Science

nside electrochemical devices, strong electric fields dramatically alter how water molecules behave. New research shows that these fields speed up water dissociation not by lowering energy costs, but by increasing molecular disorder once ions form. The reaction becomes entropy-driven—exactly the opposite of what happens in ordinary water. The findings also reveal that intense fields can push water from neutral to highly acidic, with major implications for hydrogen production.

Praise Ceiling Cat: reader Tara Tanaka, photographer and videographer extrodinaire, has returned with an awesome video featuring both cats and d*gs (well, a bobcat and coyotes). Tara filmed it from her living room in Florida (Tara and her husband own a large tract of wetland).  Tara’s Flickr page is here and her Vimeo page is here.

Tara’s Vimeo notes, which assure us that this is genuine:

“A Bobcat’s Encounter with Two Coyotes (Not AI)”

We had seen one or two coyotes around 9:30 the last two mornings. Hoping they would return for a third day I got my camera ready in the living room to try to record them. About 9:00 my husband said he saw one, so I made some final adjustments for the lighting and began to search for something moving in the distance. When I finally centered the subject in the viewfinder, I said “I think I’m looking at a bobcat.” Almost immediately the cat stood up and as I panned with it I was shocked when two coyotes ran into the frame, one on each side of the cat. Enjoy the interactions between the two species and between the very bonded pair of coyotes. I believe the female is pregnant.

After I finished filming I just sat in disbelief that I had had the opportunity to record something so unique – and from my living room! I feel like I could have gone to Yellowstone and spent a month in the field and not witnessed an encounter like this. Because of the dramatic temperature difference between the thawing ground and the sun heating the brown grass, the waves of heat shimmer intensified as the sun got higher and you can see them rippling across the screen. Despite the extreme conditions, I was thrilled that I was able to record the interaction so clearly from 1000′ away, and through a double-paned window.

We should have a pond full of water with waders arriving to nest right now, however due to a severe drought that started over a year ago, the entire swamp is dry. Without water to allow our large alligators to patrol under the nests and protect them from predators, I’m afraid that our hundreds of waders that nest here every year will not feel safe and will likely nest elsewhere.

Filmed with a Panasonic GH6 + Nikon 500mm f2.8 lens. Since I filmed it from inside the house, I used the audio from a video I shot from the yard last year.

The bobcat and coyotes don’t seem to mind each other, though the bobcat eventually climbs partway up a tree. Be sure to enlarge the video and put the sound up to hear the birds singing.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has just made history by driving across Mars using routes planned by artificial intelligence instead of human operators. A vision-capable AI analyzed the same images and terrain data normally used by rover planners, identified hazards like rocks and sand ripples, and charted a safe path across the Martian surface. After extensive testing in a virtual replica of the rover, Perseverance successfully followed the AI-generated routes, traveling hundreds of feet autonomously.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has just made history by driving across Mars using routes planned by artificial intelligence instead of human operators. A vision-capable AI analyzed the same images and terrain data normally used by rover planners, identified hazards like rocks and sand ripples, and charted a safe path across the Martian surface. After extensive testing in a virtual replica of the rover, Perseverance successfully followed the AI-generated routes, traveling hundreds of feet autonomously.

For the first time, a complex, ring-shaped molecule containing 13 atoms—including sulfur—has been detected in interstellar space, based on laboratory measurements. The discovery closes a critical gap by linking simple chemistry in space with the complex organic building blocks found in comets and meteorites. This represents a major step toward explaining the cosmic origins of the chemistry of life.

The search for life-supporting worlds in the Solar System includes the Jovian moon Europa. Yes, it's an iceberg of a world, but underneath its frozen exterior lies a deep, salty ocean and a nickel-iron core. It's heated by tidal flexing, and that puts pressure on the interior ocean, sending water and salts to the surface. As things turn out, there's also evidence of ammonia-bearing compounds on the surface. All these things combine to provide a fascinating look at Europa's geology and potential as a haven for life.

Red Geysers are an unusual class of galaxy that contain only old stars. Despite having plenty of star-forming gas, Red Geysers are quenched. Astronomers have mapped the flow of gas in these galaxies and figure out why they're dormant.

This is my favorite of all operatic arias; indeed, it may be my favorite piece of vocal classical music, and it’s a good way to end a dreary week. The aria, a short one, is “O mio babbino caro” (“Oh, my dear father”), and comes from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, first performed in 1918.  It is of course very famous (I’m sure you’ve heard it) as it’s beautiful and short —too, short, in my view.

Wikipedia sets the scene:

It is sung by Lauretta after tensions between her father Schicchi and the family of Rinuccio, the boy she loves, have reached a breaking point that threatens to separate her from Rinuccio. It provides an interlude expressing lyrical simplicity and love in contrast with the atmosphere of hypocrisy, jealousy, double-dealing, and feuding in medieval Florence . It provides the only set piece in the through-composed opera.

I’ve listened to it enough times that I can sing along with it in Italian, though of course I wouldn’t want anyone to hear me.

The soprano here is the Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø (“Sissel” is the Norwegian version of “Cecilia”), who sings both classical and pop music (she sang the wordless music in the movie “Titanic”).  My previous favorite version was by Kiri Te Kanawa, but I think this is at least as good. And this performance appears to be informal, though of course it was rehearsed.  I like the “S” for Sissel on her tee-shirt.

You can find other renditions of the song by her on YouTube, but I like this one because of the tee-shirt.  If you want to hear her handle another lovely song, but a popular one, go listen to her perform the traditional American folk song “Shenandoah,” accompanied by the Chieftains’ late Paddy Moloney on tin whistle. I posted that some time ago.

Here are the lyrics so you can sing along, too. But watch those high notes at the end!

O mio babbino caro
Mi piace, è bello, bello
Vo’ andare in Porta Rossa
A comperar l’anello Sì, sì, ci voglio andare
E se l’amassi indarno
Andrei sul Ponte Vecchio
Ma per buttarmi in Arno Mi struggo e mi tormento
O Dio, vorrei morir Babbo, pietà, pietà
Babbo, pietà, pietà

Columnist Michael Le Page delves into a catalogue of hundreds of potentially beneficial gene mutations and variants that is popular with transhumanists

Jupiter's icy moon Europa is a tantalizing target in the search for habitability in our Solar System. Its thick, global ice sheet overlies a warm, salty, chemically-rich ocean. But for life to exist in that ocean, nutrients need to find their way from the surface to the ocean. New research says that may be very difficult.

The light, rare element boron, better known as the primary component of borax, a longtime household cleaner, was almost mined to exhaustion in parts of the old American West. But boron could arguably be an unsung hero in cosmic astrobiology, although it's still not listed as one of the key elements needed for the onset of life.

My friend Maarten Boudry, a Belgian philosopher, has been increasingly demonized for his heterodox views, especially on the Hamas/Israel war, since he is sympathetic to Israel (he isn’t Jewish). In the latest post on his Substack site, also published in condensed form in The Jewish Chronicle, Maarten recounts how there is a near-unanimity among European academics that Israel is the Great Satan. Any dissent on this issue is ruthlessly suppressed. Because of this, one gets a false impression, says Boudry, that European academia is united in hating Israel, Zionists, and, by extension, Jews.

Boudry himself, as you see below, has lost his position at the University of Ghent because of his outspokenness.  In the article he does a small experiment showing that there is indeed dissent that Israel is committing “genocide”, but academics who disagree about the Israeli “genocide” dare not speak up. This “spiral of silence”, as Steve Pinker calls it, suppresses speech, and is one reason why many American universities are beginning to adopt institutional neutrality—a policy that promotes free expression.

Click below to read the Substack piece. 

Unless you’re in Europe, you have no idea how strong and pervasive the anti-Israel pressure is. In an article in Quillette, Maarten and I described how we and another academic were canceled from giving a talk at the University of Amsterdam on the ideological suppression of science—a talk that had absolutely nothing to do with Israel. And yet we were explicitly told by the student science organization that our talk was cancelled because of our views on Israel. That was my first experience with cancellation, and believe me, it affected me strongly. I couldn’t believe that fellow scientists were blackballing us simply because of our views on the war, and for a talk that had nothing to do with that war. We were, apparently, tainted.

But on to Maarten’s narrative; his quotes are indented below. He begins by describing the academic consensus that Israel aims at genocide in Gaza, and recounts his own demonization.

In Europe, social pressure is even more intense than in the United States. A petition opposing the IAGS resolution garnered hundreds of signatories in the U.S., but only a handful in Europe—primarily in Germany and around a single London-based center for antisemitism research. In the Low Countries, where I live, my stance on the Gaza war has left me increasingly isolated within the ivory tower. In an interview with the Belgian newspaper De Morgen, the rector of my alma mater, Ghent University, declared that any academic questioning the genocide in Gaza can no longer rely on the protections of academic freedom: “This is a line that cannot be crossed.” Five professors have called on the previous rector to discipline me for my “Zionist-tinged” views. I’ve also been deplatformed twice at the University of Amsterdam for my views on Israel, a matter I detailed inQuillette together with my friend and fellow cancellee, the biologist Jerry Coyne.

And yet, for the past two years, I have been receiving regular emails from academic colleagues that can be summarized as follows: “I completely agree with you and am glad that you’re fighting this battle, but please keep it quiet—I don’t want to get into trouble.” The social pressure to condemn Israel, preferably in the strongest possible terms, has become so intense that many dissidents no longer dare to speak out. After a number of such discreet messages of support, I began to grow annoyed. To the outside world, it appeared as if I was the only academic rejecting the official narrative—but in reality, many others agreed with me.

This reluctance to speak up gives rise to what psychologists call pluralistic ignorance: people mistakenly assume that they are alone in holding a dissenting opinion and therefore either remain silent or misrepresent their own views, inadvertently perpetuating the illusion of consensus and raising the social cost of dissent.

Maarten then did a nonscientific experiment (there could have been respondent bias), but one showing there’s a lot more sympathy for Israel than you’d guess from living as a European academic:

In the spirit of the [“Emperor has no clothes”] fable, I wanted to see whether there was a way to break the spell. What if people could anonymously explain why they believed the emperor was naked, without exposing themselves to social or professional risk? To test this, I collected anonymous testimonies from academics with dissenting views on Israel and Gaza, by putting out a call on X in Dutch. The testimonies that landed in my inbox were both sobering and chilling.

Chilling to the reader, but also chilling to speech. Academics in Europe won’t dare to speak in sympathy with Israel, or contest the stupid “genocide” canard against Israel, for fear of professional repercussions. There’s a long list of responses, but I’ll give only a few:

A senior lecturer at a Dutch university writes: “I’m afraid to share my thoughts freely with my colleagues and feel restricted in my freedom to speak openly about this.” A philosophy professor describes academic debate on the war in Gaza as effectively “impossible”: “Critical voices are silenced through exclusion, dismissal, and sometimes even violence. In such circumstances, I don’t feel compelled to express my critical thoughts openly.” Another Dutch lecturer admits bluntly: “I certainly keep my mouth shut about my views to my colleagues.”

. . . . Among the testimonies are also voices with the relevant expertise, rarely heard in mainstream media. A professor of military law stresses that “extreme caution is required” on the question of genocide and warns against “jumping to conclusions.” Some actors, he notes, “automatically assimilate the conduct of hostilities with acts of genocide, but this reasoning seems incorrect to me.” A doctor of law and former advisor to the International Court of Justice, who has pored over previous genocide dossiers for many years, writes in a lengthy email: “I am not convinced that Israel is committing genocide, but I am currently raising capital and will not risk taking this position publicly.”

Dissenting opinions can be found even at the highest levels of academic institutions. A vice-chancellor of a Belgian university observes: “The Gaza mania that is currently prevailing seems to me a collective madness. The call to declare what Israel is doing a genocide is in line with this.” Yet in official communications, universities often strike a different tone, shaping and constraining the debate. A Ghent academic notes that the election of our new rector Petra De Sutter—who is strongly anti-Israel—further worsened the atmosphere: “I saw this tendency strengthen following the rector elections. Either you were outspoken, or else you were better off keeping quiet. The election result and the political convictions of the new rector have reinforced their ideology.”

. . . .Another lecturer’s testimony illustrates how subtle yet pervasive the professional and social repercussions can be, even for tenured staff: “I stopped reposting and commenting about Israel on X after noticing that my university suddenly stopped sharing any of my achievements. While colleagues were receiving retweets and links to their projects, mine went unnoticed, whereas this had never happened before.” The pressure extended to the social realm, with colleagues unfollowing him or no longer responding to messages. Ultimately, he gave up the fight for family-related reasons: “The decisive factor came when my wife asked me to leave the fight to others. We simply cannot afford to lose our jobs.” Several colleagues describe struggling with guilt for remaining silent, scolding themselves as “cowards” or “sell-outs.”

And the understatement of the year:

Several colleagues explicitly argue that the academic hostility towards Israel stems from antisemitism.

This hostility, says Boudry, also obtains largely in Canada, and in Europe can degenerate into threats of violence for those sympathetic to Israel or Jews:

Even before October 7, an Israeli academic working at a European university relates how he moved his tutorials off campus, because the threat of physical violence was constantly on his mind, even though his academic field was completely unrelated to Israel or the Middle East: “I always worried about being known as an Israeli and outspoken about my views that someone could just show up and attack me.” After the October 7 massacre and the ensuing Gaza war, of course the situation became far worse. An anti-Zionist website hosted on a server in the Netherlands even placed bounties for assassination as high as $100,000 on the heads of Israeli academics.

If you think this violence is directed simply against “Zionists”, and has nothing to do with Jews, I have some land in Florida to sell you. People didn’t stop to survey people’s views on Israel before they commit massacres on Australian beaches or in American synagogues.

In the end, Boudry concludes that censoriousness, threats of professional reprisal, and threats of violence have produced an artificial and false consensus about Israel being The Great Satan:

The academic consensus on Israel is, therefore, partly a mirage. Pluralistic ignorance, suppression of dissent and fear of professional and social reprisal have produced an artificial unanimity that is untethered from evidence and reasoned debate. In particular, the “Gaza genocide” accusation has become the Left’s equivalent of the stolen election hoax on the American Right—a baseless claim that signals ideological allegiance precisely because it defies logic and evidence. It functions much like mantras such as “men can get pregnant” or “scientific and Indigenous ways of knowing are equally valid”: deep down everyone understands that it’s nonsense, but that is precisely what allows it to serve as an ideological litmus test. Breaking the spiral of silence will require more people to step forward and call out such nonsense, thereby lowering the social cost of dissent.

Again, the only remedy for this is a tough one; dissenters must be willing to speak out in a climate of hostility. And European universities must do more to allow free speech. I don’t know of any university outside the U.S.—though here I may be wrong—that both promotes freedom of speech and maintains an policy of institutional neutrality, whereby the school takes no official position on moral, ideolotical, or political issues. If we think we have things bad in America, remember that it’s far worse across the pond.

******

A poster in Dam Square, Amsterdam, photographed in May, 2024:

When the rover now named Perseverance landed in Jezero crater in early 2021, scientists already knew they had picked an interesting place to scope out. From space, they could see what looked like a bathtub ring around the crater, indicating there could once have been water there. But there was some debate about what exactly that meant, and it’s taken almost five years to settle it. A new paper from PhD student Alex Jones at Imperial College London and his co-authors has definitively settled the debate on the source of that feature - part of it was once a beach.

Some people don’t develop dementia despite showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, and we're starting to understand why

Today I’ve borrowed another batch of bird photos (with permission) from Aussie biologist Scott Ritchie, a great photographer whose Facebook page is here. Scott’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Scott hails from Cairns.

I got up at six, heard light rain, made a coffee and checked the radar. There was quite a massive rain shower headed towards Cairns from the north. Anyway, I decided to take my time and just see how it panned out. There was a break after the big initial rain band, with rain ending around 8 to 830. My plan was to go to Redden Island and just concentrate on shorebirds because it was sort of dark outside. And I was trying out my 200 to 800 lens with the 1.4X teleconverter (max mag at 1120!). When I left, I saw that there was a new band of rain forming to our north. Bummer! I probably had about an hour hour and a half tops to get my birds.

And I did have fun with a couple of Pied Oystercatchers showing how they got their name. The little Red-capped Plover and the Greater Sand-Plover also put on a pretty good show. And I got a couple of terns in flight. It was fun to run into the gang just before the next rain band hit. Cheers and I hope you enjoy them.

Pied Oystercatcher [Haematopus longirostris] finds a succulent clam:

But it’s hard work getting it free from the shell:

He keeps trying while his mate keeps a hopeful eye.:

At last it’s coming free:

He washes the sand off the meat:

And down the hatch:

That was yummy!:

A Greater Sand-Plover [Anarhynchus leschenaultii] loosens up:

Shakes it loose:

And goes for a run on the beach!:

Caspian Tern [Hydroprogne caspia]:

Hovers looking for fish:

Red-capped plover [Anarhynchus ruficapillus]:

Doing his yoga stretches:

Crested Terns [Thalasseus bergii], Black-naped Terns (small ones; Sterna sumatrana). Please confirm the IDs!:

Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire?

Yawning and deep breathing each have different effects on the movement of fluids in the brain, and each of us may have a distinct yawning "signature"

We pick the sci-fi novels we’re most looking forward to reading this month, from a new Brandon Sanderson to the latest from Makana Yamamoto

Researchers have found a way to make ordinary aluminum tubes float indefinitely, even when submerged for long periods or punched full of holes. By engineering the metal’s surface to repel water, the tubes trap air inside and refuse to sink, even in rough conditions. The technology could eventually be scaled up into floating platforms, ships, or even wave-powered energy systems.

In the early 1800s, Denmark’s government, medical community, church leaders and school teachers all united to promote the new smallpox vaccine, which led to a remarkably quick elimination of the disease in the capital