News Feeds

You must have experienced this frustration: trying to get those stickers off of individual pieces of fruit without ripping the skin. I suppose it can be done with care, but I don’t have the time. Plus they now have ways to emboss the fruit without stickers, like using lasers.

My lunch apple, before:

My lunch apple, after sticker removal.  The unavoidable crater appears:

Now clearly this isn’t a cosmic issue, but it’s one Andy Rooney would have talked about, and now that he’s gone somebody has to!

Better fitness in children is linked to better cognition and health in later life, but the majority in the US and UK don't get nearly enough. Here's what parents can do

A comment by reader Chris Slater called my attention to this article from GeoNet, an organization described as providing “geological hazard information for Aotearoa New Zealand.”  It’s also

. . . . sponsored by the New Zealand Government through its agencies: Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake, GNS Science, Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

The hazards include volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis.  Useful, right? And of course the monitoring is done using scientific methods (see here for earthquakes, for instance), because you must use modern science to make the best predictions.

But this is New Zealand, and so GeoNet had to drag in some indigenous knowledge to satisfy the Zeitgeist; in this case, the addition was arrant superstition. This article, which you can read by clicking on the headline, invokes gods as a cause of earthquakes.  It’s all metaphor, of course, but it’s done to satisfy the claim that both kinds of “knowledge” is the optimal mixture for understanding the world.

The subheadline echoes the headline:

The weaving together of different knowledge strands, Mātauranga Māori and western science, strengthens our understanding of our whenua (land) and supports conversations on how we can be better prepared for natural hazard events, such as an Alpine Fault earthquake, together.

Note the assertion that combining indigenous “ways of knowing” with what they persist in calling “western science” (which is no longer western) will make for a better understanding of nature.  But Mātauranga Māori doesn’t just include practical knowledge gleaned from trial and error: it also includes superstition, ethics, morality, legend, and religion.  And here they bring in the religion. 

An excerpt (my bolding)

The Alpine Fault is the longest naturally forming straight line on earth. It marks the meeting of two large tectonic plates and has formed over millions of years, stretching longer, lifting our landscape up out of the ocean, and creating the peaks of Kā Tiritiri o te Moana (Southern Alps) with every large earthquake it generates.

According to Ngāi Tahu creation stories, earthquakes are caused by Rūaumoko, the son of Ranginui (the Sky Father) and his wife Papatūanuku (the Earth Mother). Māori have experienced rū whenua, which means ‘the shaking of the land’ for centuries.

Science tells us that Rūaumoko rumbles the Alpine Fault about every 300 years, and the last time was in 1717. These big earthquakes have been happening for millions of years and the next one is not a case of if, but when. The next large Alpine Fault earthquake will be long and strong and significantly alter the landscape of Te Waipounamu as we know it. Landslides, liquefaction, river changes, flooding, tsunami, and aftershocks are all likely.

A large Alpine Fault earthquake happening in our lifetimes is no doubt a scary thought! However, understanding how our whenua has moved in the past helps us prepare to move with it in the future. While we can’t predict when it will happen, we can work together to be better prepared for it by sharing our mātauranga (knowledge), science, and experiences of past earthquakes and emergencies to raise awareness, build understanding, and strengthen our relationships. The better connected we are beforehand, the easier it will be to support each other during and after a catastrophic event.

This is a hot mess.  Dragging in Māori religion not only doesn’t add anything to the prediction of earthquakes, but is likely to confuse students who think that religious mythology is inherent in this prediction. What on earth can it mean to say that “Science tells us that Rūaumoko rumbles the Alpine Fault about every 300 years. . “?  That is simply a flat-out lie.  The pressures on the tectonic plates makes them slip roughly once every 300 years. It’s not due to the actions of a god who decides to rumble the earth about every 300 years (does he get bored?).

It is a disservice—in fact, an insult—to geologists to add to their science the idea that gods are shaking the earth. It is an embarrassment to New Zealand’s government that they are more or less forced to mix indigenous myths with science to pretend that they can reinforce each other. And that pressure comes from trying to sacralize the indigenous people and satisfy, so they think, are the demands of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. But that treaty says nothing about indigenous ways of knowing being made coequal to modern science.

Yes, indigenous knowledge may be a useful addition to some limited scientific endeavors, but this is not one of them. Get the gods out of geology!

A tunable metasurface can control optical light in space and time, offering a path toward new ways of wirelessly and securely transmitting large amounts of data both on Earth and in space.

A tunable metasurface can control optical light in space and time, offering a path toward new ways of wirelessly and securely transmitting large amounts of data both on Earth and in space.

Ultrafine particles, UFPs, the smallest contributors to air pollution, hinder the function of mitochondria in human olfactory mucosa cells, a new study shows. The study showed that traffic-related UFPs impair mitochondrial functions in primary human olfactory mucosa cells by hampering oxidative phosphorylation and redox balance.

Chemists have for the first time established how Rembrandt applied special arsenic sulfide pigments to create a 'golden' paint.

Novel porous crystalline solid shows promise as an efficient and durable material for ammonia (NH3) capture and storage, report scientists. Made through a simple reprecipitation process, the proposed organic compound can reversibly adsorb and release NH3 via simple pressurization and decompression at room temperature. Its stability and cost-effectiveness make this material a promising energy carrier for future hydrogen economies.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers imaged a new exoplanet that orbits a star in the nearby triple system Epsilon Indi. The planet is a cold super-Jupiter exhibiting a temperature of around 0 degrees Celsius and a wide orbit comparable to that of Neptune around the Sun. This measurement was only possible thanks to JWST's unprecedented imaging capabilities in the thermal infrared. It exemplifies the potential of finding many more such planets similar to Jupiter in mass, temperature, and orbit. Studying them will improve our knowledge of how gas giants form and evolve in time.

The 166-million-year-old fossils of an adult and a juvenile of the same extinct mammal species reveal that they had longer "childhoods" and lifespans than similar species today

Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is converted to CO2 by microbes in tree bark, meaning trees are even better for the climate than we thought

When we take a break from exercise, it can feel like we quickly go back to square one. But this isn't the case, and there are various ways to minimise the decline

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “Trump“, came with a short summary: “God wants you to stop projecting your own desires onto him.”

Clearly Mo is a Democrat!  But of course, anybody who wishes that Trump had been killed is morally off the rails, though I’ve heard that from a few people.

A brain circuit discovered in mice could explain why placebo treatments ease pain in people

If the idea of exercise is more attractive than the reality, you aren't alone. But there are ways to train your motivation and develop better habits

To keep long-term moon residents safe from harmful radiation, lunar bases will need to be built several metres under the surface or inside caves or lava tubes

Combining two neural networks has helped researchers predict potentially disastrous collapses in complex systems, such as financial crashes or power blackouts

Rehabilitation robots, first introduced in the 1990s, are just what they sound like – robotics used to aid in regaining function through rehabilitation following an injury. The idea sounds compelling, and the technology has been advancing steadily. But still we have to ask ourselves the question – do they actually help, and what is the evidence? A recent comprehensive meta-analysis and systematic […]

The post The Evidence for Rehabilitation Robots first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

An orange layer on the tips of Komodo dragons’ teeth may give the enamel extra strength for ripping apart their prey

Researchers are calling for greater protection for basking sharks after a camera on a tagged shark recorded a collision for the first time