There’s a trigger warning on ZeFrank’s recent video: “True Facts is not appropriate for children, nor for adults who don’t act like children.” But in fact this 11+ minute video is perfectly appropriate for kids. (There’s a commercial from 3:15 to 4:22).
It’s about plants that disperse their seeds, spores, or pollen explosively, including liverworts, dogwoods, mosses, witch hazel, oats, and sundry others.
Not only do the explosions disperse the seeds (clearly an adaptive trait; you want your genes to be away from your plot, where they compete with you), but in some cases the explosion has evolved to give the dispersing seeds an orientation that makes them go further. And some of the spores, as in horsetails, have little arms that curl with changes in humidity that allow them to “walk” along the ground! (Oat seeds can do the same thing, hopping with their “awns” and then twisting themselves into the ground.) As usual, the photography is amazing, so don’t miss this one. The extensive research is documented by a list of references at the end.
In this video ZeFrank doesn’t mention evolution or natural selection, but of course it’s implicit in these amazing and diverse adaptations for dispersal. I, for one, hardly knew anything about these features, and was delighted to see all these complicated results of natural selection, which of course is cleverer than you are. Seeds that plant themselves by screwing themselves into the dirt!
h/t: Mary
This I didn’t expect, and it’s a decision by a 6-3 vote, with Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor dissenting. Trump is now apparently shielded from prosecution for official acts, but not private ones. That’s going to cause great confusion, but it’s also going to delay his trials, making it easier for him to win November’s election.
From the NYT; click the headlines to read (archived here, but the feed changes):
An excerpt as things unroll in real time:
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from prosecution, a decision that will almost surely delay the trial of the case against him on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election past the coming election in November. The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.
Mr. Trump contended that he was entitled to absolute immunity from the charges, relying on a broad understanding of the separation of powers and a 1982 Supreme Court precedent that recognized such immunity in civil cases for actions taken by presidents within the “outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities. Lower courts rejected Mr. Trump’s claim, but the Supreme Court’s ruling may delay the case enough that Mr. Trump would be able to make it go away entirely if he prevails in November.
Here’s what to know:
The ruling: The justices said that Mr. Trump is immune from prosecution for official acts taken during his presidency but that there was a crucial distinction between official and private conduct. The case returns to the lower court, which will decide whether the actions Mr. Trump took were in an official or private capacity.
The charges: The former president faces three charges of conspiracy and one count of obstructing an official proceeding, all related to his efforts to cling to the presidency after his 2020 loss. He was indicted last August by the special counsel, Jack Smith, in one of two federal criminal cases against him; the other relates to the F.B.I. raid on his private club, Mar-a-Lago, in August 2022 that recovered missing government documents.
The trial timing: The prospects for a trial in the 2020 election interference case before the election seem increasingly remote. If Mr. Trump prevails at the polls, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges. The bottom-line effect of the court’s ruling appears to be that the trial judge in Washington, Tanya S. Chutkan, is going to have to hold an evidentiary hearing on many, if not most, of the allegations in the special counsel’s indictment of Mr. Trump. The fact-finding process the court has ordered could take a while not only to conduct, but also to prepare for.
Lower courts ruled against Trump: Judge Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington denied Mr. Trump’s immunity request in December. “Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” she wrote. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed in February.
Apparently the January 6 case will go back to an appellate court for further consideration, and that means that a lot of time will pass (way past the election) before this case is decided.
Click to read the ruling as a pdf that you can download:
We are well and truly screwed: the President can commit as many crimes as he wants so long as they are “official acts”, and he has nothing to lose by doing that. And if he gets elected in November, a prospect that seems increasingly likely, he could simply order the Justice Department to drop the whole case against him.
If you’re a lawyer or legal eagle, weigh in below.
Robotic companions are a mainstay of sci-fi series everywhere. From R2D2 to Johnny 5, these characters typically have a supporting role in the story and are helpful to their human companions. But what if they were integral to the humans in the story? So much so that they couldn’t live without their robotic compatriots? That’s the idea behind Biobot, which was given a NIAC grant in 2018 – why not use a robotic companion to carry supporting equipment on human extravehicular activities (EVAs) on other planets?
If you watch the footage from the Apollo missions, you can see how awkward it is for the astronauts to bend over to pick things up. Also, these extraordinarily naturally fit and gifted people seem to fall over an awful lot, given how coordinated they are on Earth. That’s probably because a 61 kg pack on their back is helping to keep them alive.
Each moonwalker had to carry a life support system on their suit to maintain conditions inside the suit that allowed them to breathe and not cook to death. This portable life support system (PLSS) weighed almost as much as the astronauts. It dramatically changed their center of gravity from its typical interalized location to somewhere behind their shoulder blades. That limited the astronaut’s mobility and, even with the light lunar gravity, limited the time they could participate in an EVA before becoming exhausted.
Alternatively, in microgravity, EVAs have taken place using umbilical cords and a larger life support system inside the space station or shuttle. This has proven successful, but managing the umbilical cords requires a significant amount of overhead—typically, another astronaut manages it for the person doing the EVA. Given the importance of productively utilizing all of an astronaut’s time, it would be better not to require that helping hand.
Dr. David Akin of the University of Maryland’s Department of Aerospace Engineering considered all that, and his solution is Biobot. The final design is a small rover capable of following an astronaut around on an EVA and attaching to their suit via an umbilical cord that the rover manages. As part of the NIAC grant Dr. Akin received, he and his team looked at potential design trade-offs as well a developed a working prototype of the system.
First, let’s discuss some advantages. Biobot removes the heavy weight from the astronaut’s back, freeing them from carrying it around and moving their center of gravity back to a more familiar place. It can also allow PLSS designers to add components that would otherwise be considered unsuitable for fitting into a backpack itself, such as radiative cooling systems.
Some UMD students testing an early prototype.It can also serve as a platform for holding collected samples or tools necessary for the mission. It can even let the astronaut ride on it in a pinch as a last resort in emergencies. Since it is mobile, the umbilical cord that would typically tie the astronaut to a base station is no longer an issue, and since it is designed to traverse any terrain an astronaut can, it should be capable of keeping up with them.
From some of the pictures in the NIAC final report, it appears the engineers working on the project had fun developing the system. They successfully showed a proof-of-concept of the basic functionality of what they expected the Biobot to do. They also plan to continue developing it, including a test phase at NASA’s “Rockyard” planetary surface simulator.
However, no additional NASA funding has been forthcoming. Though the paper mentions volunteer student support, it seems the Biobot idea is on hold for now. But someday, astronauts exploring the lunar or Martian surface might have a robotic companion with them that can provide both comic relief and life-giving support.
Learn More:
Akin et al. – BioBot: Investigating an Alternative Paradigm for Planetary EVA
UT – SpaceX Shows Off Its New Extravehicular Activity Suit
UT – Lunar Astronauts Will Need Easy Walking Trails Around the Moon’s South Pole
UT – Astronauts Could Rely on Algae as the Perfect Life Support Partner
Lead Image:
Artist’s depiction of BioBot
Credit – Akin et al.
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