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Many countries have made it illegal to possess nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, and research now shows the drug can be picked up in someone's breath

Mark Sturtevant is back with some lovely insect photos (he got a bit excited about one of the wasps).  His captions and IDs are indented (he’s also provided links), and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. There’s one snail at the end.

Here is another set of critter pictures. All of these were taken in area parks near home, which is in eastern Michigan.

Readers may remember that my last post finished with pictures from the Magic Field, where large Cicada Killer wasps were provisioning their burrows with paralyzed cicadas. These wasps often concentrate burrows in the same area, probably because they favor the same soil conditions. It was noted that a smaller Mystery Wasp would frequent the area as well, perhaps because it too favored those conditions. I will start with those wasps, but their introduction will take a while to explain. Bear with me.

The blackish Mystery Wasps were common sights in Cicada Killer Town, running quickly on the ground and frenetically searching in various nooks and crannies. They would investigate my shoes, backpack, and I’d even see them go into the cavernous Cicada Killer burrows. What were they? There was zero chance to get pictures since they were dialed at “11” for hyperactivity. Oh, well, I thought.

But one day I saw one of the wasps was carrying an object under its body. I approached, and the wasp dropped the object and retreated only a couple feet. It was a field cricket, paralyzed, and its hind legs had been removed. This no doubt was to make it easier to carry and to stuff down a burrow somewhere. Such is the Economy of Nature, as Darwin would say. But to me this was a valuable clue about the Mystery Wasps. I put the cricket down, and the wasp immediately ran up and carried away its prize. Back home, I searched for “cricket hunting wasp” in BugGuide (which is my go-to place for identifying arthropods online), and bingo. It was the Steel-blue Cricket Hunter (Chlorion aerarium). From the pictures therein one could see that the wasp was a thing of great beauty! My discouragement about getting pictures turned to determination. I was going to get pictures, even if I had to cheat a little.

I returned to the Magic Field with the trusty butterfly net and quickly caught one of the wasps. Back at home again, I set up my light box which is a large enclosure made with foam board and netting across the front. I often use this to photograph flying insects when the need arises.

A favorite trick for getting an active subject to sit for pictures is to give them food or water. A drop of diluted honey definitely did the trick this time, as it made my hungry but hyperactive friend settle right down so that I could take pictures shown below.

Excuse me, but this is where ‘ol Mark has to completely lose it for a moment.

LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL CREATURE!! JUST LOOK AT IT!!!

Ok, sorry about that. The next pictures include a frontal view, and there you can see that she has impressive mandibles. This is typical of solitary wasps that carry prey to their lair. 

Next up are more insects. I always pass a field of sunflowers on the way to one of the area parks. But once I stopped to try for pictures. Here is a Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens) in a nice composition.

I think it was on that same outing that I found this this Nessus Sphinx Moth caterpillar (Amphion floridensis) that had been parasitized by what are probably Braconid wasps. Those are wasp cocoons anchored to the back of the caterpillar, which was quite moribund and soon would die.

Another caterpillar is shown in the next picture. This is the larva of the Beautiful Wood Nymph (Eudryas grata). What I think is rather interesting about this colorful cat is that it shows false head mimicry, where its rear end is presented as its head while the actual head is kept tucked away. “Beautiful Wood Nymph” does not conjure up what the moth looks like, as it is a bird dropping mimic, complete with splatter effects as shown in the link. Bird dropping mimicry has its advantages since one only has to sit out in plain sight.

Speaking of bird dropping mimics, here is another example. This is the young larva of the Eastern Giant Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio cresphontes), our largest butterfly. Unlike the previous example that resembles dried out bird poo, the oeuvre of the Giant Swallowtail cat is to look like the shiny fresh stuff. The caterpillar will grow to a size that is not so passable as a bird dropping, so once it reaches its last larval instar they look more like a scary  snake mimic, as the linked pictures show.

Next up is one of our Tiger Moths. There are several similar-looking species, but this is the Harnessed Tiger Moth (Apantesis phalerata).

Moving on to beetles, here is a pair of mating v (Harmonia axyridis). I might not bother taking this picture, but it provided an opportunity to show something a bit different. Those yellow thingies decorating the elytra are the fruiting bodies of entomophagous fungi that I suppose will doom these beetles.

To expand on this, one can hardly do better than Ze Frank who made an entertaining episode on fungi that parasitize insects, and here it is.  Everyone MUST watch it. It starts out with something awful, and then it gets a lot worse. What fun!

Next up is a brightly colored Swamp Milkweed Beetle, Labidomera clivicollis.

The restroom at one of the parks had numerous moth flies sitting on the tiles. These very small flies have a larval stage that feeds on – oh, I don’t know, presumably organic matter and algae. So the adult flies are common in restrooms. The species is Clogmia albipunctata, and I am rather bummed with the picture since in this otherwise good focus stack I managed to not focus on the interesting antennae. [JAC: Note how closely this fly resembles a moth!]

And for closure, here are a pair of terrestrial snails that I put together for pictures. They are Brown-lipped snails, Cepaea nemoralis. I had learned that they are native to Europe, but are now common over much of the U.S.

Emmy Noether was hailed as a mathematical genius in her own time. And her theorem on symmetry is still driving new discoveries in particle physics and quantum computing today

Designing research studies to determine what is going on inside the minds of animals is extremely challenging. The literature is littered with past studies that failed to properly control for all variables and thereby overinterpreted the results. The challenge is that we cannot read the minds of animals, and they cannot communicate directly to us using language. We have to infer what is going on in their minds from their behavior, and inference can be tricky.

One specific question is whether or not our closest ancestors have a “theory of mind”. This is the ability to think about what other creatures are thinking and feeling. Typical humans do this naturally – we know that other people have minds like our own and we can think strategically about the implications of what other people think, how to predict their behavior based upon this, and how to manipulate the thoughts of other people in order to achieve our ends.

Animal research over the last century or so has been characterized by assumptions that some cognitive ability is unique to humans, only to find that this ability exists in some animals, at least in a precursor form. This makes sense, as we have evolved from other animals, most of our abilities likely did not come out of nowhere but evolved from more basic precursors.

But it is still undeniably true that humans are unique in the animal kingdom for our sophisticated cognitive abilities. Our language, abstraction, problem solving, and technological ability is significantly advanced beyond any other animal. We therefore cannot just assume that even our closest relatives possess any specific cognitive ability that humans have, and therefore this is a rich target of research.

The specific question of whether or not our ape relatives have a theory of mind remains an open research controversy. Previous research has suggested that they might, but all of this research was designed around the question of whether or not another individual had some specific piece of knowledge. Does the subject ape know that another ape or a human knows a piece of information? This research suggests that they might, but there remains a controversy over how to interpret the results – again, what can we infer from the animal’s behavior?

A new study seeks to inform this discussion by adding another type of research – looking at whether or not a subject ape, in this case a bonobo, understands that a human researcher lacks information. This is exploring the theory of mind from the perspective of another creatures ignorance rather than their knowledge. The advantage here, from a research perspective, is that such a theory of mind would require that the bonobo simultaneously knows the relevant piece of information and that a human researcher does not know this information – that their mental map of reality is different from another creature’s mental map of reality.

The setup is relatively simple. The bonobo sits across from a human researcher, and at a 90 degree angle from a “game master”. The game master places a treat under one of several cups in full view of the bonobo and the human researcher. They then wait 5 seconds and then the researcher reveals the treat and gives it to the bonobo. This is the training phase – letting the bonobo know that there is a treat there and they will be given the treat by the human researcher after a delay.

In the test phase an opaque barrier is placed between the human researcher and the cups, and this barrier either has a window or it doesn’t. So in some conditions the human researcher knows where the treat is and in others they don’t. The research question is – will the bonobo point to the cup more often and more quickly when the human researcher does not know where the treat is?

The results were pretty solid – the bonobos in multiple tests pointed to the cup with the treat far more often, quickly, and insistently when the human researcher did not know where the treat was. They also ran the experiment with no researcher, to make sure the bonobo was not just reaching for the treat, and again they did not point to the cup when there was no human researcher to communicate to.

No one experiment like this is ever definitive, and it’s the job of researchers to think of other and more simple ways to explain the results. But the behavior of the bonobos in this experimental setup matched what was predicted if they indeed have at least a rudimentary theory of mind. They seem to know when the human researcher knew where the treat was, independent of the bonobo’s own knowledge of where the treat was.

This kind of behavior makes sense for an intensely social animal, like bonobos. Having a theory of mind about other members of your community is a huge advantage on cooperative behavior. Hunting in particular is an obvious scenario where coordination ads to success (bonobos do, in fact, hunt).

This will not be the final word on this contentious question, but does move the needle one click in the direction of concluding that apes likely have a theory of mind. We will see if these results replicate, and what other research designs have to say about this question.

The post Do Apes Have a Theory of Mind first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

What really happened — and what didn't — in the 2024 telecom cyberattack.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If confirmed, Kennedy will keep trashing science and will continue exploiting the trashed science he helps create for his own benefit.

The post The Trashing of Science by Robert F Kennedy Jr first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A groundbreaking study on the freezing of water droplets suspended in air sheds light on a key process in Earth's water cycle: the transformation of supercooled water into ice.

A new platform for studying neuroinflammatory diseases, utilizing advanced 3D bioprinting technology has been developed.

This Hubble image shows a supernova named SN 2022aajn in a distant galaxy about 600 million light-years away with the unwieldy name of WISEA J070815.11+210422.3. However, the obtuse yet scientifically descriptive names aren’t what’s important.

What’s important is that SN 2022aajn is a Type 1a supernova, also known as a standard candle, and this image is part of a critical effort in cosmology.

Standard candles are an important part of the Cosmic Distance Ladder (CDL). Astronomers use the CDL to determine accurate distances to objects at extreme distances from us. There are different types of standard candles, though Type 1a supernovae are considered the most reliable. What do all standard candles have in common?

They have a known intrinsic luminosity. That means that they emit the same amount of energy across all wavelengths in all directions. So no matter from what angle it’s measured, its the same luminosity. For clarity, our Sun has intrinsic luminosity.

Astronomers compare a standard candle’s intrinsic luminosity with its apparent or observed brightness. Note the different terms “luminosity” and “brightness.” Brightness depends on both an object’s luminosity and how that luminosity is diminished by distance and any intervening matter like dust.

The Cosmic Distance Ladder is ubiquitous in cosmology and does a good job. However, it still faces some problems. The primary problem has to do with calibration: How can astronomers determine what a candle’s absolute magnitude is? How can they accurately describe the class of objects called Type 1a SN so that they can recognize all of them? And how can they find enough of them at well-known distances in order to determine their intrinsic luminosity with extreme accuracy?

The Cosmic Distance Ladder starts out using parallax, but it has its limits. Astronomers rely on standard candles beyond paralax. Image Credit: By ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49212250

This Hubble image is part of the effort. As part of an observing program, the Hubble is observing 100 known Type 1a supernovae to more finely calibrate our understanding of standard candles and their distances.

The program’s name gives a good idea of its goal. It’s named “Reducing Type Ia Supernova Distance Biases by Separating Reddening and Intrinsic Color.” Prof. Ryan Foley of the University of California at Santa Cruz is the Principal Investigator.

If Type 1a supernova exploded in a Universe without any dust, astronomers’ work would be simplified. But, of course, they dont. They explode in galaxies with their own dust. There can also be a lot of intergalactic dust between us and distant SN. All that dust reddens the light from the supernova, making its intrinsic luminosity more difficult to determine.

Type 1a Supernovae occur in binary systems where one star is a massive white dwarf. As its companion ages and swells, the white dwarf draws material away from the companion onto its surface. Eventually, the white dwarf explodes. Image Credit: By NASA, ESA and A. Feild (STScI); vectorisation by chris ? – http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/star/supernova/2004/34/image/d/, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8666262

In observations, the reddening from dust gets tangled up with the reddening from redshift. Dust in the intergalactic medium is about the same size as the wavelength of blue light. The dust absorbs and scatters the light from distant objects, making their light more red by the time it reaches us. Professor Foley’s observing program is an effort to “remove” intergalactic dust from our observations.

“Accurate distance measurements and unbiased cosmological constraints from Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) rely on proper correction for host-galaxy dust reddening that may attenuate the observed SN brightness,” Foley and his co-researchers write. To get around this, astronomers use what’s called a “reddening law.” “A correction is made by comparing observed and intrinsic color, and using a reddening law to determine extinction,” they write.

But reddening laws can be difficult to work with. It’s a delicate matter. “This procedure is nontrivial since a SN’s intrinsic color correlates with its luminosity in a manner nearly indistinguishable from the effects of dust reddening at optical wavelengths,” Foley writes in the description of the observing campaign.

Astronomers use a somewhat simplified way to determine how red a distant supernova is by treating the reddening from both dust and distance the same. “The current standard for measuring SN distances treats both fainter-redder relations as a single SN color law,” Foley explains. However, this introduces a bias into measurements since both causes are unlikely to contribute equally and uniformly to the reddening.

“This issue is currently SN cosmology’s largest systematic uncertainty and if not addressed will prevent future cosmology experiments from meeting their goals,” Foley explains. He also says that the error can be as large as about 6%. That’s a lot when measuring objects that are hundreds of millions of light-years away, and even much further than that.

How can astronomers solve this problem? By getting better data and more of it. That’s the motivation for Foley’s campaign, which tries to get around the problem by observing across multiple wavelengths, something the Hubble is built to do.

“The path to breaking the degeneracy between SN color and dust reddening is to extend observations to the UV and NIR, where the dust and intrinsic color, respectively, dominate the observed color,” the observing program’s description states.

The researchers will try to get around the SN cosmology problem by using the Hubble to survey 100 Type Ia supernovae in seven wavelength bands from ultraviolet to near-infrared. The leading image is a combination of image data from four infrared wavelengths, since IR passes through dust more easily than either UV or visible light. The researchers will then compare the brightness of the SNe across the wavelengths and disentangle the distance reddening effect from the dust reddening effect.

We’re accustomed to the Hubble’s “eye candy” images that have been gracing web pages and magazines for decades now. They’ve transformed our understanding of nature. But the telescope’s purely scientific side is where some of its real transformative power lies.

An accurate cosmic distance ladder is integral to cosmology. By helping scientists determine accurate distances to standard candles, the Hubble is helping develop a more accurate cosmic distance ladder, paving the way for a better understanding of the Universe.

The post The Hubble Space Telescope is a Powerful Science Instrument Despite its Age appeared first on Universe Today.

It seems everyone is talking about the Moon and everyone wants to get their foot in the door with the renewed passion for lunar exploration. ESA too have jumped into the lunar landing game having just signed a contract with Thales Alenia Space to build its Argonaut Lunar Lander. Compared to other landers, it will be unique in its ability to handle the harsh night and day conditions on the lunar surface. Each mission is planned to have a 5 year life and will have a standard descent and cargo module but with different payloads determined by the Moon. If all goes to plan then the first lander will fly in 2031. 

The Moon, Earth’s only natural satellite, is a celestial body that has fascinated us for centuries. It orbits Earth at an average distance of about 384,400 kilometres and is a barren, rocky surface covered in craters, mountains, and vast plains of solidified lava. Its lack of atmosphere results in extreme temperature fluctuations, with daytime temperatures reaching up to 127°C and nighttime temperatures plummeting as low as -173°C. 

The occultation of Aldebaran by the Moon in 2016. Credit: Andrew Symes.

Since the Apollo missions of the 1960’s lunar exploration has become a central part of space science.  The first major milestone was achieved in 1959 when the Soviet Luna 2 mission became the first human-made object to impact the Moon. This was followed by Luna 9, which successfully landed and transmitted images from the surface. This was followed by Apollo 11 and humanity’s first steps on another celestial body. Since then robotic missions like China’s Chang’e program, India’s Chandrayaan missions, and NASA’s Artemis program have aimed to study lunar water ice, geology, and sustainability for long-term human presence. 

Apollo 11 launch using the Saturn V rocket

The European Space Agency have got in on the act now with their plans to build Argonaut, an autonomous lunar lander. It will launch on regular missions to the moon and can be used for delivering rovers, infrastructure, instrumentation or resources to the Moon for lunar explorers. The lander will compose of the descent module, the payload and the cargo platform which will act as the interface between the lander and the payload and will integrate operations between the two. 

ESA signed their contract with Thales Alenia Space in Italy, a joint venture and prominent player in the global space market. They have been delivering high-tech solutions for navigation, telecommunication and Earth observation for over 40 years. They will be leading the European group to build the descent module with the remaining core team from the Group’s UK and France. 

Artist’s impession of the Lunar Gateway with the Orion spacecraft docked on the left side. Credit: ESA

Once complete, Argonaut will become a key part of ESA’s lunar exploration strategy and will integrate with their Lunar Link on the new lunar Gateway. This new international space station is planned to orbit the Moon as part of the NASA Artemis programme. Argonaut will become one of Europe’s main contributions to international lunar exploration as nations work together to establish permanent presence on our nearest celestial neighbour. 

Source : Argonaut: a first European lunar lander

The post ESA is Building its Own Lunar Lander appeared first on Universe Today.

Seven years ago, researchers caught an unexpected phenomenon on film: A pool of red dye that somehow 'knew' how to solve a maze filled with milk. Propelled forward by a couple drops of soap, it unerringly found its way, avoiding dead ends and even making 90 degree turns in its path toward the exit.

Through a multi-university collaboration, researchers have discovered a new, solid lubricating mechanism that can reduce friction in machinery at extremely high temperatures, well beyond the breakdown temperature of traditional solid lubricant such as graphite.

Scientist have concluded water did not arrive as early during Earth's formation as previously thought, an insight that bears directly on the question of when life originated on the planet. The finding is significant because the data reported by the study support the idea that water arrived towards the final stages of Earth's development into a planet from dust and gas, what geologists refer to as late accretion.

We can’t help ourselves but wonder about life elsewhere in the Universe. Any hint of a biosignature or even a faint, technosignature-like event wrests our attention away from our tumultuous daily affairs. In 1984, our wistful quest took concrete form as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, SETI has turned up nothing. Recently, scientists used a powerful new data system to re-examine data from one million cosmic objects and still came up empty-handed. Did they learn anything from this attempt?

This effort used COSMIC, which stands for Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster. It’s a signal-processing and algorithm system attached to the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio astronomy observatory. According to SETI, it’s designed to “search for signals throughout the Galaxy consistent with our understanding of artificial radio emissions. “

Modern astronomy generates vast volumes of data and algorithms and automated processing are needed to comb through it all. So far, COSMIC has observed more than 950,000 objects, and the results of the effort are in a new paper. It’s titled “COSMIC’s Large-Scale Search for Technosignatures during the VLA sky Survey: Survey Description and First Results” and will be published in The Astronomical Journal. The lead author is Chenoa Tremblay from SETI.

Image of radio telescopes at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, located in Socorro, New Mexico. Image Credit: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

“The place of humanity in the Universe and the existence of life is one of the most profound and widespread questions in astronomy and society in general,” the authors write. “Throughout history, humans have marvelled at the starry night sky.”

In our modern technological age, we marvel not only with our eyes but with powerful telescopes. The Karl G. Jansky Array is one of those telescopes, though it’s actually 28 radio dishes working together as an interferometer. Each one is 25 meters across, and they’re all mounted on movable bases that are maneuvered around railway tracks. This gives the system the ability to change its radius and density so it can balance its angular resolution and its sensitivity.

The Array is used to observe astronomical objects like quasars, pulsars, supernova remnants, and black holes. It’s also used to search trillions of systems quickly for signs of radio transmissions.

Currently, the VLA is engaged in the VLA Sky Survey (VLASS), a long-term effort to detect transient radio signals in the entire visible sky. The elegance of the COSMIC system is that it can “tag along” as VLASS progresses. “COSMIC was designed to provide an autonomous real-time pipeline for observing and processing data for one of the largest experiments in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to date,” the authors write.

One of the problems facing modern astronomy is the deluge of data. There aren’t enough astronomers or students to possibly manage it. “The idea is that we are receiving increasing quantities of data that must be sorted in new ways in order to find information of scientific interest,” the authors write. “Developing algorithms to search through data efficiently is a challenging part of searching for signs of technology beyond our solar system.”

There aren’t enough human brains to manage the tidal wave of valuable data created by modern astronomy. The signals we seek are buried in this wave, and we need automated help to find them. Image Credit: DALL-E

COSMIC is a digital signal processing pipeline that VLASS data flows through. It searches for signals that display temporal and spectral characteristics consistent with our idea of what an artificial technological signal would look like.

The sky is full of radio signals from astrophysical objects. In order for a signal to be considered a technosignature, it needs to be a narrowband signal, and its frequency should change over time as a result of the Doppler effect. That still leaves potentially millions of hits. Researchers are forced to make other assumptions about what might constitute a technosignature, and COSMIC filters through signals based on those assumptions. “In this pipeline, extraterrestrial technosignatures are characterized by a set of assumptions and conditions that, if not met, are used to eliminate hits that do not meet these assumptions,” Tremblay and her co-authors write. “The output of this search is a database of “hits” and small cutouts of the phase-corrected voltage data for each antenna around the hits called “postage stamps.”

COSMIC examined more than 950 million objects in space for technosignatures and found nothing. But that’s okay. SETI scientists still learned things from the effort by testing their system.

“As shown in <Figure 15>, within the last 11 months of operation, COSMIC has observed over 950,000 fields and is rapidly becoming one of the largest SETI experiments ever designed,” the authors write.

Figure 15 from the paper shows a plot in galactic coordinates of all the coordinates currently in the database observed from 29 March 2023 to 14 July 2024. The orange points represent data from
frequencies below 4 GHz (S-band), and the blue points are from data collected above 4 GHz (C-band). Image Credit: Tremblay et al. 2025.

Though COSMIC has observed almost 1 million sources, researchers focused on a small subset to rigorously test the postprocessing system. In a test field of 30 minutes of data, they searched toward 511 stars from the Gaia catalogue. “In this search, no potential technosignatures were identified,” the authors write.

However, this is just the beginning and constitutes a successful test of the system. Future efforts with COSMIC will be both faster and more automated, which is necessary to manage the vast volume of data in modern astronomy.

“This work overall represents an important milestone in our search,” the authors write in their paper’s conclusion. “With the rapidly growing database, we need new methods for sorting through the data, and this paper describes a rapid and viable filtering mechanism.”

Research: COSMIC’s Large-Scale Search for Technosignatures during the VLA Sky Survey:
Survey Description and First Results

The post SETI Researchers Double-Checked 1 Million Objects for Signs of Alien Signals appeared first on Universe Today.

Recognising that someone lacks information you possess is key for effective communication and cooperation, and bonobos seem to share this skill with humans

Researchers developed an automated system to help programmers increase the efficiency of their deep learning algorithms by simultaneously leveraging two types of redundancy in complex data structures: sparsity and symmetry.

Researchers developed an automated system to help programmers increase the efficiency of their deep learning algorithms by simultaneously leveraging two types of redundancy in complex data structures: sparsity and symmetry.

Scientists are hoping a new research technique will help unlock underwater secrets of marine wildlife.

National targets for solar and wind power will see reliance on natural gas plummet, reducing electricity price volatility across Europe, with major beneficiaries including the UK and Ireland, the Nordics, and the Netherlands.

Tiny copper 'nano-flowers' have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.