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A new study has measured the toxicity of several types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), better known as 'forever chemicals,' when mixed together in the environment and in the human body.

The Big Conflict has begun, though I hope it’s a limited attack.  Iran has launched at least 150 ballistic missiles at Israel, and many appear to be landing,  but the U.S. has vowed to provide assistance. This will doubtlessly be assistance in defense (like the last attack from Iran), for I can’t imagine the U.S. launching its own weapons at Iran.  Unfortunately, there are reports that some of the missiles have evaded Israel’s “Arrow” defense system against ballistic missiles and may be landing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There may be dozens of hits. and apparently every city in Israel is under attack.

Israel will respond; there is no doubt of that.

And people just can’t stop attacking the Jewish state.

Here’s a real-time video, with commentary (h/t Debra):

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss473_Max_Boot_2024_10_01.mp3 Download MP3

From best-selling biographer Max Boot comes this revelatory portrait, a decade in the making, of the actor-turned-politician whose telegenic leadership ushered in a transformative conservative era in American politics. Despite his fame as a Hollywood star and television host, Reagan remained a man of profound contradictions, even to those closest to him. Never resorting to either hagiography or hit job, Reagan: His Life and Legend charts his epic journey from Depression-era America to “Morning in America.” Providing fresh insight into “trickle-down economics,” the Cold War’s end, the Iran-Contra affair, and so much more, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades.

Max Boot is a Russia-born naturalized American historian and foreign-policy analyst and a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has worked as a writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, and the Christian Science Monitor, and is now a regular columnist for the Washington Post. His New York Times bestseller, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. He is also the author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present, and, controversially, of The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right. His new book is Reagan: His Life and Legend.

Shermer and Boot discuss:

• What led him to undertake this biography
• How to write a biography—with sources, and which to consider as reliable
• Early influences on Reagan’s life: family, Midwestern upbringing, education, teachers, mentors, experiences.
• Relative influence of genes, environment, and luck.
• The Lifeguard
• Depression economics influences
• Reagan’s attitudes and beliefs on social issues reflecting those of his generation
• Radio and Acting
• President of the Screen Actor’s Guild and his purported role in preventing a Communist takeover of Hollywood.
• GE pitch man
• A groundbreaking look at why Reagan left the Democratic Party, showing his reliance on conspiracy-mongering tracts, fake quotes, and statistics—and the influence of both the FBI and General Electric.
• Revelations about the role of “white backlash” politics in Reagan’s rise.
• California governor
• 1968 Presidential campaign
• 1976 Presidential campaign
• Goldwater and the state of the Republican Party when Reagan entered politics
• New evidence about the “October Surprise” and the involvement of Reagan’s aides in political skullduggery prior to the 1980 election
• Arthur Laffer and Trickledown economics
• Budget deficit
• AIDS epidemic
• Iran-Contra
• Abortion
• “Evil Empire”
• Gorbachev Geneva summit
• Gorbachev Reykjavik summit
• Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI/Star Wars)
• Reagan on nuclear weapons
• Rancho del Cielo
• An examination of how Reagan was both different from—and similar to—Donald Trump
• Hotspots: N Korea, Iran, Israel, China.

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

Discerning whether a nuclear reactor is being used to also create material for nuclear weapons is difficult, but capturing and analyzing antimatter particles has shown promise for monitoring what specific nuclear reactor operations are occurring, even from hundreds of miles away. Researchers have developed a detector that exploits Cherenkov radiation, sensing antineutrinos and characterizing their energy profiles from miles away as a way of monitoring activity at nuclear reactors. They proposed to assemble their device in northeast England and detect antineutrinos from reactors from all over the U.K. as well as in northern France.

Because this is a contest for computer geeks, banning Israeli students is particularly onerous, as they’d done excellently in the past.  As the article below notes, “In the 2024 competition, held in Alexandria, Egypt, four Israeli students participated remotely due to security concerns and won three gold medals and a bronze. The Israeli team placed second overall out of 94 participating countries and more than 350 student competitors.”

But now there’s no chance for Israeli medals because of the ban. And that ban serves no purpose I can see save to further demonize Israel by hurting its young people, and to demonstrate some kind of twisted “virtue” on the part of the organizers.

Now that the American Association of University Professors has dropped its long-standing opposition to academic boycotts (undoubtedly to give the okay to boycotts of Israel, though they won’t say it), others are following suit. A new article in Tablet gives examples of how Jews are being “frozen out” of not just academia, but publishing—and this is largely in America! A wave of anti-semitism is sweeping the world, and it’s not good.

The Times of Israel reports on the latest instance of Jew-banning, and also shows the resilience of those banned young Jews.  Click to read.

Excerpts:

Israel won’t be allowed to participate as a competing nation in the 2025 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), a prestigious international competition for high school students, in the first such decision by a global tournament organizer.

The IOI General Assembly voted by a two-thirds majority to “sanction Israel for its role” in the ongoing “humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the ongoing conflict,” according to a Tuesday announcement by the IOI.

“Beginning in 2025, Israel will not be recognized as a participating delegation at IOI, but four contestants from Israel may still participate under the IOI flag,” the statement said.

Well isn’t that alternative special? Happily, the Israelis aren’t having it:

Today, the Education Ministry says that Israeli students competing in the olympiad under the IOI flag is “not going to happen.”

“The Israeli team will carry the Israeli flag proudly on the way to many more victories and international achievements… The ministry is examining, in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, decisive measures on the issue,” the statement says.

The punishment is levied because of the conflict in Gaza. The IOI website says this:

Dear Colleagues and members of the IOI community,

This message is being sent to provide an update on a significant decision of the General Assembly of the IOI.

Members of the community requested that the IOI respond to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the ongoing conflict. During IOI 2024, the General Assembly debated many options at length. The question about what action to take, if any, was not taken lightly. The result was a vote to sanction Israel for its role in the crisis. Over two thirds of the delegations voted in favour of this action. Specifically, the action means that beginning in 2025, Israel will not be recognized as a participating delegation at IOI, but four contestants from Israel may still participate under the IOI flag.

There will continue to be reflection and debate about the mission of the IOI and its connection to war and other international disputes.Assoc/Prof Sun Teck Tan
President of IOI

Perhaps the IOI should be ideologically neutral instead of taking sides. But if they must take sides, they’re taking the wrong one.

Note that the IOI is sanctioning Israel for its “role in the crisis”, which means for defending itself (Israel isn’t allowed to win a war). If the IOI is doing this because “too many Gazan civilians were killed”, they should realize that “civilians” as reported by the Hamas-controlled Gazan Health Ministry include Hamas terrorists; that Hamas elevated civilian deaths as part of its strategy because dead Gazans mean more world opprobrium towards Israel; and that civilian deaths were elevated because Hamas deliberately embedded itself in civilian areas, schools, and hospitals. Further, the ratio of civilians killed to Hamas fighters killed is among the lowest in the history of modern warfare (it’s getting tiresome to repeat this). And I haven’t even mentioned the hostages. . . .  This isn’t computer science, after all, but simple facts.

If anybody is banned from this competition, it should be Palestine, home of terrorists, genocidal towards Jews, and the territory that started the war. Remember, they’re punishing young Jews that had nothing to do with the war, so, under that philosophy, if anybody should be punished, it should Palestinians. But perhaps they shouldn’t mix politics with computers at all.

The next IOI competition, sans Israelis, is scheduled to be held in Bolivia next year.

Cracks running through samples of asteroid Ryugu were probably formed by the repeated thawing and freezing of water inside it, which could have helped asteroids like this carry the building blocks of life to early Earth

Understanding the “effort paradox” can help you reshape your relationship to exertion so that you commit to those hard but truly meaningful activities

Researchers have synthesized a new compound, which forms a so-called covalent organic framework. The compound, which is based on condensed phosphonic acids, is stable and can for example be used to capture carbon dioxide.

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers compared the diagnostic performance of ChatGPT and radiologists in assessing 150 brain tumor MRI reports. Their findings might surprise you.

Everyday experience tells us that light reflected from a perfectly flat mirror will give us the correct image without any deformation. Interestingly, this is not the case when the light field itself is structured in a complex way. Tiny deformations appear. These have now been observed in the laboratory. The results confirm the prediction of this fundamental optical effect made more than a decade ago. They also show how it can be used, for example, as a method for determining material properties.

As many as 249 lives could have been saved in London during the 2018 record-setting hot summer had the city widely adopted cool roofs, estimates a new study.

Research is heralding in a new era for genetic sequencing and testing.

Engineers have discovered a simple and inexpensive means of directing lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the revolutionary molecules that delivered the COVID-19 vaccines, to target specific tissues, presaging a new era in personalized medicine and gene therapy. The key is making small changes to the chemical structure of LNPs, including the incorporation of siloxane, a chemical group that includes silicon, whose wider atomic radius increases membrane flexibility and improves mRNA uptake by target cells.

siRNA therapies show promise for treating diseases like cancer and genetic disorders, but their effectiveness depends on proper delivery. A recent study found that the method of mixing siRNA with lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) is key to success.

The high cost of installing heat pumps for home heating could slow down people widely adopting the technology and leave government targets missed, research suggests.

Miniature robots on the millimeter scale often lack the strength to transport instruments for endoscopic microsurgery through the body. Scientists are now combining several millimeter-sized TrainBots into one unit and equipping them with improved 'feet'. For the first time, the team was able to perform an electric surgical procedure on a bile duct obstruction experimentally with a robotic convoy.

Miniature robots on the millimeter scale often lack the strength to transport instruments for endoscopic microsurgery through the body. Scientists are now combining several millimeter-sized TrainBots into one unit and equipping them with improved 'feet'. For the first time, the team was able to perform an electric surgical procedure on a bile duct obstruction experimentally with a robotic convoy.

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard's star, the closest single star to our Sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts just over three Earth days. The team's observations also hint at the existence of three more exoplanet candidates, in various orbits around the star.

Researchers explored how infants act purposefully by attaching a colorful mobile to their foot and tracking movements with a Vicon 3D motion capture system. The study tested AI's ability to detect changes in infant movement patterns. Findings showed that AI techniques, especially the deep learning model 2D-CapsNet, effectively classified different stages of behavior. Notably, foot movements varied significantly. Looking at how AI classification accuracy changes for each baby gives researchers a new way to understand when and how they start to engage with the world.

Inspired by the dynamic color-changing properties of squid skin, researchers have developed a method to manufacture a heat-adjusting material that is breathable and washable and can be integrated into flexible fabric. The composite material operates in the infrared spectrum and consists of a polymer covered with copper islands. Stretching the material separates the islands and changes how it transmits and reflects infrared light; this innovation creates the possibility of controlling the temperature of a garment.