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Red specks in the early universe are puzzling astronomers, but a proposed explanation suggests they are the progenitors of supermassive black holes

Okay, my oil is changed, I have new wiper blades, car is lubed, all fluids checked, and my car is in pretty good shape for a 2000 Honda (still haven’t reached 90,000 miles). But I have stuff to do, and so you can enjoy this ZeFrank video (an old one): true facts about the duck. The most exciting part of the movie is, of course, the drake’s corkscrew penis.  This is an early ZeFrank video, so it’s short and there’s a dearth of science.

Meanwhile, Mordecai and Esther are doing well, and Esther is investigating windows for her nest. We think she’s picked one out now, and there is plenty of quacking, splashing, and diving. Tomorrow a Chicago Maroon writer will interview me about the ducks, and I hope they do a good article. I want the campus to learn about Esther and Mordecai so they are taken care of as a University asset. Students are already stopping frequently to gawk at and photograph our mallards.

Photosynthesising microbes in soil may increase their activity as temperatures rise, offsetting some of the carbon emissions expected to be released from peatland and permafrost

After nearly 36 years of searching, astronomers have finally confirmed Neptune has auroras, thanks to data from the James Webb Space Telescope

Mary Rasmussen lives in Chicago, but has photographed plenty of wildlife. Her photos are below, with her captions and IDs indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

My Backyard on the Chicago River

My little yard in a lively neighborhood of Chicago backs up to a branch of the Chicago River. This is not the coveted motor-navigable part of the river. This part of the river is channelized, often clogged with debris, and across the river are canyons of apartment buildings. As a kid we rode our bikes to the river but were warned to stay out of it. It was considered pretty much an open sewer. That is changing.

From GROK: “Fish species that vanished from the river—like largemouth bass, bluegill, and even otters—have returned, with biodiversity surveys noting over 70 species now present, up from just a handful decades ago. The river’s still not pristine (urban runoff and legacy pollutants like PCBs linger), but it’s clean enough that people kayak, fish, and even swim in it—things unthinkable a generation ago.

So, yeah, it’s gotten a lot cleaner—less a sewer, more a living river. Still a work in progress, though.”

It is a hopeful sign of spring when the shopping carts are thawing from the ice.

Coyotes (Canis latrans) are pretty common here and they can make some real racket howling. This fellow is checking for spilled birdseed.

When there are no birds at the feeders and the yard is quiet I check for hawks. Cooper’s hawks (Astur cooperii) are frequent visitors. Sometimes they perch on the backs of our lawn chairs.

Lots of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) too. I saw this young deer a little after dawn eating my violets. They can easily leap over the chain link fences and go from yard to yard:

Eastern cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) eat almost everything. It’s good they’re so cute.

There is a family of raccoons (Procyon lotor) that lives in a hollow branch of a Cottonwood tree along the river. The branch overhangs our yard and makes for lots of entertainment.

It was over 90 degrees on this day and there were at least 3 or 4 raccoons in that branch. It must have been stifling:

American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are often in the trees or on the power lines in the backyard. One day they were making such a fuss I went out to see what was happening. It was fledging season and I thought they could be upset about a neighbor’s cat moving through the yard:

The animal was moving so slowly through the grass that I went inside, grabbed my camera, and realized that it was not a cat. It went under the fence, turned around and stared at me. Not afraid. I checked the photo and realized it’s an American mink! (Neogale vison) They are making a comeback along the river. I’ve seen them twice in my yard since then:

This female wood duck (Aix sponsa)came last year to check for spilled seed under the feeders. I hope to see her and her mate this year:

Per Grok: “Urban wildlife diversity often surpasses that of farmland because cities, despite their challenges, are heterogeneous landscapes. They offer a mosaic of habitats—gardens, vacant lots, forest fragments, and even business parks—that can support a range of species, from songbirds to small mammals like foxes. Research from the last decade shows that urban areas can have higher or comparable mammal diversity to wild spaces, especially when green spaces are preserved.”

For fun I also asked Grok (X’s A.I. app) to create an image of my spirit animal. Grok checks the internet and creates an animal based on what it finds or information that I give it about myself. This is what it gave me. I’m not sure about the hat, but an owl is better than I expected. This was done with Grok 2. Grok 3 seems to generate less personal images:

I use a Nikon D500 camera with a NIKKOR 200-500mm lens.

A new review suggests that cranberries may in fact be effective at preventing urinary tract infections.

The post Cranberry Juice, Revisited first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

From the Topic Suggestions (Lal Mclennan):

What is the 80/20 theory portrayed in Netflix’s Adolescence?

The 80/20 rule was first posed as a Pareto principle that suggests that approximately 80 per cent of outcomes stem from just 20 per cent of causes. This concept takes its name from Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who noted in 1906 that a mere 20 per cent of Italy’s population owned 80 per cent of the land.
Despite its noble roots, the theory has since been misappropriated by incels.
In these toxic communities, they posit that 80 per cent of women are attracted to only the top 20 per cent of men. https://www.mamamia.com.au/adolescence-netflix-what-is-80-20-theory/

As I like to say, “It’s more of a guideline than a rule.” Actually, I wouldn’t even say that. I think this is just another example of humans imposing simplistic patterns of complex reality. Once you create such a “rule” you can see it in many places, but that is just confirmation bias. I have encountered many similar “rules” (more in the context of a rule of thumb). For example, in medicine we have the “rule of thirds”. Whenever asked a question with three plausible outcomes, a reasonable guess is that each occurs a third of the time. The disease is controlled without medicine one third of the time, with medicine one third, and not controlled one third, etc. No one thinks there is any reality to this – it’s just a trick for guessing when you don’t know the answer. It is, however, often close to the truth, so it’s a good strategy. This is partly because we tend to round off specific numbers to simple fractions, so anything close to 33% can be mentally rounded to roughly a third. This is more akin to a mentalist’s trick than a rule of the universe.

The 80/20 rule is similar. You can take any system with a significant asymmetry of cause and outcome and make it roughly fit the 80/20 rule. Of course you can also do that if the rule were 90/10, or three-quarters/one quarter. Rounding is a great tool of confirmation bias. l

The bottom line is that there is no empirical evidence for the 80/20 rule. It likely is partly derived from the Pareto principle, but some also cite an OKCupid survey (not a scientific study) for support. In this survey they had men and women users of the dating app rate the attractiveness of the opposite sex (they assumed a binary, which is probably appropriate in the context of the app), and also asked them who they would date. Men rated women (this is a 1-5 scale) on a bell curve with the peak at 3. Women rated men with a similar curve but skewed to down with a peak closer to 2. Both sexes preferred partners skewed more attractive than their average ratings. This data is sometimes used to argue that women are harsher in their judgements of men and are only interested in dating the top 20% of men by looks.

Of course, all of the confounding factors with surveys apply to this one. One factor that has been pointed out is that on this app there are many more men than women. This means it is a buyer’s market for women, and the opposite for men. So women can afford to be especially choosey while men cannot, just as a strategy of success on this app. This says nothing about the rest of the world outside this app.

In 2024 71% of midlife adult males were married at least once, with 9% cohabitating. Marriage rates are down but only because people are living together without marrying in higher rates. The divorce rate is also fairly high so there are lots of people “between marriages”. About 54% of men over age 30 are married, with cohabitating at 9% (so let’s call that 2/3). None of this correlates to the 80/20 rule.

None of this data supports the narrative of the incel movement, which is based on the notion that women are especially unfair and harsh in their judgements of men. This leads to a narrative of victimization used to justify misogyny. It is, in my opinion, one example of how counterproductive online subcultures can be. They can reinforce our worst instincts, by isolating people in an information ecosystem that only tolerates moral purity and one perspective. This tends to radicalize members. The incel narrative is also ironic, because the culture itself is somewhat self-fulfilling. The attitudes and behaviors it cultivates are a good way to make oneself unattractive as a potential partner.

This is obviously a complex topic, and I am only scratching the surface.

Finally, I did watch Adolescence. I agree with Lal, it is a great series, masterfully produced. Doing each episode in real time as a single take made it very emotionally raw. It explores a lot of aspects of this phenomenon, social media in general, the challenges of being a youth in today’s culture, and how often the various systems fail. Definitely worth a watch.

 

The post The 80-20 Rule first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A quantum algorithm for solving mathematical problems related to knots could give us the first example of a quantum computer tackling a genuinely useful problem that would otherwise be impossible for a classical computer

The rise of large language models like ChatGPT that can churn out computer code has led to a new term - vibe coding - for people who create software by asking AI to do it for them

The search for evidence of life on Mars just got a little more interesting with the discovery of large organic molecules in a rock sample. The Mars Curiosity Rover, which is digging in the Martian rock beds as it goes along, tested pieces of its haul and found interesting organic compounds inside them.

At hypersonic speeds, complexities occur when the gases interact with the surface of the vehicle such as boundary layers and shock waves. Researchers were able to observe new disturbances in simulations conducted for the first time in 3D.

At hypersonic speeds, complexities occur when the gases interact with the surface of the vehicle such as boundary layers and shock waves. Researchers were able to observe new disturbances in simulations conducted for the first time in 3D.

Bizarre parasitic wasps preserved in amber about 99 million years ago had trap-like abdomens that they may have used to immobilise other insects

Suppose humanity was faced with an extinction-level event. Not just high odds, but certain-sure. A nearby supernova will explode and irradiate all life, a black hole will engulf the Earth, a Mars-sized interstellar asteroid with our name on it. A cataclysm that will end all life on Earth. We could accept our fate and face our ultimate extinction together. We could gather the archives from libraries across the world and launch them into space in the hopes that another civilization will find them. Or we could build a fleet of arks containing life from Earth. Not people, but bacteria, fungi and other simple organisms. Seed the Universe with our genetic heritage. Of all of these, the last option has the greatest chance of continuing our story. It's an idea known as directed panspermia, and we will soon have the ability to undertake it. But should we?

What drives us to send probes throughout the Solar System and rovers and landers to Mars? It's not cheap, and it's not easy. It's because we live inside a big, natural puzzle, and we want to understand it. That's one reason. But the main reason for space exploration is to search for life beyond Earth. That our planet could be the only planet to host life is a disquieting thought.

A tiny magnetic robot which can take 3D scans from deep within the body, that could revolutionize early cancer detection, has been developed by researchers. The team say this is the first time it has been possible to generate high-resolution three-dimensional ultrasound images taken from a probe deep inside the gastrointestinal tract, or gut.

A tiny magnetic robot which can take 3D scans from deep within the body, that could revolutionize early cancer detection, has been developed by researchers. The team say this is the first time it has been possible to generate high-resolution three-dimensional ultrasound images taken from a probe deep inside the gastrointestinal tract, or gut.

Scientists have developed a new theory to explain heat transfer on advanced surfaces. The theory is critical to the researchers' work to develop innovative surfaces for applications such as harvesting water from air without electricity.

Every year, millions of tires end up in landfills, creating an environmental crisis with far-reaching consequences. In the United States alone, over 274 million tires were scrapped in 2021, with nearly a fifth of them being discarded into landfills. A study has now pioneered a technique for breaking down this rubber waste and transforming it into valuable precursors for epoxy resins. This technique offers an innovative and sustainable alternative to traditional recycling methods while significantly reducing rubber waste in landfills.

Proof-of-concept work uses unique, safe particles to remove microplastics in a single cycle.