize that even unanimity of opinion would be problematic for disinvesting (bolding is mine).

Even if there were universal consensus in support of divestment and shared agreement about which companies “supply military equipment used in the present campaign in Gaza”—as the faculty resolution frames it—it would be unrealistic for us to seek to compel our current outside investment managers to remove these companies from their funds. We would, therefore, need to liquidate holdings at potentially poor valuations and either move our endowment capital to other managers whose current investments do not include these companies or directly manage the capital, which would not align with responsible practices for institutional investment. These actions could have significant immediate and long-term negative impacts on returns and—because the endowment directly supports 56% of the College’s annual operating budget—on financial aid, faculty and staff salaries and benefits, and operations.

This is puzzling. I’m not sure whether the actions taken by Amherst’s Trustees with respect to South Africa and Sudan involved disinvesting, but if it did, then clearly there is no complete bar to doing so.

Which is it, Amherst?  Perhaps, though, the Trustees didn’t disinvest in those cases, but merely issued statements. But as I said, even statements violate institutional neutrality. Who would be the judge of whether agreement on an issue is sufficiently widespread that action could be taken? If one student or professor dissents from an action (and surely there was not 100% agreement on South Africa and Sudan), does that still warrant taking sides?

Clearly not, because taking sides, either through issuing statements or disinvesting, will chill the speech of actual or potential dissenters. This is why institutional neutrality should be near absolute, breached only when an issue affects the working and mission of a college.

So would Amherst disinvest again  on a political issue like Gaza if demands to do so come from the college and nearly everybody agrees? They don’t say, but leave the question unanswered. In other words, they punt (bolding is mine):

Students, faculty, and alumni have also raised important questions about the standards by which the Board makes decisions about the endowment and possible actions related to divestment, the channels through which such actions should be proposed and how they should be evaluated, and the transparency of such decisions. Concurrently, some trustees have raised the question of whether the endowment is ever the correct vehicle for the College to express a position on a matter of morality or politics.

The Board realizes that it must address these important issues and continues to discuss the student-drafted proposal to create a campus committee that would make recommendations on such actions in the future. It has become apparent that members of the Amherst community interpret the role of the endowment in very different ways.

This is kicking the Kalven can down the road.

So no, Amherst has not adopted a policy of institutional neutrality, but simply made any official statements and actions contingent on how much dissent there is in the college community. That’s not a great way to foster free expression.

Categories: Science

Readers’ wildlife photos

Why Evolution is True Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 6:15am

Today’s photos of Arctic birds come from ecologist Susan Harrison of UC Davis. Her captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

Arctic Europe

Here are a few birds of the tundra and rocky shores of the high European Arctic, mostly on Norway’s scenic Varanger Peninsula at the very northern end of Europe.   An earlier post from this May 2024 trip focused on the seabirds of the island of Hornoya and nearby fishing town of Vardo.  In a subsequent post I’ll go a little farther south and feature the forest birds of northern Finland.

Willow Ptarmigan (a.k.a. Willow Grouse, Red Grouse; Lagopus lagopus):

Rock Ptarmigan (Lagopus muta) – can you spot both of this pair?

Meadow Pipit (Anthus pratensis):

Parasitic Jaeger (a.k.a. Arctic Skua; Stercorarius parasiticus), given its unpleasant name for its food-stealing habit:

Short-eared Owl (Asio flammeus) – we saw five of these in one morning, suggesting it’s a good vole year:

White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), quite common in this area, and so large they have been called “flying barn doors:”

White-throated Dipper (Cinclus cinclus), hunting along a river swollen by snowmelt:

Bluethroat (Luscinia svecica) – this is the only picture I could manage of this enchanting high-Arctic bird, found in both the Old and New Worlds:

Dotterel (Eudromias morinellus) – a pink plover!!

Eurasian Golden-Plover (Pluvialis apricaria) – a dazzling sequined plover!!

Long-tailed Ducks (Clangula hyemalis); these two were likely exhausted after a long migratory flight:

Dunlin (Calidris alpina); this flock was completely exhausted and immobile on a rocky beach:

Dunlin closeup:

Common Eider flock (Somateria mollissima), the source of that lovely down:

Common Eider closeup:

Categories: Science

The universe is built a lot like a giant brain – so is it conscious?

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 6:00am
Research has found the universe is remarkably similar in structure to the human brain. But does this mean the cosmos has a consciousness of its own?
Categories: Science

Three bright ideas that could fix fashion's environmental problems

New Scientist Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 5:00am
3D weaving technology, AI-designed fibres and leather made from waste fish scales are among the sustainable fashion innovations on display at an exhibition in London
Categories: Science

Death Valley for Students

Skeptoid Feed - Tue, 06/25/2024 - 4:55am

Skeptoid's Death Valley Adventure is holding 5 tickets for students and active duty military. To apply to get one, visit skeptoid.com/deathvalley

Categories: Critical Thinking, Skeptic

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