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With their 'T-REX' method, researchers developed a glassy, amber-like polymer that can be used for long-term storage of DNA, such as entire human genomes or digital files such as photos.

A new type of dart launcher has been developed as a safer and more cost-effective alternative to firearms or air guns to inject animals with drugs or tracking chips.

A suite of three innovations enables high-resolution, high-throughput imaging of human brain tissue at a full range of scales and mapping connectivity of neurons at single cell resolution. To demonstrate the advance, researchers compared a brain region in an Alzheimer's and a control sample.

Findings indicate that such software can dramatically improve patient safety during surgery.

The malaria treatment artemisinin improved hormone levels and regulated menstrual cycles in women with polycystic ovary syndrome

A three-layered textile made from fabric, plastic and silver nanowires can keep a person several degrees cooler than silk or other cooling materials

Gene therapies for cystic fibrosis have previously struggled to reach the faulty lung cells, but a new approach has succeeded in achieving long-lasting modifications in mice

Minuscule black holes that formed right after the big bang could have had a strange property called colour charge, and spotting them could help unravel the mystery of dark matter

Researchers have developed a technique that allows artificial intelligence (AI) programs to better map three-dimensional spaces using two-dimensional images captured by multiple cameras. Because the technique works effectively with limited computational resources, it holds promise for improving the navigation of autonomous vehicles.

Researchers have developed a technique that allows artificial intelligence (AI) programs to better map three-dimensional spaces using two-dimensional images captured by multiple cameras. Because the technique works effectively with limited computational resources, it holds promise for improving the navigation of autonomous vehicles.

The small footprint and dim light of white dwarfs, remnants of stars that have burned through their fuel, may make excellent backdrops for studying planets with enough water to harbor life. The trick is spotting the shadow of a planet against a former star that has withered to a fraction of its size and finding that it's a planet that has kept its water oceans for billions of years even after riding out the star's explosive and violent final throes. A new study of the dynamics of white dwarf systems suggests that, in theory, some watery planets may indeed thread the celestial needles necessary to await discovery and closer scrutiny.

This study discovered mini-Neptunes around four red dwarfs using observations from a global network of ground-based telescopes and the TESS space telescope. These four mini-Neptunes are close to their parent stars, and the three of them are likely to be in eccentric orbits.

A new computational method developed by physicists can be used to estimate the risk of sudden cardiac death from a one-minute heart rate measurement at rest. The study was carried out in interdisciplinary collaboration between cardiology and computational physics.

Data assimilation is an important mathematical discipline in earth sciences, particularly in numerical weather prediction (NWP). However, conventional data assimilation methods require significant computational resources. To address this, researchers developed a novel method to solve data assimilation on quantum computers, significantly reducing the computation time. The findings of the study have the potential to advance NWP systems and will inspire practical applications of quantum computers for advancing data assimilation.

Data assimilation is an important mathematical discipline in earth sciences, particularly in numerical weather prediction (NWP). However, conventional data assimilation methods require significant computational resources. To address this, researchers developed a novel method to solve data assimilation on quantum computers, significantly reducing the computation time. The findings of the study have the potential to advance NWP systems and will inspire practical applications of quantum computers for advancing data assimilation.

Researchers have engineered nanosized cubes that spontaneously form a two-dimensional checkerboard pattern when dropped on the surface of water. The work presents a simple approach to create complex nanostructures through a technique called self-assembly.

How can Douglas Murray lecture on antisemitism in Amsterdam, the very city that deplatformed several of us simply for having sympathy for Israel, which wasn’t a topic of our scheduled discussion? Maarten Boudry tells me that for the video below “he was invited by a right-wing party, so the rabid anti-Israel activists have no clout there.”

Yes, Murray is a conservative, but on the topic of Israel he’s on both the money and on the morality. That’s why many dislike him, though he’s been demonized for other reasons, like his distaste for immigrants coming to the West. I won’t discuss that here, as the video below doesn’t deal with that.  If you’ve heard Murray on this topic before, there’s not much new, but I listened anyway.

If you click on “notes” at the youTube site after expanding the details, you’ll  get a link to a transcript that goes along with the video. I actually listened to this rather than read it, as I like Murray’s eloquence. The lecture itself ends at 36:15, and then there are 24 minutes of audience questions, which Murray writes down and then answers. Here’s a near-comprehensive list:

Is it possible to defeat Hamas?
How do we get the ball rolling to get rid of antisemitism?
What are the psychological sources of antisemitism?
Should we stop using the word “Palestine” or “Palestinian” or “pro-Palestinian” given that there is not really a Palestinian people or country?
Given that the people of Iran are pro-Israel but its regime is the biggest source of anti-Israel weapons and support, what do we do?”
Why are the countries of Spain and Ireland vehemently anti-Israel while other European countries are more sympathetic to the country?
What can we do to make the silent majority about Israel “rise up”?
What do you think about Europe defending Western values?
What about Russia and China and other countries attacking Western values?

I can’t resist calling attention to his barb about Greta Thunberg, and why she’s the Nordic equivalent of a rōnin, a samurai without a master. The analogy starts at 47:14.

h/t: Bat

Our previous provost, Daniel Diermeier, became Chancellor (i.e., President) of Vanderbilt University, and that was a great loss to us. Since he went to Vandy, he’s enforced prohibitions against trespassing and illegal violations of free speech (building occupations), and also adopted both the Free Speech Principles and the Institutional Neutrality that he experienced at the University of Chicago. I wish he were our President now, as he’s doing a bang-up job at Vandy.

Harvard recently tried to go institutionally neutral, too, and it did a pretty good job, as I wrote about here and here.  But Diermeier finds one problem with Harvard’s neutrality that eluded me. It’s important, as it involves university investments—the object of much rancor these days. Diermeier identifies Harvard’s blind spot in the following WSJ article (it isn’t archived, so ask if you want a pdf):

Click to read:

Actually, the article makes two points. First, it explains why institutional neutrality is importantin a clear and succinct way (the Kalven Report is much longer):

In explaining institutional neutrality and why it’s important, most proponents point to the 1967 Kalven Report from the University of Chicago. At the report’s heart is the assertion that neutrality is necessary for maintaining conditions conducive to a university’s purpose. The report points out that universities and their leaders risk stifling debate when they stake out official positions. Moreover, when a university or its administrative units take a political stance, it invites lobbying and competitive advocacy by various campus constituencies, which turns the university into a political battlefield and erodes its unique purpose—promoting the pursuit of knowledge and truth.

Taking official positions also erodes the university’s commitment to expertise. Recognizing and rewarding deep knowledge, and making sharp distinctions between experts and nonexperts, is part of a university’s reason for being. When university leaders make declarations on issues they know little about, often in haste, they compromise that reverence for expertise. Even in the rare case where leaders are domain experts, they should avoid making official statements to keep from chilling debate.

He also points out a semantic issue that, comparing Harvard’s neutrality with Chicago’s, is a distinction without a difference:

Oddly, the two co-chairs of the Harvard faculty working group that recommended the new policy wrote in a recent op-ed piece that “the principle behind our policy isn’t neutrality.” Instead, they seek to further “values that drive the intellectual pursuit of truth: open inquiry, reasoned debate, divergent viewpoints and expertise.” There is little to distinguish those values from those of the Kalven Report.

Sorting out these semantics can be left to future historians of academia. The important thing is that Harvard agrees the duty of the university is to be a forceful advocate only when it comes to its core functions—and to be silent on other matters.

The recent op-ed by two Harvard professors who confected their neutrality report, an op-ed that I criticized in the first link above, appeared in the NYT, and can be found archived here. The op-ed was quite a bit different from the proposed policy. But the policy is what’s in force.

BUT. . . . somehow neutrality went out the window at Harvard when it comes to investing, about which Harvard refuses to  explicitly affirm institutional neutality. Diermeier says this:

Yet although Harvard’s change of heart is encouraging news for higher education, its new policy makes a crucial omission that is at the core of the current controversy on campuses.

Students at universities nationwide have called on their institutions to join the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. According to the Harvard working group co-chairs, it didn’t “address, much less solve, the hard problem of when the university should or shouldn’t divest its endowment funds from a given portfolio.” Its members classified divestment “as an action rather than a statement” and thus treated the question as “outside our mandate.”

This is a distinction without a difference. Whether you call it an action or a statement, politically or socially motivated divestment plainly violates institutional neutrality because it requires a university to choose a side in a debate unrelated to its core function, thus signaling that there is only one acceptable way to think about the issue.

When a university’s portfolio manager makes the considered and consequential decision to divest from a company because its stock seems overvalued, this is legitimate fiduciary oversight. But divesting because an entity does business with the Israeli government is a clear violation of institutional neutrality. A university’s investment goal should be to maximize the rate of return, which means more funding for faculty research and student aid.

Institutional neutrality firmly supports a university’s purpose. So after an era when universities have been quick to issue position statements on the political controversies of the day, it is good that they are getting out of that game. It is a university’s job to encourage debates, not settle them. But for any university policy prohibiting political statement-making to be comprehensive and effective, it must address and discourage politically driven divestment.

This is why any university aspiring to institutional neutrality must not make an exception of investments, which could lay the university open to all kinds of moral, political, and ideological pressures from both within and without the school. Calls for universities to divest from Israel, which are ubiquitous, should not be heeded—and they often aren’t. The same goes for Palestine or any kind of call for divestment driven by other than pecuniary considerations.  Diermeier’s explanation of why investments should also be institutionally neutral is important, and those who want universities to be neutral should read it and absorb it.  That includes Harvard.

I wonder how much money it would take to lure Diermeier back to Chicago, where he should, in my view, be promptly installed as President.

At our current level of knowledge, many exoplanet findings take us by surprise. The only atmospheric chemistry we can see with clarity is Earth’s, and we still have many unanswered questions about how our planet and its atmosphere developed. With Earth as our primary reference point, many things about exoplanet atmospheres seem puzzling in comparison and generate excitement and deeper questions.

That’s what’s happened with GJ-3470 b, a Neptune-like exoplanet about 96 light-years away.

Astronomers discovered the planet during a 2012 High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) campaign. The campaign was searching for short-period planets orbiting M-dwarfs (red dwarfs). When it was discovered, it was called a hot Uranus. It doesn’t take an astrophysicist to figure out why that term has fallen out of favour, and now it’s called a sub-Neptune planet.

GJ-3470 b is about 14 times more massive than Earth, takes 3.3 days to complete one orbit, and is about 0.0355 AU from its star.

New research presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society and soon to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters shows that the planet’s atmosphere contains more sulphur dioxide than expected. The lead researcher is Thomas Beatty, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

“We didn’t think we’d see sulphur dioxide on planets this small, and it’s exciting to see this new molecule in a place we didn’t expect since it gives us a new way to figure out how these planets formed.”

Thomas Beatty, University of Wisconsin, Madison

GJ-3470 b’s atmosphere is well characterized among exoplanets. The JWST has aimed its powerful spectroscopic eyes at the planet and revealed more detail than ever. Spectroscopy examines the light from its star as it passes through the planet’s atmosphere, revealing its chemical constituents.

Sub-Neptunes like GJ-3470 b are the most common type of exoplanet detected. Astronomers have detected carbon and oxygen in two of them, TOI-270d and K2-18b, which are important scientific results. But in GJ-3470 b’s atmosphere, astronomers also detected water, methane, and, more significantly, sulphur dioxide (SO2).

“The thing is, everybody looks at these planets, and often everybody sees flat lines,” said Beatty. “But when we looked at this planet, we really didn’t get a flat line.”

Finding SO2 was a surprise because GJ-3470 b is the smallest and coolest exoplanet to have the compound in its atmosphere. Image Credit: Beatty et al. 2024

This is the coldest and lightest exoplanet with sulphur dioxide in its atmosphere. The finding is significant in the effort to understand the different ways that planets form and evolve. The sulphur dioxide probably comes from chemical reactions in the atmosphere, as radiation from the nearby star tears hydrogen sulphide molecules apart, freeing the sulphur, which then bonds to oxygen, forming sulphur dioxide.

The amount of sulphur dioxide is also surprising. There’s about one million times more SO2 than expected.

“We didn’t think we’d see sulphur dioxide on planets this small, and it’s exciting to see this new molecule in a place we didn’t expect since it gives us a new way to figure out how these planets formed,” said Beatty, who worked as an instrument scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope before joining the UW–Madison faculty. “And small planets are especially interesting because their compositions are really dependent on how the planet-formation process happened.”

Astronomers found sulphur dioxide in WASP-39b, a hot Jupiter. But it’s 100 times more massive and two times hotter than GJ-3470 b. It forms the same way on both planets.

This image shows what the powerful JWST found in WASP-39b’s atmosphere. It was the first exoplanet where carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide were detected. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)

“On both planets, SO2 is produced through photochemistry on the planetary daysides: light from the star hits the top of the atmosphere and breaks apart sulfur-bearing molecules, and then the sulfur-atom wreckage from those photon/molecule collisions recombines with other molecules in the atmosphere and forms into SO2,” Beatty told Universe Today.

Beatty and his co-researchers tried to identify the pathways that could create SO2 through recombination. But the planet’s coolness led to dead ends.

“Identifying the correct recombination pathways was an important part of understanding SO2 on WASP-39b – but these predicted effectively zero SO2 on a planet as cool as GJ 3470b,” Beatty told Universe Today. It turns out that the atmospheric metallicity allows it to happen.

“As a part of these observations, we determined that the high metallicity of GJ 3470b’s atmosphere (it’s about 100x more metal-rich than WASP-39b) can drive SO2-producing reactions at much lower temperatures,” Beatty explained in an email exchange. “Put another way, we realized that all of the ambient water and carbon dioxide in GJ-3470 b’s atmosphere make the recombination process to form sulphur dioxide much more efficient than on larger giant exoplanets like WASP-39b.”

Astronomers can’t piece together a planet’s formation history without a complete account of its atmospheric constituents. With a complete list, they can start to tell the story of its formation. “Discovering sulfur dioxide in a planet as small as GJ 3470 b gives us one more important item on the planet formation ingredient list,” said Beatty.

But there’s more to the planet’s story than the SO2 and other atmospheric chemicals. It follows a polar orbit, which is a strong clue that the planet has been bullied out of its original orbit. It’s also extremely close to its star and has likely lost much of its atmosphere, blown away into space by the star’s powerful stellar wind. It may have lost 40% of its atmosphere.

“That migration history that led to this polar orbit and the loss of all this mass — those are things we don’t typically know about other exoplanet targets we’re looking at,” Beatty said. “Those are important steps in the recipe that created this particular planet and can help us understand how planets like it are made.”

The post Sulphur Makes A Surprise Appearance in this Exoplanet’s Atmosphere appeared first on Universe Today.

Taking a combination of short and long strides as you walk increases the amount of energy used by the body