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In the era of climate change, France’s capital is prone to more frequent and extreme warmth. Staging the Olympic games there in the height of summer is wrong, says Madeleine Orr

Writer Naomi Klein unpacks her book Doppelganger about the "mirror world" of misinformation, conspiracy influencers and strange alt-right alliances

Governments must step up if we are to make good on Thermal Energy Storage's promise as a cheap and easy way to help tackle wind and solar power's intermittency problem

In an era when the creation of artificial intelligence (AI) images is at the fingertips of the masses, the ability to detect fake pictures -- particularly deepfakes of people -- is becoming increasingly important. So what if you could tell just by looking into someone's eyes? That's the compelling finding of new research which suggests that AI-generated fakes can be spotted by analyzing human eyes in the same way that astronomers study pictures of galaxies.

In an era when the creation of artificial intelligence (AI) images is at the fingertips of the masses, the ability to detect fake pictures -- particularly deepfakes of people -- is becoming increasingly important. So what if you could tell just by looking into someone's eyes? That's the compelling finding of new research which suggests that AI-generated fakes can be spotted by analyzing human eyes in the same way that astronomers study pictures of galaxies.

Australian engineers have unveiled a clever new device -- based on a modified speargun -- as a cheap and efficient way to test seabed soil when designing offshore wind farms.

Researchers have developed a hydrogel implant that can help prevent endometriosis, a condition that affects a great many women. This innovation also acts as a contraceptive.

New experimental results show particles called muons can be corralled into beams suitable for high-energy collisions, paving the way for new physics.

An international team of physicists has proven new theorems in quantum mechanics that describe the 'energy landscapes' of collections of quantum particles. Their work addresses decades-old questions, opening up new routes to make computer simulation of materials much more accurate. This, in turn, may help scientists design a suite of materials that could revolutionize green technologies.

Opioid medications offer people relief from debilitating pain, but these drugs come with dangers: the risk for addiction, miserable withdrawal symptoms and the potential for fatal overdose. Researchers have now identified a strategy to design safer opioids. They showed that an experimental opioid, which binds to an unconventional spot in the receptor, suppresses pain in animal models with fewer side effects -- most notably those linked to fatal overdoses.

When you think of a battery, you probably don't think stretchy. But batteries will need this shape-shifting quality to be incorporated into flexible electronics, which are gaining traction for wearable health monitors. Now, researchers report a lithium-ion battery with entirely stretchable components, including an electrolyte layer that can expand by 5000%, and it retains its charge storage capacity after nearly 70 charge/discharge cycles.

When you think of a battery, you probably don't think stretchy. But batteries will need this shape-shifting quality to be incorporated into flexible electronics, which are gaining traction for wearable health monitors. Now, researchers report a lithium-ion battery with entirely stretchable components, including an electrolyte layer that can expand by 5000%, and it retains its charge storage capacity after nearly 70 charge/discharge cycles.

A newly engineered type of soil can capture water out of thin air to keep plants hydrated and manage controlled release of fertilizer for a constant supply of nutrients.

The newly discovered planet TIC 241249530 b has the most highly elliptical, or eccentric, orbit of any known planet. It appears to be a juvenile planet that is in the midst of becoming a hot Jupiter, and its orbit is providing some answers to how such large, scorching planets evolve.

PrISMa is a new platform that uses advanced simulations and machine learning to streamline carbon capture technologies, by taking into account the perspectives of diverse stakeholders early in the research process.

Researchers have demonstrated that the layered multiferroic material nickel iodide (NiI2) may be the best candidate yet for devices such as magnetic computer memory that are extremely fast and compact. Specifically, they found that NiI2 has greater magnetoelectric coupling than any known material of its kind.

Researchers have demonstrated that the layered multiferroic material nickel iodide (NiI2) may be the best candidate yet for devices such as magnetic computer memory that are extremely fast and compact. Specifically, they found that NiI2 has greater magnetoelectric coupling than any known material of its kind.

Damping vibrations is crucial for precision experiments, for example in astronomy. A new invention uses a special kind of magnets to achieve this -- electropermanent magnets. They consist of a permanent magnet and a coil. In contrast to electromagnets, they do not have to be permanently supplied with energy. In contrast to permanent magnets, their strength can be tuned: Whenever necessary, a strong electric pulse is sent through the coil, adapting the properties of the magnet.

Damping vibrations is crucial for precision experiments, for example in astronomy. A new invention uses a special kind of magnets to achieve this -- electropermanent magnets. They consist of a permanent magnet and a coil. In contrast to electromagnets, they do not have to be permanently supplied with energy. In contrast to permanent magnets, their strength can be tuned: Whenever necessary, a strong electric pulse is sent through the coil, adapting the properties of the magnet.

This is an open letter to Noa Tishby because, as a passionate defender of Israel, she made a rather serious mistake about biology, and I tried to contact her about it via her publicist. I don’t know if she got my email, so I’m putting it below lest any Jews (or other people) be led to that we carry genes for inherited trauma.  We almost certainly don’t!

Noa Tishby is an Israeli actress who moved to the U.S. and has largely given up acting to advocate for Israel, in which she’s done an exemplary job. She wrote, for example, a primer for the ignorant called Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, setting out the background of the conflict between Israel and, well, the rest of the world. I read it, and although I already knew much of the material, many people don’t, as evidenced by the widespread and often willful ignorance among “anti-Zionists.” See the first video below!

Noa’s also got chutzpah, as you can tell from this video. She is not easily fazed or discombobulated, even when faced with arrogant stupidity combined with hatred:

In other words, I’m a fan and admire her resolve.

Her error: In the article below, published in the Jewish magazine Sapir, Tishby describes how nerdy she was when young, and now her “uncoolness” persists in her constant defense of Israel, an unpopular stand in much of the world.  While making this reasonable argument, though, Tishby also made a misguided claim about the “inherited” trauma of Jews. It’s a good article (click to read), but the epigenetics stuff bothered me.

Here’s the part that rankled:

What haunts us, even those of us who have lived through only the most recent pogrom, is the familiarity of even the oldest testimony. “We were awakened by a terrifying noise, we didn’t know what was happening . . . ” two millennia ago in Jerusalem. “We realized they’d broken into our neighbors’ house. . . .  We heard them screaming until silence fell. We thought of escaping into the forest, but everyone who tried to escape found it was impossible” one millennium ago in Cologne. This history has shaped us: “Deep inside I know it,” each survivor says in unison as they stand together at the close of the video. The weight of our past is in our blood.

Perhaps literally. Recent studies suggest that these traumatic stories have become woven into our hereditary fabric through epigenetic change. Epigenetic changes are additions to our DNA that influence the way our genetic code is read by our bodies. Studies show that epigenetic change can occur from traumatic experience, and that these changes can be inherited. The idea is intuitive to us: It’s long been suggested that historical traumas can be psychologically passed down from generation to generation. Epigenetic fear is the biological manifestation of historical traumas alongside our genetic code. A review found that “there is now converging evidence supporting the idea that offspring are affected by parental trauma exposures occurring before their birth, and possibly even prior to their conception.” One study found that “in the absence of their own traumatic exposures, offspring of Holocaust survivors” were more likely to exhibit biological signs associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Other studies have suggested that epigenetic changes can be passed down for many generations.

After the pogrom of October 7 and the global reactions to it, our epigenetic inheritance may have been activated in our veins. As the researcher behind the study of offspring of Holocaust survivors observed, “Epigenetic changes often serve to biologically prepare offspring for an environment similar to that of the parents.”

In this respect, Jews have a built-in mechanism that gives acts of barbarism against us a certain familiarity and triggers an almost automatic response. Though the threats have come from different neighbors — Romans, Germans, Baghdadis — across time and place, they have always been similar enough to inoculate us against being truly surprised.

Here’s another version of it on her Facebook page.

Now if you know anything about epigenetics, a form of inheritance of acquired characteristics, you’ll know two things.  First, in nearly all organisms the acquired trait gets passed on for only a single generation, as the modifications of DNA that cause the trait (in this case trauma), is wiped out as the DNA sheds its modifications when producing gametes for the next generation.  Second, there is no evidence that I know of in mammals (including us) that even if a trauma causes something to be inherited by modifying our DNA, that “something” is not the trauma itself, but whatever developmental change happens to be wrought by environmental effects on the DNA.  In the most famous widespread case of “inherited trauma”, the Dutch case of famine during the “hunger winter” of 1944, what was inherited wasn’t the trauma of not getting enough food, but a number of developmental aberrations that lasted only a single generation:

The Dutch Hunger Winter has proved unique in unexpected ways. Because it started and ended so abruptly, it has served as an unplanned experiment in human health. Pregnant women, it turns out, were uniquely vulnerable, and the children they gave birth to have been influenced by famine throughout their lives.

When they became adults, they ended up a few pounds heavier than average. In middle age, they had higher levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol. They also experienced higher rates of such conditions as obesity, diabetes and schizophrenia.

By the time they reached old age, those risks had taken a measurable toll, according to the research of L.H. Lumey, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. In 2013, he and his colleagues reviewed death records of hundreds of thousands of Dutch people born in the mid-1940s.

They found that the people who had been in utero during the famine — known as the Dutch Hunger Winter cohort — died at a higher rate than people born before or afterward. “We found a 10 percent increase in mortality after 68 years,” said Dr. Lumey.

The change lasted only one generation; as far as I know, the grandchildren of survivors don’t show this syndrome. Thus, Ms. Tishby erred when implying that the trauma itself faced by Jews could presumably last for a long time, perhaps generations.  If we are indeed traumatized by centuries of antisemitism, it’s certainly because the trauma comes from the environment (i.e., antisemites), and persists because antisemitism persists. Certainly I didn’t want a famous defender of Israel to popularize misguided biology.

So I sent the letter below a while back to Ms. Tishby. Since I couldn’t find a way to contact her directly, I sent it to her public relations person with a request that it be passed on to Tishby. So far I have no reply, and though I didn’t expect one from Tishby, I have no way to know if she ever got my correction.  Ergo I’m publishing it here in hopes that she’ll see it and the “inherited trauma of antissemitism” business will stop.  Yes, call me a Pecksniff. . .

Dear Ms. Tishby,

I’m writing just to urge you to be a bit cautious about the “epigenetic” aspect of Jewish trauma that you mentioned in your otherwise admirable Sapir article. I’m only writing because I’ve long admired your advocacy of Israel in the face of huge pushback, and don’t want you to fall into the errors of others who have mischaracterized epigenetics.

I am Jewish and also an evolutionary geneticist, and know a great deal about epigenetics: environmentally-induced changes in the DNA that usually occur by attaching a methyl group to various parts of DNA. It’s been known, as you said, that this can be inherited: rarely, the effects of parental trauma can cause inherited change in their offspring, though those changes don’t usually involve a child inheriting the trauma itself of their mothers.

What’s more important is that, because DNA changes are “reset” every generation when sperm or eggs are formed, epigenetic modifications usually disappear after one generation, so they can’t be inherited beyond parent—>offspring.  Further, if they do occur (usually through trauma affecting a mother’s physiology or placenta), what is inherited via methylation is not the trauma itself, but various other effects. The famous “Dutch famine study” from the “hunger winter” during the war didn’t involve inheritance of trauma, but a degradation of the offspring’s health that led to various other diseases. In other words, trauma was not inherited, but caused other effects in the children of the traumatized. And that lasted but a single generation.  There’s simply no evidence in humans that trauma itself can be coded into the genome and passed from parent to offspring.

You also mention that ” Other studies have suggested that epigenetic changes can be passed down for many generations.” But the study you cite involved roundworms, and had nothing to do with either humans or trauma (only one study, not “studies” was linked).

In short, there are no studies showing that parental trauma itself is inherited epigenetically. Instead, the effects of trauma on the physiology or development of offspring can be inherited. But they’re inherited, at most, for only one generation. Ergo, it’s a bit misleading to suggest that “the weight of the past is in our blood—literally.” That would be true only, and only in part, for the one generation of offspring of those experiencing the Holocaust. The rest of the Jews would be unaffected, so it wouldn’t be a general phenomenon.  And it would last only for a single generation at most—and what would be inherited wouldn’t be trauma itself but whatever developmental aberrations devolved upon fetuses developing during their mother’s trauma.

It’s really not necessary to invoke dubious science in support of your cause, for we Jews have suffered environmental trauma generation after generation via antisemitism, and this is due to a continuing culture, not to genes.  I myself have been traumatized by the resurgence of antisemitism after October 7, even though I’m at best a secular Jew. But none of my relatives were in the Holocaust, though they came from Eastern Europe.  My own “trauma” comes from seeing the world buy into the big lies about Israel (genocide, apartheid, “disproportinal” killing of Gazans, etc.)

My suggestion, then, is to stay far away from epigenetics as you promulgate your message. And of course your message is vital and important. As I said, I greatly admire your courage in going out there and speaking the truth, and wanted to let you know that the “truth” about epigenetics isn’t very solid!

Best wishes,
Jerry Coyne
Emeritus professor of Ecology and Evolutino
The University of Chicago

I’ve done what I can, and we’ll see if Ms. Tishby continues to spread the fallacious notion of “trauma literally in our blood” (it would have to be in the white cells, since red blood cells lack nuclei!)