News Feeds

An international team has identified a strategy to improve both the performance and stability for solar cells made out of the 'miracle material' perovskite by mitigating a previously hidden degradation pathway.

Researchers have developed a new method of growing organic crystals that can be used for energy-harvesting applications.

Researchers have developed a new method of growing organic crystals that can be used for energy-harvesting applications.

In order to use remote locations to record and assess the behavior of wildlife and environmental conditions, the GAIA Initiative developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that reliably and automatically classifies behaviors of white-backed vultures using animal tag data. As scavengers, vultures always look for the next carcass. With the help of tagged animals and a second AI algorithm, the scientists can now automatically locate carcasses across vast landscapes.

New cathode materials are being developed to further increase the capacity of lithium batteries. Multilayer lithium-rich transition metal oxides (LRTMOs) offer particularly high energy density. However, their capacity decreases with each charging cycle due to structural and chemical changes. Using X-ray methods at BESSY II, teams from several research institutions have now investigated these changes for the first time with highest precision: at the unique X-ray microscope, they were able to observe morphological and structural developments on the nanometer scale and also clarify chemical changes.

Researchers have developed a new crystalline material that can harvest water from fog without any energy input. The design of the novel type of smart crystals, which the researchers named Janus crystals, is inspired by desert plants and animals, which can survive in arid conditions.

Scientists find that most of the microplastics and the 'forever chemicals' known as PFAS cycle through landfills and wastewater treatment plants and end up back in the environment.

When making diagnostic decisions, radiologists and other physicians may rely too much on artificial intelligence (AI) when it points out a specific area of interest in an X-ray, according to a new study.

Researchers have developed a new bio-inspired approach to building complex 3D microfluidic networks by utilizing plant roots and fungal hyphae as molds. The team grew plants and fungi in nanoparticles of silica, then baked out the plants and solidified the glass. What remains is glass with micrometer-sized networks where the roots used to be.

Researchers have created a method that uses artificial intelligence to more accurately predict short-term river discharge using historical data from two hydrometric stations on the Ottawa River along with other weather-based parameters. They built on an existing type of algorithm called group method of data handling, which constructs predictive models by sorting and combining data into groups. The models are computed in different combinations repeatedly until the best and most reliable data combination is identified.

Researchers employ machine learning to more accurately model the boundary layer wind field of tropical cyclones. Conventional approaches to storm forecasting involve large numerical simulations run on supercomputers incorporating mountains of observational data, and they still often result in inaccurate or incomplete predictions. In contrast, the author's machine learning algorithm is equipped with atmospheric physics equations that can produce more accurate results faster and with less data.

Researchers study how Champatis roll and bounce down inclines. The authors released a heap of the seeds down an inclined plane while a camera recorded their descent to analyze their speed and the dynamics of their movement. The grains start to spread out slowly, then decrease quickly as they move downstream, akin to rock avalanches. This research may provide valuable insights into geological flows, including hyperspreading of rock avalanches, and could contribute to resolving challenges in this area.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss486_Jon_Mills_2024_11_19.mp3 Download MP3

Michael Shermer interviews Jon Mills, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, on a variety of topics, including the evolution of psychoanalysis, the dynamics of therapeutic relationships, and the psychological roots of aggression and trauma. Mills explains Freud’s lasting influence, the moral implications of aggression, and the role violence plays in society. The conversation also explores how trauma affects individuals and families across generations and the difficulty of understanding human behavior when faced with global challenges.

The discussion extends to broader issues such as individuality, the struggles faced by modern youth, and the evolution of belief in God. Shermer and Mills discuss how technology impacts mental health and the pursuit of spirituality without relying on traditional religion.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP, is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. His two latest books are Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality, and End of the World: Civilization and its Fate.

End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate

Famine. Extreme climate change. Threats of global war and nuclear annihilation. Obscene wealth disparities. Is civilization destined for self-annihilation? In this timely book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills explores the emergencies that could ignite an apocalypse. As we idly stand by in the face of ecological, economic, and societal collapse, we must seriously question whether humanity is under the sway of a collective unconscious death wish. Examining ominous existential risks and drawing on the psychological motivations, unconscious conflicts, and cultural complexes that drive human behavior and social relations, he offers fresh new perspectives on the looming fate of humanity based on a collective bystander disorder.

End of the World is a warning about the dangerous precipice we find ourselves careening toward and a call to action to take control of our own fate.

Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality

In this controversial book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills argues that God does not exist; and more provocatively, that God cannot exist as anything but an idea. Put concisely, God is a psychological creation signifying ultimate ideality. Mills argues that the idea or conception of God is the manifestation of humanity’s denial and response to natural deprivation; a self-relation to an internalized idealized object, the idealization of imagined value.

After demonstrating the lack of any empirical evidence and the logical impossibility of God, Mills explains the psychological motivations underlying humanity’s need to invent a supreme being. In a highly nuanced analysis of unconscious processes informing the psychology of belief and institutionalized social ideology, he concludes that belief in God is the failure to accept our impending death and mourn natural absence for the delusion of divine presence. As an alternative to theistic faith, he offers a secular spirituality that emphasizes the quality of lived experience, the primacy of feeling and value inquiry, ethical self-consciousness, aesthetic and ecological sensibility, and authentic relationality toward self, other, and world as the pursuit of a beautiful soul in search of the numinous.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP, is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is Honorary Professor, Department of Psychosocial & Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK, on faculty in the Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, USA, and on faculty and a Supervising Analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, USA. Recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship including 5 Gradiva Awards, he is the author and/or editor of over 30 books in psychoanalysis, philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies including most recently Psyche, Culture, World. In 2015 he was given the Otto Weininger Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Canadian Psychological Association. He is based in Ontario, Canada. His two latest books that I want to discuss today are Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality, and End of the World: Civilization and its Fate.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

A reader called my attention to a new quarterly online magazine called Sapir. It’s edited by the NYT writer Bret Stephens, it’s free, and it has a number of intriguing articles (check out this interview with Daniel Diermeier, our former provost and now chancellor of Vanderbilt University). It also offers a free one-year hard-copy subscription here.

The magazine appears to deal largely but not exclusively with matters Jewish (Stephens’s background). Among the secular pieces is a fine new article by Stephens himself that you can access by clicking on the title below. It’s about the demise of liberalism in American universities, including a defense of what Stephens considers true liberalism and a list of obstacles to university reform. It’s short and well worth reading.

Stephens defines true liberalism this way:

By liberalism I do not mean the word in the usual ideological or political sense. I mean it as the habit of open-mindedness, a passion for truth, a disdain for dogma, an aloofness from politics, a fondness for skeptics and gadflies and iconoclasts, a belief in the importance of evidence, logic, and reason, a love of argument rooted in intelligent difference. Above all, a curious, probing, independent spirit. These were the virtues that great universities were supposed to prize, cultivate, and pass along to the students who went through them. It was the experience I had as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago 30-plus years ago, and that older readers probably recall of their own college experience in earlier decades.

And how it’s disappeared from universities:

Except in a few surviving corners, that kind of university is fading, if not altogether gone. In its place is the model of the university as an agent of social change and ostensible betterment. It is the university that encourages students to dwell heavily on their experience of victimization, or their legacy as victimizers, rather than as accountable individuals responsible for their own fate. It is the university that carefully arranges the racial and ethnic composition of its student body in the hopes of shaping a different kind of future elite. It is the university that tries to stamp out ideas or inquiries it considers socially dangerous or morally pernicious, irrespective of considerations of truth. It is the university that ceaselessly valorizes identity, not least when it comes to who does, or doesn’t, get to make certain arguments. It is the university that substitutes the classics of philosophy and literature with mandatory reading lists that skew heavily to the contemporary ideological left. It is the university that makes official statements on some current events (but not on others), or tips its hand by prominently affiliating itself with political activism in scholarly garb. It is the university that attempts to rewrite the English language in search of more “inclusive” vocabulary. It is the university that silently selects an ideologically homogeneous faculty, administration, and graduate-student body. It is the university that finds opportunistic ways to penalize or get rid of professors whose views it dislikes. It is the university that has allowed entire fields of inquiry — gender studies, ethnic studies, critical studies, Middle Eastern studies — to become thoroughly dogmatic and politicized.

A charitable term for this kind of institution might be the relevant university — relevant in the sense of playing a direct role in shaping public and political life.

He calls the new kind of universities the “relevant university” in that their raison d’être is to improve society. But in so doing, they put Social Justice above merit and excellence, a point that we made in our joint paper “In defense of merit iu science” published in The Journal of Controversial Ideas.  The demotion of merit in favor of ideology—something that Scientific American excelled at (see the previous paper)—has a very palpable downside: the lost of public confidence in institutions:

In fact, there are many less political and more productive ways in which universities can credibly establish their relevance to the world around them: by serving as centers for impartial expertise, making pathbreaking discoveries, and educating students with vital skills, not just academically but also with the skills of good citizenship and leadership.

But the latter kind of relevance does not emerge from a deliberate quest for relevance — that is, for being in tune with contemporary fads or beliefs. It emerges from a quest for excellence. And excellence is cultivated, in large part, by a conscious turning away from trying to be relevant, focusing instead on pursuing knowledge for its own sake; upholding high and consistent standards; protecting the integrity of a process irrespective of the result; maintaining a powerful indifference both to the weight of tradition and the pressure exerted by contemporary beliefs. In short, excellence is achieved by dedicating oneself to the ideals and practices of the kind of liberalism that gives free rein to what the educator Abraham Flexner, in the 1930s, called “the roaming and capricious possibilities of the human spirit.”

What does excellence achieve, beyond being a good in itself? Public trust. Ordinary people do not need to have a good understanding of, say, virology to trust that universities are doing a good job of it, especially if advances in the field lead to medicines in the cabinet. Nor does the public need to know the exact formulas by which universities choose their freshman class, so long as they have reason to believe that Yale, Harvard, Princeton and their peers admit only the most brilliant and promising.

But trust is squandered when the public learns that at least some virologists have used their academic authority to make deceitful claims about the likely origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Trust evaporates when the public learns how the admissions process was being gamed for the sake of achieving race-conscious outcomes that disregard considerations of academic merit, to the striking disadvantage of certain groups. And trust is destroyed when the country sees students from elite universities behaving like Maoist cadres — seizing university property, disrupting campus life, and chanting thought-terminating slogans such as “From the river to the sea.” What those protests have mainly achieved, other than to demoralize or terrify Jewish students, is to advertise the moral bankruptcy and intellectual collapse of our “relevant” universities. Illiberalism always ends up finding its way to antisemitism.

I agree with nearly everything Stephens says, even though he calls himself a political conservative. But he can espouse conservatism in politics all he wants (and he does so judiciously, having voted for Harris) so long as he holds out for classical liberalism as the framework for universities.

At the end of his piece, Stephens lists the obstacles impeding a return to liberal universities, obstacles that include illiberal faculty, a “deeply entrenched DEI bureaucracuy”, a “selective adherence to free expression” (this is what brought down Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill after the House hearings), students taught to identify themselves as victims, and so on.

You may not hear anything new from this piece, but once in a while it helps to have your inchoate ideas clarified by a clear thinker and writer like Stephens, and then buttressed if, like me, your clearer ideas seem correct.

The vast computational power of the El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will be used to support the US nuclear deterrent

Tiny, solid windows in the shells of heart cockles let in light for the photosynthetic algae inside them – and they could show us how to make better fibre-optic cables

A cataclysmic quantum fluctuation could wipe out everything at any moment. The fact that we’re still here is revealing hidden cosmic realities

I’ve written a fair number of posts about science writer John Horgan over the years, and also pointed out posts in which others took Horgan to task for his miguided views or even lack of understanding of the science he wrote about.

Horgan became well known for his 1996 book The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Science in the Twilight of the Scientific Age. Its thesis is summarized by Wikipedia:

Horgan’s 1996 book The End of Science begins where “The Death of Proof” leaves off: in it, Horgan argues that pure science, defined as “the primordial human quest to understand the universe and our place in it,” may be coming to an end. Horgan claims that science will not achieve insights into nature as profound as evolution by natural selection, the double helix, the Big Bang, relativity theory or quantum mechanics. In the future, he suggests, scientists will refine, extend and apply this pre-existing knowledge but will not achieve any more great “revolutions or revelations.”

This thesis of course has not been supported. To name two new mysteries in physics that arose after Horgan (writing largely about physics) claimed that the field was moribund, we have new evidence for both dark energy and gravitational waves. The book hasn’t worn well, and his subsequent work never came close to the popularity of his 1996 book. As he writes about himself (yes, in the third person) on his own website:

Although none of Horgan’s subsequent books has matched the commercial success of The End of Science, he loves them all. They include, in chronological order, The Undiscovered Mind; Rational Mysticism; The End of War; Mind-Body Problems; Pay Attention, a lightly fictionalized memoir; and My Quantum Experiment, which like Mind-Body Problems is online and free.

Apparently Horgan supports himself with a sinecure as a teacher and Director of the Center for Science Writings (CSW) at Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Given that he has gone after me several times over the years, and in an unprovoked way (reader Lou Jost once called him a “contrarian” in a comment).  And his rancor continues in the latest post on his own website (below), in which, defending departed Scientific American editor Laura Helmuth, he can’t resist insulting a number of us:

Well before Scientific American’s editor vented her despair over the election, social injustice warriors were bashing the magazine for its political views. Critics include anti-woke bros Jordan Peterson, Charles “The Bell Curve” Murray, Pinker wannabe Michael Shermer, Dawkins wannabe Jerry Coyne and the right-leaning Wall Street Journal and City Journal.

Seriously, Horgan, “social injustice warrrions?” and “woke bros”? And what’s with the nicknames and “wannabes”? No, I don’t want to be Richard Dawkins: I’ve never aspired to that level of renown nor do I have the talent to achieve it.  Horgan simply can’t resist mocking everyone who has “bashed” Scientific American, apparently unable to distinguish between criticism and “bashing.”  Yet despite his historical nastiness to others, Horgan characterizes himself on his webpage as a “nice guy”

John Horgan is a science journalist who has knocked many scientists over the course of his career and yet stubbornly thinks of himself as a nice guy

And, in the piece below, also praises Helmuth for her niceness:

She is also—and I’ve heard this from her colleagues and experienced it first-hand–a kind, considerate person. That’s a heroic feat in this mean-spirited age.

I am perfectly prepared to believe that Helmuth is a kind and considerate person, and have never said otherwise. It’s a pity that Horgan himself has failed to achieve this “heroic feat.”

At any rate, Horgan wrote for Scientific American between 1986 and 1997. As he says in his third-person bio, “Horgan was a full-time staff writer at Scientific American from 1986 to 1997, when the magazine fired him due to a dispute over his first book, The End of Science.” But he later wrote several other pieces for the magazine: “From 2010-2022 he churned out hundreds of opinion pieces for the magazine’s online edition.” Several of these were under the editorship of Helmuth, who headed the magazine from 2020 until about a week ago.

As you know, Helmuth resigned from Scientific American after posting several expletive-filled tweets on election night, something that I showed and discussed here. Although she later apologized, she announced her resignation five days ago.  It’s not clear, however, whether she voluntarily resigned or was given the choice of resigning or being fired. The president of the magazine says the former, but it seems ambiguous; as the Washington Post notes:

Kimberly Lau, president of the magazine, said in a statement that it was Helmuth’s decision to leave, and the magazine is already seeking a new editor.

and adds:

A screenshot of her posts circulated on X, and one account called “The Rabbit Hole” asked its followers on Nov. 12 if Helmuth was “someone who is entirely dedicated to uncompromising scientific integrity?” or “a political activist who has taken over a scientific institution?”

Elon Musk, owner of X and close ally of president-elect Donald Trump, reacted to the post four minutes later with “the latter” — which spawned thousands of comments, replies and likes.

Lau, the president of Scientific American, did not respond to questions about whether Helmuth’s resignation was related to the backlash from Musk and others.

I won’t speculate about what happened, but as readers know I’ve criticized the magazine many times for its wokeness, its misguided views, its pervasive ideology, and its downright errors many times (see here for a collection of criticisms, including the magazine’s infamous indictment of both E. O. Wilson and Gregor Mendel [!] as racists).

Michael Shermer, a Sci. Am. columnist, who was given a pink slip because he contradicted the magazine’s “progressive” views, has also summarized the increasing wokeness of the magazine, as has James B. Meigs. (See also my critique of articles from just the single year of 2021.)

In the end, I think Helmuth’s desire to make Scientific American a magazine infused with and supporting progressive leftism not only severely degraded the quality of a once-excellent venue for popular science—perhaps at one time our best popular-science magazine—but also ultimately led to her leaving the room.

But John Horgan now defends both the magazine and Helmuth in his latest blog post (click below), implicitly assuming that Helmuth was fired—and fired largely because people like me criticized the magazine:

The intro:

Well before Scientific American’s editor vented her despair over the election, social injustice warriors were bashing the magazine for its political views. Critics include anti-woke bros Jordan Peterson, Charles “The Bell Curve” Murray, Pinker wannabe Michael Shermer, Dawkins wannabe Jerry Coyne and the right-leaning Wall Street Journal and City Journal.

On election night, Sci Am editor Laura Helmuth called Trump voters “racist and sexist” and “fucking fascists” on the social media platform BlueSky, a haven for Twitter/X refugees. Yeah, she lost her cool, but Helmuth’s labels apply to Trump if not to all who voted for him.

Although Helmuth apologized for her remarks, Elon Musk (perhaps miffed that Scientific American recently knocked him) and others called for her head. Yesterday Helmuth announced she was stepping down.

Trump spews insults and wins the election. Helmuth loses her job. Critics of cancel culture cheered Helmuth’s cancellation. I’m guessing we’ll see more of this sickening double standard in coming months and years.

Note the implicit assumption that Helmuth was fired (“loses her job”). Well, I didn’t cheer her cancellation (yes, some people cheered her departure), and I doubt that she’s been canceled. She’s been gone only a week, and I doubt that she’s been blackballed in science journalism. At any rate, Scientific American does have a long way to go if it’s ever to repair the reputation it once had, a reputation that was eroded with Helmuth at the helm.

Horgan lays out his rationale for the piece:

I’m writing this column, first, to express my admiration for Helmuth. She is not only a fearless, intrepid editor, who is passionate about science (she has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience). She is also—and I’ve heard this from her colleagues and experienced it first-hand–a kind, considerate person. That’s a heroic feat in this mean-spirited age.

Indeed! Would that Horgan himself was kind and considerate! But in fact I’d settle for “not obnoxious,” but for Horgan that’s not in the cards.

He proceeds to defend the magazine’s politicization:

I’d also like to address the complaint that Helmuth’s approach to science was too political and partisan. Yes, under Helmuth, Scientific American has had a clear progressive outlook, ordinarily associated with the Democratic party. The magazine endorsed Joe Biden four years ago, shortly after Helmuth took over, and Kamala Harris this year.

Sci Am presented scientific analyses of and took stands on racism, reproductive rights, trans rights, climate change, gun violence and covid vaccines. Critics deplored the magazine’s “transformation into another progressive mouthpiece,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. Biologist Jerry Coyne says a science magazine should remain “neutral on issues of politics, morals, and ideology.”

What??!! As Coyne knows, science, historically, has never been “neutral.” Powerful groups on the right and left have employed science to promote their interests and propagate lethal ideologies, from eugenics to Marxism. Science journalists can either challenge abuses of science or look the other way.

I became a staff writer at Scientific American in 1986, when Jonathan Piel was editor. The magazine bashed the Reagan administration’s plan to build a space-based shield against nuclear weapons. I wrote articles linking behavioral genetics to eugenics and evolutionary psychology to social Darwinism. I got letters that began: “Dear Unscientific Unamerican.” My point: the magazine has never been “neutral,” it has always had a political edge.

First, Horgan here conflates the practice of science itself with the presentation of science in magazines like Scientific American.  Yes, the actual doing of science should, as far as possible, be politically neutral, and so should articles published in scientific journals. (Sadly, the latter hope is now repeatedly violated.) The ideological erosion of biology, as Luana and I called our paper in Skeptical Inquirer, has led to the loss of trust in biology and in journals themselves; and the same is happening in all STEMM fields. You wouldn’t think that math could go woke, for instance, but it has, and medical education has long been colonized by ideology, to the point where it endangers the health of Americans.

No, I see no problem in principle with scientific journals pointing out scientific problems with social issues. Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, for example, was criticized by three authors (including Hans Bethe) in a 1984 issue of Scientific American. And scientific data on covid, published in journals, was critical in assessing how to best attack the pandemic. To the extent that public policy depends on scientific fact, and to the degree that those facts inform policy, it’s perfectly fine for scientific journals and magazines to correct the facts and show how such corrections might change policy.

But Scientific American went much further than that, taking on social-justice issues that were purely performative and had no possible salubrious effect on society, or even dealt with matters of fact. To see some of this mishigass, I call your attention to the collection of 2021 posts I made about ludicrous or mistaken articles in the journal—and this is but a small selection.

1.) Bizarre acronym pecksniffery in Scientific American.Title: “Why the term ‘JEDI’ is problematic for describing programs that promote justice, diversity, equity, and Inclusion.”

2.) More bias in Scientific American, this time in a “news” article. Title: “New math research group reflects a schism in the field.”

3.) Scientific American again posting non-scientific political editorials.Title: “The anti-critical race theory movement will profoundly effect public education.“

4.) Scientific American (and math) go full woke.  Title: “Modern mathematics confronts its white, patriarchal past.”

5.) Scientific American: Denying evolution is white supremacy. Title: “Denial of evolution is a form of white supremacy.”

6.) Scientific American publishes misleading and distorted op-ed lauding Palestine and demonizing Israel, accompanied by a pro-Palestinian petition. Title: “Health care workers call for support of Palestinians.” (The title is still up but see #7 below)

7.) Scientific American withdraws anti-Semitic op-ed. Title of original article is above, but now a withdrawal appears (they vanished the text): “Editor’s Note: This article fell outside the scope of Scientific American and has been removed.”   Now, apparently, nothing falls outside the scope of the magazine!

8.) Scientific American: Religious or “spiritual” treatment of mental illness produces better outcomes. Title: “Psychiatry needs to get right with God.”

9.)  Scientific American: Transgender girls belong on girl’s sports teams. Title:  “Trans girls belong on girls’ sports teams.”

10.) Former Scientific American editor, writing in the magazine, suggests that science may find evidence for God using telescopes and other instruments. Title: “Can science rule out God?“

And of course the magazine was full of op-eds that pushed a progressive Leftist viewpoint. When I emailed Helmuth offering to write my own op-ed about the malign effects of ideology on science, she turned me down flat.  There was no balance in the magazine—not even in the op-eds.

The rest of Horgan’s short rant goes after Trump and his appointees, for he seems to connect Helmuth’s resignation with Trump’s victory. Yes, in one sense they were connected, because Helmuth scuppered herself by being unable to control her tweets on election night, calling Trump supporters “fucking fascists.” But to imply that the critics of the journal were “right-wing”or “social injustice warriors” is just wrong.  People like me, Pinker, Dawkins, and Shermer are classical liberals, and criticized the magazine because it was becoming a vehicle for ideology rather than science.

We have two batches left (including today’s), so please send in your wildlife photos.

Today’s photos of archnids come from Dean Graetz of Australia, whose IDs and notes are indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Backyard Spiders

Here in Canberra, we grow Australian native desert flowers in our backyard for their colour and insect attraction.  As a consequence, we also attract an array of spiders interested in trapping any visiting insects.  We find all spiders naturally interesting.  They have a 200-million-year fossil record and are a very successful lifeform with about 36,000 species, of which about 2,900 are found in Australia.  We wish to share them with you, such as this specimen.  Undoubtedly a female, she is intriguingly patterned and laying out a very sparse web.

A much larger example of these Flower or Crab spiders with legs folded ready to seize any visiting insect.  Her back pattern is very similar to that of the spider in the first image.  The ragged covering of hairs or spines make is difficult to immediately separate the spider body from the flower.

Leaf-curling Spiders  (Phonognatha graeffei) select a suitable leaf from the ground and, using silk, curl it to form a protective cylinder, silked shut at the top and open at the bottom.  They then live in this protective cylinder with only their legs showing, feeling for the vibrations of a captured insect.  As much as we try, we have never seen this construction happening live.

A distinct species of Flower-type spider, away from our backyard, industriously repairing her web after trapping and ingesting the innards of a wasp-type insect.  Its desiccated remains will be eventually cut loose and discarded.

A demanding situation to interpret.  Barely visible at the bottom of the cluster is a bee abdomen.  Swarming all over it are very young spiders that are suspiciously similar to the presiding web-owning female.  We did not witness the bee capture or the arrival of the young spiders.  So, which event came first?  Intriguing!

Another puzzling situation.  An unusually large amount of silk was used to wrap the butterfly, whose abdomen shape suggests its contents have not yet been liquified and extracted.  The view is of the spider’s underside where a curious spherical body is visible.  A parasitic tick?

An unknown species resting at the centre of her unfinished web.  The visible haloes of dots surrounding her are the small sticky deposits she has symmetrically spaced to eventually hold the long cross-lengths of silk, the last task of web construction.  Fascinating and thought-provoking.

The next two photos are borrowed and are not of our backyard, though we do occasionally find this famous spider here.  It is a large female Redback spider, guarding her near-perfect spherical egg sacs.  This species (Latrodectus hasselti) is well known in Australian popular culture.  It is seriously venomous, agonisingly painful, but apparently not lethal since the development of an antivenom.  It is well-known because, in rural settings, people have had their buttocks bitten while using an outdoor toilet (aka Outhouse) and they have never forgotten the occasion.

As well as regarded as serious threats to people, Redbacks are widely recognised as tough and effective predators.  Their silk is outstandingly strong, here trapping a struggling lizard, and their silk plus venom has been photographed killing small snakes.  Being tough and very effective are characteristics Australians respect. Consequently, many sporting teams use the name Redback because of their uniform colour and to imply their toughness and effectiveness.

So it is no surprise that when an Australian boot company wants to promote its tough and effective work boots, it uses the brand name Redback.  These boots are really ‘bloody good’ boots.  I have two pairs.

The largest number of logical qubits has been linked through quantum entanglement, which is a key step towards quantum computers that can detect and correct errors