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The dismantling of DEI in America continues. It happened last week in the entire University of North Carolina system, and now occurred the University of Wyoming. This short post just documents what is clearly a trend—one I thought wouldn’t happen until I was six feet under. Click on the headline below to read the article from USA Today:

The piece:

The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees voted unanimously last week to eliminate the school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) department and move its staff and some of its programming to other departments on campus.

The decision was made to balance input from the university community and the will of the Wyoming legislature, according to a written statement by University President Dr. Ed Seidel.

“We received a strong message from the state’s elected officials to change our approach to DEI issues. At the same time, we have heard from our community that many of the services that might have incorrectly been categorized under DEI are important for the success of our students, faculty and staff,” Seidel says. “These initial steps are a good-faith effort on the part of the university to respond to legislative action while maintaining essential services.”

Additionally, the University will no longer require job applicants to “submit statements regarding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and no longer evaluating employees’ commitment to DEI in annual performance evaluations.”

State lawmakers voted in March to cut $1.73 million from the University of Wyoming’s block grant and forbid state funding for the school’s diversity program. At a packed Board of Trustees meeting in March, students, educators, and community members rallied in support of DEI initiatives, and the Board of Trustees pledged to vote on a path forward at their May meeting.

The decision from the Board of Trustees comes amidst a heated national debate on DEI. Donald Trump recently spoke against the “DEI revolution” and pledged to crush “anti-white” racism. Defenders of DEI argue that its programming is necessary in acknowledging the present-day effects of past violence.

The last sentence is the one that’s worth discussing. Are there inimical effects on today’s society of past “violence”? (I’d use “racism” rather than “violence”.) The answer is indubitably “yes.” Given that, how do we rectify them? How can we make people at least share a minimum level of equality and well being?  One remedy is the “color blind” approachy: giving everyone equal treatment and opportunity. But as is often pointed out, many minorities already begin with two strikes against them, having inherited a culture which isn’t conducive to conventional social success. Until recently that was also the case for women, but that’s being rectified very quickly.

The remedy I’ve tentatively hit on, one that seems fair and still maintains the virtues of meritocracy, is also a remedy that seems impossible: assure all Americans that they have equal opportunity from birth.  That’s impossible not only because of inherited status and wealth, but because at least increasing opportunities by a decent modicum, ensuring good schools for all, cultures conducive to well being and success, decent medical care and other bits of the social safety net—seem to require both resources and a will that is lacking in America.  In that respect we need to be more like Iceland or Denmark but we’re demographically and socially quite different. Topping it all off, we don’t know which interventions will work, especially for fixing education. Throwing money at schools doesn’t seem to improve education much, and so we have to go through a slow empirical process of testing different interventions.

But I’ve digressed. One thing I can say is that the way DEI is used today in America is not creating more social justice. In contrast, it’s creating more division and resentment, more guilt and victimhood, and promoting a denigration of merit that can’t be good in the long run.

I’ve also pointed out that some aspects of DEI are worthy, like having a place to adjudicate harassment and bias, but this kind of monitoring hasn’t been done well. (For example, I object to anonymous “bias reporting” that chills speech and creates a climate of fear. By all means have a place to report bias, but it can’t be anonymous.)  And schools can reach out to truly diverse communities, not just involving ethnicity, but also socioeconomic status and different viewpoints.  Oh, and bring back mandatory standardized testing, which seems to be good for everyone.

But now I’ve digressed too much and am off for a fat, juicy burger (no steak this week), so I’ll just convey the news above and pass on.

h/t: Ginger K.

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The Washington Post recounts how a man was living in a car with 50–yes that’s right, 50–cats, and they were rescued from the car when it was left closed and overheated. One of the cats, named “Hercules”, was at death’s door, but they brought him back to become a model for Target’s store-brand kitty litter.

Click below to read, or go here to find the story archived for free.

The scene was heartbreaking: Nearly 50 cats were crammed into a hot car at a rest stop near Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

The cats were piled from floor to ceiling inside an SUV, and police soon learned that their owner had been living inside the car with them.

The owner agreed to surrender the cats to area animal shelters, but during the rescue, one of the cats escaped. Hercules, a gray and white feline, scampered off that sweltering day in June 2022, said Nicole Perreault, a veterinarian who runs Tuff Start Rescue, a Minnesota foster and adoption nonprofit.

Be sure to look at the photos of the cats in the car. It’s is indeed heartbreaking. But wait! There’s more:

Animal rescue volunteers searched for the cat for a month, she said, until Hercules was finally spotted sitting on someone’s doorstepin the area. His jaw was fractured, he was covered with maggots and his tongue was severely damaged, Perreault said.

The person who found Hercules outside brought the cat to the veterinary clinic.

Perreault said she suspected the cat was Hercules and contacted his previous owner, who confirmed it.

“This gentleman said he had fallen on hard times and had been evicted so he was staying in his car with all of his cats,” she said. “He was very polite, and it seemed he loved them very much. He was happy to know that Hercules had been found and was getting a lot of love.”

“We suspected he might have been hit by a car,” Perreault said of Hercules. “He was so near death that I wondered if it would be more humane to euthanize him.”

But then Hercules lifted his head and looked right at Perreault.

“I got the impression that he really wanted to fight,” she said.

Perreault and her team fed Hercules and cleaned him up, then gave him fluids through an IV and put him on pain medication. When the 6-year-old feline was strong enough, Perreault took him to an animal oral surgeon to have his jaw repaired.

Here are pictures of Hercules on Perreault’s FB page taken right when he showed up. He looks really awful! (You can donate there to help him, though he’s pretty good now):

Perreault said she posted a few photos of Hercules on her Facebook page to let people know the cat had been found and was gradually healing.

“He ripped my heart out when I saw him,” she wrote. “… I decided we owed it to him to give him every chance to recover from this horrible ordeal, so that hopefully he can experience the love and TLC that awaits.”

Jill LeBrun, a pediatric nurse from St. Paul who has fostered dogs and cats for Perreault’s rescue over the years, was immediately interested.

Last fall, LeBrun said, she was scrolling on social media when she came across a post from the Animal Connection, a pet talent agency in search of cats with unusual faces. It was scouting pet models for Target, which is based in Minneapolis.

LeBrun said the agency loved the photo she sent of Hercules with his tongue hanging out. She was asked to bring her cat to a studio for a photo shoot so his personality and star appeal could be assessed.

“Hercules did great — he’s a friendly cat and everybody loved him,” LeBrun said, noting that she was paid $100 to participate. “They told me his picture would appear on something for Target in early 2024.”

. . .In mid-March, when LeBrun still hadn’t heard back, she made a trip to her local Target and walked down the pet aisle.

When she came to a display of store-brand cat litter, she was stunned and delighted to see her cat’s image — with his dangling pink tongue — on every bucket of Up & Up Fragrance Free Clumping Cat Litter on the shelf.

And here’s a video about Hercules showing starring on the cat litter:

And there’s still more:

LeBrun said Hercules was recently called in for a second Target photo shoot, which means he’ll probably be appearing on other merchandise in a few months. The TV station Kare 11 recently reported on the cat’s sudden fame as a model.

Do watch the update on Hercules at KARE.

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Bored Panda has a collection of 50 pets at the vet’s, and I’ll show just a few cat pictures with the credits:

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Here’s a still-active bill in Pennsylvania, sponsored by Carolyn Comitta (a good-hearted Democrat, of course) that bans the cruel declawing of cats. You can click to read the bill, or read a more recent update from the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF):

I join the ALDF in supporting the bill. Their summary:

The Animal Legal Defense Fund supports this bill.

Sponsor: House Bill lead sponsor Rep Liz Hanbidge (D-61) and Senate Bill lead sponsor Sen Carolyn Comitta (D-19)
Introduction Dates:
House Bill: March 17, 2023
Senate Bill: April 22, 2024

This bill, H.B. 508/ S.B. 1178, would prohibit the declawing of cats unless the procedure is medically necessary for a therapeutic purpose and performed by a licensed veterinarian. Under this measure, declawing for cosmetic or aesthetic reasons, as well as for reasons of human convenience, would be strictly prohibited.

Declawing is an invasive surgical procedure in which the last bone of each toe is amputated, similar to severing a human finger at the last knuckle. The procedure is commonly performed for human convenience — often to protect furniture — rather than for the cat’s well-being. Declawing causes significant post-surgical pain and leads to a cat’s inability to scratch, eliminating a critical natural behavior. This can cause lifelong physical problems and lead to behavioral issues, such as biting and aggression, which the cat may resort to because they have been stripped of their primary defense mechanism.

Similar legislation has been enacted in three U.S. states — New York, Maryland, and Virginia — as well as numerous large cities that have jurisdictional bans such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Madison, West Hollywood, Austin, Denver, Beverly Hills, and Berkeley. In Pennsylvania, communities such as Allentown, Easton, Etna, and Pittsburgh have successfully passed local laws to prohibit declaw procedures.

There’s no down side to this bill that I can see.  Saving a sofa (if no other scratching posts work) is less important than saving your cat’s feet and their ability to defend themselves.

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Lagniappe:  I can’t remember where I got this–probably on Facebook.

h/t: Divy, Barry, Ginger K.

Black holes seem to provide endless fascination to astronomers. This is at least partly due to the extreme physics that takes place in and around them, but sometimes, it might harken back to cultural touchpoints that made them interested in astronomy in the first place. That seems to be the case for the authors of a new paper on the movement of jets coming out of black holes. Dubbing them “Death Star” black holes, researchers used data from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to look at where these black holes fired jets of superheated particles. And over time the found they did something the fiction Death Star could also do – move.

The black holes at the center of the study were supermassive ones at the centers of galaxies. Importantly, they were all surrounded by hot gases that were visible to Chandra’s X-ray sensors. The jets themselves were clearly visible in the data, but there was other important information hiding in it—namely, pockets free from gas, which had been pushed away by the jets.

Each black hole has particle jets in two opposing directions. As those jets push away gas and dust, they open up a pocket in space surrounding the black hole. These are visible in the X-ray data due to a lack of signal from those regions. The researchers hypothesized that the jets should align with the pockets of free space they create.

Black holes have been known to spin for a while – as Fraser discusses.

However, they found that, in at least 6 of the 16 black holes they were studying, the beams had completely changed direction such that the pockets of missing gas no longer aligned with the jets currently emitted from the black hole. In some cases, these changes added up to a 90-degree shift in the direction the jets were facing. What’s even more impressive, they seemed to move on a relatively small time scale, with estimates ranging from 1 to 10 million years. That is a blink of an eye for a black hole over 10 billion years old.

So why is this important? Cosmologists theorize that these disruptive jets put an upper limit on the number of stars that form in the host galaxy of the black holes. They don’t let the gas and dust surrounding them cool down enough to start to form stars and rocky planets. So, while it isn’t clear if the jets of particles themselves are roasting any formed planets like the actual Death Star, it is clear that moving the jets around would cause an even more massive disruption in the star-forming process. In theory, this would mean that galaxies containing these moving jets would have fewer stars, but that is a study for another paper.

Understanding exactly why this is happening might also need to be researched in another paper, but the authors have a few theories. Matter orbiting around the black hole and falling into it could cause the black hole to rotate, causing the jets it emits to move with it. 

How a black hole forms could hold the key to understanding why its jets move over time. Fraser discusses how that happens.

Another explanation is that the gas is moving around the galaxy without being impacted by the beams. In essence, the “cavities” of no gas in a galaxy are remnants of other cosmological forces and have nothing to do with the black hole beams. However, the authors don’t think this is likely because the galaxy mergers that could be one source of causing the “sloshing” happened in the galaxies that had the moving beams and those that didn’t. One would expect the cavities to be present in both types if they were caused by galaxies merging rather than moving jets of particles.

As always, there is more science to do. Thanks to the wonderful world of video streaming, a whole generation of new scientists inspired by the same Death Star could do it.

Learn More:
Chandra – Spotted: ‘Death Star’ Black Holes in Action
Ubertosi et al. – Jet reorientation in central galaxies of clusters and groups: insights from VLBA and Chandra data
UT – It’s Confirmed. M87’s Black Hole is Actually Spinning
UT – The Milky Way’s Black Hole is Spinning as Fast as it Can

Lead Image:
Image from Chandra’s X-Ray and VLBA’s radio data set of a black hole’s jets with “cavities” surrounding it.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Bologna/F. Ubertosi; Inset Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLBA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

The post Black Holes are Firing Beams of Particles, Changing Targets Over Time appeared first on Universe Today.

We’re running out of photos again, so I plead with and importune you to send in your good wildlife photos.

We have just a few photos today, and the first batch, from reader Steve Pollard, is salacious: LOCKED FOXES. As always, the contributor’s captions are indented and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

I attach three photos taken a couple of months ago of a pair of locked American Red Foxes (Vulpes vulpes fulva) in our garden. They were taken with a phone camera at extreme range, so they are not the greatest, but it’s not something I’ve seen before. From the magazine Wildlife Online:”Copulation lasts only a few seconds and, following ejaculation, the pair are locked together—a copulatory lock—for up to 90 minutes, owing to contraction of the vixen’s vagina and the swelling of the bulbus glandis tissue at the tip of the dog fox’s baculum”. As the photos indicate, the lock can result in some awkward positions! In this case, the vixen tried several times to get free, twisting and even biting at the dog. The lock lasted for over 20 minutes. The cub from a previous engagement took quite an interest in proceedings.

From Floridan Maderspacher, a marsh fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia), which, he says, “goes by the much nicer German name of Skabiosen-Scheckenfalter“.

From Lee Jussim.

Northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris)  in California:

American robin‘s eggs (Turdus migratorius), New Jersey

Hatched eggs:

Swans and babies (Cygnus sp., also New Jersey):

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss434_Tricia_Rose_2024_05_25.mp3 Download MP3

In recent years, condemnations of racism in America have echoed from the streets to corporate boardrooms. At the same time, politicians and commentators fiercely debate racism’s very existence. And so, our conversations about racial inequalities remain muddled. In Metaracism, Brown University Professor of Africana Studies Tricia Rose cuts through the noise with a bracing and invaluable new account of what systemic racism actually is, how it works, and how we can fight back. She reveals how—from housing to education to criminal justice—an array of policies and practices connect and interact to produce an even more devastating “metaracism” far worse than the sum of its parts. While these systemic connections can be difficult to see—and are often portrayed as “color-blind”—again and again they function to disproportionately contain, exploit, and punish Black people. By helping us to comprehend systemic racism’s inner workings and destructive impact, Rose shows how to create a more just America for us all.

Tricia Rose is Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies and the director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She has received fellowships from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and her research has been funded by the Mellon and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. She co-hosts with Cornel West the podcast The Tight Rope. She is the author of Longing to Tell: Black Women’s Stories of Sexuality and Intimacy, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When we Talk About Hip Hop—and Why it Matters, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, and her new book Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives—and How We Break Free.

Shermer and Rose discuss:

• how she broke free from her own working-class background growing up in Harlem in the 1960s
• racism, structural racism, systemic racism, metaracism
• specific problems to be solved vs. deep-root cause-ism
• What policies, practices, laws, and beliefs are racist in 2024 America and what can be done about them?
• what it means to be “caught up in the system”
• individual vs. group differences
• White advantages and Black disadvantages
• Rawls’ original position/veil of ignorance and why it has not been realized in America
• race differences that are real and current, and not just historical
• Trayvon Martin
• Kelley Williams-Bolar
• Michael Brown
• Rose’s response to Black conservative authors like Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell
• why Coleman Hughes is wrong about color-blindness
• Obama, George Floyd and race relations today
• reparations.

Introduction to the Show

In my 1997 book Why People Believe Weird Things, in a chapter on race and racism, I summarized the scientific research to date on the subject. My deeper motive in this exercise was my belief that in my lifetime we could achieve—or at least approach in an asymptotic curve—a post-race society in which such superficial characteristics as skin color, hair color and form, and facial traits would be considered the least important thing to know about a person.

Nearly twenty years later, in my book The Moral Arc, I suggested that we had made so much moral progress toward this end that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” was at last coming true and so, I concluded, “we are living in the most moral period in our species’ history.”

How naïve I was. Conversations about and coverage of race and race-related incidents have since become omnipresent in our culture, from social media to mainstream media. Government, corporate, and academic collection of data on all matters race has become ubiquitous, driven further along by racial (and gender) sensitivity training programs, of which I have partaken.

Thus, in 2022 I edited a special edition of Skeptic on “Race Matters,” that included: “Systemic Racism—Explained” by Mahzarin R. Banaji, Susan T. Fiske & Douglas S. Massey. Excerpt:

In the early 1960s, more than 60 percent of White Americans agreed that Whites have a right to keep Blacks out of their neighborhoods. By the 1980s, however, the percentage had dropped to 13 percent. The fact that discrimination is illegal, and White support for segregation has plummeted, begs the question of why segregation persists.

Rental and sales agents today are less likely to respond to emails from people with stereotypically Black names or to reply to phone messages left by speakers who “sound Black”. A recent meta-analysis of 16 experimental housing audit studies and 19 lending analyses conducted since 1970 revealed that sharp racial differentials in the number of units recommended by realtors and inspected by clients have persisted and that racial gaps in loan denial rates and borrowing cost have barely changed in 40 years.

Audit studies, conducted across the social and behavioral sciences, include a subset of resume studies in which researchers send the same resume out to apply for jobs, but change just one item: the candidate’s name is Lisa Smith or Lakisha Smith. Then, they wait to see who gets the callback. The bias is clear: employers avoid “Black-sounding” names. In fact, in both Milwaukee’s and New York City’s low-wage job market, Black applicants with no criminal background were called back with the same frequency or less as White applicants just released from prison.

As a result, Critical Race Theory (CRT) literature on systemic racism is both riding and fueling this cultural pattern, loaded as it is with discussions about racial group differences on everything from income and family wealth to the percentage of Black professors in STEM fields. What percentage of STEM professors have brown eyes, blue eyes, hazel eyes, and green eyes (pace Jane Elliott’s famous experiment)? How many brunettes, blonds, and redheaded professors are there in STEM?

Who knows? Who cares? Why are these superficial characteristics considered meaningless, whereas equally frivolous features like skin color, hair color and form, and facial traits are proxies for everything from intelligence and personality to moral worth and social value?

The answer is obvious. Race and racism as manifested in slavery, segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow, redlining, profiling, and police brutality is America’s original sin, whereas we have no history of prejudice and bigotry based on eye or hair color. How did we get to this point and how can we get past it?

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

On May 20th, 2024, an iceberg measuring 380 square kilometers (~147 mi2) broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica. This event (A-83) is this region’s third significant iceberg calving in the past four years. The first came In 2021, when A-74 broke off the ice sheet, while an even larger berg named A-81 followed in 2023. The separation of this iceberg was captured by two Earth Observation satellites – the ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 and NASA’s Landsat 8 satellites – which provided radar imaging and thermal data, respectively.

The iceberg has been officially designated A-83 by the U.S. National Ice Center, which assigns names based on the Antarctic quadrant where the iceberg was first sighted. Since Brunt is located in the eastern Weddell Sea, its bergs receive an ‘A’ designation while the numbers are assigned sequentially. Routine monitoring of ice shelves by satellites allows scientists to track the effects of Climate Change in remote regions like Antarctica. In particular, scientists can monitor how ice shelves retain their structural integrity in response to changing ice dynamics and increases in atmospheric and ocean temperatures.

Brightness temperature data from the U.S. Landsat 8 mission. Credit: ESA/USGS

This calving event (like its predecessors) was caused by the weakening of the ice at the McDonald Ice Rumples and the extension of the ‘Halloween Crack’ into the ice shelf. The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission relies on radar imaging to return images throughout the year, regardless of whether it’s day or night. This is especially important during the winter when there is virtually no sunlight for six months (known as Antarctic Night). Missions like Landsat 8 rely on thermal imaging to help scientists characterize ice sheet thickness.

As the image above shows, the thinner ice appears warmer since it is closer in temperature to open water, while thicker continental ice appears darker. The temperature differences between the ocean and ice sheets also help scientists identify where the calving line is. Fortunately, the iceberg does not threaten the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI Research Station, an international research platform that observes Earth, atmospheric, and space weather. While it is still located on the Brunt Ice Shelf, the station was relocated in 2017 to the Caird coast after the outer ice shelf was deemed unstable.

The ongoing loss of Antarctic ice is one of the clearest indications of rising global temperatures and a dire warning. In addition to contributing to rising sea levels, coastal flooding, and extreme weather, the loss of polar ice leads to additional solar radiation being absorbed by Earth’s oceans, causing temperatures to rise further. Monitoring the polar ice sheets is vital to adaptation and mitigation strategies, as spelled out in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).

Further Reading: ESA

The post Another Giant Antarctic Iceberg Breaks Free appeared first on Universe Today.

Imagine if your dead laptop or phone could charge in a minute or if an electric car could be fully powered in 10 minutes. New research could lead to such advances.

Nuclear physicists have long been working to reveal how the proton gets its spin. Now, a new method that combines experimental data with state-of-the-art calculations has revealed a more detailed picture of spin contributions from the very glue that holds protons together.

Undergoing surgery is seldom a pleasant experience, and it can sometimes be highly invasive. Surgical procedures have evolved steadily over the centuries, growing with the knowledge of anatomy and biology. Innovative methods have also been bolstered with new tools, and a growth in the use of robotics since the 1980s has moved health care forward significantly.

Four zebrafish are alive and well after nearly a month in space aboard China’s Tiangong space station. As part of an experiment testing the development of vertebrates in microgravity, the fish live and swim within a small habitat aboard the station.

While the zebrafish have thus far survived, they are showing some signs of disorientation. The taikonauts aboard Tiangong – Ye Guangfu, Li Cong, and Li Guangsu – have reported instances of swimming upside down, backward, and in circular motions, suggesting that microgravity is having an effect on their spatial awareness.

The zebrafish were launched aboard Shenzhou-18, which carried them, as well as a batch of hornwort, to orbit on April 25, 2024. The aim of the project is to create a self-sustaining ecosystem, studying the effects of both microgravity and radiation on the development and growth of these species.

As a test subject, zebrafish have several advantages. Their short reproductive and development cycle, and transparent eggs, allow scientists to study their growth quickly and effectively, and their genetic makeup shares similarities with humans, potentially offering insights that are relevant to human health. The zebrafish genome has been fully sequenced, and for these reasons zebrafish are commonly used in scientific experiments on Earth. Seeing how these well-studied creatures behave in such an extreme environment may have a lot to tell us about the life and development of vertebrates across species while exposed to microgravity.

The developmental stages of a zebrafish (danio rerio). Ed Hendel, Wikimedia Commons.

The taikonauts aboard Tiangong perform feeding and water sampling at regular intervals, and cameras allow scientists on the ground to monitor the aquarium.

This is not the first time fish have been to space. Starting in 2012, a Japanese research project brought medaka and zebrafish to the International Space Station for study in a similar aquatic habitat. The results of those studies revealed a decrease in bone density in the fish within just ten days. Human astronauts experience similar effects in orbit, though not on such quick time scales, and they can be mitigated somewhat through rigorous exercise routines.

Earlier fish in space include a mummichog aboard Skylab 3 in 1973 (and again in 1975 aboard Apollo-Soyuz), and zebrafish aboard the Soviet space station Salyut 5 in 1976. A variety of fish reached orbit aboard space shuttles in the 1990s, too.

The health and sustainability of animal life in space is a key area of research for human spaceflight efforts. If humans are to travel on long-term space missions, like those required to reach Mars, then understanding the biological implications of space travel is vital. These zebrafish are the latest in a long line of experiments undertaken in this pressing area of research.  

Learn More:

Gong Zhe “Aquatic antics: Fish exhibit disorientation in China Space Station.” CGTN.

The post Fish are Adapting to Weightlessness on the Chinese Space Station appeared first on Universe Today.

The hunt for new exoplanets continues. On May 23rd, an international collaboration of scientists published the NASA TESS-Keck Catalog, an effort to publicly release over 9000 radial velocity measurements collected by NASA’s space-based Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the ground-based Keck Observatory, located in Hawai’i, and the Automated Planet Finder, located at the Lick Observatory in California. An accompanying analysis of these validated 32 new planetary candidates and found the masses of 126 confirmed planets and candidates with a wide range of masses and orbits. Let’s dig into some details.

Radial velocity (RV) measurements are a backbone of exoplanet hunting. Telescopes collect data on how a star “wobbles” by checking for a red-shift (if it’s moving toward the Earth) or blue-shift (if it’s moving away) based on the gravitational pull of an exoplanet orbiting it. If the data presents a repeating pattern, the scientists know they have a likely exoplanet candidate on their hands.

To calculate the planet’s rotational period, scientists use the frequency of the changes in light from the star. They can estimate a planet’s orbital period based on how quickly the star cycles through the red and blue shifts they would expect from a complete planetary orbit. Unfortunately, since telescope time is limited, most of the exoplanets found so far using this method have much shorter orbital periods than the Earth.

Fraser discusses the end of TESS’s first mission.

Calculating a planet’s mass is also possible using the RV method – simply by calculating the planet’s gravitational pull as it is either directly behind or in front of the star. The magnitude of the respective red or blue shift can be directly tied to the planet’s mass, causing the gravitational pull.

Some truly unique worlds are hiding in the data, with two that stood out enough to be mentioned in a press release from the Keck Observatory. One is an overweight version of a “sub-Neptune”,” while another is a rapidly orbiting “super-Earth”.” 

A “sub-Neptune” is a category of planet that is a gas giant slightly smaller than Neptune, the smallest gas giant in our solar system. A planet known as TOI-1824 falls into this category but has a unique weight – it’s 19 times as massive as Earth despite being only about 2.6 times its size. That is an extremely dense planet and well outside of the range of other typical sub-Neptunes, which typically vary between 6 and 12 times the mass of our own planet.

TESS has had plenty of data updates over its lifetime – Fraser discusses one here.

A planet in the dataset that is closer in size to our own is TOI-1798c. From the mass perspective, it’s about the same size as Earth. However, it is so close to its parent’s star that it orbits it every 12 hours. This puts it in the category of an “Ultra-short period” (USP) orbit. Typically, USPs are tidally locked to their star and blasted with massive amounts of radiation. Estimates put the solar radiation it receives from its host star at 3000 times that received by the Earth. It doesn’t sound like an enjoyable vacation spot.

Doubtless, other exoplanets are hiding in the trove of data released as part of this paper. And each of those unique systems warranted their own published paper as well. As humanity begins to collect more and more discovered exoplanets, more strange and exciting new worlds will be found. It’s a crazy galaxy out there, and we’re only just starting to explore it.

Learn More:
Keck Observatory – New Catalog Showcases a Diverse Exoplanet Landscape with Strange, Exotic Worlds
Polanski et al. – The TESS-Keck Survey. XX. 15 New TESS Planets and a Uniform RV Analysis of All Survey Targets
UT – TESS Has Found Thousands of Possible Exoplanets. Which Ones Should JWST Study?
UT – Six Planets Found Orbiting an Extremely Young Star

Lead Image:
Artist’s rendering of some of the exoplanets contained in the TESS-Keck Catalog.
Credit – W. M. Keck Observatory / Adam Makarneko

The post Marvel at the Variety of Planets Found by TESS Already appeared first on Universe Today.

In just a few short years, NASA hopes to put humans back on the lunar surface. The first moonwalk in more than 50 years is scheduled for no earlier than September 2026 as part of the Artemis III mission. In preparation, astronauts, scientists, and flight controllers are conducting simulated spacewalks here on Earth.

“Field tests play a critical role in helping us test all of the systems, hardware, and technology we’ll need to conduct successful lunar operations during Artemis missions,” said Barbara Janoiko of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “Our engineering and science teams have worked together seamlessly to ensure we are prepared every step of the way for when astronauts step foot on the Moon again.”

Astronauts Kate Rubins and Andre Douglas donned mock spacesuits and test gear for a week of simulated moonwalking near Flagstaff, Arizona, where a volcanic desert served as a stand-in for the lunar surface.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins observes a geology sample she collected during a simulated moonwalk.
NASA/Josh Valcarcel

The tests were multipurpose, making sure that communications protocols with mission control were effective, putting technological devices that will used by moonwalkers through their paces, and doing dry runs of science-related activities, such as gathering geology samples.

The technology tested included an augmented reality visor that could provide navigational information to astronauts, helping them stay oriented and relocate the lunar lander in an emergency.
The test also simulated the communications procedures, allowing both astronauts and ground-based- teams to work together remotely to retrieve the most valuable geological samples and problem-solve in real-time.

“During Artemis III, the astronauts will be our science operators on the lunar surface with an entire science team supporting them from here on Earth,” said Cherie Achilles, science officer for the test at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This simulation gives us an opportunity to practice conducting geology from afar in real-time.”

NASA astronaut Andre Douglas collects soil samples during the first in a series of four simulated moonwalks in Arizona. NASA/Josh Valcarcel

All told the astronauts performed four ‘moonwalks’ and six technology demonstrations over the course of the week. These activities represent the fifth in a series of field tests, and are the “highest fidelity Artemis moonwalk mission simulation to date,” according to a NASA press release.

Artemis III is targeting the lunar south pole, which is a new environment for humans, far removed from the landing sites of the Apollo mission of 1969-72. The permanently shadowed craters of the south pole are expected to hold water ice, a valuable resource in space not just as a refreshing drink, but also as a source of the primary ingredients (hydrogen and oxygen) needed to make rocket fuel.

Rubins and Douglas’s space suits were open-sleeved for the Arizona desert, but prototypes of the actual spacesuits, currently under development by Axiom Space, are also undergoing testing. Future tests will have them put through their paces underwater at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, Texas.

Learn More:

“NASA Tests Technology, Practices Artemis Moonwalks in Arizona Desert.” NASA.

The post NASA is Practicing for the Moon With Partial Space Suits appeared first on Universe Today.

The search for life in the Universe has fascinated humans for centuries. Mars has of course been high on the list of potential habitats for alien existence but since the numerous spacecraft images that have come back showing a barren landscape, it seems Mars may not be so habitable after all. That is, until recently. The Martian regolith, the top layer of dust upon the surface has been found to be full of perchlorate salts.  These chemicals are poisonous to most life on Earth but a new study suggests that some extremophile protein enzymes and RNA may just be able to survive!

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the last of the major planets to have a solid surface. To the casual observer, Mars has a red hue to it which is the result of an iron-oxide rich surface. You might known iron-oxide by its more familiar name of rust. It is about half the size of Earth but does have some familiar surface features. Volcanoes pepper the surface but these are, as far as we know, extinct and caps of ice adorn the polar regions. 

Featured Image: True-color image of the Red Planet taken on October 10, 2014, by India’s Mars Orbiter mission from 76,000 kilometers (47,224 miles) away. (Credit: ISRO/ISSDC/Justin Cowart) (This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)

Early observers, with poor quality telescopes believed Mars was criss-crossed with a great global irrigation system that carried melt water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. We have since learned that these were just optical illusions and that the polar caps were largely made of carbon dioxide ice. As time progressed, the expectations of finding alien life on Mars slowly dwindled away. It has been kept alive though with hints of surface liquid water making the odd appearance and chemicals found in Martian meteorites that suggest biological processes. There is no doubt that the debate of life on Mars has still not reached a conclusion.

As we continue to search for evidence of life we are in parallel expanding our knowledge of life on Earth. In our search, whichever way we turn, under whichever rock we look or even indeed whichever corner of the world we search we can find signs of life. No matter how extreme the environment, life seems to find a way and as we learn more about the conditions where life can exist here, it helps in our search for alien life too. 

Among the many missions to Mars, there is mounting evidence for perchlorate salts in the Martian surface. These salts are composed of oxygen and chlorine atoms and are usually considered to be harmful to life on Earth. They can combine with water in the atmosphere to produce solutions of brine (salty water). The presence of water in many different states on Mars has informed NASA’s strategy for the search for life there to ‘follow the water’. The concept is simple, look for water and you may find life! 

A team of researchers at the College of Biological Sciences have recently published their research in the Nature Communication journal. They studied how the geochemical environment on Mars could shape and support past, or even present life on the red planet! Led by Assistant Professor Aaron Engelhart, the team studied two types of RNA (ribonucleic acid) and enzymes that are key components to life on Earth. To their surprise they found that, while the RNA functioned well in the perchlorate brine, the enzymes were less suited. They did find though that proteins that have evolved to survive extreme environments on Earth were well suited to the brine solution. 

It is a tantalising twist to the hunt for life. Where we started to lose hope for finding signs of past or present life on Mars due to the hospitable environment, the results showed that RNA is actually well suited to salty properties of the brine. With tolerance to such environmental factors the research breathes tantalising new angles into the search for life. 

Source : Exploring extremes in the search for life on Mars

The post Toxic Perchlorate on Mars Could Make Life More Interesting appeared first on Universe Today.

Have you memorized yet what CRISPR stands for – clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats? Well, now you can add MOBE to the list – multiplexed orthogonal base editor. Base editors are not new, they are basically enzymes that will change one base – C (cytosine), T (thymine), G (guanine), A (adenosine) – in DNA to another one, so a C to a T or a G to an A. MOBE is a guided system for making multiple desired base edits at once.

This is a complementary system to CRISPR, which targets a sequence of DNA and then uses Cas9 or a similar payload to make a double-stranded cut in the DNA. The cells natural repair system can then be leveraged to make changes during the repair process, such as inserting a new genetic sequence. In this way, and with different payloads, CRISPR can make targeted gene insertions or deletions, kill targeted cell types, or turn genes off and back on again.

MOBE cannot insert entire genes. Rather, systems like this can make single base edits. What is new about the MOBE system is that it can make multiple different types of edits at once. Some single base edits can change the nature of the resulting protein. Many single base changes in DNA are “silent” meaning that they do not alter the resulting amino acid that is coded for, because each amino acid has 3-4 similar three base pair codes. It’s also possible that a single base mutation will change the amino acid coded for, but the new amino acid is structurally similar to the previous one, so no conformational change in the protein results. But some point mutations will change one amino acid for a different one with a different effect – turning a straight line into a kink, for example. These alter the three dimensional folded structure of the protein, and therefore its function. Some point mutations may also change the code to what is called a stop codon, ending the production of the protein at that point and dramatically changing its structure.

This is the basis for many genetic diseases, they are point mutations. Some may be the result of a single point mutation, while others result from a combination of point mutations. The primary initial purpose of MOBE is to alter a cell line in culture with multiple different but specific point mutations in order to model a genetic illness. This allows for the creation on demand of biological models of these genetic diseases, and is therefore a boon to research.

The system uses guide RNA to target the desired location on the DNA. They combine these with RNA aptamers, which are small loops of RNA that bind to, and therefore can recruit, specific proteins. They use aptamers which recruit enzymes that make specific base edits – ABEs (adenosine base editors) in combination with CBEs (cytosine base editors). The RNA guides determine where to make the change, and the aptamers determine what change to make.

The main advantage to the MOBE system to simply performing multiple individual base edits is that this system reduces “crosstalk”, which refers to making base edits at undesired locations. Individual changes result is crosstalk about 30% of the time. With MOBE this is reduced to about 5%, while the rate of successfully making the desired changes is 30%. This is a more efficient and accurate system than what’s currently in use.

The main purpose of MOBE is research, and this level of efficiency is fine for conducting genetic research on cells in culture. But of course, for any gene editing system, there is always the question – can this be used therapeutically? We now have, for example, the first FDA approved CRISPR treatments, for sickle cell disease and thalassemia. Is MOBE accurate enough for a therapeutic intervention? That is yet to be determined, along with the related question, how much potential is there to improve the accuracy of MOBE? What threshold do we need to get to in order for the benefits to outweigh the risks? That likely depends on the application.

As I pointed out in the linked post, sickle cell and thalassemia are the lowest of hanging fruit for a therapeutic gene-editing application. This is because we can take cells out of the patient (from bone marrow), then treat them with CRISPR, ensure that we have viable healthy cells, and then transplant them back into the patient. MOBE can theoretically be used in a similar fashion, where one or more point mutations are desired to correct or compensate for a genetic illness.

These gene-editing tools can also be used theoretically on in-vitro fertilized eggs. Candidate embryos from parents where one or both have known severe genetic disease or are carriers can be treated prior to implantation. This can prevent the disease from being transmitted to the child, or even just assure that they are not a carrier. In vitro embryo gene therapy will take much longer, not because it’s harder to do, but because the risk if higher from unwanted crosstalk changes. When altering bone marrow cells, those changes affect only the one patient. But when changes are made to a genome in an embryo, that affects the entire person, and can be passed down to future generation. So those changes are being made to the human gene-pool, not just to an individual. This requires a much higher level of safety testing.

A third type of application is to somatic cells in living people, not in embryos, and not in cells that can be removed from the body. The challenge here is getting the gene editing tool (CRISPR or MOBE) to the desired cell population. Let’s say you want to edit muscle cells to treat a muscular dystrophy. How do you get the gene-editing tool to enough of the muscle cells to have a clinical impact? Right now we use mostly viral vectors, which are effective but risky. Many viruses evolved to infect a specific cell type and deliver their own genetic payload. We can therefore select and alter specific viruses to target the cells we want, and to deliver our own payload – such as CRISPR. The problem is that viruses have a nasty habit of causing infections – they are not always compliant little workers.

There have been recent advances in viral vector technology. They work, and there is the potential for continued incremental advances. It’s still hard to predict how long it will be before we have an approved viral vector-based therapy (using CRISPR or something else, perhaps MOBE) for a genetic illness. There is a lot of research being done, but proving safety is a high bar.

The research is advancing quickly. It still feels like we are on the steep part of the curve when it comes to genetic technology. Significant advances are being made at a rapid pace, and MOBE is just one more example of this progress.

The post MOBE – A New Gene Editing System first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.