Science

Extreme cosmic events such as colliding black holes or the explosions of stars can cause ripples in spacetime, so-called gravitational waves. Their discovery opened a new window into the universe. To observe them, ultra-precise detectors are required. Designing them remains a major scientific challenge for humans. Researchers have been working on how an artificial intelligence system could explore an unimaginably vast space of possible designs to find entirely new solutions.

Diamonds with certain optically active defects can be used as highly sensitive sensors or qubits for quantum computers, where the quantum information is stored in the electron spin state of these colour centeres. However, the spin states have to be read out optically, which is often experimentally complex. Now, a team has developed an elegant method using a photo voltage to detect the individual and local spin states of these defects. This could lead to a much more compact design of quantum sensors.

Diamonds with certain optically active defects can be used as highly sensitive sensors or qubits for quantum computers, where the quantum information is stored in the electron spin state of these colour centeres. However, the spin states have to be read out optically, which is often experimentally complex. Now, a team has developed an elegant method using a photo voltage to detect the individual and local spin states of these defects. This could lead to a much more compact design of quantum sensors.

Growing cells in the laboratory is an art that humans have mastered decades ago. Recreating entire three-dimensional tissues is much more challenging. Researchers are developing a new hydrogel-based material that makes it possible to engineer artificial skin tissues, which can serve as living three-dimensional models of human skin for better understanding and treating skin diseases.

Researchers have developed a machine learning workflow to optimize the output force of photo-actuated organic crystals. Using LASSO regression to identify key molecular substructures and Bayesian optimization for efficient sampling, they achieved a maximum blocking force of 37.0 mN -- 73 times more efficient than conventional methods. These findings could help develop remote-controlled actuators for medical devices and robotics, supporting applications such as minimally invasive surgery and precision drug delivery.

A researcher has analyzed the most frequent situations faced by football goalkeepers. The aim is to compile data to facilitate the design of more effective training. The work stresses the importance of practicing the deflections and first touch shots that are produced.

Researchers have demonstrated a way to use corn protein to improve the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries, a finding that holds promise for expanding the use of the high-energy, lighter-weight batteries in electric vehicles, renewable energy storage and other applications.

First ever supercomputer simulations of Mars with a fully molten core could explain the Red Planet's unusual magnetic field. Billions of years ago, Mars had an active magnetic field. Mysteriously, its imprint is strongest in the southern hemisphere. Researchers found that Mars could have produced a one-sided magnetic field with a fully molten core, rather than the traditional, Earth-like solid inner core setup.

A new study modeled the chemistry of TOI-270 d, an exoplanet between Earth and Neptune in size, finding evidence that it could be a giant rocky planet shrouded in a thick, hot atmosphere. TOI-270 d is only 73 light years from Earth and could serve as a 'Rosetta Stone' for understanding an entire class of new planets.

Desalination plants, a major and growing source of freshwater in dry regions, could produce less harmful waste using electricity and new membranes.

Researchers share a model that identifies the optimal location for bowling ball placement. Employing a system of six differential equations derived from Euler's equations for a rotating rigid body, their model creates a plot that shows the best conditions for a strike. The model accounts for a variety factors, including the thin layer of oil applied to bowling lanes, the motion of the subtly asymmetric bowling ball, and a 'miss-room' to allow for human inaccuracies.

Researchers share a model that identifies the optimal location for bowling ball placement. Employing a system of six differential equations derived from Euler's equations for a rotating rigid body, their model creates a plot that shows the best conditions for a strike. The model accounts for a variety factors, including the thin layer of oil applied to bowling lanes, the motion of the subtly asymmetric bowling ball, and a 'miss-room' to allow for human inaccuracies.

Ambisonic rendering is a way to simulate the precise locations of sounds in 3D, and an ambisonics algorithm has allowed researchers to create rich virtual 'soundscapes.'Researchers decided to test the limits of ambisonic sound reproduction through their 'AudioDome' loudspeaker array. Humans' spatial acuity is high in front of our faces but decreases around the sides of our head, and the researchers' experiments obtained very similar results from listeners in the AudioDome, proving that the loudspeaker array can reproduce sound locations at a spatial scale beyond the human limits of perception.

A decades-long stretch of extremely low precipitation in the 1500s may have spurred cultural changes among the Rapa Nui people that reduced time spent building statues, but not all archaeologists agree

Our Sun, like all stars, is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. They are by far the most abundant elements, formed in the early moments of the Universe. But our star is also rich in other elements astronomers call "metals." Carbon, nitrogen, iron, gold, and more. These elements were created through astrophysical processes, such as supernovae and neutron star collisions. The dust of long-dead stars that gathered together into molecular clouds and formed new, younger stars such as the Sun. Stars rich in metals. But there are still stars out there that are not metal rich. These extremely metal-poor stars, or EMPs, hold clues to the origin of stars in the cosmos.

In an early-stage trial, a single dose of a CRISPR treatment lowered cholesterol levels, possibly permanently

When JWST launched, it found the most distant known galaxy: JADES-GS-z14-0, with a redshift of 14.32, and seen about 290 million years after the Big Bang. Now, a team of astronomers has gone even deeper, searching for galaxies in the redshift 15-30 range, which would be galaxies from 270 to 100 million years after the beginning of the Universe. They've found a few candidates in the 15-20 range, but these could be closer, low-mass dusty galaxies.

This Washington Post article (click headline to read, or find it archived here), shows how chilled the research climate in America has become because of the Administration’s threats.  And the Admin hasn’t even =said anything about evolution yet.  (Has anybody ever asked Trump or RFK Jr. whether they accept evolution?)

The threats involve not just the potential of being demonized for publishing on a subject that the administration might denigrate, but also the possibility of researchers in that area being punished because they’re foreigners.

A few quotes:

A few days before they were to submit a scientific paper together, an evolutionary biologist in Europe received an unexpected request from two co-authors in the United States.

After much thought, the co-authors said they preferred not to risk publishing at this time. One had just lost a job because of a canceled government grant; the other feared a similar fate if they went ahead with the paper. Although both were legally in the U.S., they worried they might lose their residency if their names appeared on a potentially controversial article.

The subject: evolution.

. . . .Although President Donald Trump’s executive orders have not targeted research involving evolution, the authors’ unease about publishing on the subject reflects the fear and uncertainty now rippling through the science world.

The paper “was months of work, but at the same time I know the current situation, and I’m scared for my friends in the U.S.,” said the European evolutionary biologist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation. “I told them, ‘If you think it is too dangerous, don’t do it.’ ”

Now granted, this is for a symposium volume (something that Steve Gould called the least-read form of scientific literature), with the paper and volume described in this way:

The withheld paper described ways in which evolution unfolds in both living and nonliving systems, a subject relevant to the search for life elsewhere in the universe. The authors included measurements and genomic data on different species. An example of evolution in the nonliving world would be the growth of the universe after the Big Bang, as new minerals and elements came into being, the European scientists said.

. . .The special edition of the Royal Society journal that was to have included the withdrawn paper, emerged from the Workshop on Information Selection and Evolution last October in Washington, which drew a multidisciplinary collection of 100 researchers from as far away as Japan to discuss the latest thinking on evolution.

“People were talking about the evolution of languages, the evolution of technology, the evolution of species, the evolution of minerals and atoms and planets and things like this,” Wong said. “It was just so scintillating.”

Of course there’s a big difference between biological evolution and the idea of “change”, even though people have tried to analogize them by confecting the idea of “memes” (which can’t explain the evolution of minerals, atoms, or planets), so this heterogeneity is why the volume doesn’t get my juices flowing.

But that is not the point. NO scientific paper should be withheld, or the authors forced to hide their real names, because they work and publish in a well-accepted field or are living under a government that is bludgeoning people left and right.  Every day it gets crazier, and every day science becomes subject to more censorship.

The Lyrids and Eta Aquarids meteor showers can both be seen starting in late April, with viewing opportunities in both the northern and southern hemispheres

Four days ago, three members of the Trump Administration (Josh Gruenbaum of the GSA, Thomas Wheeler, acting general Counsel of the Dept. of Education, and Sean R. Keveney, acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services), sent a Big Stick (or a rotten carrot) to the President of Harvard University and the head of the Harvard Corporation (Penny Pritzker, the sister of Illinois’s governor). It was one of those threatening letters that tell a university that they’d better reform—or else. “Else,” of course, is the withdrawal of federal funds. This threat was made to Columbia University, which caved. But Harvard didn’t. I suggest you read the Trump Administration’s letter by clicking on the screenshot below:

This is a Big Demand and covers multiple areas, which I’ll just summarize with bullet points. Quotes are from the letter:

• Harvard has to fix its leadership, reducing the power held by students, untenured faculty, and by “administrators more committed to activism than scholarship.”
• All hiring from now on must be based on merit and there will be no hiring based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
• By August of this year, Harvard must have solely merit-based admissions, again without admissions based on ‘race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof.” The “proxies” presumably mean the way universities now get around bans on race-based and similar admissions by asking admission questions like, “describe how you overcame hardships in your life.”
• Reform international admissions, by not admitting students “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.”
• Harvard is to commission an external body to audit the university for viewpoint diversity. Though they’re not clear what “viewpoint diversity” means, it’s obvious that they want more conservative points of view and fewer professors pushing pro-Palestinian points of view
• Reforming programs with “egregious records of antisemitism or other bias”, including information about individual faculty who discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students or who incited violence
• Discontinue DEI programs, offices, committees, and the like
• Students are to be disciplined for violating University speech regulations, and student groups that promote violence, illegal harassment, or act as fronts for banned groups
• Harvard is to establish a whistleblowing procedure so that noncompliance with the Diktat above can be safely reported.

All this must be started no later than June 30 of this year, and Harvard has to report on its progress every quarter until at least the end of 2028.

Now many of these reforms are laudable (weakening of DEI, effacing any climate of anti-Semitism, mandating the kind of merit-based hiring used at Chicago, etc.), while others are problematic, the most being (to me) assuring “viewpoint diversity” (see Steve Pinker’s quote below). But the most offensive thing about this is the Trump Administration’s attempt to control universities using financial threats.  Many of the people who will suffer by the withholding of government money (probably much of it earmarked for science) are not guilty of these violations, and it’s just a horrible idea to allow the government to demand that universities act this way or that.

Yes, Harvard should have already made some of these reforms, and I know it’s trying to enact some of them, but allowing political forces to control how colleges and universities are run takes one of America’s glories–the quality of its higher education that already attracts students from throughout the world–and turns it into an arm of one political party or another. (It would be just as bad if the Biden administration had threatened universities if they didn’t become more liberal, though of course they already are!). Universities should remain as independent as possible from the vagaries of politics, though of course if politics affects the mission of universities, then schools can speak out.

Harvard responded by giving Trump a big middle finger. Here’s the response from Alan Garber, President of the University, which I mentioned yesterday. Click headline to read:

A quote from the response:

Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to “maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government.” It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.

I encourage you to read the [Administration’s] letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community. They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.

The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

Harvard’s letter doesn’t address the specific accusations of the administration’s letter, but simply affirms that Harvard will “nurture a climate of open inquiry,” respect free speech save for the appropriate “time, place, and manner” restrictions, and will “foster and support a vibrant community that exemplifies, respects, and embraces difference.”  There’s nothing about anti-Semitism, viewpoint diversity (save the last claim above), or merit-based hiring.  Garber could have responded, point by point, to what it’s already is doing to meet the demands of the government, but that would simply be playing their game.

And so, the administration began punishing Harvard: last night the Trump Administration struck back by freezing 2.2 billion in funds to the school. (archived here). From the NYT article:

Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, said universities are not entitled to federal funding. “President Trump is working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked anti-Semitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard’s support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence. Harvard or any institution that wishes to violate Title VI is, by law, not eligible for federal funding.”

The university was the first to formally push back against the government’s efforts to force change in higher education.

Hours later, the multiagency Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism responded by announcing a freeze on $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60 million in multiyear contract value to Harvard.

And today’s  NYT reports on Harvard’s decision (archived here) with a few words from Steve Pinker: (h/t Greg). They quote Harvard’s pushback as being “momentous”:

Harvard University is 140 years older than the United States, has an endowment greater than the G.D.P. of nearly 100 countries and has educated eight American presidents. So if an institution was going to stand up to the Trump administration’s war on academia, Harvard would be at the top of the list.

Harvard did that forcefully on Monday in a way that injected energy into other universities across the country fearful of the president’s wrath, rejecting the Trump administration’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. Some commentators went so far as to say that Harvard’s decision would empower law firms, the courts, the media and other targets of the White House to push back as well.

“This is of momentous, momentous significance,” said J. Michael Luttig, a prominent former federal appeals court judge revered by many conservatives. “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions.”

Michael S. Roth, who is the president of Wesleyan University and a rare critic of the White House among university administrators, welcomed Harvard’s decision. “What happens when institutions overreach is that they change course when they meet resistance,” he said. “It’s like when a bully is stopped in his tracks.”

We’ll see if Harvard’s response gives some moxie to other threatened universities. So far Harvard hasn’t been one of them.

And Professor Pinker was quoted giving a good, pithy response:

Steven Pinker, a prominent Harvard psychologist who is also a president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, said on Monday that it was “truly Orwellian” and self-contradictory to have the government force viewpoint diversity on the university. He said it would also lead to absurdities.

“Will this government force the economics department to hire Marxists or the psychology department to hire Jungians or, for that matter, for the medical school to hire homeopaths or Native American healers?” he said.

I of course agree with Pinker and Garber. Harvard needs to handle its own problems itself, though yes, it has to handle any real problems judiciously but swiftly lest it lose students and its reputation. Already worried Jewish students are applying elsewhere (see here and here).  The government already has the power to step in if Harvard has permitted a climate of anti-Semitism to occur, but I’m not so connected to my alma mater that I can judge that. And Greg Mayer reminded me that withholding money and making demands in this way is NOT legal. As he said:

Findings of punishable error (e.g., Title VI violations) must be made via the procedures specified in the law alleged to have been broken. There’s a lot of  due process involved, including the right of response and a hearing before a disinterested party, before an allegation can become an actionable fact. And even then, only the violating entity can be punished– you can’t take away a botanist’s NSF grant because some dean of student affairs is anti-semitic.

So what the administration is doing is largely illegal, and certainly unethical and counterproductive.  And universities don’t have to obey anything but court orders—not demands from an administration that wants to bully all of those damn elite, liberal schools.

h/t Norman