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Coral reefs around the world are at risk of collapse due to rising temperatures and acidifying oceans, but the natural adaptability of some species may help buy time

Promising new inroads into critical DNA testing has been forecast by experts who have applied machine learning to DNA profiling. From medical diagnostics to forensic tests and national security, PCR (polymerase chain reaction) DNA profiling has revolutionised high-throughput sampling this century -- but little has changed since it was developed in the 1980s.

Scientists have explored how quantum squeezing can improve measurement precision in complex quantum systems, with potential applications in quantum sensing, imaging, and radar technologies. These findings may lead to advancements in areas like GPS accuracy and early disease detection through more sensitive biosensors.

Scientists have explored how quantum squeezing can improve measurement precision in complex quantum systems, with potential applications in quantum sensing, imaging, and radar technologies. These findings may lead to advancements in areas like GPS accuracy and early disease detection through more sensitive biosensors.

A new hand-held scanner can generate highly detailed 3D photoacoustic images in just seconds, paving the way for their use in a clinical setting for the first time and offering the potential for earlier disease diagnosis.

Medical imaging using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is very time-consuming since an image has to be compiled from data from many individual measurements. Thanks to the use of machine learning, imaging is also possible with less MRI measurement data, which saves time and costs. However, the prerequisite for this is perfect images that can be used to train the AI models. Such perfect training images do not exist for certain applications, such as real-time (moving image) MRI, as such images are always somewhat blurred. An international research team has now succeeded in generating precise live MRI images of the beating heart even without such training images and with very little MRI data with the help of smartly trained neural networks. Thanks to these improvements, real-time MRI could be used more frequently in practice in the future.

A team develops an efficient method for synthesizing organic fluorophores using formaldehyde.

Continued investment in carbon-intensive industries will drastically increase the amount of 'stranded assets' as the world moves to net-zero emissions, researchers warn.

Engineers have developed an innovative way to make covalent organic frameworks, special materials that can be used to trap gases, filter water and speed up chemical reactions.

As part of the global effort to harness power from fusing plasma, PPPL and the University of Seville's Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Lab worked on the computer codes, engineering and physics for a new and unique fusion reactor: the SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak.

A blood test that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect cancer-related genetic changes and protein biomarkers could help screen women for early signs of ovarian cancer, according to a new study.

Rapid erosion caused by a geological act of “piracy” tens of thousands of years ago may have raised Earth’s crust and elevated Mount Everest by as much as 50 metres

Well, Princeton, via its president Christopher Eisgruber, has wussed out of adopting a crucial plank in a university free-speech platform: institutional neutrality. The man simply can’t hold back his ideological or political opinions, even if they chill the speech of faculty and students.

As you’ll know if you read here, the University of Chicago was the first college in America to adopt an official posture of institutional neutrality in the form of the Kalven Report of 1967. That report, expanded on in 2020 by the late President Robert Zimmer, specified that no units of our University could make ideological, political, or moral statements save those that had a direct bearing on the mission of the University. The object was to allow people to speak freely without worrying about being punished by contradicting “official” university statements. By and large, we’ve hewed to its dictates with a few exceptions, like this one, which involves clear and multiple violations of Kalven.

FIRE’s list of institutions adopting a Kalven-like policy has expanded exponentially, now numbering 22 (23 including Chicago). Sadly, according to the Daily Princetonian article below (click to read), Princeton will not be joining them.

An excerpt (my bolding):

President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 shared in an interview with The Daily Princetonian that the University will not consider institutional neutrality. The University administration will maintain the current policy of institutional restraint although Eisgruber expressed plans to issue statements “less frequently.”

Under institutional neutrality, universities do not take positions on social and political issues. Peer institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Cornell University have recently released statements pledging commitments to furthering institutional neutrality following highly polarizing Pro-Palestine protests in the spring semester.

“No.” Eisgruber responded when asked if the University is considering implementing institutional neutrality.

“You can’t be neutral about everything,” Eisgruber continued. He specifically noted speaking on behalf of diversity, inclusivity, free speech, academic freedom, and sustainability. “We got to do it … We’re speaking out on behalf of those things. So I think institutional neutrality is just a misleading formulation.”

This selective approach to issuing statements is called institutional restraint, the principle that universities are not neutral but instead value-laden institutions that can take positions in rare cases concerning the core values of the University. 

“We have to stand up for our values … I’ve spoken, and will continue to speak boldly for those values, where that’s required, for the institution, and at times beyond the way in which other university presidents are doing that,” Eisgruber said in defense of maintaining institutional restraint.

Nobody says that a university has to be “neutral about everything”; Kalven specifies that universities can speak up officially when there’s an issue that impacts the ability of the school to fulfill its mission (defending DACA was one of those, which would have taken students away from the school).  So, you ask, what is the difference between Kalven and “institutional restraint”? The bold bit above implies that they’re really the same.

But they’re not, and Eisgruber makes that clear:

Still, on certain topics, Eisgruber believes he has an “institutional responsibility” not to speak out.

“Something I share with the people who embrace the idea of institutional neutrality [is that] the University is first and foremost, not itself the critic. It’s the sponsor of critics,” Eisgruber said.

He specifically referenced the Dobbs v. Jackson decision reversing Roe v. Wade as a moment when he felt he should not speak out, despite his expertise in law and other university presidents doing so.

Despite holding back on certain issues, Eisgruber has issued statements on current events to recognize their “momentous character” and “the way in which they are affecting people on campus.” Recent examples include statements on the War in Ukraine and a condemnation of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. In these statements, Eisgruber shared that he makes sure to use the first person.

The University has also taken actions which would be considered violations of institutional neutrality, most notably divestments from South Africa and companies in Sudan and partial divestment from the fossil fuels sector during Eisgruber’s presidency. Eisgruber pointed out that the University of Chicago, which created and follows the Kalven Report, a guideline to institutional neutrality, never divested from South Africa.

These issues really have nothing to do with the core values of a university. Ergo, there should not be statements about them. These issues are political and ideological, and should be debated without restraint. Granted, there are people, however misguided, who support Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and even the October 7 attacks of Hamas. These folks should feel free to make their arguments about these issues without being chilled by official statements. The same goes for divestment and Sudan (see Geoff Stone‘s pro-Kalven statement about divestment from Darfur in Sudan).

While Eisgruber recognizes in the article that he’s probably made too many political statements on behalf of Princeton (duh!), he still won’t commit the school to keeping its institutional yap shut. And that is a shame. The prestigious Ivy League schools should be promoting institutional neutrality, and, so far, the only ones that have are Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Even Yale hasn’t joined the side of the angels.

How did the supermassive black holes we’re now seeing in the early universe get so big so fast? Astrophysicist Sophie Koudmani is using sophisticated galaxy simulations to figure it out

A remote annular solar eclipse bookends the final eclipse season for 2024.

The final eclipse of the year is almost upon us. If skies are clear, a few lucky observers and intrepid eclipse-chasers will get to witness the passage of the Moon in front of the Sun one last time on Wednesday, October 2nd during an annular solar eclipse.

The eclipse is the final one of the current season, and the last solar eclipse for 2024. The first—the April 8th total solar eclipse spanning North America—was witnessed by millions. This week’s eclipse is by contrast much more bashful.

The path and timing for Wednesday’s annular solar eclipse. Credit: from Michael Zeiler’s Atlas of Solar Eclipses (2020 to 2045). Why Do Annulars Occur?

An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon is visually too small to cover the Sun. Both vary in apparent size throughout the month and year, as the orbits of the Moon and the Earth are both elliptical. The shadow of the Moon falls short of the surface of the Earth during an annular eclipse, and the ‘ring of fire’ path is known as an antumbra.

Stages of the 2019 annular eclipse as seen from Guam. Credit: Eliot Herman

We often marvel at how ‘perfect’ total solar eclipses are, but this situation slowly changing. Going forward, annulars are already more common, as the Moon slowly moves away from the Earth… in about 600 million years annulars will win this battle for good, as total solar eclipses will cease to occur on the surface of the Earth.

The path for Wednesday’s annular solar eclipse over the southern tip of South America. Credit: from Michael Zeiler’s Atlas of Solar Eclipses (2020 to 2045).

There’s good reason why this eclipse is annular. The Moon reaches its most distant apogee of 2024 on October 2nd at 50 minutes after eclipse conjunction at 19:08 Universal Time, at 406,516 kilometers from Earth.

Eclipse Path and Circumstances

The path crosses the South Pacific, and only makes landfall across Easter Island, Chile, Argentina. Maximum annularity reaches 7 minutes and 25 seconds in duration northwest of Easter Island. There’s a chance for some excellent ‘horns of the Sun’ shots towards sunset around to Falkland Islands and the Horn of South America.

An animation of Wednesday’s eclipse. Credit: NASA/GSFC/A.T. Sinclair

The partial phases of the eclipse will be visible from Antarctica and northern New Zealand, across southern South America all the way up to Brazil, Paraguay and Peru, up to a small sliver of the west Pacific coast of Mexico. The Falkland Islands in the Atlantic ocean will see a narrow miss, with Stanley seeing an 84% obscured partial eclipse.

This eclipse also marks the end of the second and final eclipse season for 2024. This season was book-ended by the slight partial lunar eclipse earlier this month.

This eclipse is also member 17 in the 70 eclipses in relatively new Solar Saros Series 144. This saros is a prolific producer of annulars, and started on April 11th, 1736 and will end on May 5th 2980.

Viewing and Safety

Unlike a total solar eclipse, proper safety precautions must be taken during Wednesday’s eclipse… even during the annular phase. A few percent of the Sun is still pretty bright, enough to give the sky a deep blue-steely tint, the only hint that something might be afoot. NASA has a pretty solid eclipse safety page.

There’s another low tech way to observe the eclipse. Keep an eye out for tiny crescent suns cast though natural pin hole projectors. These can include gaps in tree leaves and latticework. Kitchen utensils such as graters and strainers will also do the trick.

Crescents cast through gaps in the tree leaves seen from Mapleton Maine during the June 2021 annular solar eclipse. Credit: Dave Dickinson.

Comet T-ATLAS ‘may’ also make an appearance during the eclipse. Have any comets ever appeared during an annular? Certainly bright comets have made themselves known during the daytime. There’s now a chance that Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS ‘may’ reach negative magnitudes in early October, and the comet will be ~20 degrees from the Sun during next Wednesday’s annular eclipse… To be sure, it’s an extremely remote chance to see comet T-ATLAS against a bright sky, but I remember noticing Venus becoming plainly visible on April 8th about 10 minutes prior to totality, so you just never know…

The next eclipses in 2025 includes only two partial solars worldwide: one on March 29th for the North Atlantic, and another on September 21st for New Zealand and the South Pacific. The next annular won’t occur until February 17th, 2026 for the remote Antarctic.

Will the eclipse be carried live? As of writing this, no live streams along the path have emerged, but we’ll drop them here if any turn up.

if you have the chance, don’t miss this final eclipse of the year.

The post An October Annular Solar Eclipse Rounds Out 2024 appeared first on Universe Today.

My hour-long conversation with UCSD Professor Brian Keating, on his Into the Impossible podcast, has just come out on YouTube; click here to listen.

We covered several topics from my book, including what particles really are and how the Higgs field gives them mass, along with others ranging from renormalization to the nature of the book’s cover.

The podcast’s intro sequence is a bit wild — a mix of Dr. Who meets the Discovery Channel — but hang tight, because the discussion itself is serious science. One thing that’s fun about it is that Keating asked me a number of questions that no one had asked me on prior podcasts that I’ve been on. The fact that some of his queries were a bit “out there” adds to the entertainment value. I think you’ll enjoy it.

As a reminder, I have a number of other podcasts and interviews that you can choose from, listed below:

• Shalaj Lawania’s podcast “Know Time”
  • Episode title: “Particle Physics, Waves & the Higgs Field”
    • 185 minutes (!!), covering all the main topics in the book and some metatopics too
      
• The “Quirks and Quarks” show:
  • Episode title: “Why an essential subatomic particle plays the field”
    • 15 minutes, on how the Higgs field gives mass to particles
      
• Sean Carroll’s podcast “Mindscape”
  • Episode title: “Matt Strassler on Relativity, Fields, and the Language of Reality”
    • 90 minutes, all about the book
      
• Daniel Whiteson’s podcast “Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe”,
  • Episode title: “Is the Universe Made From Waves?”
    • Part 1 , 43 minutes
    • Part 2 , 53 minutes
      

I’m not putting up “Readers’ Wildlife’ today as we have only a few contributions left. Please help out by sending in your good photos.

Yesterday was one of those unpredictable nights when I hardly slept at all. Perhaps it’s because I drank ONE MEASLY GLASS OF WINE before dinner, and wine interacts badly with my new sleeping medication. But sometimes I can have wine with dinner and it doesn’t affect my sleep. It seems unprecictable. I’m going to try weaning myself off sleep medication because life without wine is intolerable. As they say on television, I’ll ASK MY DOCTOR.

Anyway, I slept on and off, but not more than about two hours total. I finally dozed off, having a bizarre dream in which I was with an old girlfriend in Florida, which for some reason was next to the University of Pennsylvania (it was a dream, Jake!). We were staying in a long, pink hotel, but I suddenly got lost and couldn’t find it again. I was unable to find my girlfriend, and discovered that my cellphone was missing as well. I asked a passerby to lend me her cellphone so I could call 911 and perhaps find my girlfriend through a “missing persons” report, but the woman refused to lend me her phone. The dream was so realistic that I woke up in terror, and it took me a minute to realize that it was just a dream. At least I no longer have the Academics’ Dream in which you’re in school but can’t find the room for the final exam, or are taking the exam but haven’t studied all semester.

Anyway, as I tossed and turned and tried not to get more anxious by worrying about staying awake, I had a series of thoughts. I meant to write them down, but you know how hard it is to get up in the middle of the night to write stuff.  I remember three things.

1.) This is something I noticed while watching the NBC Evening News, which of course advertises a lot of drugs for the ailments of the aged (the t.v. news demographic leans OLD).  Nearly all the new drugs they advertise have an “x”, “y” or “z” in them. Examples: Ozempic, Breztri, Keytruda. And none of those drug names are appealing, as they don’t make you optimistic or even suggest what the drug is for.

2.) I regretted that, as I grow older, I learn more about humans and how to deal with their issues.  The regret is because you should be born old and then get younger, so you’d enter the world with a built in stock of learned wisdom. This would save a lot of problems. (I’d stop the “younging” process at about 25.) And here is one thing that I’ve learned (I may have said this before):

When someone calls you in distress, or has a problem they want to talk about, I first try to find out what the person needs. I call these the “three H’s”:

a. Help: a tangible solution to their problem.  Males are more likely to want solutions and to offer them. Often women simply want b):
b.  Hearing:  Someone to simply listen and sympathize. This is often the best thing to do since many problems defy quick solutions, and I’m not a therapist.
c. Hugging:  Sometimes physical contact, like an affectionate hug or a squeeze of the hand, might help. This has to be done in person, and must be used sparingly lest it be mistaken for a romantic gesture.

Before saying anything, I try to ascertain what the person in distress wants.

These thoughts may have been triggered by reading Abigail Shrier’s terrific new book on the maladaptive effects of therapy, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. I recommend it highly.

3.) Once again I mused on the penchant of Brits (and some Americans) for tea over coffee, especially in the morning. I like the taste of good tea, and enjoy it as part of a conversation or, upon occasion, as a restorative in cold weather. But I can’t fathom why Brits use it to wake up. Perhaps it’s my upbringing, but be aware that a cup of tea has only half the caffeine of an equal-sized cup of coffee.  Tea doesn’t seem to me to be an effective wake-up drink. (Note: I am NOT dissing tea drinkers!).  If you want a non-coffee drink with lots of caffeine, try yerba mate brewed strongly. Brits should weigh in.

I had other thoughts as well, but I can’t remember them. I need a voice recorder by my bed that records only when you speak. Then I’d have a lot to say here!

Of course this is also a prompt for readers to disgorge their own midnight thoughts, or reveal their dreams, particularly recurring ones.

I can’t resist a good science story involving technology that we can possibly use to stabilize our climate in the face of anthropogenic global warming. This one is a fun story and an interesting, and potentially useful, idea. As we map out potential carbon pathways into the future, focusing on the rest of this century, it is pretty clear that it is going to be extremely difficult to completely decarbonize our civilization. This means we can only slow down, but not stop or reverse global warming. Once carbon is released into the ecosystem, it will remain there for hundreds or even thousands of years. So waiting for natural processes isn’t a great solution.

What we could really use is a way to cost-effectively at scale remove CO2 already in the atmosphere (or from seawater – another huge reservoir) to compensate for whatever carbon release we cannot eliminate from industry, and even to reverse some of the CO2 build up. This is often referred to as carbon capture and sequestration. There is a lot of research in this area, but we do not currently have a technology that fits the bill. Carbon capture is small scale and expensive. The most useful methods are chemical carbon capture done at power plants, to reduce some of the carbon released.

There is, however, a “technology” that cheaply and automatically captures carbon from the air and binds it up in solid form – trees. This is why there is much discussion of planting trees as a climate change mitigation strategy. Trees, however, eventually give up their captured carbon back into the atmosphere. So at best they are a finite carbon reservoir. A 2019 study found that if we restored global forests by planting half a trillion trees, that would capture about 20 years worth of CO2 at the current rate of release, or about half of all the CO2 released since 1960 (at least as of 2019). But once those trees matured we would reach a new steady state and further sequestering would stop. This is at least better than continuing to cut down forests and reducing their store of carbon. Tree planting can still be a useful strategy to help buy time as we further decarbonize technology.

But what if we could keep trees from rotting and releasing their captured CO2 back into the atmosphere? They could then become a longer term sequestration strategy. One way to do this is to build stuff out of the wood, and this also has already been proposed. There is a movement to use more wood for commercial construction, as it has a lower carbon footprint than steel or concrete. Wood in a building that is kept dry can easily last hundreds of years.

A recent study now offers a potential other option – we could just bury trees. But wait, won’t they just rot under ground and still release their CO2? Yes – unless the soil conditions are just right. Ning Zeng and his colleagues set out to study if wood could survive long term in specific kinds of soil, those with lots of clay and low oxygen. Zeng found a location near Quebec with soil conditions he thought would be conducive to preserving wood long term. He dug a trench to place fresh wood in the soil so they could then track it over years and measure its carbon release. But here’s the fun part – when they dug the trench they found a log naturally buried in the soil. They examined the log and discovered that it was 3,775 years old. Not only that, they estimate that the log has lost less than 5% of its carbon over that period of time. Nature has already conducted the experiment Zeng wanted to run, so he published those results.

What this means is that we can potentially just grow trees, find or even create locations with the right conditions (clay seems to be the key), and just bury the logs. Then replace the trees and capture more carbon, without the older trees releasing their carbon back. They analyzed the potential of this method and found:

“We estimate a global sequestration potential of up to 10 gigatonnes CO2 per year with existing technology at a low cost of $30 to $100 per tonne after optimization.”

That is a lot. The global release of CO2 is now at about 36 gigatonnes per year, so this would be more than a quarter of our current release. So if we can get our global CO2 release to less than 10 gigatonnes per year, and combine it with burying logs in the right conditions, we could get to net zero, and even net negative. Current methods of direct air capture of CO2 cost $100-$300 per tonne, so if we can get this approach closer to the $30 per tonne cost that would be potentially viable. At the low end sequestering 10 gigatons per year of CO2 using this method would cost $300 billion per year. That’s a big number, but not that big if we consider this a global project. Estimates of the cost of global warming range from $1.7 to $38 trillion dollars per year by 2050, which means this could be a cost-effective investment. f

Obviously before scaling up this approach we need more study, including a survey of potential locations. But we can certainly get started planting some trees while we figure where to put them. And a point I frequently make – we should not be putting all our eggs in one basket, or necessarily looking for the one solution to climate change. Reforestation, wood construction, and wood vaulting, combined with other carbon capture technologies, can all work together. We can use trees to capture a lot of carbon over the next 50 and 100 years, altering the path of global climate change significantly.

 

The post Wood Vaulting for Carbon Sequestration first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Before you read the rest of this article know there are no known threats to life on Earth! We shouldn’t sit complacently on this tiny rock in space though so NASA have been working on ways to neutralise potential asteroid threats should they arise. The DART mission proved it was possible to alter the trajectory of an asteroid in space. Direct impact though where a probe smashes into the rock is one way but potentially not the best. A team of researchers have now been exploring ways that a nuclear explosion near an asteroid may send a blast of X-rays sufficiently powerful to vaporise material generating thrust to redirect the asteroid. 

Statistically the risks of an asteroid are low but the ‘impact’ of such an event could be catastrophic. The majority of asteroids that enter our atmosphere burn up giving us the stunning sight of a ‘shooting star’  but those over 1km wide could cause widespread damage and devastation. The likelihood is rare and might occur once every several hundred thousand years but smaller objects hit more often. They can also create significant localised damage. Take the Chelyabinsk event in Russia in 2013 when an asteroid exploded in mid air sending shockwaves across hundreds of kilometres. 

This image of a vapor trail was captured about 125 miles (200 kilometers) from the Chelyabinsk meteor event, about one minute after the house-sized asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere. Credits: Alex Alishevskikh

Whilst the risk is low we must put in place a plan to deal with such threats when they arise. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission that NASA launched back in 2021 sent a probe to the binary asteroid system Didymos with its tiny moon Dimorphos. The probe hit Dimorphos in September 2022 and very slightly altered the orbit proving it is possible to effect change in an asteroid trajectory. Whilst the approach worked, the scope of such an approach is limited since colliding a spacecraft may not be so effective on large asteroids. Coupled with the liklihood of not getting much notice and an alternative, more, effective approach is needed. 

The asteroid Dimorphos was captured by NASA’s DART mission just two seconds before the spacecraft struck its surface on Sept. 26, 2022. Observations of the asteroid before and after impact suggest it is a loosely packed “rubble pile” object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

Other approaches have been explored from deployment of fusion engines to the target rock, focussing laser beams on them, neutron bursts and of course nuclear blasts that generate X-ray radiation. Analysis of these options reveals that only the latter, nuclear blasts has been deemed as a suitable approach for the neutralisation of the threat of a large asteroid impact when only limited time is available. 

A team of researchers led by Nathan W Moore has shown through simulations that a nuclear bomb could indeed deflect an incoming asteroid. Much of the energy release from a nuclear explosion is in the form of X-rays. the team showed that the X-ray emission would be sufficiently powerful to be able to vaporise the surface of an asteroid causing the results vapour to slowly propel the asteroid in the opposite direction. You can think of this as a very basic rocket engine with the vapour producing thrust. In simulations, the test asteroid reached speeds of 250 kilometres per hour! 

The results showed for the first time that X-rays could work and may provide sufficient protection against an incoming asteroid up to 4 km wide assuming of course, we have sufficient notice! There in lies the challenge, asteroids are typically dark and finding them against the blackness of space can be a challenge. The more time we have, then the greater chance we have of deflection being a viable proposition. 

The next step is for actual tests however, nuclear explosions come with high costs, high risks and a whole bunch of international legal restrictions. Careful planning is now needed with perhaps a little more research before this approach can be put on the shelf to be used should the need arise! 

Source : Simulation of asteroid deflection with a megajoule-class X-ray pulse

The post Nuclear Detonations Could Deflect Dangerous Asteroids Away from Earth appeared first on Universe Today.

A beam of radioactive carbon ions has been used to destroy cancer cells in mice, demonstrating a therapy that may cause less collateral damage than current techniques