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For survivors of strokes, regaining fine motor skills is critical for recovering independence and quality of life. But getting intensive, frequent rehabilitation therapy can be challenging and expensive. Now, researchers are developing a new technology that could allow stroke patients to undergo rehabilitation exercises at home by tracking their wrist movements through a simple setup: a smartphone strapped to the forearm and a low-cost gaming controller called the Novint Falcon.

Using unconventional statistical mechanics to understand fluid dynamics, a professor helped solve a 150 year old physics problem of how turbulent fluids move through a pipe.

Physicists describe the successful creation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Made up of dipolar sodium-cesium molecules that were cooled with the help of microwave shielding to just 5 nanoKelvin and lasted for up to two seconds, the new molecular BEC will help scientists explore a number of different quantum phenomena, including new types of superfluidity, and enable the creation of quantum simulators to ecreate the enigmatic properties of complex materials, like solid crystals.

Physicists describe the successful creation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Made up of dipolar sodium-cesium molecules that were cooled with the help of microwave shielding to just 5 nanoKelvin and lasted for up to two seconds, the new molecular BEC will help scientists explore a number of different quantum phenomena, including new types of superfluidity, and enable the creation of quantum simulators to ecreate the enigmatic properties of complex materials, like solid crystals.

Under certain conditions, some algae are able to produce hydrogen -- a much sought-after green energy source. Its production takes place in the unique catalytic center of the unicellular algae and is only possible if certain cofactors of the relevant proteins are present. Researchers have identified how such a cofactor, the so-called hydrogen cluster, is assembled. Specifically, they describe the previously unexplained role of the enzyme HydF, which is involved in the final steps of assembly.

A rare fossil skull provides strong evidence that the Dromornithidae, an extinct group of Australian flightless birds, were related to geese and ducks

The Pecksniffs, having tried to gain control over scientific names of animals but failing to do so—at least for the Latin binomials that scientists use when communicating with other scientists (e.g., Homo sapiens, Drosophila mauritiana)—are now coming for plant names. And not just common names, but, more important, the Latin binomials. The article below, by Banu Subramaniam, a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology and now a professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College, takes a deep dive into the perfidy of botanical names, but also indicts the field for other abrogations of morality, like demonizing “invasive” plants and making us falsely think that sex is binary. (It is, as I’ve argued many times before.)

While Subramaniam has some good points, like criticizing “parachute science”, in which Western biologists take botanical samples from undeveloped countries without permission (this practice is now largely illegal and disappearing), in general the article, which summarizes her new book Botany of Empire, comes off as just one more performative attempt to reform a scientific field in a way whose effects are generally malign rather than good.

Click to read the Guardian article by Zoë Corbyn, which summarizes Subramaniam’s book:

An excerpt from the article:

Subramaniam is the author of the provocative new book, Botany of Empire. The book challenges plant science to better see the ways in which it has been profoundly shaped by European colonialism and how imperial attitudes, theories and practices endure. Colonialism and colonial logic remains “sedimented at every level”, argues Subramaniam, who also looks at what a more widespread and serious effort to “decolonise” might look like, even if such a project is never-ending. The book focuses on three subfields: taxonomy, plant reproductive biology and invasion biology (the science of the spread of introduced species).

Yes, the book wants to decolonize botany. But read on, even if your stomach is starting to hurt. I’ve put in bold three assertions Subramaniam makes in response to “problematic” areas in botany, and I’ve given excerpts of her prose (indented) as well as my own comments (flush left)

1.) Names of plants can be bad. 

The attempt to change common names of animals that some find offensive, like Audubon’s warbler, doesn’t bother me too much. That’s because common names vary among cultures, and aren’t crucial for scientific communication in books and publications. But Latin binomials (Setophaga auduboni for the warbler) are crucial in scientific communication, and if they were changed, everything in botany would be messed up forever. That’s why the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the official body for approving “scientific” names (Latin binomials) for animals has said that it will not change existing animal names, but that future names might take into consideration the person honored by the name.

Subramaniam, however, wants “offensive” scientific names of plants changed, though she doesn’t answer the crucial question: Who will decide what names are offensive?  After all, given that she’s proposing changing the scientific literature, she can’t possibly suggest that every plant named after a person be changed. That would cause confusion widespread beyond imagining in the botanical world. And that means that somebody has to decide what is “offensive.”

Her suggestion:

When Banu Subramaniam thinks about whether plants should be renamed so as not to honour white supremacist colonialists – Cecil Rhodes, for example, is commemorated in the names of 126 plant species – she contrasts it with how, for so many years in our patriarchal system, women were expected to change theirs. “That wasn’t considered complicated… and yet those in power give any number of reasons why this is,” says the professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College, outside Boston, Massachusetts.

Here are three examples of offensive names given in the article, all of whose binomials involve the demonized Cecil Rhodes: Crotalaria rhodesiae, Cyphostemma rhodesiae and Coptosperma rhodesiacum. Interestingly, none of these seem to have common names with “Rhodes” in them; the last one’s common name, for example, is “butterspoon.”

More:

[Botany of Empire] enters the fray at a contentious moment. It is the International Botanical Congress (IBC) in Madrid in July and the so-called Nomenclature Section, responsible for the International Code that governs the scientific naming of plants, will be meeting to discuss and decide on a number of amendments that taxonomists have proposed since it last met seven years ago. Included is whether a mechanism should be added to the code so plant names that are regarded as culturally offensive or inappropriate can be rejected. If it passes the preliminary voting stage, it will be over to about 200 taxonomists who have individual votes along with the power to cast secret votes for their institutions.

Here’s one of the proposals in Taxon taken from the penultimate link above:

(121) Amend Art. 56.1 as follows (new text in bold)

“56.1. Any name that would cause a disadvantageous nomenclatural change (Art. 14.1) or that is regarded as culturally offensive or inappropriate (Art. 51.2) may be proposed for rejection. A name thus rejected, or its basionym if it has one, is placed on a list of nomina utique rejicienda (suppressed names, App. V). Along with each listed name, all names for which it is the basionym are similarly rejected, and none is to be used (see Rec. 50E.2).”

Again, who makes the decision? Presumably a committee, and I bet that if this happens they will choose an all-woke committee that will reject anybody who is morally impure. Would Darwin fall into that class?

But I object to the whole endeavor. There are two upsides, neither important, and one big downside.

The upsides are, first, the assumption that marginalized people have been put off botany or even driven out of the field by culturally offensive names. I don’t believe that at all, for I’ve seen no evidence of it.

The second “upside” is that it makes people like Subramaniam feel as if they are enacting social justice in the botanical realm. But that would be true only if the first upside were true, which it isn’t. Thus the second upside is a purely performative endeavor with no substantive effects.

The big downside, which I’ve mentioned, is that changing botanical binomials would throw the scientific literature into a tizzy. When you use a “new” name, do you still have to note what the former name was? That’s the only way to avoid confusion. And you’d have to do that forever, because the “offensive” name is already ensconced in the literature. And so this proposal does not get rid of the offensive name from the literature at all.

Going forward, however, you could still have a committee to eliminate proposed NEW names considered offensive. I’ll leave that endeavor to the Pecksniffs.

2.) Botany reinforces a false sex binary.  Subramaniam sees “colonial” botany as having distorted sex in plants, falsely implying that sex in plants is binary. But in fact it is binary, though plants have hermaphrodites, which combine male and female functions in one individual, far more often than do animals. But hermaphrodites are not a “third” sex, as their reproductive partners have reproductive systems that are either male or female. There are only two gametes: big, immotile female ones and small, motile male ones, even in hermaphrodites.

In the case of plant reproduction, Subramaniam draws on the work of historians of science who show how European colonial sexual norms based around heterosexual romance were transposed on to plants by Linnaeus. She argues that, as a result, our vocabulary and how we think about the way plants reproduce today “relies obsessively” on binary categories of male/female with their limited possibilities. Into this “impoverished” framework we try to shoehorn a breathtaking array of plant reproductive arrangements. More than 85% of flowering plants end up classified as “bisexual” or “hermaphrodite”, because the flowers have male and female parts; and that’s not to mention all the “asexual” ways flowering plants can propagate such as through roots, stems, leaves and buds. “There are more exceptions than rules,” says Subramaniam. “Plants do such interesting things… if we had better ways to describe them that aren’t based around human reproduction, it might open up other ways to study them.” (Subramaniam has published suggestions of new terminology and vocabulary.)

Being asexual is, of course, not a sex. It’s a way of cloning yourself, not reproducing sexually.  Below is the paper by Subramaniam and Bartlett that includes her suggestions; read it for yourself (it’s from Integrative and Comparative Biology) and check the glossary about how she wants to move away from a binary notion of sex into a spectrum. She also sees plants as being “queer”, which of course is a concept that applies to humans, not plants.  Here’s how plants can be “queer” (from the glossary):

Queer: is perhaps best described by Eve Sedgwick: “That’s one of the things that “queer” can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (Sedgwick 1993: 7).

If that has a definite meaning, I can’t parse it out. If plants are “queer” because they have hermaphrodites or reproduce asexually, then just use those two words instead of dragging in terms from human sexual preference.

But of course that importation of ideology into science is the real point of the article and book.  Here’s the author’s real point at the end:

[Subramaniam’s] takeaway message when it comes to plant science: “Botany, like everything, is political. Question received wisdom.”

Yep, everything is political, including my work on speciation in Drosophila. Right?

Click to read:

3.) The idea of “invasive plants” leads to xenophobia. Here we have another performative act with no evidence that the concept produces its touted salubrious results:

Meanwhile, when it comes to invasion biology, the good native/bad foreigner binary that has become so pervasive in how most people think about plants’ place in the world is deeply ironic. We seem to have forgotten that it was European colonialism that ushered in the “massive and grand reshuffling of global biota” that we see before us. That they are here, for good or bad, is a legacy of colonial botany. And most of our agricultural species are foreign, too, though we don’t hate them on our dinner plates.

Yet today we demonise non-native plants as evil and undesirable. Subramaniam worries this is helping to fuel xenophobia and giving us poor approaches to species conservation and management. Blame the plant and attention flips to violent eradication, which rarely works. Meanwhile the real problem, landscapes disturbed through overdevelopment (for it is often here that introduced species find their chance), takes a back seat. Former colonies’ promoting and protecting of native plants – essentially trying to return the environment to some kind of idyllic past state – while simultaneously showing so little regard for the Indigenous people who co-evolved with those flora and fauna, is a continuation of a colonial settler logic, suggests Subramaniam. “We need other logics for our approach to nature… not ideological litmus tests,” she says.

This is hyperbolic: we are worried about invasive plants because they can displace native ones, leading to extinction.  Subramaniam’s claim that the concept “fuels xenophobia” has not an iota of evidence behind it, as critic Dan Simberloff says later in the article:

Yet for Daniel Simberloff, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Subramaniam’s arguments, which he has encountered before, remain tortuous and unconvincing, and lack evidence. Not only does she “almost completely” ignore the impacts of many non-native species, but there is also scant proof that judgments about the aesthetics of non-native plants transfer to xenophobia. And approaches to restoration, which involve removing non-native species, aren’t so much about trying to return land to some unspoilt past but giving degraded ecosystems a fighting chance to recover. There are plenty of examples where campaigns to eradicate invasive non-native species have worked, he notes.

Responding to a recent study that found invasion biology research negatively frames non-native species, regardless of whether they cause harm, Simberloff and others in the field point out that the accumulating evidence is that substantial numbers of non-native species are going on to have a harmful impact. The rule of thumb used in the past – that only 1% of non-native species can be expected to become pests – is a “highly misleading low estimate” (though a new estimate is hard to give). Given that it isn’t always clear which non-native populations can “irrupt into invasion problems”, a precautionary principle, even if they seem benign, is prudent, they argue. They also point to a “formidable international scientific consensus” that non-native species pose threats, citing a sobering Invasive Alien Species Assessment published last September by an intergovernmental body representing 143 member countries.

I’ll quote one more critic: well-known botanist Sandra Knapp, who points out that botany is already scrutinizing itself and that Subramaniam is exaggerating ideas that, in some form, are already being tackled:

For Sandra Knapp, a taxonomist at the Natural History Museum and past president of the UK’s Linnean Society, the book provides an interesting perspective on botany but she questions some of Subramaniam’s characterisations.

While colonialists’ names do persist in plant names, it is a stretch to say the field is “celebrating” those people; big herbaria aren’t just confined to the global north, although there are more there; and “parachute science” is diminishing. One of the reasons botany used male and female when talking about plants’ pollen and ovule-bearing organs is because it made common understanding easier. “As plant scientists discover more about plant reproductive biology, they realise it kind of defies categorisation,” says Knapp, referring to a recent discovery about the sexual fluidity of an Australian bush tomato.

But, chiefly, Knapp questions the book’s starting point: that botany has its head in the sand over its colonial past. While botany isn’t a monolith, from Knapp’s perspective, the journey is under way: the field is actively engaged with thinking about and coming to terms with its past, as well as how it might create a more inclusive future. “There’s a blossoming of this discussion throughout botany now,” says Knapp. “It might not be the conversation [Subramaniam] thinks there should be, but that’s all the more reason to keep it going.”

Knapp points to a wealth of projects taking place at institutional and grassroots levels to amplify different voices: the Linnean Society’s addition to its library of portraits celebrating its first female fellows; a recent project by botanists to relay untold stories of individuals who collected and studied plants but who have been excluded from historical accounts; and work she has been undertaking with colleagues to produce a dataset of plant genera named after women.

Subramaniam is a good example of the maladaptive incursion of ideology into biology, an incursion that has virtually no upsides except for the good feeling it gives the Pecksniffs. Yes, parachute science is bad, but we realized that a long time ago, and now you need all kinds of permits to collect either animals or plants from different countries, particularly underdeveloped ones. But as for changing names or worrying about the name “invasive” or about whether plants are too “queer” to support a sex binary, that’s what’s called “pilpul” in Hebrew, referring to “casuistic hairsplitting” in analysis of the Talmud.

In the end, everything is political, so Subramaniam sees her endeavor as “good politics” that will enact social justice among vegetables.

To reach the Green Bank Observatory, you take the road less traveled, winding through scenic and remote regions of the Allegheny Mountains and the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia. About an hour away, you’ll start to lose cell phone service. The Green Bank Observatory – a collection of radio telescopes that search the heavens for faint radio signals from black holes, pulsars, neutron stars or gravitational waves — sits near the heart of the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, a unique area the encompasses an area of approximately 13,000 square miles, spanning the border between Virginia and West Virginia.

Here in the NRQZ, human-generated radio transmissions are limited to shield the radio telescopes from Earth-based radio signals called RFI (Radio Frequency Interference), which are high-frequency electromagnetic waves that emanate from electronic devices such as computers, cell phones, microwave ovens, and even digital cameras. Even the weakest RFI signals can drown out the faint radio waves coming from the cosmos.

A view of the Green Bank Observatory’s Science Center and some of the telescopes. Credit: Jay Young for the Green Bank Observatory.

“You can only use basic, old-style film cameras here within 2 miles of the Green Bank Telescope,” said Paul Vosteen, Media Specialist at Green Bank Observatory who provided a tour of the facilities. Vosteen recounted a time he took a group out to see the gigantic (and very photogenic) 100-meter Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and unwittingly, a member of the group started snapping photos with a digital camera. While he quickly got the photographer stopped, Vosteen later coyly checked in with technicians who had been running diagnostics on the GBT that day. They were scratching their heads about a strange spike in signals earlier that morning. Turns out, it was the exact moment the photographer used their digital camera. 

“The slightest electronic signal can cause interference,” Vosteen explained. “We can only use diesel vehicles here on the premises because gasoline engines have spark plugs. Everything that sparks produces radio waves.” Diesel engines, on the other hand, ignite by compression.

GBT Control Room. Credit NSF/GBO/Jill Malusky.

To keep the amount of interference on-site in check, the observatory’s control room and the nearby Science Center’s exhibit hall are completely surrounded by copper Faraday cages, wire-mesh devices built into the walls to block electromagnetic signals. Even windows are covered with a thin wire mesh, and the heavy door to the control room opens and closes like an entrance to a high-security bank vault.

Green Bank is home to six large radio telescopes ranging in size from 14 meters to 100 meters in diameter. The 20-meter and the 40-foot telescopes are full-time educational telescopes used by students around the country.

UT journalist Nancy Atkinson by the Reber Telescope, the world’s first parabolic dish built by Grote Reber in his Illinois backyard. The dish was moved to the Green Bank Observatory site in the 1960s. Credit: Nancy Atkinson.

The observatory also contains many relics of radio astronomy history. There’s an exact replica of the dipole array antenna Karl Jansky used when he discovered quite by accident that radio waves were emanating from the center of the Milky Way. That was the beginning of radio astronomy as we know it today. There’s also the actual parabolic dish radio telescope (the world’s first) built by Grote Reber in 1937 to follow up on Jansky’s detection. Then there’s the 85-foot Howard E. Tatel telescope that Frank Drake used in 1960 to perform the world’s first search for extraterrestrial intelligence with Project Ozma.

GBT – “Great Big Thing”

At 485 feet (148 meters) tall, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT – sometimes called ‘Great Big Thing’ by locals) is the tallest and most eye-catching dish at the observatory, and the largest steerable radio telescope in the world. The maneuverability of its large 100-meter dish allows it to quickly track objects across its field of view, and see 85% of the sky.

While the GBT has been in operation since 2000, as we discussed in an article last week, a new upgrade for the telescope is under development. ngRADAR is a next-generation radar system that will allow the GBT to track and map asteroids with unprecedented resolution, making GBT the most advanced planetary radar system in the world. It will also be able to study comets, moons and planets in our Solar System. When finished it will not only help astronomers study the composition of other planetary bodies, but also help defend against potential large meteor strikes on Earth by mapping the precise trajectories of asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit.

Astronomers study the Universe by capturing light from stars, planets, and galaxies. But they can also study nearby objects by shining radio light on them and analyzing the signals that echo back. This is called planetary radar, and the process can reveal incredibly detailed information about our planetary neighbors.

The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. Credit: Jay Young.

“When astronomers are studying light that is being made by a star, or galaxy, they’re trying to figure out its properties,” said Patrick Taylor, the project director for ngRADAR and the radar division head for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in our article last week. “But with radar, we already know what the properties of the signals are, and we leverage that to figure out the properties of whatever we bounced the signals off of. That allows us to characterize planetary bodies – like their shape, speed, and trajectory. That’s especially important for hazardous objects that might stray too close to Earth.”

Previously, the workhorse for planetary radar was the 1,000-foot-diameter (305 meters) Arecibo Observatory which collapsed in 2020, as well as the Goldstone 70-meter dish in California, which is primarily used for communicating with spacecraft as part of NASA’s Deep Space Network. Taylor said that the idea for ngRADAR has been discussed for years — even before Arecibo’s demise — but with the loss of Arecibo, the upgrade is even more important.

Radar signals transmitted by the ngRADAR at the GBT will reflect off astronomical objects, and those reflected signals will be received by the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a network of ten observing stations located across the United States.

A Synthetic Aperture Radar image of the Moon’s Tycho Crater using the ngRADAR prototyope, showing 5-meter resolution detail. Image credit Raytheon.

“The idea is for GBT is to do the transmitting almost constantly and the VLBA — either all ten of those or any subset of those telescopes — doing the receiving,” said Taylor. “This new system will allow us to characterize the surfaces of many different objects in a different frequency or wavelength that hasn’t been used before.”

Radio Frequencies

All light travels through space in waves – think of how ripples move across a pond. Each ripple has a peak and a trough, which is called a cycle. An object emitting radio waves produces many cycles in a very short period. During each cycle, the wave moves a short distance, which is called its wavelength. Radio waves have the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. They range from sub-millimeter lengths to over 100 kilometers.

For radio waves of all wavelengths, the number of cycles per second is called a frequency, with one cycle per second being one hertz. That means one thousand cycles per second is a kilohertz and a billion cycles per second is a gigahertz. Radio astronomers are interested in objects in a wide range of frequencies, but mostly from between 3 kilohertz and about 900 gigahertz.

“Arecibo worked at 2.38 gigahertz, the Goldstone 70-meter primarily works at 8.56 gigahertz,” said Taylor. “For ngRADAR, we are looking at even higher frequencies, at 13.7 gigahertz, something that really hasn’t been used for planetary radar before. This is a way to offer something new and different, while the capabilities of the two instruments – GBT and Goldstone – also would complement each other.”

But more importantly, since Goldstone is now “the only planetary radar game in town,” as Taylor described it, that means planetary radar in the US has a single point failure. The antennas of Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex are busy 24 hours a day communicating with spacecraft around the Solar System.

“If Goldstone is down for whatever reason or if it’s not available because of its work with the DSN,” said Taylor, “having a radar transmitter on the GBT gives us more flexibility and redundancy.”

Taylor said there are several applications for the future of radar, from not only advancing our knowledge of objects in the Solar System and characterizing asteroids and comets, but also aiding in future robotic and crewed spaceflight.

The Green Bank Telescope Credit: Dave Green

The GBT worked with the Goldstone telescope to help confirm the success of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission in 2022, the first test to see if humans could successfully alter the trajectory of an asteroid. In a two-week campaign, the radio telescopes were able to track how the orbit of Dimorphos, the asteroid that was hit by DART, changed after the impact.

But the main goal ngRADAR is for is planetary defense.

“That will be one of the highest priority uses for the radar system, where we can track and characterize near earth-asteroids and comets to evaluate any hazard they might present to Earth in the future. Radar delivers very precise data that allows you to predict where these small bodies will be in the future. We can determine its size, how it rotates, what it might be made of, is it just a round ball, or does it look like a potato, or does it have a moon that you also must worry about.”

Building ngRADAR

Raytheon’s prototype radar system deployed on the prime focus boom of the Green Bank Telescope over its 100-meter collecting dish. Credit: Green Bank Observatory.

As we discussed last week, a scaled-down prototype of ngRADAR at the GBT produced some of the highest resolution planetary radar images ever captured from Earth. Not only will the new full-scale system need to be built, but several changes will need to be made to the GBT. 

“This will be a pretty intensive infrastructure project,” Taylor explained. “We’ll have to build the transmitter and mount it onto the GBT. With the size and weight of the system, as well as the cooling systems that will be needed, extra structures will be needed to support all that.”

Taylor said the timeline for completion would depend on funding, but a reasonable goal is that in the next five years – perhaps by 2029-2030 – ngRADAR could be up and running.

But Taylor feels that ngRADAR will allow the GBT to come full circle.

“Some of the first science done with GBT was receiving radar signals when it was first inaugurated,” he said. “It’s been a receiver for radar for over 20 years but now we are trying to take the next step and have it be a transmitter as well.”

Read part 1 of this series, Next Generation Radar Will Map Threatening Asteroids.

The post Part 2: The History and Future of Planetary Radar appeared first on Universe Today.

The 12th Large Hadron Collider Physics conference is taking place this week in Boston, and for the first time in a several years, I’ll be able to attend in person. I’ll post about it all week.

As part of the conference activities, I will be participating in a public event Thursday night at the Boston Public Library, a panel discussion entitled “Where the Universe and Humanity Collide.” The other panelists are Yale Professor Sarah Demers, a member of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, and Dr. Katrina Miller, a particle physicis and a writer and essayist for the New York Times and other publications. We’ll be discussing the future of particle physics, talking about how we got into the field, and answering whatever questions the audience might have for us. If you’re in Boston, please consider attending!

Menstruation is occurring earlier and earlier in life for younger generations in the Western world, but researchers are puzzled as to why

Which is worse – clickbaity headlines for news articles that are factually correct, but may be playing up a sensational angle, or straight-up misinformation? It depends on what you mean by “worse”. A new study tries to address this information, with some interesting findings.

Misinformation is an increasingly important topic, one with far reaching implications for society. Our individual lives and our society is increasingly run on information. It is a critical resource, and the ability to evaluate and utilize information may be a determining factor in our quality of life. My favorite example remains Steve Jobs, because he is such a stark example. He was one of the richest people on the planet, with every physical resource at his disposal, and was a titan of an information industry. And yet he died prematurely of a potentially curable disease. He chose to delay mainstream treatment in order to pursue “natural” therapies that were ultimately worthless. We cannot know for sure what would have happened if he did not take this course, but his odds of survival would have been better.

At a societal level the most visible impact that our information ecosystems have deals with politics and public health. We are facing a rather dramatic decision regarding the next presidential election in the US, and this will ultimately be determined by how people are accessing and evaluating information. This has always been the case in a democracy, but I think most people alive today have not experienced a divergence of narrative and opinion as intense as we have today.

We also just when through the worst pandemic in a century, which brought into focus every issue dealing with misinformation. How do we deal with it in an age of social media? How do we balance the interests of making sure people get accurate health information so they can make informed choices, and freedom of speech and the value of open debate? There is no one correct answer, we just have to choose our tradeoffs.

But we can do research to at least inform our choices, to know what the tradeoffs are. That is where the new research comes in. Researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management, publishing in Science, showed thousands of study participants 130 vaccine-related stories. They surveyed the subjects for their demographics, and asked them how the news story affected their intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19. They used this information to estimate the net effect of these vaccine-stories on society.

Their core findings are unsurprising. The more a news article suggested that vaccines could be harmful to a person’s health, the more they discouraged vaccination. Second, the more widespread the news article the more of an impact it had. Again – these are completely unsurprising findings. But then they calculated the net effect that a misleading clickbait headline of a factually correct article in the mainstream media would have vs terrible misinformation spread by social media. They found the clickbait headline would have 46 times a greater negative effect on vaccination rates than the social media misinformation.

The reason for this is because, even though the misleading mainstream article has a much lower negative impact on vaccine attitudes, it was read by far many more people. One mainstream article may be read by 54 million people, while a Facebook post flagged as misinformation may be read by only 0.3% as many people. Part of the reason this may be surprising is because we tend to intuitively underestimate the impact of very large numbers (we are just not wired to deal with such numbers). This comes up in many contexts. In medicine, we tend to intuitively focus on how typical a set of symptoms is for a disease, rather than the base rate (how common) that disease is. In reality, an atypical presentation of a common disease may be much more likely than a more typical presentation of an extremely rare disease.

The same is true with misinformation – we will intuitively give more consideration to the negative impact of an individual article rather than consider the numbers of people who may have read it, and have a hard time grasping the net effect of a small effect times millions of people.

How should we interpret these results? First, it does not mean that we should be ignoring misinformation on social media. In fact, I could argue that this research shows flagging misinformation and marginalizing it works. That was the whole point – to keep the number of people who see the extreme misinformation to a minimum.

But it also means that mainstream outlets have an extreme responsibility to be very careful with their headlines and the way they sensationalize important news. Headline writers are typically not the journalists themselves, and their whole job is to create eye-catching headlines. But responsible mainstream outlets should have editors who review and approve those headlines, and should filter out dangerous clickbait. It doesn’t matter that all the appropriate caveats are deep in the body of the article. The headlines themselves, and the opening paragraphs, need to capture an accurate gist of the story. It takes more work and consideration to create an intriguing headline that is also not misleading, but it’s worth the effort.

The post Clickbait and Misinformation first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

The Chang’e 6 moon lander touched down on 2 June and began collecting lunar rock for China’s second sample-return mission

Efforts to remove animal traps and discourage poaching in Vietnamese protected areas have been partly effective, but conservationists say other approaches are needed to safeguard threatened species

Dr. Pierre Kory and the pseudomous Substacker known as A Midwestern Doctor provide two more examples of how "anti-COVID" antivax has now become just antivax.

The post Yet another example of how “new school” anti-COVID vaccine antivaxxers have become just antivaxxers now first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

After touching down on the moon’s far side, China’s Chang’e-6 lander is collecting samples to bring back to Earth — and sending back imagery documenting its mission.

Chang’e-6, which was launched May 3, went through weeks’ worth of in-space maneuvers that climaxed with its weekend landing in the moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin region. The mission plan calls for the probe to collect samples of lunar soil and rock over the course of about two days, and then pack them up for the return trip.

If the operation is successful, Chang’e-6 would bring back the first fresh lunar samples ever collected on the moon’s far side — following up on the Chang’e-5 mission in 2020, which returned samples from the moon’s Earth-facing side.

The China National Space Administration said the lander used its onboard camera during its powered descent to detect obstacles autonomously and select a safe landing site. Chang’e-6 captured video imagery during the final phase of the lander’s descent and transmitted the views back to Earth. One video frame shows the shadow of the lander itself moments before touchdown.

Chang’e-6 is built to collect samples using a drill and a robotic arm. It’s also expected to gather scientific data about its surroundings using a radon detector, a negative-ion detector and a mini-rover. During surface operations, data and telemetry are being relayed between Chang’e-6 and Earth via China’s Queqiao-2 satellite.

Up to 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of lunar samples will be stowed inside the lander’s “ascender” stage. The rocket-powered ascender will then lift off from the surface and transfer the samples to the Chang’e-6 orbiter, which is currently in lunar orbit. Following the model set by Chang’e-5, the orbiter will head back toward Earth and release the sample capsule for atmospheric re-entry and touchdown in Inner Mongolia.

An image captured by a camera aboard the Chang’e-6 lander shows the spacecraft’s shadow on the lunar surface just moments before touchdown. (Credit: CLEP / CNSA)

The moon’s south polar region is of particular interest because it’s thought to harbor reserves of water ice that could support lunar settlement. Studying fresh samples from the South Pole-Aitken Basin could help scientists and mission planners learn more about the region’s resources.

Chang’e-6 is the latest spacecraft in an international armada of moon landers — including Russia’s Luna 25, iSpace’s Hakuto-R and Astrobotic’s Peregrine, which were unsuccessful, plus more fruitful missions such as India’s Chandrayaan-3, Japan’s SLIM and Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus.

Coming attractions include NASA’s VIPER rover, which is currently due to be delivered to the moon late this year; and China’s Chang’e-7 mission, which features a hopping probe and is set for launch in 2026. Looking further ahead, China aims to send astronauts to the lunar surface by 2030 — not long after NASA’s Artemis 3 crewed lunar landing, currently scheduled for 2026.

The post Chinese Probe Lands on Moon’s Far Side to Collect Samples for Return appeared first on Universe Today.

This may not be Bill Maher’s funniest “bit” on his Real Time show, but it’s one of his best: a diatribe against the oppression of women in most majority-Islamic countries. He does get in a few humorous licks at American protesters who, he says, should be fighting Muslim gender apartheid instead of putting up tents and doing performative protests. And he’s right: half the population in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and, yes, territories like Gaza, aren’t even close to having equal opportunity. This problem is sorely neglected by most Western feminists.

Not only are women surely restive under these restrictions, which are immoral because they treat people grossly unequally, but it would be much better for these societies to tap the potential of people with two X chromosomes.  It’s impossible for me to agree that maintaining gender apartheid (usually derived from bogus religious beliefs) is socially better than giving women equal opportunities. We know this is true from how Iran and Afghanistan used to be before they became fundamentalist Islamic countries, and how they are now, with veiled and monitored women agitating against the restrictions of the regimes. Do a Google Image search for “Women, Afghanistan, 1970s” and then compare it to a search for “Women, Afghanistan, 202os“. (See this post as well.)

h/t Muffy

Speaking of graduation, here are a video and some photos of convocation that took place yesterday. The expected protest by pro-Palestinian demonstrators did take place, but it wasn’t serious enough to disrupt the ceremony (see news report below), and so the seniors were able to have their Big Moment. Unfortunately, it drizzled and the ceremony was long, so many students and parents donned plastic ponchos that were provided for free. It often seems to rain on graduation day.

I have to admit that although I’ve witnessed many of these graduations, and hooded some of my students in them, I never get used to it. It’s a tremendous accomplishment (especially here, where the work is hard), and it’s heartwarming to see the students pose before and after the ceremony with their proud parents. (They used to post by Botany Pond, but it’s still under construction and fenced off.)

Because there were restrictions about being on campus, I wasn’t able to wander around freely to photograph, but here are a few things to give a flavor of the day.The police did let me film and take pictures before the ceremony and, from the door of my building, of the procession.

First a video of the beginning of the ceremony. The procession always begins with two bagpipers:

Miscellaneous shots:

Going through Hull Gate to the Quad:

Lots of selfies:

“Only the strong survive” on a mortarboard. Indeed. One of the tee-shirts they sell on campus says: “The University of Chicago: Hell does freeze over.”

There were students wearing keffiyehs, who probably participated in the subsequent walk-out during the ceremony (see below). I avoided taking photos of their faces to avoid implicating them in anything.

Foreground, my friend Eliza Ross, a pro-Israeli activist in the UChicago Maroons for Israel (along with Talia Elkin, Eliza brought charges against the Students for Justice in Palestine for disrupting a Jewish “event” in the Quad. SJP was given a slap on the wrist). I avoided showing her face, but look at her shoes:

She showed them off for me. The Hebrew says “Am Yisrael Chai”—”the people of Israel live.”

Here’s the whole set-up of the stage on the east side of the Quad, but before the students arrived. It’s a panoramic shot, so click to enlarge it.

An Instagram post from UChicago United for Palestine, alerting demonstrators to the graduation protest. I doubt that the masks are for safety against viruses; rather, they hide the identity of protestors so they can avoid punishment:

Here’s a Channel 7 news video of the pro-Palestinian protesters. There was not only a walkout during the ceremony itself, but also a group of non-University protesters to the west of the venue.  One of them, not affiliated with the University, was arrested for battery.  I tried to film the University protesters, clad in gowns and keffiyehs, as they walked out past my building, chanting “Free free Palestine”, but at that point the campus police wouldn’t let me take any pictures. I don’t think that’s a legal order, but I wasn’t about to buck the campus cops, who were clearly on high alert. Here’s a news report showing some of the protest:

As the Chicago Maroon reported in February (see my post on it here), a group of pro-Palestinian protestors who had violated University of Chicago rules by participating in sit-in in the admissions office were required to submit essays as part of their punishment.  I guess the point was to give students a chance to reflect on—and presumably repent about—their disruptive conduct. But the result was the opposite: the students doubled down in their activism and demonization of the University. Here are just two of several letters I reproduced:

“… I participated in the sit-in on November 9 because it is proven that my University has investments in weapons manufacturing companies, and I could not continue to attend classes and go about my day-to-day without thinking about how the institution I am a part of is facilitating the genocide and displacement of millions of Palestinian people. There is a long and honorable legacy of the sit-in protest being used to peacefully remind large institutions of the harm that they are causing people through their actions, a legacy that was taken up by students of UCUP. And if UChicago, a supposed stalwart of free speech, retaliates against students for taking up this form of protest and trying to communicate with administration at the University they themselves attend, what does that mean about free speech at this institution? Although I can understand the stress this may have placed on the Deans-on-Call, that was not intentional. The stress I experienced for the past several months knowing that my University is invested in companies that build bombs, and the stress that I experienced when the administration repeatedly refused to meet with us to discuss our demands, however, has been caused by the University…”

Sahar Punjwani, Class of 2024

. . . . and another:

“… The University of Chicago has, in my time here, taught me a lot. This sit-in, my arrest, and your office’s obligation to begin disciplinary proceedings against me, have taught me a lot as well that the University would rather criminalize and punish its students—those most committed not only to values of free expression but also noble pursuits of justice, equality, and liberation, and, as it has not passed my notice, most of whom are Black/Indigenous and students of color, and low-income—than meet with them and be transparent about its investments in arms companies.…

… I believe myself to be an excellent student and upstanding member of the UChicago community. I would never and have never sought to violate university policy. I sought to exercise my right to free expression, as established and championed by the Chicago Principles; and, after having attended the numerous quad tabling events, art builds, and rallies leading up to this sit-in, I felt moved to participate in this sit-in in an abundance of despair over my university’s failure to recognize its role in or even name the Israeli genocide in Gaza, where now over 22,000 Palestinians have been killed. Knowing that a Palestinian child was being killed every 10 minutes, knowing the school year in Palestine was canceled as all schools had been bombed or turned into refugee shelters, I could not continue to merely attend my classes. It is precisely because of my education that I participated in this sit-in; my education here has fostered a young mind that cannot turn a blind eye to the genocide that is taking place with my tuition money…”

Kelly Hui, Class of 2024, Student Marshal [JAC note: Hui,  was one of the four students whose degree was withheld by the University over their participation in the later Encampment, spurring a lot of protest on graduation day yesterday (see next post).

As you see, if the essays were meant to “reform” the students, they failed miserably.  The self-reflection that was supposed to teach students that “free speech” does not justify disruption (or at least disruption without punishment) led only to intensified demonization of the University and increased emphasis on its support of the so-called Israeli “genocide”. As you see, Hui, one of the students disciplined for participating in the sit-in, is now subject to disciplinary proceedings over participation in the later encampment. She is of course entitled to her views, but clearly the “essay” assignment didn’t change them.

A similar and risible attempt to get protestors to “self-educate” is the subject of Jesse Singal’s latest Substack post, dealing with protestors at New York University (NYU) who were asked to “self-educate” after illegally disrupting campus activities. But their “self-education assignment”, involving completing a complex series of exercis in a module, is even more ludicrous than was Chicago’s.

Click to read:

The background (Singal’s words are indented, and one quote he gives is doubly indented):

As you may have heard, there is a war between Israel and Hamas. As you may have also heard, there has been a surge of pro-Palestinian and/or anti-Israeli activism on many college campuses. While NYU didn’t get as much attention as its bigger and more Ivy-covered brother uptown, Columbia University, a group of students there were disciplined for their actions during protests.

Now that the dust has settled, the generous administrators at NYU have offered these students a chance to evade disciplinary action. As Ginia Bellafante reported in TheNew York Times a couple weeks ago:

While the university eventually moved to have the criminal charges against the students dropped, it initiated a disciplinary process against some of them (the university will not disclose how many) that seemed as if it had been conjured in the writers’ room of a dystopian sci-fi series. In order to return to the university, some students would be required to complete a 49-page set of readings and tasks — “modules” — known as the Ethos Integrity Series, geared at helping participants “make gains” in “moral reasoning” and “ethical decision making.” In a letter to the administration, Liam Murphy, a professor at the law school, called it “an intellectual embarrassment,” betraying the university’s mission as a training ground for independent thought and forcing students merely “to consume pages and pages of pablum.”

The Ethos Integrity Series was not the only command. Some students would be assigned a “reflection paper,” the details of which were laid out by the Office of Student Conduct. In it they would address several questions, among them: What are your values? Did the decision you made align with your personal values? What have you done or need still to do to make things right? Explicitly instructed not to “justify” their actions, the students were told to turn their papers in by May 29 in “12-point Times New Roman or similar font.”

Ben Burgis, who wrote a piece about all this in Jacobin that you should read, got a copy of the module, which he generously shared with me. You can read it here.

You should read Burgis’s piece but especially the copy of the module students were supposed to work through. The object, of course, was to convince the students, after reading and writing about morality and their own actions and values, that their illegal protests were immoral and wrong.  But as you see above, these protesters are already convinced that they were right, regardless of how much deep thought they’d devoted to their actions, and so these questions are a waste of time. NYU’s module includes, for example, a list of 42 “personal values” that you’re supposed to rank in order of importance. Here are the first ten:

Then there are a series of essays designed to promote self-reflection that leads to contrition. Here’s one:

Part 2: Essay about Sanctioned Action

In this essay, discuss the following questions using your responses from above to provide thorough reflection:

1. What was going on in your life leading up to and at the time of the sanctioned action? What influenced your decisions with regard to the sanctioned action?

2. Which of your values influenced your involvement in the situation that resulted in the sanctioned action, and which values were not considered in this situation? How so?

3. Why did you make the decisions you made regarding the action that lead to this sanction?

4. What were the outcomes of the situation and who was affected by those outcomes?

5. What have you learned (in general and about yourself) since the time of the situation that resulted in the sanctioned action?

Now think about how protesters are going to answer those questions. Here’s one more (it’s a LONG module):

9. What decision would a “Person of Character” make?

In fitting with a non-consequentialist perspective, Nash discusses asking what you would do if you were acting in character – meaning if you were acting in a manner to further your own personal, moral story that you are “attempting to live‟” (p. 15). Nash also suggests stepping into the shoes of a person who you respect and consider to be an ethical person. Identify a few of these people. The Persons of Character may be parents, professors, religious leaders, a co-worker or boss, etc. Look at the ethical dilemma from the perspective of one or two of these Moral Exemplars. What decision would these people make? Are these decisions a part of your set of options? If not, add them to the list.

You can image which “people of character” would be chosen!

The whole point is that this dumb series of modules is highly unlikely to change the minds of any protesters, particularly those who were so determined to act that they went beyond free, unsanction speech to violate university principles.  The module is not an “educational” experience in which students get to reflect on both sides of an issue. Rather, it’s designed to make students come to a predetermined conclusion—that their actions were wrong.

Singal also concludes that this exercise is fatuous, but favors leniency towards protesters, in the form of a warning for a first violation and punishment after subsequent ones. I agree with that, except that many of the protesters—like Hui mentioned above—were involved in multiple disruptions but were never given any initial warnings (Hui did participate in the essay exercise, which I suppose counts as a warning).

This stuck out to me as neatly exemplifying a certain very buzzword-heavy, bureaucracy-friendly approach to serious issues like ethics and social justice. My preference, at the end of the day, is toward leniency for nonviolent student protesters. If that means they have to fill out some idiotic form, fine. But why not do what Columbia did to some of the student protesters up there, and simply ask them to sign a document agreeing that henceforth, they will follow the student conduct guidelines? Then if they violate them again, no one can say they weren’t warned or didn’t have every opportunity to follow the rules.

This approach, on the other hand. . . it’s just debasing. It perverts the whole idea of moral inquiry and self-examination. It feels like what you get when the administrative class becomes too powerful within education.

Singal is right. Let students engage in civil disobedience if they feel strongly, and then impose the proper sanctions on them for doing so. (Until the war protests this year, accepting one’s punishment was an integral part of civil disobedience.)  But don’t try forcible education to change their views. That violates the entire purpose of a university, which is fostering free inquiry.

John Avise is back with his third installment of the birds of Spain and Portugal (part 1 is here and part 2 is here). John’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Portugal and Spain Birds, Part 3 

This week’s post is the third and final of a mini-series on birds I photographed while on a business (i.e., seminar) trip to Portugal and southern Spain in 2010.

Red Kite (Milvus milvus):

Red-legged Partridge (Alectoris rufa):

Red-rumped Swallow (Cecropis daurica):

Eurasian Scops Owl (Otus scops):

European Serin (Serinus serinus):

Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia):

Eurasian Spoonbill flying:

Spotless Starlings (Sturnus unicolor):

Spotted Flycatcher (Muscicapa striata):

European Stonechat (Saxicola rubicola) male:

White Stork (Ciconia ciconia):

Common Swift (Apus apus):

There was a time when maps of the Moon were created from telescopic observations and drawings. Indeed Sir Patrick Moore created maps of the Moon that were used during the historic Apollo landings. Now researchers have enhanced a technique to create accurate maps from existing satellite images. Their approach uses a technique called ‘shape-from-shading’ and involves analyzing shadows to estimate the features and shape of the terrain. Future lunar missions will be able to use the maps to identify hazards on the surface making them far safer. 

Researchers at the Brown University in Rhode Island have helped refine a process used to map the surface of the Moon making it more accurate than ever before. In their paper, published in the Planetary Science Journal and authored by Benjamin Boatwright and team details the enhancements to the mapping technique. It can generate detailed models of the Moon’s surface to highlight craters, ridges and slopes from composites of 2D images. 

Closeup of lunar surface (Credit NASA)

Highly detailed maps are of crucial importance to lunar missions and help the planners to identify the safest place to land. They can also use them to identify areas of particular interest that require further study enabling the whole mission to be far more efficient. Missions such as the Artemis project will benefit when it heads for the south pole of the Moon, an area which is not well mapped. High resolution maps of the area will aid the autonomous landing systems to avoid hazards. 

Artist impression of Artemis lunar landing

Creating the maps is a time consuming job and is difficult to be accurate when lighting levels on target area are poor. The interpretation of shadows has been less than effective until now with the team addressing the issues. In their paper, the team explain how advanced computer algorithms can automate a lot of the process and improve the resolution of the generated models. Their new software gives lunar astronomers the necessary tools and information to create larger more detailed maps of the surface. 

To allow lunar scientists to create a map from images requires at least two images of the same area. Each image must be perfectly aligned with its counterpart so that features in one are in exactly the same place in the other. Until now, the technology has not been able to take multiple images of an area and create a perfect map. Boatwright said ‘We implemented an image alignment algorithm where it picks out features in one image and tries to find those same features in the other and then line them up, so that you’re not having to sit there manually tracing interest points across multiple images, which takes a lot of hours and brain power.’

Along with the image alignment algorithm, the researchers created quality control algorithms and filters to remove poor quality images from the alignment process. By only inputing good quality images to the process means the output will be of far higher quality. It is a similar model that astronomical imaging employs when processing multiple images through stacking and alignment techniques. 

To evaluate the accuracy of their work, the team compared the output from existing maps of the Moon to look for errors. To their delight, they found that maps created using their enhanced ‘shape-from-shading’ technique was more precise compared to those acquired during traditional techniques. 

Source : New technique from Brown University researchers offers more precise maps of the Moon’s surface

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