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A new study places the origin of the Imazighen in the Epipaleolithic, more than twenty thousand years ago. The research concludes that the genetic origin of the current Arab population of north Africa is far more recent than previously believed, placing it in the seventh century AD. The team has designed an innovative demographic model that uses artificial intelligence to analyze the complete genomes of the two populations.

A new 3D printing method developed by engineers is so simple that it uses a polymer ink and salt water solution to create solid structures. The work has the potential to make materials manufacturing more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

A new 3D printing method developed by engineers is so simple that it uses a polymer ink and salt water solution to create solid structures. The work has the potential to make materials manufacturing more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

To diagnose heart conditions including heart attacks and heart rhythm disturbances, clinicians typically rely on 12-lead electrocardiograms (ECGs) -- complex arrangements of electrodes and wires placed around the chest and limbs to detect the heart's electrical activity. But these ECGs require specialized equipment and expertise, and not all clinics have the capability to perform them. Scientists showed that, with help from an AI tool, cardiologists can diagnose heart attacks using a simpler, easier and more accessible electrocardiogram technology.

Photovoltaic (PV) technologies, which convert light into electricity, are increasingly applied worldwide to generate renewable energy. Researchers have now developed a molecular treatment that significantly enhances the efficiency and durability of perovskite solar cells. Their breakthrough will potentially accelerate the large-scale production of this clean energy.

Scientists uncover a pivotal enzyme, XccOpgD, and its critical role in synthesizing C G16, a key compound used by Xanthomonas pathogens to enhance their virulence against plants. This breakthrough opens new avenues for developing targeted pesticides that combat plant diseases without harming beneficial organisms. Insights into XccOpgD's enzymatic mechanism and optimal conditions offer promising prospects for sustainable agriculture, bolstering crop resilience and global food security while minimizing environmental impact.

Recently, researchers developed a non-invasive method combining electrical impedance tomography and extracellular voltage activation to evaluate drug effects on ion channels. The resulting printed circuit board sensor allows real-time monitoring of how newly developed drugs can affect ion flow in channels, providing a cost-effective and accurate alternative to traditional methods like patch-clamp techniques and paving the way toward more efficient and shorter preclinical testing in the drug discovery process.

Fewer side effects, improved chances of healing: the goal of precision medicine is to provide patients with the most individualized treatment possible. This requires a precise understanding of what is happening at the cellular level. Researchers have now succeeded in mapping the interactions of 144 active substances with around 8,000 proteins. The results could help to identify previously unknown potential benefits of existing drugs.

Researchers have developed a new model to explain the formation of giant planets such as Jupiter, which furnishes deeper insights into the processes of planet formation and could expand our understanding of planetary systems.

What if the 'Market Economy' always existed? Archaeologists tried to answer this question by researching how much Bronze Age people used to spend to sustain their daily lives. Their results show that, starting at least 3,500 years ago, the spending habits of prehistoric Europeans were not substantially different from what they are today.

Soil liquefaction that results in infrastructure damage has long been a point of contention for urban planners and engineers. Accurately predicting the soil liquefaction risk of a region could help overcome this challenge. Accordingly, researchers applied artificial intelligence to generate soil liquefaction risk maps, superseding already published risk maps.

Soil liquefaction that results in infrastructure damage has long been a point of contention for urban planners and engineers. Accurately predicting the soil liquefaction risk of a region could help overcome this challenge. Accordingly, researchers applied artificial intelligence to generate soil liquefaction risk maps, superseding already published risk maps.

As you may remember, when faced with determining whether trans women should compete against biological women in the Olympics, the IOC threw up its hands and punted, declaring that each separate sport had to make its own rules on the issue. This has led, in the present Olympics, to biological males qualifying to box in the women’s division. The results are predictable, for even men who become transwomen retain a substantial amount of the size, strength, musculature, and other athletic advantages that biological men have over biological women. Hormone suppression doesn’t equalize those athletic abilities.

Nevertheless, according to the NBC News story below, two biological males who identify as women—people who were disqualified from boxing as women in previous competitions—have qualified for the IOC. Note that they both seem to have been raised as women, so they may well believe that they are indeed biological women. Ergo, they may well not think of themselves as having “transitioned”, so I won’t call them “transwomen.” Nevertheless, they are both almost certainly biological men with disorders of sex development (“DSDs”), and their competing against biological women is just as unfair—but not nearly as consciously unfair—as transwomen competing against biological women.

Click to read (the story is by Matt Lavietes):

Excerpts:

Two boxers who were disqualified from competing with women at a global event last year have been permitted to fight in the Paris Olympics, the International Olympic Committee confirmed.

Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan failed to meet gender eligibility tests at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi last year, prompting their disqualifications. But they have been cleared to compete in the women’s 66-kilogram and women’s 57-kilogram matches in Paris this week, the IOC confirmed in an email Tuesday.

 At the time of their disqualifications, the president of the International Boxing Association, which governs the World Boxing Championships, alleged that the boxers’ chromosome tests came back as XY (women typically have two X chromosomes, while men typically have an X and a Y chromosome).

“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women,” the association’s president, Umar Kremlev, told Russia’s Tass news agency at the time. “According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.”

. . .In an email Tuesday, the IOC said that “all athletes participating in the boxing tournament of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations.”

The IOC updated its rules regarding athletes’ gender eligibility, including its transgender participation guidelines,  in 2021 to defer to each sport’s governing body. The IOC no longer recognizes the IBA as the governing body over Olympic boxing, and instead refers to the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit — an ad-hoc unit developed by the IOC — for its eligibility standards.

In other words, the IOC made up the qualifications, ignoring what the International Boxing Association says. And they made them up on the spot. Why on earth would they do that? The article continues:

Critics in the United States, where the issue of whether trans women should be permitted to compete in women’s sports has been hotly debated in recent years, condemned the inclusion of Khelif and Lin in this week’s competition. Some questioned whether their participation was fair to other female competitors, while others directed incendiary language toward the boxers. [JAC: Check out the “incendiary language”, which isn’t incendiary at all, and comes from Riley Gaines.]

Khelif is scheduled to compete against Italy’s Angela Carini on Thursday, and Lin is scheduled to fight against Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova on Friday.

Here’s Khelif from the Wikipedia article, which adds some details (below):

ALGÉRIE PRESSE SERVICE | وكالة الأنباء الجزائرية , CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

From Wikipedia:

In March 2023, Khelif was disqualified for failing to meet eligibility criteria shortly before her gold medal bout at the 2023 IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships. The Algerian Olympic Committee said Khelif was disqualified for medical reasons. It later emerged that the disqualification was due to high levels of testosterone.[7][8]

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), using different rules to the IBA, cleared Khelif to compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, confirming that she complied with all necessary eligibility and medical regulations for the event,[8][12] without detailing what these eligibility rules were.[10] The IOC noted that Khelif was a woman according to her passport and that this was not a “transgender issue“.

She defeated Angela Carini in 42 seconds at the 2024 Olympics, after Carini withdrew citing intense pain in her nose. Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, tweeted about the match, writing, “Angela Carini rightly followed her instincts and prioritized her physical safety, but she and other female athletes should not have been exposed to this physical and psychological violence based on their sex.”[14]

And from The Daily Fail, the details of the match between Khelif and Carini:

 A boxer deemed a ‘biological male’ today won against an Italian woman in one of the most controversial Olympic bouts ever.

The fight between Italy‘s Angela Carini and her Algerian opponent Imane Khelif took just 46 seconds, with the Italian throwing her helmet onto the floor as the clash was abandoned, yelling: ‘This is unjust.’

The 25-year-old refused the handshake and fell to the canvas sobbing having received just two punches from Khelif – who had been banned from a major boxing contest before the Olympics.

00:17 02:24 Read More

 

Khelif was thrown out of last year’s world championships after failing testosterone tests carried out to establish gender qualification.

After the match was stopped, the referee raised Khelif’s hand in the air. But a visibly furious Carini yanked her own hand away from the fight official and walked off.

Ignoring the Algerian, the Italian fighter then plunged to her knees and burst into tears as she said she had never felt such strong blows in a contest before.

Speaking after the match, the heartbroken Italian said: ‘I’m used to suffering. I’ve never taken a punch like that, it’s impossible to continue. I’m nobody to say it’s illegal.

‘I got into the ring to fight. But I didn’t feel like it anymore after the first minute. I started to feel a strong pain in my nose. I didn’t give up, but a punch hurt too much and so I said enough. I’m leaving with my head held high.’

Khelif failed testosterone tests last year (the testosterone levels of biological men vs women are nonoverlapping), has a Y chromosome, and I’m guessing that this is a biological male, though it could be a rare intersex person. To know for sure, you’d have to check the internal reproductive anatomy to see if they have the equipment for making sperm or eggs. But testosterone levels, which can be suppressed are irrelevant; what matters is whether the person is a biological male or female. Nor does it matter what their genitalia are: if Khelif went through a male puberty, then it’s a biological male and carries substantial strength and speed advantages, as well as punch strength (see below), over biological women, regardless of testosterone suppression. Finally, it doesn’t matter whether these two people were raised as male or female, what matters is whether they have a disorder of sex development that affects their athletic ability. Here are a few tweets showing the ill-fated and unfair match:

A couple of punches to the head and it’s all over. /2 pic.twitter.com/6egSrRj51s

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 1, 2024

IOC allowed this male boxer to fight a woman. He won. Fight abandoned after 46s /4 pic.twitter.com/YwUfZQ6ssb

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 1, 2024

“None giusto!”.
“it’s not fair!” Says Angela /6 pic.twitter.com/ukqReaRHbP

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 1, 2024

And the end, with tears. It’s heartbreaking:

Angela Carini’s Olympic dreams smashed today. She breaks down in tears. /7 pic.twitter.com/CBNK2pNFo4

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 1, 2024

The loser’s statement, even sadder:

“I wanted this victory at all costs. Just for my father.”

Italian boxer Angela Carini emotionally discusses winning for her late father after securing a spot at the Paris Olympics.

She just forfeited her match against Imane Khelif, who is male. pic.twitter.com/zypHELjldX

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) August 1, 2024

I’ve written before (see here and here) that taking testosterone suppressors does not eliminate the athletic advantages of natal men over natal women, especially if they’ve gone through male puberty. You can track down the references by going to the thread of Emma Hilton, a biology professor at the University of Manchester. The thread starts here:

There have been two academic reviews of musculoskeletal changes in transwomen suppressing testosterone.

Both conclude that loss of muscle mass and strength is small, and that strength advantage over females is retained.

Citations to follow.

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) March 6, 2021

Here’s the huge difference in punching power (my emphasis) between biological men and women (it will probably be somewhat reduced if the man suppresses his testosterone, but not equalized). The reference is at the bottom of the figure.

It’s manifestly unfair to women to force them to compete against biological males who identify as women.  This might be another question to ask to the Presidential candidates—if they have a debate.

h/t: Luana

The most widely recognized explanation for planet formation is the accretion theory. It states that small particles in a protoplanetary disk accumulate gravitationally and, over time, form larger and larger bodies called planetesimals. Eventually, many planetesimals collide and combine to form even larger bodies. For gas giants, these become the cores that then attract massive amounts of gas over millions of years.

But the accretion theory struggles to explain gas giants that form far from their stars, or the existence of ice giants like Uranus and Neptune.

The accretion theory dates as far back as 1944 when Russian scientist Otto Schmidt proposed that rocky planets like Earth formed from ‘meteoric material.’ Another step forward happened in 1960 when English astronomer William McCrea proposed the ‘protoplanet theory,’ stating that planets form in the solar nebula. In the decades since then, the accretion theory was refined and added to, and in modern times, astronomers have gathered more observational evidence that supported it.

However, the theory has some holes that still need plugging.

According to the theory, forming a core large enough to become a gas giant takes several million years, and protoplanetary disks dissipate too soon for that to happen. Protoplanets also tend to migrate toward their star as they grow, and they may not gather enough mass before the star consumes them.

The accretion theory faces another problem that’s surfaced since we’ve discovered more exoplanets in other solar systems. It struggles to explain hot Jupiters and super-Earths.

Over the years, the development of streaming instability and pebble accretion has overcome some of these problems. Streaming instability explains how particles in a gas disk experience drag and accumulate into clumps, which then collapse gravitationally. Pebble accretion explains how particles from centimetres to meters in diameter experience drag and form planetesimals. Both of these have strengthened the accretion theory, but astronomers still hunger for a complete theory of planet formation.

Researchers have developed a new model that incorporates all the physical processes involved in planet formation. Their work, which is published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, is titled “Sequential giant planet formation initiated by disc substructure.” The lead author is Tommy Chi Ho Lau, a doctoral candidate at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in München, Germany.

The new model shows that substructures in a protoplanetary disk called annular perturbations can trigger the formation of multiple gas giants in rapid succession. Critically, this model matches up with some of the most recent observations.

Planets form in unstable gas disks around stars. The researchers show how small, millimetre-sized dust particles accumulate in the disk and become trapped in the annular perturbations. The authors call these migration traps. Since they’re trapped, the particles can’t be gravitationally drawn toward the star. A lot of material from which planets form accumulates in these compact regions in the disk, which creates the conditions for rapid planet formation.

“We find rapid formation of multiple gas giants from the initial disc substructure,” the researchers write in their paper. “The migration trap near the substructure allows for the formation of cold gas giants.”

This is an image of the HL Tau planet-forming disk taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA has imaged many of these protoplanetary disks with gaps. The gaps have been interpreted as rings carved out of the disk by forming planets, but this new model has a different explanation. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

The process creates a new pressure maximum at the outer edge of the planetary gap, which triggers the next generation of planet formation. This results in a compact chain of giant planets, which is what we see in our Solar System. The process is efficient because the first gas giants that form prevent the dust needed to form the next planet from drifting inward toward the star.

“When a planet gets large enough to influence the gas disk, this leads to renewed dust enrichment farther out in the disk,” explains Til Birnstiel, co-author and Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at LMU and member of the ORIGINS Cluster of Excellence. “In the process, the planet drives the dust—like a sheepdog chasing its herd—into the area outside its own orbit.”

These panels are snapshots from five different times in one of the simulations that show sequential planet formation. The solid line represents gas density, and the dashed line represents dust density. Each dot is a formed planet. As time passes, the dust density peak moves further from the star, shepherded along by newly formed planets. Image Credit: Lau et al. 2024.

The process then repeats itself. “This is the first time a simulation has traced the process whereby fine dust grows into giant planets,” said Tommy Chi Ho Lau, the study’s lead author.

The Atacama Large Millimetre-submillimetre Array (ALMA) specializes in observing protoplanetary disks. It can see through the dust that obscures planet formation around young stars. It’s found gas giants in young disks at a distance beyond 200 AU. In our Solar System, Jupiter is at about 5 AU, and Neptune is at about 30 AU. The authors say that their model can explain all of these different architectures. It also shows how our Solar System stopped forming planets after Neptune because the material was all used up.

“This work demonstrates a scenario of sequential giant planet formation that is triggered by an initial disc substructure,” the authors write in their conclusion. “Planetary cores are formed rapidly from the initial disc substructure, which can then be retained at the migration trap and start gas accretion.” The results show that “… up to three cores can form and grow into giant planets in each generation.”

How the substructures form is beyond the scope of this work. More research is needed to investigate this.

This work can explain how gas giants form, but it can’t explain how the timing worked in our Solar System. That requires more research into how gas accretion works, which the astronomical community is actively pursuing.

“Further investigations specifically on gas accretion are required to model the formation time of the Solar System’s giant planets,” the authors conclude.

The post A New Model Explains How Gas and Ice Giant Planets Can Form Rapidly appeared first on Universe Today.

Let others bang on about Trump; I’ve passed my judgment and have nothing to say about the loon. My brief this morning, as it is so often (sorry!) is New Zealand, which I see as the country of the world most captured by woke ideology (in this case, what we call DEI). In NZ, this takes the form of holding everything indigenous as sacred, and any criticism of such things cannot and will not be tolerated within the country. (I am safe in America.)  New Zealand may be a model of what will happen in countries like the US and UK, so we should pay attention.

What really burns my onions in when this kind of capture affects science, so that schoolkids—all the way up to college—are taught that science is not only compatible with the local “way of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori, or MM), but almost coequal, despite the fact that MM is a composite of empirical trial-and-error knowledge, spirituality, religion, myth and legend, and morality.

Today’s example, sent to me by yet another anonymous Kiwi (not the same one as yesterday!) puts the lie to the fact that this kind of capture is trivial and should be ignored. There are actually two articles, both from a government geological agency, GNS Science.

GNS Science is, according to Wikipedia,

. . . .a New Zealand Crown Research Institute. It focuses on geology, geophysics (including seismology and volcanology), and nuclear science (particularly ion-beam technologies, isotope science and carbon dating).

GNS Science was known as the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (IGNS) from 1992 to 2005. Originally part of the New Zealand Government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), it was established as an independent organisation when the Crown Research Institutes were set up in 1992.

As well as undertaking basic research, and operating the national geological hazards monitoring network (GeoNet) and the National Isotope Centre (NIC), GNS Science contracts its services to various private groups (notably energy companies) both in New Zealand and overseas, as well as to central and local government agencies, to provide scientific advice and information.

It’s analogous to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Click to read the summary page on “Minerals and Metals in New Zealand”:

After informing us that New Zealand is home to many minerals and metals (which are “not rocks”), and that these minerals and metals have many different uses, the page segues into spirituality and religion, which occupies fully half the page. Here you go:

Mātauranga Māori and minerals

Over hundreds of years, through interaction with and adaptation to the environment, Māori have developed a deep understanding and knowledge of minerals.

Māori believe that each rock and mineral type emerges from the Earth with its own story, its own whakapapa (genealogy) relating to its origin – hei koha tū, hei kura huna a Papa.

According to Māori tradition (pūrākau), Pūtoto, the god of magma, constantly seeks outward paths towards the Earth’s surface. On his upward journey, Pūtoto leaves many deposits — koha (gifts) for the guardians of the Earth’s bedrock and crust. Through the natural processes of heating, compression, solidification, weathering and erosion, Pūtoto’s deposits generate new varieties of stones, rocks, sand and minerals.

Pounamu (also known as jade or greenstone) is one of New Zealand’s most iconic mineral material. Pounamu is the Māori collective term for the semi-precious stone scientifically referred to as nephrite (kawakawa, kahurangi, inanga) or semi-nephrite. Ngāi Tahu are the kaitiaki (guardians) of pounamu and have a desire for it to be managed under the principle of ‘Tiakina he tino taonga Pounamu mō tātou, ā, mo kā uri ā muri ake nei’ (Care for the precious treasure Pounamu for all of us and our children who follow us). GNS Science provides scientific research and information to assist Ngāi Tahu with achieving these aspirations for now and for the benefit of future generations.

Well, I’m prepared to believe that the Māori know what uses metals and minerals have, but of course without modern science they don’t know how to make them into compounds or even the chemical composition of these substances. The geological origin of minerals, as recounted above, comes not from indigenous “ways of knowing” but also from modern science.  What distresses me is that the bit above mixes geology with legend. That isn’t science but anthropology—or even religion.  Seriously, are the things that traditional knowledge tells us of any use in a geology institute, or is it simply a form of virtue signaling? (They are, of course, of some use in anthropology or sociology.)

As the reader who sent this to me remarked,  “They’re trying to be both scientists and not at the same time!”

I have no idea whether the next article has anything to do with diluting geology with religion, but it’s an indication of what’s happening to science in New Zealand. Click to read:

The bad news:

GNS Science is proposing to axe dozens of jobs – the latest in a rolling series of shake-ups that have rocked the public and science sectors.

The Crown Research Institute has begun consulting staff on its cost-cutting proposals, which would disestablish 103 positions, of which one-quarter were vacant.

While 77 staff were affected by the plans, GNS was also proposing to establish 37 new roles, which it said would help the institute to “address its challenges and rise to its opportunities”.

“The change process anticipates these new positions will offer redeployment opportunities for some of our impacted staff,” GNS said in a statement.

The agency said it’d been focused on operating with fiscal prudence, seeking cost savings where possible and looking hard at any discretionary spending.

“Now, considering the size of our workforce alongside other cost-saving measures is a difficult but necessary step on a longer journey to financial sustainability,” it said.

“We are now encouraging staff to engage and provide feedback on the issues we face and our change proposals.”

It wasn’t yet clear how some of the agency’s vital functions – such as monitoring natural hazards or climate change research – might be affected.

Now I’m sure that New Zealand, a country of immense geological interest (it sits atop two tectonic plates) is full of excellent science-oriented geologists. I wonder what they think when their own governmental organization says stuff like this:

Ngāi Tahu are the kaitiaki (guardians) of pounamu and have a desire for it to be managed under the principle of ‘Tiakina he tino taonga Pounamu mō tātou, ā, mo kā uri ā muri ake nei’ (Care for the precious treasure Pounamu for all of us and our children who follow us). GNS Science provides scientific research and information to assist Ngāi Tahu with achieving these aspirations for now and for the benefit of future generations.

Is that the job of geologists?

On another page, you can see the “Framework of GNS”, described as “MAHIA Framework – the values that guide our work at GNS Science”.  These articles always have colorful diagrams for those who need pictures.

Today we have a collection of photos from several readers. All of their captions and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

First, three from Martin Riddle:

I take lots of nature photos around the campus of Brooksby Village, a retirement community in Peabody,Ma.

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird  (Archilochus colubris):

Hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum). [JAC: this is a great example of convergent evolution when taken together with hummingbirds]

American Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis):

From Norm Gilinsky:

This is perhaps more of a conversation starter than an actual wildlife photo, but we found this seemingly unique sunflower in a field of sunflowers. This one is from a farm in Woodinville, Washington. It’s a cultivar of the Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus).

What’s up with that? It’s a well-formed flower within the main flower. Since sunflowers are in the Asteraceae (Formerly the Compositae), it’s a composite within a composite. Strange and interesting:

From Simon Badderley:

Lin was walking down Democracy Street in our village when she saw this on the step of a derelict house in the middle of Ano Korakiana, Corfu.It’s a Giant Peacock Moth (Saturnia pyri), the largest moth in Europe, having a wingspan close to five and a half inches (140mm). It’s often thought to be a bat when flying at night. This is the female without the male’s feather-like antennae. The adult moth does not feed, but the caterpillar feeds on various deciduous trees including fruit trees and is regarded as a nuisance by fruit tree owners. These moths are active from March to late June. This one was almost inert, willing to be touched.

From Bryan Lepore:

 A photo of a green burgundy stink bug.  Wikipedia says it’s “Banasa dimidiata, the green burgundy stink bug, is a species of stink bug in the family Pentatomidae.”  Photo details: Taken in mid-Massachusetts: Middlesex county, July, 2024 – i.e. just a couple weeks ago. Mid-day, sunny, dry… on the recycle bin lid. iPhone 13 mini; enhanced photo:

And a lovely mountain from Larry Zelenak:

Not a wildlife photo, but maybe you can use it anyway, perhaps in a new series of best views from commercial plane flights.  This is Mt. Rainier on the morning of July 9 from an Alaska Airlines flight from SEA to RDU, taken with an older iPhone.

A strain of green algae has been artificially evolved to turn carbon dioxide into sustainable fuel and plastic

Let me start out by saying that I think the answer to that question is no – but this requires lots of clarification. This was, however, the discussion here, while although poorly informed, does raise some interesting questions. This is a Tik Tok video of a popular podcast which is mainly personalities chatting. The host, Logan, asks the question of whether or not it is possible that Jesus was essentially a con artist – a charismatic speaker who essentially started a cult of personality, and may or may not have believed his own rhetoric about being the son of God.

I think the question touches on something interesting, although historical context is critical. As I have discussed before, I think the evidence for a historical Jesus is thin. In the end, it doesn’t really matter because what is clear is that the mythology of Jesus evolved in a typical way involving all the elements known to fuel such mythologies. There were many stories of Jesus which are mutually exclusive, involving wildly different archetypes and story details. The themes followed the mythology themes that were already prominent in that time and place. The story evolved in a pattern of obvious embellishment. Eventually a canon was imposed from the top down, and all other versions became heresy and actively destroyed. What is left is almost entirely mythology, and the question of whether or not the life of a real person is in the mix is mostly irrelevant (from a historical point of view).

Unfortunately this renders the Logan conversation mostly irrelevant also, one giant non sequitur. Everyone in the conversation assumes that the details in the New Testament are historically accurate (if not the interpretation of those details), but that assumption is not justified. So the conversation takes the form of – could those details be the result of a charismatic con artist, or do they require an actual son of God.

For example, at one point, responding to the question, one person asks – has Trump ever walked on water? The point is that modern cult-like followings are not an adequate analogy to Jesus, because Jesus performed actual miracles. Another person raises the point (one which I have heard often before) that the disciples all faced persecution and death for their beliefs, and they would not have done so their belief was not genuine and intense. The unstated major premise here is that such belief can only come from a genuine Jesus.

The same person also argues no eyewitness to Jesus ever recanted. First, we do not have any direct eye witness accounts of Jesus. Paul, who wrote earliest about Jesus, never met him and only allegedly saw him 25 years after his death in visions (keep that in mind – the ultimate source of Christian belief is visions). The earliest gospels were written about 40 years after the death of Jesus. The writings that we have were all written by the faithful, to tell a story of faith, so why would they include accounts of recants. Any disagreement was purged as heresy. We don’t even know who wrote the gospels. They were authored anonymously and only later attributed to characters in the story.

I also found it interesting that the point was raised that there were a hundred such prophets walking around the middle east at the time claiming to be the son of god, and yet only one spawned a world religion. I actually think this point works against the claim of authenticity for Jesus. That’s right – there were lots of messiahs and prophets at the time. The concept of a messiah, a person with some kind of divinity, with a special message for humanity, who must make a personal sacrifice in order to save us, was the standard myth of the time. Why would we think that, by an amazing coincidence, one of these people was an actual messiah while the rest were fake?

The fact that one messiah myth emerged and persisted is not surprising. This is partly due to the notion that some messiah myth had to win and fill that mythology niche. It’s also possible that the Jesus myth that emerged contains elements of many of the false messiahs – any stories about any messiah that resonated could survive and would likely become attached to the most famous messiah story. Eventually Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of Rome, and that is the primary reason why it is a world religion today. Essentially, one version of the messiah myth emerged, mainly through luck and happenstance. This doesn’t mean that it has to be the one real messiah.

I am approaching this question from a neutral historical perspective, one not relying on faith. As a historical question, there is still some discussion about whether there is an element of historicity to the Jesus myth. But there is no debate about whether or not the story is a myth – it is. It emerged out of the mythology of that time and place, it evolved like a myth, and all of the references to Jesus either emerge from the early religious tradition itself or are a reference to that religious tradition (yes, even Josephus – he was not giving any first hand account, just referring to Christian belief).

But there is still an element of legitimacy to Logan’s question – it is very likely that many of the messiahs who were walking around at that time were charismatic cult leaders. We see this today, and we can see how such leaders can create new religions (Mormonism, Scientology). The process of creating mythology and mythology evolving into religion is not mysterious, but rather is well documented.

The post Was Jesus a Con Artist? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Bigger antennas are better, at least according to researchers interested in geospatial monitoring. That’s because higher resolution in monitoring applications requires larger apertures. So imagine the excitement in the remote sensing community when a researcher from Leidos, a government consulting firm, developed an idea that dramatically increased the effective aperture size of a remote radio-frequency monitoring system simply by tying a rotating antenna to a flat “sparse” array. That’s exactly what Dr. John Kendra did, and it has garnered him not only two NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grants to advance the technology but also a prize paper award at a technical conference on remote sensing. In other words, if implemented correctly, the Rotary-Motion Extended Array Synthesis (R-MXAS) technology could be a game changer for remote sensing applications.

To understand why, it is best to understand the underlying concept of synthetic aperture radar (SAR). In a SAR system, multiple images of a single area are collected as a sensor moves past that area. Those images are then combined using a specially designed algorithm to create a single image composition. These images can see through clouds and are commonly used in remote sensing, especially in ground monitoring applications, such as tracking ocean levels.

R-MXAS is an implementation of a synthetic aperture imaging radiometer (SAIR), which combines the movement aspect of a typical SAR system and stitches together data from at least three separate antennas. One antenna is a large, 2-D plane that is, in fact, a 1-D “sparse” antenna. Two antennas are attached to either end of a tether that rotates at a right angle to the flat plane.

Scott Manley explains the basics of Synthetic Aperature Radar (SAR).
Credit – Scott Manley YouTube Channel

Data from those antennas are captured and combined in a specialized signal processing algorithm, some of which would occur in a remote sensing satellite, while some would have to occur on the ground. Those signal-processing algorithms effectively create an aperture area much larger than the sum of the physical components comprising it, which is precisely what remote sensing enthusiasts are looking for.

One particular application of this technology is ground moisture monitoring. Currently, there is a mission known as the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, which ESA runs. It does an excellent job of monitoring overall soil moisture content at a resolution of about 35 km per “pixel.” But it does so from a low-Earth orbit, meaning it can only update those estimates once every few days. That update rate is frustrating to end data customers, who would like to see a faster cycle time and a higher resolution to allow for more specific tailoring of responses to conditions on the ground.

R-MXAS can help with both of those desires. First, according to calculations by Dr. Kendra, it can map the same 35 km resolution from geostationary orbit, allowing it to monitor an entire hemisphere simultaneously and continuously. While this particular final report didn’t dive into the detail of how R-MXAS could improve the resolution to 5-10 km rather than 35km, the idea is addressed, at least in theory, to show that the same multi-antenna configuration could be used as a high-gain phased array to increase the resolution even more.

R-MXAS Boom Design depiction
Credit – John Kendra

Given the novel nature of the idea and the enthusiastic acceptance by other researchers in the remote sensing community, R-MXAS was one of the lucky projects selected to receive a NIAC Phase II grant in 2019, immediately after its original Phase I grant in 2018. A brief search shows the most recent paper as being from 2021 and no further adopted plans or missions that implement the concept, but it would seem that a project somewhere would do so. Given the wide variety of use cases for a technology such as R-MXAS, it remains to be seen what that use case might be.

Learn More:
John Kendra – Rotary-Motion-Extended Array Synthesis (R-MXAS) FINAL REPORT
UT – There’s a Cloud of Space Debris Around Earth. Here’s how we Could get a Better Picture of it
UT – How a Single Atomic Sensor Can Help Track Earth’s Glaciers
UT – Astrobiologists Detect a Signature of Life Remotely. Don’t get too Excited, Though, it was With a Helicopter Here on Earth

Lead Image:
Artist’s conception of the R-MXAS system.
Credit – John Kendra

The post A Unique Combination of Antennas Could Revolutionize Remote Sensing appeared first on Universe Today.

Many people enjoy the experience of using AIs like ChatGPT or voice assistants like Alexa to find out information, but it turns out doing so makes it less likely you will spot inaccurate information