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Researchers have developed a hydrogel that heals and strengthens itself as it is overloaded and damaged. The proof-of-concept demonstration could lead to improved performance for situations where soft but durable materials are required, such as load-bearing connections and joints within machines, robots and even people.

Researchers have developed a hydrogel that heals and strengthens itself as it is overloaded and damaged. The proof-of-concept demonstration could lead to improved performance for situations where soft but durable materials are required, such as load-bearing connections and joints within machines, robots and even people.

Researchers have developed a new optical computing material from photon avalanching nanoparticles.

Physicists bring unprecedented levels of predictability to the ancient practice of knitting by developing a mathematical model that could be used to create a new class of lightweight, ultra-strong materials.

Physicists bring unprecedented levels of predictability to the ancient practice of knitting by developing a mathematical model that could be used to create a new class of lightweight, ultra-strong materials.

In a breakthrough that could transform bioelectronic sensing, an interdisciplinary team of researchers has developed a new method to dramatically enhance the sensitivity of enzymatic and microbial fuel cells using organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs).

In a breakthrough that could transform bioelectronic sensing, an interdisciplinary team of researchers has developed a new method to dramatically enhance the sensitivity of enzymatic and microbial fuel cells using organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs).

In a significant advancement for boosting renewable energy generation development, engineers have examined nanoscale properties of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). This initiative has resulted in the development of more efficient and durable cells, poised to substantially diminish costs and broaden applications, thereby connecting scientific research with the needs of the business community.

New information is pushing Asteroid 2024 YR4 off of our front pages. Initial estimates gave it a 2.8% chance of striking Earth in 2032. Now, the European Space Agency says the chance of it striking our planet is down to a paltry 0.001%.

Scientists dislike expressing things in absolute terms because Nature can make fools of us all, so this is as close to zero as it’s likely to get.

2024 YR4 was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Chile a couple of days after Christmas. ATLAS is an early-warning system for smaller asteroids. When it detected the asteroid on December 27th, 2024, it sent out an alert. Follow-up observations indicated the asteroid’s impact probability was greater than 1%, and that triggered our planetary defence response, which at this point consists of a greater effort to understand the rock and its trajectory.

It’s easy to get used to these asteroid warnings. However, it’s a bad idea to ignore the threat they pose. 2024 YR4 is not very large, only between 40 to 90 metres (130 to 300 ft) in diameter. Its small mass doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. An asteroid that large can cause serious damage in a populated area. Earth has been struck many times in the past, and there are more impacts in its future.

More worryingly, follow-up observations at first showed the asteroid’s impact probability rising. At its highest rating on 18th February, it had a 2.8% chance of striking Earth. The spike of concern was dulled the next day when observations with the ESO’s Very Large Telescope cut that number in half. People unfamiliar with space, Earth, and asteroids have asked why there’s so much uncertainty. The simple answer is that everything in space is moving. The object is also tiny and dark.

The Very Large Telescope is one of the world’s most advanced telescopes and even it could barely see the asteroid, as the GIF below shows.

via GIPHY

In the two months following its detection, the ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre—along with other institutions—monitored the asteroid. More data is better data in this case, and observations allowed astronomers to refine its orbit to determine how much of a threat it posed.

2024 YR4 follows an elliptical orbit around the Sun and crosses Earth’s path, making it a near-Earth Object (NEO). It takes almost four years to complete an orbit, and its last perihelion was on 22 November 2024. Its closest approach to Earth was on Christmas, two days before its discovery. At that time, it came to within 830,000 km of Earth. In December 2028, it will make its next closest approach at just more than 8 million km of Earth. Unfortunately, between this April and leading up to the next approach, none of our ground-based telescopes will be able to see it.

One problem in determining the impact threat is that everything in space is moving. Nothing is still. So, each time the asteroid comes near the Earth or the Moon, the gravity from both bodies has a chance of changing 2024 YR4’s orbit. These are called gravitational keyholes, and they complicate efforts to determine its orbit.

This rising and then falling impact probability is an established pattern in asteroid detection and monitoring. At first, there’s more uncertainty, but as astronomers continue to observe it, uncertainty is reduced.

What it boils down to is this: We spotted another small yet potentially dangerous rock with a chance to strike Earth. We watched it and saw that its chance of striking us shrank. Now, the rock will disappear into the blackness of space for three years.

Where does that leave us?

Each time another asteroid approaches, it triggers concern about protecting Earth. Should we launch a nuke and blow it to pieces? How about a kinetic impactor to change its orbit slightly? How about evacuating people from the impact zone?

We’re developing ways to protect the planet. NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) showed that a relatively small mass can deter an approaching asteroid. Nukes are not needed and, in fact, can create an unpredictable shower of debris.

This artist’s illustration shows the ejection of a cloud of debris after NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

One proposal for asteroid redirection envisions kinetic impactors waiting to be launched on short notice. They can be at a Lagrange point or possibly on the lunar surface, on standby until needed. The more advance notice we have, the smaller the kinetic mass needed to deter an asteroid.

The main effort right now is centred on finding all dangerous asteroids and constraining their orbits. The upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory will detect many asteroids and will help us identify which ones are hazardous.

The type of massive asteroid that rocked the dinosaurs is increasingly unlikely. It was between 10 and 15 km in diameter, and large asteroids like it tend to remain stable in the asteroid belt. But the smaller ones in the decameter size range are more likely to be perturbed out of their orbits and become NEOs. It’s those ones we really have to worry about.

NASA’s “Eyes on Asteroids” site maps the known Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and shows the population of these objects. Some are parent bodies of meteorites found on Earth. Courtesy NASA.

Asteroids are like pandemics. There’s always another one in the future. It’s simply nature. The danger from this one seems to have diminished, but another one will eventually come close.

Though the danger posed by 2024 YR4 has diminished, the overall threat posed by the asteroid population remains the same. In a sense, it’s not about any individual asteroid. It’s about our understanding of the risks in our space environment and how we can protect ourselves and Earth.

We’re not fully prepared to deflect an incoming asteroid if necessary, but we’re working towards it. In the meantime, get used to the occasional news article about asteroids with tiny yet real chances of striking Earth. 0.001% is tiny, but it’s not zero.

The post As Expected, the Threat from 2024 YR4 has Essentially Dropped to Zero appeared first on Universe Today.

The electrons in a twisted piece of graphene show a strange repeating pattern first predicted in 1976, but never directly measured until now

Wearable technology could go beyond smartwatches to items of clothing that monitor large parts of your body

By far the oldest evidence of humans living in dense forests comes from a site in Ivory Coast, where stone tools and plant remains reveal a human presence stretching back 150,000 years

Climate models predict that even under extreme warming, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation will weaken but not collapse entirely – although this could still have serious impacts

Should that meeting have been an email? Is it ever ok to send a voice note? Andrew Brodsky has studied the communication habits of 100,000 people and has the answers

UPDATE:  Carole Hooven called my attention to a paper in Hormones and Behavior, on which Maney is co-author, which is far more explicit about the author’s motivation to depose the hegemony of binary sex.  Carole also tweeted about Maney’s paper:

“This species challenges the practice of flattening nature’s wondrous diversity into two categories, male and female.” White-throated Sparrows are indeed fascinating, challenging stereotypes about sex differences. I learned lots from your explanation of how that works.

But sex…

— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) February 26, 2025

I had hoped and expected, after the departure of woke editor Laura Helmuth from Scientific American, that the magazine would go back to what it was good at and famous for: presenting solid articles on popular science actually written by scientists. The ideology-imbued science, I thought, would disappear, as readers were canceling their subscriptions.

Sadly, it appears that the magazine may well be creeping back to “progressive science,” at least as judged by the latest biology article I read, as well as a similar critique of binary sex and, as lagniappe, an op-ed promoting gender activism and “affirmative care”.

The good news is that the biology article presents some solid and interesting data on the white-throated sparrow, a bird with a unique system of genetics and mating behavior. The bad news is that the author, neuroscientist Donna Maney of Emory University, couches all her results, and those of her colleagues, as casting aspersions on the binary nature of sex. It’s the usual argument that “things are complicated here, and if we are blinded by the idea that sex is binary, we miss the complicated and interesting stuff.”  In other words, the biology presented is used partly to do down the sex binary.

Click to read (the article is archived here).

The article is long and complex (perhaps too complex for the non-biologist reader), but the phenomenon is quite interesting.  Here are the salient facts (wording is mine):

a.) The North American white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) comes in four varieties. There are two sexes (something the author admits but doesn’t emphasize), and each sex has two varieties that differ in color and behavior.

b.) Both males and females come in two flavors, and each sex has roughly 50% of each. Each morph behaves and looks the same whether it’s in males or females.  The “white” morph, shown on the left below, has a white stripe on its head, and, in both males and females, is more aggressive, defending its breeding territories more vigorously than do individuals of the tan morph (right below), which has a tan stripe and spends more of its time bringing food to the offspring.  The diagram below is from a paper by Romanov et al. in BMC Genomics.

(From paper){ Various views of the plumage morphs of the white-throated sparrow. Two morphs are shown: A, the white morph, and B, the tan morph. Morph is absolutely associated with the presence (i.e. ZAL2m/ZAL2 = white) or absence (i.e. ZAL2/ZAL2 = tan) of a chromosomal rearrangement.

c.) The genes for striping differences, as well as for the behavioral differences between morphs, reside on the birds’ second chromosome, and within an inverted section of that chromosome, where the chromosome has broken multiple times and been rearranged.  The white morphs have one copy of the rearranged chromosome and one of the “normal” chromosome, while the tan morphs have two copies of the “normal” chromosome. You can see the difference in the chromosome-2 photo at the bottom left above: in the white morph, the  copies of chromosome 2 are of different configuration because of the rearrangements.

d.) What happens if you get two copies of the rearranged chromosome containing the genes for aggression and white head color? Well, that doesn’t happen, and that’s the interesting part of the story. It turns out that white males will mate only with tan females, and tan males will mate only with white females.  Because of this, the white chromosome can occur only in a single copy.

Note also that, as far as the sexes are concerned, males have two copies of the “sex chromosome” and are ZZ, while females have unlike sex chromosomes and are ZW; this differs from the way sex is determined in humans and many other mammals. The Z and W chromosomes are, like our Xs and Ys, members of a pair, but they are not the second chromosome, which carries the genes for color and behavior. It is not unusual for genes involved in producing sex-specific traits to reside on chromosomes different from the sex chromosomes. Each male in humans, for example, carries genes for other sex-related traits like breasts and vaginas, but they aren’t expressed because they aren’t activated. Even genes involved in producing the human male vs. female reproductive system, like SOX9, DMRT1, NR5A1, and DHH, are spread throughout the genome.  We’ve long known this, and it’s not unexpected, but the author appears to think that this is an unexpected finding.

e.) Because there are two morphs of each sex, and each morph mates with a member of the opposite sex that has the opposite pattern and behavior, the system is stably maintained in this species.  How it evolved is another question, and the author implies it’s a mystery.  I can’t find any speculation about how the system arose in this species, but perhaps those speculations exists somewhere, and perhaps a reader/bird expert can help.  All I can say is now is that this system of sex-morph variability can maintain itself, and, also, the fact that there is an inversion on the second chromosome prevents gene exchange (that normally occurs during gamete formation) between the “normal” and “inverted” chromosomes. Crossing-over between inverted chromosomes, which leads to gene mixing between the two copies of each chromosome, leads to wonky chromosomes that cannot function. This prevention of gene mixing allows the two versions of the second chromosome to diverge evolutionarily and accumulate different genes, explaining why the color and behavioral differences we see reside largely on that chromosome.

There’s a lot more stuff in the article, and some good biology, but the data relevant to this post is above. The system is fascinating and somewhat of an evolutionary puzzle, though Maney and her colleagues are working out which genes are involved in color and behavioral differences, and how they result in differences between the morphs.

Note that there are only two sexes here, not four. Some benighted authors have said that this species has four sexes, but they are deluded. We have a case of two sexes and “polymorphism” (different behaviors and appearances) within each sex.  The author recognizes this, but, as you can see from the big-print heading below, she wants us to know that this system detracts from the importance of the sex binary:

The point is the usual one: “things are complicated here, and can’t be fully understood simply by recognizing that there are just two sexes.”  And that’s true, but nobody thinks that recognizing two sexes brings a stop to further research on any biological system. After all, work on this sparrow had to begin by recognizing that there are two sexes, and then realizing that each of the two sexes comes in two forms.  First, here are quotes showing that the author recognizes that there are two sexes. Bold headings are mine; the indented bits are quotes from Maney’s article:

Recognizing that there are two sexes, not four. Maney adopts the consensus definition of sex: males produce sperm in their testes and females eggs in their ovaries:

This interesting and complex situation has earned this species the nickname “the bird with four sexes.” But to be clear, White-throated Sparrows do not have four different types of gonads. As in other birds, each individual typically has either two testes that produce sperm or a single ovary that produces eggs.

, , , The sex chromosomes, which in birds are known as Z and W, influence whether primordial gonads develop as ovaries or testes. Birds with both the Z and the W typically develop an ovary, whereas birds with two copies of the Z develop testes.

. . . . Although color morphs in White-throated Sparrows are not technically sexes, the standard and supergene-bearing versions of chromosome 2 share features with the human sex chromosomes X and Y, respectively.

. . . . In White-throated Sparrows, we see “masculine” and “feminine” traits distributing themselves in a manner clearly orthogonal to gonadal sex. White-striped birds with ovaries behave in a way that is more masculine than we expect for female songbirds, and tan-striped birds with testes look and behave in a relatively feminine way.

So yes, the author admits that there are two sexes, with each having two varieties.

But despite that, she says that admitting the binary nature of sex somehow inhibits us from studying this system; it “flattens” the diversity.  So throughout her paper there are attempts to show that recognizing that there are two sexes somehow either inhibits research or stifles our interest in how this system evolves.  It does neither; this is pure ideologically-based attempts to do down the palpable fact, which the author recognizes, that there are only two sexes.  As I said, that recognition is the very beginning of an attempt to understand the multi-morph system, and I know of no biologist who would say, “Yes, there are two sexes here. That’s the truth, and we needn’t study anything else or ask further questions. And so we get to this:

Dissing of the sex binary. A few quotes from the author:

Nevertheless, as recent research has shown, this species has much to teach us about the nature of sex variability—the way in which sex-related behaviors are influenced by genes, the complex structure of sex-associated chromosomes and the evolution of sexual reproduction itself. Importantly, this species challenges the practice of flattening nature’s wondrous diversity into two categories, male and female.

Um. . .  well, the wondrous diversity is flattened into four categories: white males, white females, tan males, and tan females. But let’s pass on to more binary-dissing:

Even genes involved in gonadal development and hormone synthesis can be found on most any chromosome, mapping to locations throughout the genome that freely recombine. Each individual inherits a new combination of genetic and epigenetic material, resulting in diversity that defies binary categories.

We’ve known for years that sex-specific genes producing intraspecific or intra-sex variability don’t need to be on the sex chromosomes. There is no “defying binary categories” here.

A few more disses:

In most sexually reproducing species, making an embryo requires two gametes: one egg and one sperm. That binary is clear. But the egg-sperm binary does not apply to the eventual development of that embryo into a sexed body with sex-related behaviors. That development is conceptually separate and decidedly nonbinary in many ways.

This is the “development in sex is complicated, implying that the sex binary is simplistic” argument. Finally, there’s a Big Finish:

The development of sex-related traits is astonishingly diverse not only across species but within them. Every individual, sparrow or human, has masculine and feminine characteristics. That diversity is obscured when we lump individuals into two categories and consider each as a homogeneous group. When we compare the categories “female” and “male,” we often report a “sex difference”—a binary outcome made inevitable by a binary approach. This approach fails to acknowledge the profound overlap between sexes on almost any measure.

White-throated Sparrows help us see past the sex binary by forcing us to acknowledge sources of variability other than sex, which is, in reality, only a small contributor to variability for many species. Diversity and plasticity of phenotypic expression is the norm, particularly for traits that correlate with sex. Sex-related traits are simply not hardwired. Evolutionary biologists believe that this plasticity—like the dazzling diversity of sex-determining molecular pathways—may be adaptive in changing environments. Individuals retaining maximal flexibility in the expression of sex-related traits are better able to adapt quickly to changing environments or, in some cases, may even be able to change their sex.

I’m not sure what the author means by saying “every individual, sparrow or human, has masculine and feminine characteristics”.  Males and females do of course share common traits, like having (usually) five fingers and two legs, but inspection of myself this morning revealed neither a vagina nor breasts.  At any rate, the author is attacking a straw man here and throughout her paper. NOBODY argues that recognizing that there are two sexes in all plants and animals either stifles research or “flattens diversity”.

Once again, the recognition that there are just two sexes is the beginning of research to explain diversity.  This recognition, as Darwin realized, for example, gave rise to his explanation of why there is sexual dimorphism (differences in temperament, behavior and ornamentation between males and females). Hie explanation was sexual selection (Darwin saw two varieties, “combat” and “preference for beauty”). And sexual selection that is the direct result of females investing more in offspring than do males, something that starts with the different gametes.  Note that differences between animal sexes, which involve weapons like antlers, behavior like building bowers, or plumage and display traits, need not reside on the sex chromosome, and in fact cannot because there are simply too many differences between the sexes. The important part, though, is that this inter-sex and interspecific diversity can be understood ONLY as a result of the sex binary, which involves the ability to produce either high-investment eggs or lower-investment sperm.

I won’t go on except to say that perhaps we need a name for the tactic of doing down the sex binary (or pretending it doesn’t exist), by emphasizing both diversity of nature and the complication of sex determination and expression of sex-related traits. I will call it “The Argument from Complication” which says something like this:

“Nature, including the determination and expression of biological sex, is complicated and diverse.
Therefore the sex binary is relatively unimportant, because by itself it can’t explain everything.” 

I’m not sure why the author flaunted this straw man, and I have no idea who the new editor of the journal is. But what is clear is that either the author or the editor, or both, decided to slant what is otherwise an informative article towards criticizing the very important fact that there are two sexes in all plants and animals, and that the defining traits of those two sexes, involving gametes, is both universal and explanatory. If you want to read more about this, see this free article by Richard Dawkins.

Two additional notes. First, this article appears on the website, published yesterday (click to read; I just saw it and haven’t yet); it’s by our old friend Agustín Fuentes, who is making a living attacking the sex binary:

And there is this one, reporting a new study that seems to lack a control (click to read):

An excerpt from the Santora piece:

Suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth jumped by as much as 72 percent from 2018 to 2022 in states that had recently passed laws to curtail their rights. And President Donald Trump took this onslaught to the federal level last month when he signed an executive order to cut federal medical care support for trans people aged 19 and younger, which two federal judges have since temporarily blocked. These political actions affect a set of young people who already had much higher rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide attempts than their nontransgender peers. Many of the recent state laws ban gender-affirming care—which a 2022 study suggests is a lifeline for many trans youth. In the study, those who received gender-affirming care had 60 percent lower odds of depression and 73 percent lower odds of suicidality over a 12-month follow-up than those who did not.

A growing body of evidence supports the mental health benefits of gender-affirming care for trans youth—including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and, in very rare cases, surgery. Now a new study adds to this evidence: it’s the first of its kind to show that hormone therapy improves overall emotional health among trans youth.

For the new study, published in January in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers tracked the emotional health of 315 trans youth aged 12 to 20 for two years after they began using hormone therapy (testosterone or estrogen). Emotional health is a component of mental health that concerns feelings; it shapes how we act in relationships, react to struggles and generally behave in everyday life. The study also tracked appearance congruence, a measure of how much a person’s physical presentation matches their gender identity.

Two points about it.  First, the “new study” doesn’t seem to have a control, so (and I just scanned it) the improvements in emotional health can’t be ascribed to hormone therapy. This is what controls are for! We know that gender dysphoria generally resolves and disappears in 80% of untreated children, so those controls are essential.

Second, the article does not mention the contradictory results in the literature, nor does it mention the famous but unpublished study of Johanna Olson-Kennedy that, over a period of two years (same as above) found contradictory results (the Olson-Kennedy study remains unpublished because the results weren’t ideologically acceptable!). From the NYT:

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

My conclusion from all this: Scientific American is, after a short hiatus, going woke again. Keep your eye on it.

h/t: Robert

Neutron stars are stellar remnants. Composed of dense nuclear material, they all have strong magnetic fields. But the magnetic fields of some neutron stars can be a thousand times stronger. They are known as magnetars, and we aren’t entirely sure how they generated such powerful magnetic fields. But a new study in Nature Astronomy reveals some clues.

The general thought has been that magnetars create their fields through some type of dynamo process. This is where a flow of magnetic material generates a magnetic field. Since the flow is driven by heat convection, it can power strong fields. Earth’s magnetic field is unusually strong for a planet of its size and is powered by the convection of iron in its core. However, the core of a neutron star is made of nucleons, not atoms, so it is difficult to determine a specific dynamo process for magnetars.

For this study, the team wanted to understand what are known as low-field magnetars. These are magnetars that have weaker magnetic fields than most magnetars, but still generate bursts of X-rays and gamma rays. Most magnetars are identified by their high-energy emissions, since it takes intense magnetic fields to create such powerful bursts. Low-field magnetars shouldn’t have a strong enough field to create such bursts, but they sometimes do. This would suggest that at times their magnetic fields become intense. The question is how.

To answer this question, the team ran computer simulations of several dynamo models, looking for one that best fit the observational data. They found that the best fit involved what’s known as the Tayler–Spruit dynamo. This dynamo is well known in stellar models and involves the differential rotation of a stellar core. Stars don’t rotate as a single rigid object. Instead, different latitudes of a star rotate at slightly different rates. This is likely caused by a fast-rotating core, which can produce the Tayler–Spruit dynamo.

The authors demonstrated that as a low-field magnetar forms, the supernova that created the magnetar transfers angular momentum to its core, thus creating a differential rotation. Through the Tayler–Spruit dynamo, this can create bursts of intense magnetic fields that power the X-rays and gamma rays we observe from these stars. This process is likely unique for low-field magnetars, as opposed to traditional magnetars that generate their magnetic fields in other ways.

Reference: Igoshev, Andrei, et al. “A connection between proto-neutron-star Tayler–Spruit dynamos and low-field magnetars.” Nature Astronomy (2025): 1-11.

The post So This is How You Get Magnetars appeared first on Universe Today.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “decide”, came with the note, “Because the Koran is the most overrated book in the history of the written word.”

Jesus is fed up with the contents of Mo’s book (a book apparently dictated to Mo by an angel from Allah), and is making a bulletin board.   (I have indeed read both the Bible and Qur’an, and while both are fictional, the Qur’an (the “final revelation”) is nastier to unbelievers).

Today we have Part VI of Robert Lang’s recent trip to Brazil’s Pantanal region (wetlands). Robert’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Readers’ Wildlife Photos: The Pantanal, Part VI: Birds

Continuing our mid-2025 journey to the Pantanal in Brazil, by far the largest category of observation and photography was birds: we saw over 100 different species of birds (and this was not even a birding-specific trip, though the outfitter also organizes those for the truly hard core). Here we continue working our way through the alphabetarium of common names.

Crested caracaras, adult and juvenile (Caracara plancus):

A caracara eating another bird (too far gone for me to identify, but perhaps our birding experts recognize it):

This one shows an onlooker waiting its turn. The facial color can change, depending on the bird’s mood (according to Wikipedia) and also reflects the dominance hierarchy, so here, yellow = boss, red = underling:

A chaco chachalaca (Ortalis canicollis). Say that five times fast. Its onomatopoeic name reflects its call—it’s one of the chattiest birds to be heard in the Pantanal:

Chalk-browed mockingbird (Mimus saturninus):

Chestnut-eared aracari (Pteroglossus castanotis). I love the wild coloration on this toucan relative:

Cocoi heron (Ardea cocoi) with a fish (unknown species). They hunt by spearing their prey, then can spend a fair amount of time and effort flipping and playing with the foot so that they can swallow it head-first and not get the heartburn of spine-in-the-gullet:

A cocoi heron flying:

Crane hawk (Geranospiza caerulescens):

Crested oropendola (Psarocolius decumanus). These are weaver birds, building elaborate hanging nests, one of which you can see immediately behind the bird:

More birds to come.

What, exactly, is dyslexia? What causes it, how should it be diagnosed, and stemming from that, how should it be treated? We can even ask a more fundamental question – does it actually exist as a discrete clinical entity? These questions have existed since dyslexia was first described and named in 1887, by German Opthalmologist, Rudolf Berlin. Not surprisingly, he thought the […]

The post Redefining Dyslexia first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

From integrated photonics to quantum information science, the ability to control light with electric fields -- a phenomenon known as the electro-optic effect -- supports vital applications such as light modulation and frequency transduction. These components rely on nonlinear optical materials, in which light waves can be manipulated by applying electric fields.