News Feeds

Extreme weather, pest outbreaks and overharvesting are turning forest carbon sinks into carbon sources across Europe, undermining a crucial part of countries’ net-zero plans

Last Thursday during a roundtable on stem cell therapies, new FDA Commissioner Marty Makary referred to EBM levels of evidence as an artificial and dogmatic construct. Apparently Dr. David Katz's "more fluid concept of evidence" now reigns at the FDA—selectively.

The post Drs. Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad embrace a “more fluid concept of evidence” at the FDA first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A team of researchers has shown that even small-scale quantum computers can enhance machine learning performance, using a novel photonic quantum circuit. Their findings suggest that today s quantum technology isn t just experimental it can already outperform classical systems in specific tasks. Notably, this photonic approach could also drastically reduce energy consumption, offering a sustainable path forward as machine learning s power needs soar.

Computers have been involved in spaceflight since almost the very beginning. Just like on the Earth, computers aid in a variety of tasks, like navigation and communication. But unfortunately, space is really, really unkind to electronics.

Here’s an unusual pair of singers: Joni Mitchell performing the song “Long Black Veil” with Johnny Cash on his television show.

The history of the song from Wikipedia.  It’s been covered many times (see a version by Neil Young here, and one by Rod Stewart here).

“Long Black Veil” is a 1959 country ballad, written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin and originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell.

It is told from the point of view of a man falsely accused of murder and executed. He refuses to provide an alibi, since on the night of the murder he was having an extramarital affair with his best friend’s wife, and would rather die and take their secret to his grave than admit the truth. The chorus describes the woman’s mourning visits to his gravesite, wearing a long black veil and enduring a wailing wind.

In 2019, Frizzell’s version of “Long Black Veil” was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

You can hear Lefty Frizzell’s preserved version here.

This was from the second episode of the Johnny Cash Show on June 21, 1969. He was 37 and she was only 26, but had already released two albums. They both get a chance to sing lead, and it’s a sad but beautiful duet. There’s a bit of pre-song banter, too:

 

Lagniappe:  Here they perform Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country“; one site says this aired on October 7, 1970.

Of course one YouTube video leads to another, and here’s Dylan himself doing a duet of the same song with Johnny Cash.  I’d almost forgotten about this Dylan song, but it made me realize once again what a great songwriter he was. One site says this was on the first episode of the Johnny Cash Show on May 1, 1969.

h/t: Greg Mayer

As you surely know, the “Freedom Flotilla,” which is a boat called the Madleen carrying a bunch of activists (most notably Greta Thunberg), is heading to Gaza with a bit of aid for civilians. (I heard it was enough aid for about a dozen Gazans, but I don’t know for sure.). Israel has vowed to block the ship, and in fact there is a UN report allowing Israel to impose a general blockade as a means of self defense (this followed a violent incident in 2011 when another Gaza Freedom Flotilla clashed with Israeli commandos, resulting in the death of 9 activists).  If you’re a supporter of Israel like me, there’s a downside for whatever decision Israel makes: if Greta & Co. is allowed to pass through the blockade, they will broadcast loudly about how horrible Israel has been to Gaza; but if their boat is blocked, it’ll be a stopping of humanitarian aid—just a tiny amount, but, curiously, Greta still has a loud voice. And that will also look bad.  I’m leaning towards letting the ship in, though I don’t know the consequences for the UN resolution.

From NBC News:

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has vowed to block an aid vessel carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching Gaza, by “any means necessary.”

The Madleen departed Sicily last Sunday, aiming to breach Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza, deliver humanitarian aid, and draw attention to the worsening humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

According to a live tracker on board the vessel, it was sailing north of the Egyptian coastal city of Rosetta on Sunday morning, roughly 160 nautical miles from Gaza.

Katz said Sunday that he had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to “prevent the ‘Madelaine’ hate flotilla from reaching the shores of Gaza.”

“To the anti-Semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas propaganda spokespeople, I say clearly: You should turn back — because you will not reach Gaza,” he posted on Telegram.

“Israel will act against any attempt to break the blockade or aid terrorist organizations — at sea, in the air and on land.”

On Sunday, a press officer for the Madleen, Hay Sha Wiya, said the crew was “preparing for the possibility of interception.”

One thing I’m sure of, unlike the previous incident, I don’t think the crew of the Madleen will use weapons as part of their “preparations.”

Here’s Greta making their case (note: I’m not vouching for the veracity of any assertion):

So, I’ll solicit comments (I no longer am able to insert polls:

What do you think of this molehill on a mountain?  Should Israel let the Madleen into Gaza or should it intercept the ship and send it back?  Or should it take some other action If you don’t care, there’s no need to say that.

 

 

Friday was the one-month anniversary of Esther’s brood hatching, and yesterday was the “monthiversary” of the ducklings venturing into the water from their nest under the tree, a entry that I witnessed.  Now the ducklings are large, resembling small, half-fuzzed versions of the adults (see below), and they’re getting their feathers. They are entering the “punk duckling” phase in which they are no longer unbearably cute, but I still love them.  In about three weeks they’ll start trying to fly.

Here are some photos and videos taken the last week of May and one or two showing them more recently. They’re all healthy and rambunctious, and I take some credit for keeping them alive, as there is no real food for them in the pond.  They get a diet of Mazuri duck chow (now they’re able to eat the adult-sized pellets) combined with mealworms as a special treat.

Just as a reminder, here’s the brood at one day old within 10 minutes after they entered the water (there were seven, but we mysteriously lost one on the first day):

And here is a video from May 30: the brood is now a flotilla of miniature ducks. This is how they come to me when I call them for meals:

A “baby” losing its down and getting feathers, They start growing on the wing and the tail.

After meals, the babies like to disport themselves in the “cold tubs”: leftover plant pots:

A duckling with a few real feathers, also sporting a longish duck bill:

Much of the activity that charms duck-watchers is how they dive, preen, and flap their little winglets after a meal, comme ça:

More partly-feathered little ones. Note the pointy feathers on the tail:

Here’s some of that wing-flapping and dunking that occurs after meals.  Onlookers love it when they flap their little wings.  In a few short weeks, though, those little stubs will be big, able to carry the ducks high into the sky:

A half-fuzzer scratching himself. This may well be a male because of the greenish-brown color of the distal portion of the bill (females are said to be orange). The color-identification method isn’t fully reliable given that we never see the babies after they’ve developed their adult plumage that enables us to tell them apart.

A favorite activity after meals is jumping onto the east edge of the pond for preening, sunbathing, and snoozing. Esther, ever watchful, stands up. (She does nap sometimes.)

The postprandial sunning-and-preening session. Note the swollen throats; they store food in their esophagus to digest later:

And often, especially when it’s a bit cool, they’ll form a pile o’ ducks:

Here’s the brood splashing and diving after a meal. Esther is the role model:

And the Queen herself, watching over her offspring:

Today we have the second and final installment of damselflies from evolutionist John Avise.  What will John send next? Stay tuned.

His IDs and captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Damselflies in North America, Part 2

This week’s post concludes my photos of the Damselflies, which are in the Order Odonata and can be thought of as svelte relatives of the Dragonflies.  I also show the state where I took each photo.

Rambur’s Forktail, Ischnura ramburii, mature female (Florida):

Rambur’s Forktail, young female (Florida):

River Jewelwing, Calopteryx aeguabilis, female (Michigan):

Spreadwing, Lestes sp. (Michigan):

Spreadwing, Lestes sp., mating pair (Michigan):

Tule Bluet, Enallagma carunculatum, male (California):

Tule Bluet, female (California):

Vivid Dancer, Argia vivida, male (California):

Vivid Dancer, female (California):

Western Forktail, Ischnura perparva, male (California):

Western Forktail, female (California):

Physicists have managed to simulate a strange quantum phenomenon where light appears to arise from empty space a concept that until now has only existed in theory. Using cutting-edge simulations, researchers modeled how powerful lasers interact with the so-called quantum vacuum, revealing how photons could bounce off each other and even generate new beams of light. These breakthroughs come just as new ultra-powerful laser facilities are preparing to test these mind-bending effects in reality, potentially opening a gateway to uncovering new physics and even dark matter particles.

In a world where over a billion smartphones are produced yearly, a team of researchers is flipping the script on electronic waste. Instead of tossing out older phones, they ve demonstrated a groundbreaking approach: turning outdated smartphones into micro data centers. This low-cost innovation (just 8 euros per phone) offers practical applications from tracking bus passengers to monitoring marine life without needing new tech.

But in space, like on the Moon or Mars, we have…none of that. Zero. No GPS satellites, no globe-spanning networks. Just radio broadcasts from command centers here on Earth to tell our robots and crews what to do.

Scientists at Binghamton University are bringing a sci-fi fantasy to life by developing tiny batteries that vanish after use inspired by Mission: Impossible. Led by Professor Seokheun Choi, the team is tackling one of the trickiest parts of biodegradable electronics: the power source. Instead of using toxic materials, they re exploring probiotics friendly bacteria often found in yogurt to generate electricity. With engineered paper-based batteries that dissolve in acidic environments, this breakthrough could revolutionize safe, disposable tech for medical and environmental use.

Did you find the stink bug in this morning’s photograph? Here’s the answer, an an enlargement is below:

Here’s the critter, well camouflaged on the pavement:

x

 

Interview with Emily Schoerning; Quickie with Bob: Prepping for Q-Day; News Items: Seed Oils, Lead into Gold, American Lysenkoism, The Screwworm is Coming, Galactic Collision; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Dream Learning; Science or Fiction

Bill Maher’s “new rule” deals once again with why Democrats have lost power. Maher considers that we need a “liberal Joe Rogan,” but notes that Rogan doesn’t seem to have hewed too close to the Trumpian dogma.  He adds that Musk, too, used to be more liberal, and explains their conversion, in part, due to the movement of the Dems farther to the Left, and from “the mean girl shit you get from the cool kids in Wokeville.”

Maher identifies with this kind of reaction, and expresses hopes that both Musk and Rogan can be won back as Democrats, since they were once near the Left but got “driven away” by a Democratic agenda that became too extreme (he means “woke”). His solution: Republicanism will cure itself.  “Drunk with power,” as Maher characterizes Republicans, they’ve taken a lot of actions, like the imposition of tariffs, cuts in Medicaid, and the deportations of “moms”, that aren’t even widely popular with members of the GOP.

Well, it’s early days, and we shall see.  But I’m not convinced that Republicans are going to implode.  Neither Maher nor I are pundits, but Democrats do need to start putting forth some credible candidates.

Unlike birds, which navigate unknown environments with remarkable speed and agility, drones typically rely on external guidance or pre-mapped routes. However, a groundbreaking development by Professor Fu Zhang and researchers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has enabled drones and micro air vehicles (MAVs) to emulate the flight capabilities of birds more closely than ever before.

Today our regular Mark Sturtevant weighs in with some spider photos. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Here are some spider photos. Most were taken early last season—I’m usually about a year behind—but a couple are more recent, shot specifically to fill in a narrative gap for this post.

It is an odd thing that I tend to neglect photographing some of the most commonplace arthropods, and probably the most overlooked of these had been what we call house spiders. These shy cobweb weavers always hide from the slightest disturbance, but after much, much effort I managed to get a focus stack of this one in a staged setting. This is the Triangulate Cobweb Spider, Steatoda triangulosa, and you have probably seen thousands of them.

Next up is a species of Ground Spider, I think Drassyllus sp. Ground spiders are free-roaming and are among the fastest spiders I know when they decide to make a run for it:

The spider shown in the next photo is a Running Crab Spider (Philodromus sp). The term “crab spider” is widely used for spiders in different families, so this is not particularly related to the crab spiders that you might see lurking on flowers:

Here is a small Wolf Spider (Trochosa idunno). She was quite thirsty, so it was easy to get this focus stack of her while she was having a drink.

With the previous picture and subsequent pictures, you can see a significant change in my gear through the reflections in spider eyes. I had used a very popular brand of dual head flash for years, but one that produced twin reflections. Last season I switched to a more traditional single head flash, and you can see that in the reflections of things like spider eyes. I’ve always rolled my own flash diffusers, and this is one of those big conical ones that people tend to favor for single flashes. The black intrusion on the bottom in the eye reflections is the camera lens. One element in this early edition of the new diffuser is the bright spot that you can see in the reflected diffuser face. This of course comes directly from the flash head, and it is an exceedingly common artifact in these types of diffusers. However, I managed to make that pretty much go away with later refinements on the design, and you will see that here and there in later pictures.

Next up are jumping spiders. I begin with my personal favorite which is the Tan Jumping Spider Platycryptus undatus. These are the largest species in this family in my area, and I am very lucky that I can go out to my shed and almost always find at least one of these spiders on it. They have a flatter shape than other jumping spiders, and this allows them to quickly hide in cracks. The cryptic coloration of this species would make it nearly impossible to spot on tree bark, but these seem to prefer the shed (as far as I know). Jumping spiders are fun to work with since they have so much personality and even curiosity, but they also can hop away and go scurrying across the dining room table in an instant. The first pictures show a male:

 

In spider-world, males are often more colorful than the females, and this is a product of intersexual selection where males actively court sharp-eyed and judgmental females. Normally, male color displays are to attract a female and to persuade her into mating. But in the world of jumping spiders male color may also be used as a defense against a murderous attack from a female. Jumping spiders have good but also very weird vision, in which red objects appear closer than they really are. It has not escaped notice that the males of many jumping spider species have reddish markings on their face, like this one, and there is speculation that this might cause a hungry female to lunge inaccurately.

The next two pictures are of a female Platycryptus. I always think of them as looking a bit like scary little Ewoks from Star Wars. Unlike the male, who was super chill for pictures, she needed a meal to sit still for her manually focus stacked pictures:

I would like to explain focus stacking. Macro photography tends to produce pictures with a very shallow depth of focus. One solution for this is to take a series of shots at slightly different focal points, while striving to keep the same alignment on the subject. The pictures are combined, and software is used to blend the pictures together to produce greater depth of focus in a single picture. The process can also result in certain artifacts, however, and those are later cleaned up to some degree with digital trickery. The whole process is technically very easy, but it can take time.

The final images are manual focus stacks of Bold Jumping Spiders, Phidippus audax. The first one is a juvenile, and the last two are of a very regal adult male, all decked out to advertise the quality of his genes to females. Those largish chelicerae and fangs may look imposing, but males of all spiders are strictly lovers and not fighters: those things are simply part of his “bling” for the ladies. Their only thought is to meet up with a conspecific spider of the opposite sex and to hopefully not be murdered:

Reader Bryan Lepore sent a “spot-the” picture that I consider difficult. As he says below, what you’re looking for is a pentatomid, a member of the Hemiptera family (“true bugs”): Here’s his caption:

I just spotted a cool “stink bug” on my driveway, thought I’d take a photo survey for you – here’s one:

Can you find it? If you do, just say in the comments you have, but please don’t give the location away so that other readers have a chance to look.

The reveal will be at 11:30 am Chicago time.

Shrinking silicon transistors have reached their physical limits, but a team from the University of Tokyo is rewriting the rules. They've created a cutting-edge transistor using gallium-doped indium oxide with a novel "gate-all-around" structure. By precisely engineering the material's atomic structure, the new device achieves remarkable electron mobility and stability. This breakthrough could fuel faster, more reliable electronics powering future technologies from AI to big data systems.

Space is hard. There's no doubt about that. It's completely unlike any environment we have ever faced on the Earth.