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To guard against harmful waterborne pathogens, many consumers, including managers of health-care facilities, install antimicrobial silver-containing showerheads. But researchers now report that these fixtures are no 'silver bullet.' In real-world showering conditions, most microbes aren't exposed to the silver long enough to be killed. However, the composition of rare microbes in water from these showerheads varied with each type of fixture tested.

Scientists recently led a team that found, for the first time, that Chiron has surface chemistry unlike other centaurs. Its surface it has both carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide ice along with carbon dioxide and methane gases in its coma, the cloud-like envelope of dust and gas surrounding it.

A study of more than 26,000 white dwarf stars has confirmed a long-predicted but elusive effect in these ultra-dense, dying stars: Hotter white dwarfs are slightly puffier than cooler ones, even when they have the same mass.

A new set of recommendations aims to help improve the way datasets are used to build Artificial intelligence (AI) health technologies and reduce the risk of potential AI bias.

Scientists have spotted a massive black hole in the early universe that is 'napping' after stuffing itself with too much food. Like a bear gorging itself on salmon before hibernating for the winter, or a much-needed nap after Christmas dinner, this black hole has overeaten to the point that it is lying dormant in its host galaxy.

Scientists have developed swarms of tiny magnetic robots that work together like ants to achieve Herculean feats, including traversing and picking up objects many times their size. The findings suggest that these microrobot swarms -- operating under a rotating magnetic field -- could be used to take on difficult tasks in challenging environments that individual robots would struggle to handle, such as offering a minimally invasive treatment for clogged arteries and precisely guiding organisms.

Scientists have developed swarms of tiny magnetic robots that work together like ants to achieve Herculean feats, including traversing and picking up objects many times their size. The findings suggest that these microrobot swarms -- operating under a rotating magnetic field -- could be used to take on difficult tasks in challenging environments that individual robots would struggle to handle, such as offering a minimally invasive treatment for clogged arteries and precisely guiding organisms.

Researchers can now fabricate a 3D chip with alternating layers of semiconducting material grown directly on top of each other. The method eliminates thick silicon substrates between the layers, leading to better and faster computation, for applications like more efficient AI hardware.

Researchers can now fabricate a 3D chip with alternating layers of semiconducting material grown directly on top of each other. The method eliminates thick silicon substrates between the layers, leading to better and faster computation, for applications like more efficient AI hardware.

Physicists have created a new and long-lasting magnetic state in a material, using only light. The results provide a new way to control and switch antiferromagnetic materials, which are of interest for their potential to advance information processing and memory chip technology.

Scientists propose a 'remelting' of the Moon's surface 4.35 billion years ago due to the tidal pull of Earth causing widespread geological upheaval and intense heating.

Atomic clocks that excite the nucleus of thorium-229 embedded in a transparent crystal when hit by a laser beam could yield the most accurate measurements ever of time and gravity, and even rewrite some of the fundamental laws of physics. Thorium-229-doped crystals are both scarce and radioactive. A thin film using a dry precursor of thorium-229 shows the same nuclear excitation as the crystal, but its low cost and radioactivity, and smaller size mean its production could be more easily scaled up to make smaller, less expensive, more portable atomic clocks.

It’s time to tell each other what we’re reading and what we think of the books. The object, of course, is to give all of us hints about what we might want to read.

I’ve just finished two books, both of them good  (of course both were recommended by a friend who knows good writing), and I recommend both, but especially this first one, which is superb. Click on the cover to go to the Amazon site:

There’s a Wikipedia article about this 1999 novel here, but don’t read it if you don’t want to see the whole plot. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that it’s about a Japanese-Korean man, Franklin Hata, who has moved to a small suburban town in New York, running a pharmacy-supplies store. He’s done well and has, in fact, become his town’s model citizen, eventually giving up his store and living a happy and prosperous retirement, having adopted, as a single man, a Korean girl named Sunny.

The one unhappy aspect of his life is that he can’t seem to form stable love relationships, not with Sunny nor with any of the several women he fancies. The reason involves a series of flashbacks to when Hata was serving in the Japanese Army in World War II (there are flashbacks involving nearly every relationship in the book), and a relationship he developed at that time, which haunts his whole existence. I will say no more, except that the prose is beautiful (a sine qua non for novels I like). HIGHLY recommended, and it should have won more awards than it did. I don’t think it was made into a movie, but it really should have been.

Here’s the book I just finished (click to go to Amazon site):

That one, from 2005, also has a Wikipedia page. Nathan Glass, stricken with cancer, moves to Brooklyn to live out his days in a pleasant urban environment (he’s the opposite of Franklin Hata, who hated cities). He meets his nephew, and then ensues series of random and unpredictable episodes involving an antique bookstore, long-lost relatives, and fractious relationships with other people.  It’s a good read, and a short one, so it’s a good book to take along on a trip or the beach (if you happen to live in a warm place). I would recommend it, but not nearly as highly as I would A Gesture Life.

I’m not going to read the other three essays in the Ta-Nehisi Coates book The Message, for his Israel-essay debacle put me off him for a while. Instead, I have two books in line. I started the first one, below, last night. It’s from 2001 and I have found but not read its Wikipedia page. (Click to go to the Amazon site.)

After that one, I’ll attack this monster, which I’ve requested on interlibrary loan (I have no more room to put any books I buy, so I get them all from the University Library). Click to go to the Amazon page. At 864 pages, this one is a monster, but, unlike the kids, I like long books. It was published in 2004, is highly regarded, and has its own Wikipedia page that I refuse to read.

It seems that I’m on a fiction kick lately, which isn’t usual for me, but the books that my literary advisor recommends, which have all been good, are guaranteed not to contain a clunker. As for nonfiction, I’m still waiting for Robert Caro to produce his fifth volume of the LBJ biography that I love so much (I think it’s the best biography ever written, at least that I’ve read), but Caro is now 89 and it’s a race against time.  The previous bio that I thought was the best, William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, was abruptly truncated after volume 1 because Manchester died. I’d still recommend reading the first volume, even though it ends right as Winnie becomes Prime Minister and things would be getting even more interesting.

Your turn. Which books have you read lately, and which do you recommend (or not recommend)?

Astrophotography is a challenging art. Beyond the usual skill set of understanding things such as light exposure, color balance, and the quirks of your kit, there is the fact that stars are faint and they move.

Technically, the stars don’t move; the Earth rotates. But to capture a faint object, you need a long exposure time. Typically, from a few seconds to half a minute, depending on the level of detail you want to capture. In thirty seconds, the sky will shift by more than a tenth of a degree. That might not seem like much, but it’s enough to make the stars blur ever so slightly. Many astrophotographers take multiple images and stack them for even greater detail, which would blur things even more. It can create an interesting effect, but it doesn’t give you a panorama of pinpoint stars.

The motion blur of starlight used to create a rain of stars. Credit: Diana Juncher/ESO

Fortunately, there is plenty of off-the-shelf equipment you can get to account for motion blur. There are tracking motors you can mount to your camera that move your frame in time with the Earth’s rotation. They are incredibly precise so that you can capture image after image for hours, and your camera will always be perfectly aligned with the sky. If you make your images into a movie, the stars will remain fixed while the Earth rotates beneath them.

Of course, most astrophotographers have the same limitations of almost everyone. We are bound to the Earth and can only view the stars through our blanket of sky. If we could rise above the atmosphere, we would have an unburdened view of the heavens. A sky filled with uncountable, untwinkling stars. While astronauts often talk about this wondrous sight, photographs of stars from orbit are often less than spectacular. That’s because of how difficult astrophotography is in space, and it all comes back to motion blur.

Most astrophotography is done from the International Space Station (ISS). Since the ISS is in a relatively low orbit, it travels around the Earth once every 90 minutes. This means the stars appear to drift at a rate 16 times faster than they do on Earth. A 30-second exposure on the ISS has greater motion blur than an eight minute exposure on Earth. Because of this, most photographs from the ISS either have blurry stars or only capture the brightest stars.

Don Pettit’s Homemade Orbital Sidereal Tracker. Credit: Don Pettit

Ideally, an astronaut astrophotographer would bring along a camera mount similar to the ones used on Earth. But the market demand for such a mount is tiny, so you can’t just buy one from your local camera store. You have to make your own, which is precisely what astronaut Don Pettit did. Working with colleagues from RIT, he created a camera tracker that shifts by 0.064 degrees per second and can be adjusted give or take 5%. With this mount, Don has been able to capture 30-second exposures with almost no motion blur. His images rival some of the best Earth-based images, but he takes them from space!

The detail of his photographs is unprecedented. In the image above, for example, you can see the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and not just as fuzzy patches in the sky. You can see individual stars within the clouds. The image also gives an excellent view of an effect known as airglow. Molecules in the upper atmosphere are ionized by sunlight and cosmic rays, which means this layer always has a faint glow to it. No matter how skilled a terrestrial astrophotographer is, their images will always have a bit of this glow.

Airglow from different molecules in the upper atmosphere. Credit: NASA/annotations by Alex Rivest

But not Don Pettit. He’s currently on the ISS, capturing outstanding photographs as a side hobby from his day job. If you want to see more of his work, check him out on Reddit, where he posts under the username astro_pettit.

The post Astronaut Don Pettit is Serious, He Rigged up Astrophotography Gear on the ISS appeared first on Universe Today.

Small robots directed by magnetic fields can cooperatively lift heavy objects, form floating rafts and push through clogs. They may one day deliver drugs within the human body

Electronics made using diamond-based chips would have many advantages, but have been hard to make – a new technique involving sticky tape could change that

Researchers have tried to work out how fast Australopithecus afarensis could run by creating a 3D digital robot of the ancient hominin

UPDATE: The site to which I refer below disappeared for a while this morning, and then reappeared.  So the post right below still links to the right places:

Simon Fraser University in British Columbia recently adopted a policy of institutional neutrality.  But its latest endeavor shows that it’s still in the thrall of wokeness, for it’s launched a policy of “decolonizing and indigenizing” STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).  Nothing good can come of their effort, for, as you see, it can mean only the adoption of indigenous “ways of knowing” in the sciences.  There are several pages on the site, which was sent to me by a member of the Simon Fraser community. Click on the screenshot below to go to the “welcome” page and its links.  The small print in the headline says this:

Welcome to the Decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM (DISTEM) Website, dedicated to decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM at Simon Fraser University (SFU)!

This website, originally designed to support STEM faculty, is a valuable tool for anyone committed to the decolonization of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to decolonize and indigenize our teaching. Click the link to go to the web site. Most of the pages are just a bit of text and links to other sites or to the home pages of the authors.

The endeavor seems serious, for this is part of the rationale:

To understand the importance of such systems in the decolonization of library classification, it is essential to explore Ashley’s work with the Indigenous Curriculum Resource Centre (ICRC) and her adaptation of the Brian Deer Classification System (BDCS). Most importantly, classification and categorization systems need to shift away from Western-European knowledge systems to prioritizing Indigenous ways of knowing and being, which are community focused. For example, a shift in language from “Indigenous Peoples – History and Culture” to “Indigenous Peoples – Communities,” moves the narrative away from historicizing Indigenous peoples toward their power, knowledge, and contemporary contributions. Not only does this shift place Indigenous Peoples and communities at the centre, but all other surrounding categories move outward to reflect their relationality to these communities and Indigenous knowledge. Such shifts in thinking and doing are crucial for STEM faculty and students to learn and apply. We strongly encourage you to follow the links provided above to gain a deeper understanding of these vital concepts and how we can all further decolonize our minds.

Note that the program is not designed to bring more indigenous people into science—though that may be one of its aims—but to CENTER the contributions “Indigenous Peoples and Communities” in teaching the content of science, at the same time “moving all other surrounding categories outward.”

Some of the aims from the Project History:

One of the major concerns faculty shared was that they lack the time and resources necessary to learn about and then implement these processes, both personally and professionally. This issue was exasperated because information and resources related to decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM, as well as teaching and learning, are dispersed and disconnected both online and off, which can be overwhelming for faculty, particularly those just beginning their decolonizing journeys. Thus, the DISTEM Website originally aimed to meet faculty needs by creating a central online living archive of relevant and varied resources focused on decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM, both generally and regarding teaching and learning, in postsecondary institutions.

As I always say, if there is indigenous knowledge that is part of STEM, then by all means incorporate it into STEM, for I seriously doubt that there is enough empirical knowledge in American northwest tribes to constitute a substantial moiety of modern science. Like the indigenous “knowledge” of New Zealand, it will consist largely of trial-and-error methods that the locals developed for subsistence: how, when, and where to catch fish, collect berries, build canoes, and the like.  Indigenous knowledge is not a toolkit like modern science—a toolkit for finding answers that incorporates hypothesis-testing, experiments, statistics, blind testing, pervasive doubt, and so out. Rather, indigenous knowledge is a set of facts acquired independently of that tookit. But yes, there may be some indigenous knowledge there, but seriously, why would Simon Fraser make a whole program out of centering science on it.

You know why: they are displaying their virtue by sacralizing the practices of the indigenous people.  But those people descended from other people who crossed over the Bering Strait about 15,000 years ago, and those people had their own knowledge. It’s bizarre to center the “knowledge” of tribes who flourished before modern science began, but again, that’s what you have to do if you want to show your virtue. And it’s too bad for science—and for Simon Fraser.

If you have any interest in scrolling around these pages, the person who sent this to me says this: The “Prototype” page is the resource. The coloured circles and the orbiting dots are links – click one to make the dots stand still and get a pop-up with some text and a link to a resource. They are amazingly bad. I picked one from “Animals” and one from “Creation Stories”, and got links to old essays by the queer theorist Kim Tallbear. Not a scientist, and not writing about or engaging with science. The “Creation Stories” link is full of old tropes about the racism of human population genetics research. Ho hum. Here’s what the prototype page looks like (click to go to it). The rings are labeled, from the outside in, “Indigenous Influence/Contributions to Non-Indigenous Society,” “Elders,” “Family Life and Parenting,” “Sexuality and Relationships,” “Gender Roles and Gender Identity,” “Children and Youth,” “Social Structures—Kinship, Clans, Families,” “Indigenous Identity”, and, in the center, “Roles and Relationships.” You know already that this is a sociological resource having almost nothing to do with STEM.

If you click on the green dot in the “Gender Roles and Gender Identity” site, for instance, you get one reference and its summary:

Two Spirit Garrett, M. T., & Barret, B. (2003). Two Spirit: Counseling Native American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 31(2), 131–142. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1912.2003.tb00538.x

The cultural world of the Two Spirit, the traditional role of Native individuals believed to possess both male and female spirit, is explored in both “old ways” and current-day experiences. Cultural beliefs and meanings around sexual identity are discussed from a Native perspective with recommendations for counseling Two Spirit clients.  (A Spanish translation follows.)

This has nothing to do with STEM.

In one respect this seems harmless, because there’s no way in tarnation for this stuff to really make its way into STEM. But in other ways it’s not harmless, as it warps scholarship, pretends that sociology or ideology is hard science, and makes a mockery of true STEM.

Poor Simon Fraser. In the end they are not decolonizing of indigenizing science, but sacralizing Native Americans.

Quantum computing hardware has been progressing rapidly in recent years – and quantum software is following

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “rooted,” is a good one, and comes with this note:

#ffffff to be precise. [JAC: this refers to the color white]

A reminder of the UK parliament’s proposed definition of Islamophobia:

Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.

Jesus is right on the money, but Mo is wrong in saying Jesus is an “old white guy” (he was supposedly around 33 when he was crucified.