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Spike-in normalization helps molecular biologists ensure the accuracy of their results, but the technique is easily misused. New study suggests new guidelines for use of this valuable technique.

Existing global energy projections underestimate the impact of climate change on urban heating and cooling systems by roughly 50% by 2099 if greenhouse gas emissions remain high, researchers report. This disparity could profoundly affect critical sustainable energy planning for the future.

A nationwide analysis of community-level floodplain development found that over two-million acres of floodplain were developed over the past two decades across the United States, with roughly half of all new floodplain housing built in Florida.

The common practice of building dams to prevent flooding can actually contribute to more intense coastal flood events, according to a new study. By analyzing data and measurements from Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, dating back more than a century, researchers determined that coastal dams don't necessarily mitigate flooding. Dams can either increase or decrease flood risks, depending on the duration of a surge event and friction from the flow of water.

Greg Lukianoff is, as most of you know, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He’s also a lawyer and co-author, with Jon Haidt, of the excellent book  The Coddling of the American Mind.  Yesterday in Quillette, Lukianoff wrote a piece that many of us may find useful, outlining how to give comebacks to flimsy arguments against free speech.  The advice is especially useful now that both extreme Left and extreme Right are finding reasons to curtail speech, the former through demonizing certain opinions that go against Righthink and the latter through banning or censoring books.  I think the article below is free, so have a look.

I’m just going to put the arguments down, and if you’re savvy you should be able to give comebacks to most of these.  Nobody will get them all, I think, so go back and read the piece. I’ve indented Lukianoff’s arguments below, but have left out the ripostes. For some reason I can’t see the graphics that Lukianoff has embedded in the article.

I’ll note first that anyone using the phrase “freeze peach” when referring to free speech is simply mocking this important concept. On to the objecftions (Lukianoff thanks some people at the end for helping him out.)

Assertion 1: Free speech was created under the false notion that words and violence are distinct, but we now know that certain speech is more akin to violence.

Assertion 2: Free speech rests on the faulty notion that words are harmless.

Assertion 3: Free speech is the tool of the powerful, not the powerless.

Assertion 4: The right to free speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say; it still leaves other people free to kick you out.

Assertion 5: But you can’t shout fire! in a crowded theatre. (I have to do some self-aggrandizing here by quoting part of his answer):

This old canard, afavourite reference of censorship apologists, needs to be retired. It’s repeatedly and inappropriately used to justify speech limitations. People have been using this cliché as if it had some legal meaning, while First Amendment lawyers point out that it is, as Alan Dershowitz puts it, “a caricature of logical argumentation.” Ken White penned a brilliant and thorough takedown of this misconception. While his piece is no longer available online, you can find a thorough discussion of the arguments by Jerry Coyne here. Please read it before proclaiming that your least favourite language is analogous to “shouting fire in a crowded theatre.”

Assertion 6: The arguments for freedom of speech are outdated.

Assertion 7: Hate speech laws are important for reducing intolerance, even if there may be some examples of abuse.

Assertion 8: Free speech is nothing but a conservative talking point.

Assertion 9: Restrictions on free speech are OK if they are made in the name of civility. (Note that this argument doesn’t hold for this website; as I explain in the Roolz, if your comment is uncivil or insulting to another reader, I don’t have to publish it. On a website like this, I do not have to put up every comment that comes in, though I try to use a light hand when moderating. But First-Amendment-style free speech doesn’t apply to websites, discussion groups, and the like.)

Assertion 10: You need speech restrictions to preserve cultural diversity. 

Assertion 11: Free speech is an outdated idea; it’s time for new thinking.  (Note that this is the same argument made in #6 above).

Assertion 12: I believe in free speech, but not for blasphemy. 

Of these, the one I think it’s most useful to understand is the rebuttal to #7: the claim that “hate speech” doesn’t count as free speech. To answer this properly you’ll have to know what exceptions to First Amendment-style free speech have been carved out of that Amendment by the courts (false advertising, defamation, etc). Indeed, in countries like Germany and Britain, “hate speech” is a violation of the law, but Lukianoff notes that, at least crudely, “hate speech” laws don’t seem to go along with a strong reduction in bigotry, nor would you expect them to.

In his conclusion, Lukianoff once underlines the need for free speech. And speaking personally, I’d recommend that everyone who hasn’t read Mill’s “On Liberty” do so now (it’s free here on the Internet).

Lukianoff:

Free speech is valuable, first and foremost, because, without it, there is no way to know the world as it actually is. Understanding human perceptions, even incorrect ones, is always of scientific or scholarly value, and, in a democracy, it is essential to know what people really believe. This is my “pure informational theory of freedom of speech.” To think that, without openness, we can know what people really believe is not only hubris, but magical thinking. The process of coming to know the world as it is is much more arduous than we usually appreciate. It starts with this: recognise that you are probably wrong about any number of things, exercise genuine curiosity about everything (including each other), and always remember that it is better to know the world as it really is—and that the process of finding that out never ends.

Feeding bees edible bits of hydrogel increases their odds of surviving pesticide exposure by 30 per cent

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss468_Pinker_Ridley_2024_09_13.mp3 Download MP3

From the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to the rise of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives and Artificial Intelligence, in this episode Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, and Michael Shermer challenge conventional narratives and explore how we can continue to move forward.

They discuss the state of democracy, autocracy, and the lessons learned from historical crises, while offering insights into how innovation, rationality, and education can lead us through challenging times.

This session was presented at FreedomFest 2024. To see more speeches and sessions from FreedomFest, visit freedomfest.com/civl.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) is on a roll to clean up its act and promulgate freedom of speech and divisive DEI actions. I’ve written before about how UNC-CH adopted institutional neutrality, making it one of seven schools that have done so. Now, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), the entire UNC system is dismantling its DEI apparatus. Remember, the CHE isn’t a right-wing site, but the most respected source of reportage about developments in higher education.  Click headline to read:

The reporter, Jasper Smith, seems to concentrate on issues of colleges and race.

An excerpt:

In a report released on Wednesday, campuses in the University of North Carolina system outlined how they’ve complied with a directive to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts — such as eliminating staff positions, altering or ending programs, and cutting spending.

Across the system, institutions eliminated 59 jobs and restructured 132 positions. The DEI-related cuts added up to more than $17 million, a majority of which was redirected to “student success” initiatives, according to university officials.

At a time when colleges across the country have been dismantling diversity programs in response to political pressure, the UNC report offers a particularly comprehensive look at how a wide-ranging group of institutions approached the purging of DEI.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the state’s flagship, accounted for the biggest changes: It axed 20 staff positions, reassigned 27 positions, and redirected more than $5 million away from DEI efforts.

The Chapel Hill campus eliminated seven positions in central administration, including the vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer. Reassignments include the senior associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, who in a new role will focus on “professional and leadership development” for students and faculty.

First, why is this something to celebrate?  While the origin of DEI (“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”) may be well intentioned—to give a hand to underperforming minority students—the way it’s worked out has been counterproductive. And not just that—it’s divisive as well. Here are some of its problems (h/t Luana):

a.) DEI initiatives are universally associated with a particular ideology, one derived largely from postmodernism. It sees society as a clash between competing worldviews (in this case, among different ethnic groups or among the sexes), with the most powerful people getting to promulgate their worldview. In that sense it’s divisive, as it sets up a hierarchy of privilege that has led to things like increased anti-semitism in particular and the chilling of speech in general.

b.) DEI instills those lower on the “power” hierarchy with a sense of victimhood, which in some (but not all) cases leads to a sense of futility among those deemed “minoritized”. Why strive to improve if society is holding you down you from the outset?

c.) It has largely replaced merit as a criterion for success with ethnicity, race, or gender. This has largely reduced the quality of education in various fields. It’s because of this that most of the elite schools that initially got rid of standardized testing have now reinstated it.

d.) The initiatives almost uniformly state that their goal is “equity” (equal representation) rather than “equality of opportunity.” These are not the same thing, and leads to the notion that inequities are not the result of anything besides systemic racism and ubiquitous bigotry. This in turn buttresses the view that society is totally and inseparably wedded to racism. I know that, at least in academia, this is not true; but DEI pushes its false narrative that it is.

At any rate, What’s important for the UNC system is that positions aren’t just being “restructured” (a euphemism under which the system continues but with jobs given different names). but eliminated.  Maybe there should be a small group of “DEI” people in charge of investigating claims about bias, but, as you know, the whole system has become bloated. (The University of Michigan, for example, has over 240 DEI jobs that costs the system over $30 million a year.)

This is, of course, blamed on the Republicans, and, indeed, it’s mostly the GOP that has pushed these changes, but I can’t say it’s all to the bad:

The changes in the UNC system come as Republican lawmakers, conservative activists, and others continue to push a national anti-DEI movement. Since 2023, 86 anti-DEI bills have been introduced, and 14 have been signed into law, according to The Chronicle’s DEI Legislation Tracker.

The Chronicle has also tallied more than 200 campuses in 30 states that have eliminated or altered diversity offices or programs.

Last year, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature banned the use of diversity statements and mandatory DEI training, overriding a veto from the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. The legislation went into effect in December of 2023.

In May of this year, the UNC system’s Board of Governors voted to replace a policy that had mandated certain diversity-related activities on each campus. The system’s new policy emphasized a commitment to nondiscrimination and “institutional neutrality.”

Of course one likely result is that minority representation will fall, especially since the Supreme Court banned race-based admissions. Now I don’t think there’s equality of opportunity of any means, and that is one reason for inequities. But to me the solution is not to substantially lower the admissions bar to create equity for minorities, but to increase equality of opportunity, which must be done by starting with kids at a very young age. We all know how hard that will be, requiring a substantial investment of effort and money (throwing money at schools doesn’t seem to work).  And I still believe in a form of affirmative action, one that nevertheless may be illegal under the Supreme Court ruling. In muy view, if two students are pretty much equally qualified, go for the minority student.  But that may be “race-based” admissions, and may be prohibited by the Court’s decision.

Regardless, we simply don’t need the DEI bloat that is causing more problems on campus than it solves.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has delayed its launch, but the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover is heading toward completion. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2018, but technical delays prevented it. Now, after dropping Russia from the project because of their invasion, the ESA says it won’t launch before 2028.

But when it does launch and then land on Mars, it will do something no other rover has done: drill down two meters into Mars and collect samples.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover (RFR) was initially called the ExoMars Rover. ExoMars was a two-part joint mission between the ESA and Roscosmos (Russia). The first part is the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which is currently in orbit around Mars. The rover is meant to follow the orbiter and has been renamed in honour of British chemist and DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin.

The rover will land in Oxia Planum, a 3.9 billion-year-old, 200-km-wide plain that contains one of the largest regions of exposed clay-bearing rocks on the planet. Oxia Planum was initially a candidate landing site for NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which eventually landed in Jezero Crater. There’s overwhelming evidence that this region was once watery. Oxia Planum is also geologically diverse, with plains, craters, and hills, and is flat and mostly free of obstacles.

Ancient water channels flowed into Oxia Planum in Mars’ past, and it’s possible that these flows carried evidence of life with them. In that sense, the water did some of the work for the rover. Rather than have to traverse a much larger area looking for evidence of life, nature might have delivered it to Oxia Planum for the RFR to find.

The Oxia Planum landing site. Image Credit: By NASA – http://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/2014_05/14_Oxia_Thollot_webpage.pdf, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44399172

The RFR is aimed at astrobiology rather than geology, and if there’s any astrobiological evidence for it to find, it’ll be buried. The subsurface is protected from harmful radiation that could degrade evidence of life. As it moves around Oxia Planum, the RFR will use its ground-penetrating radar to study the subsurface. The radar is called WISDOM for Water Ice Subsurface Deposits Observation on Mars. Its data will be transmitted to Earth, where the ESA will create images of the subsurface, looking for ideal places to drill. Other instruments, like the Adron-RM neutron spectrometer, will help it find desirable water-rich deposits underground.

It will also discover buried obstacles that could make drilling difficult. Though the drill is robust and designed to operate in Mars’ harsh conditions, it could still be damaged.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover will map the subsurface, looking for desirable drilling sites. It can drill down as deep as two meters and collect samples. Image Credit: ESA

The RFR also has wide-angle cameras on a mast to help it investigate its surroundings and find routes. The cameras will also identify hydrothermal deposits for further investigation.

Once a drilling site is selected, the RFR will drill down to a maximum depth of two meters, collecting either a rock core or loose material. After withdrawing its drill, it will place the sample in its Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD), where a suite of instruments will examine it for both chemical and morphological evidence of past life.

The suite of instruments is called the Pasteur Payload and includes spectrometers, imagers, molecular analyzers, and other instruments.

The mission will also showcase advanced technologies. It’ll use machine learning to analyze data from its Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer(MOMA) instrument. Its PanCam (Panoramic Camera) system is an advanced system that will provide high-resolution, 3D, multispectral images of the Martian landscape. It even has a miniaturized infrared spectrometer integrated into the drill, called Ma_MISS (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies), to analyze the walls of the borehole as the drill penetrates the surface.

The RFR will have solar panels, but it’ll also be powered by an Americium power unit called a radioisotope heater unit (RHU). This is the first time Americium-241 has been used on a spacecraft, and its job is to keep the rover’s components warm in Mars’ frigid temperatures.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover will be more agile and autonomous than other rovers. It can drive over boulders as large as its wheels and should be able to safely navigate steep slopes. It also has the ability to lift its wheels if they’re stuck in sand or loose material. It can use its wheels to “walk” its way out of the sand.

The ESA deserves credit for severing its relationship with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and pivoting to complete the mission without Roscosmos’ involvement.

“The war in Ukraine has had a big impact on ExoMars. The spacecraft was ready to move to the launch campaign in Baikonur in April 2022 but was halted because of the invasion and the subsequent termination of the cooperation with Roscosmos, with whom the mission was partnered,” the ESA said in a statement in 2023. “The impact on the team and the disappointment for what happened was tangible, as a lot of effort had been spent in preparing this long-awaited mission.”

Russia was originally going to supply the launch vehicle and the landing platform for the rover. However, after Russia was ousted from the mission, the USA stepped in to provide the launch vehicle. The mission still needs a replacement landing platform, which is one of the reasons for the delayed launch. The ESA says that, unlike the original landing platform, the replacement will be simpler and won’t perform any science of its own. It won’t even have solar panels and once the rover is functioning, the platform will shut down a few days after deploying the lander.

This mission is about science, intellectual curiosity, and nature, not politics. Despite humanity’s woeful behaviour towards one another, our appetite for knowledge remains robust. Many missions suffer delays and other problems, so the RFR is in good company.

If the ESA can achieve its 2028 launch date, the RFR will arrive on Mars six to nine months later, most likely, and begin its scheduled seven-month-long mission to search for evidence of past life. Despite Russia’s bluster and terrible decisions, the mission will continue.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover is a remarkable machine. There’s still a lot of work to do, and the mission still has to land successfully, which is a daunting challenge. But if it does, it may finally provide an answer to one of our most pressing questions: Was there ever life on Mars?

The post How the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Rover Will Drill for Samples on Mars appeared first on Universe Today.

A powerful new AI called o1 is the most dangerous that OpenAI has ever released, the firm claims – but who are these warnings for, asks Chris Stokel-Walker

Custom-made wool caps have enabled scientists to record electroencephalograms in awake cats for the first time, which could help assess their pain levels

An international team of researchers has found a simple relationship between the rates of energy and information transmission across an interface connecting two quantum field theories.

With global demand for lithium-ion batteries fast depleting reserves of raw materials, experts are seeking safe, affordable and reliable alternatives for rechargeable batteries. Aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) could be the answer to producing low-cost alternatives from abundant feedstocks, and scientists are paving the way for the production of simple and practical polymer AZIBs using organic cathodes for more sustainable energy storage technology.

With global demand for lithium-ion batteries fast depleting reserves of raw materials, experts are seeking safe, affordable and reliable alternatives for rechargeable batteries. Aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) could be the answer to producing low-cost alternatives from abundant feedstocks, and scientists are paving the way for the production of simple and practical polymer AZIBs using organic cathodes for more sustainable energy storage technology.

The low-energy excited state of thorium-229 (229Th) isotope nucleus has recently gained much attention owing to it being an ideal candidate for ultra-precise nuclear clocks. Building such high-precision clocks requires an acute understanding of the excitation and de-excitation state of the nucleus. In this view, researchers have designed 229Th-doped vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) transparent CaF2 crystals. They excited it with X-rays to control the isomeric state population and observed radiative decay in a closed chemical environment.

Researchers have invented a technique that enables low Earth orbit satellite antennas to manage signals for multiple users at once, slashing costs and simplifying designs for communication satellites.

Researchers have invented a technique that enables low Earth orbit satellite antennas to manage signals for multiple users at once, slashing costs and simplifying designs for communication satellites.

Overlapping and weak fingerprints pose challenges in criminal cases. A new study offers a solution and brings hope for using chemical residues in fingerprints for personal profiling.

Most rechargeable batteries that power portable devices, such as toys, handheld vacuums and e-bikes, use lithium-ion technology. But these batteries can have short lifetimes and may catch fire when damaged. To address stability and safety issues, researchers have designed a lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery that features an improved iron sulfide cathode. One prototype remains highly stable over 300 charge-discharge cycles, and another provides power even after being folded or cut.

A new study is providing new insights into how next-generation electronics, including memory components in computers, breakdown or degrade over time.