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Beekeepers often experience some seasonal losses, but this past winter, more than half of all US honeybee colonies died off, potentially the largest loss in US history

A chemical reaction that's vital to a range of commercial and industrial goods may soon be initiated more effectively and less expensively.

Quantum states can only be prepared and observed under highly controlled conditions. A research team has now succeeded in creating so-called hot Schrodinger cat states in a superconducting microwave resonator. The study shows that quantum phenomena can also be observed and used in less perfect, warmer conditions.

Quantum states can only be prepared and observed under highly controlled conditions. A research team has now succeeded in creating so-called hot Schrodinger cat states in a superconducting microwave resonator. The study shows that quantum phenomena can also be observed and used in less perfect, warmer conditions.

Wakes from offshore wind farms can reduce the power generated by neighbouring farms – an issue that is growing more prevalent as turbines get bigger and more numerous

Collaborative research defines a novel approach to understanding how certain proteins called transcription factors determine which genetic programs will drive cell growth and maturation. The method, called 'Perturb-multiome,' uses CRISPR to knock out the function of individual transcription factors across many blood cells at once. The researchers then perform single-cell analyses on each cell to measure the effects of the editing, including identifying which genes have been turned on or off and which genes are accessible (based on epigenetic markers).

Here’s a short ZeFrank video on the apparent waning of fireflies, which are luminescent species of beetles in the family Lampyridae. Wikipedia notes as well that fireflies seem to be disappearing worldwide, and there are many reasons why this should be so:

Firefly populations are thought to be declining worldwide. While monitoring data for many regions are scarce, a growing number of anecdotal reports, coupled with several published studies from Europe and Asia, suggest that fireflies are endangered. Recent IUCN Red List assessments for North American fireflies have identified species with heightened extinction risk in the US, with 18 taxa categorized as threatened with extinction.

Fireflies face threats including habitat loss and degradation, light pollution, pesticide use, poor water quality, invasive species, over-collection, and climate change. Firefly tourism, a quickly growing sector of the travel and tourism industry, has also been identified as a potential threat to fireflies and their habitats when not managed appropriately. Like many other organisms, fireflies are directly affected by land-use change (e.g., loss of habitat area and connectivity), which is identified as the main driver of biodiversity changes in terrestrial ecosystems. Pesticides, including insecticides and herbicides, have also been indicated as a likely cause of firefly decline. These chemicals can not only harm fireflies directly but also potentially reduce prey populations and degrade habitat. Light pollution is an especially concerning threat to fireflies. Since the majority of firefly species use bioluminescent courtship signals, they are also sensitive to environmental levels of light and consequently to light pollution.A growing number of studies investigating the effects of artificial light at night on fireflies has shown that light pollution can disrupt fireflies’ courtship signals and even interfere with larval dispersal. Researchers agree that protecting and enhancing firefly habitat is necessary to conserve their populations. Recommendations include reducing or limiting artificial light at night, restoring habitats where threatened species occur, and eliminating unnecessary pesticide use, among many others.

The video describes various ways of monitoring their abundance as well as reprising the causes of decline describe above. When I was a kid, fireflies were abundant during the summer, and we would catch them and put them in jars to make lanterns (we’d let them go afterwards).  Now I can’t remember when I last saw one of these amazing insects. It’s very sad.

I could go on about how they emit light, and the amazing species that flash synchronously, but I’ll leave that ZeFrank in a future video. But if you want to donate, just go to this page of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and cough up a few bucks.

 

h/t Matthew Cobb

Astronomers have discovered an extremely rare, high mass, compact binary star system only ~150 light years away. These two stars are on a collision course to explode as a type 1a supernova, appearing 10 times brighter than the moon.

A team of researchers led by a physics graduate student recently made the surprising discovery of what they call a 'shape-recovering liquid,' which defies some long-held expectations derived from the laws of thermodynamics. The research details a mixture of oil, water and magnetized particles that, when shaken, always quickly separates into what looks like the classically curvaceous lines of a Grecian urn.

Researchers from chemistry, biology, and medicine are increasingly turning to AI models to develop new hypotheses. However, it is often unclear on which basis the algorithms come to their conclusions and to what extent they can be generalized. A publicationnow warns of misunderstandings in handling artificial intelligence. At the same time, it highlights the conditions under which researchers can most likely have confidence in the models.

Researchers from chemistry, biology, and medicine are increasingly turning to AI models to develop new hypotheses. However, it is often unclear on which basis the algorithms come to their conclusions and to what extent they can be generalized. A publicationnow warns of misunderstandings in handling artificial intelligence. At the same time, it highlights the conditions under which researchers can most likely have confidence in the models.

In the quest to design the next generation of materials for modern devices -- ones that are lightweight, flexible and excellent at dissipating heat -- a team of researchers made a discovery: imperfection has its upsides.

Do physicians or artificial intelligence (AI) offer better treatment recommendations for patients examined through a virtual urgent care setting? A new study shows physicians and AI models have distinct strengths. The study compared initial AI treatment recommendations to final recommendations of physicians who had access to the AI recommendations but may or may not have reviewed them.

The US anti-vaccine movement is now firmly embedded in the highest levels of government, where those overseeing public health agencies are making drastic cuts both wide and deep

It’s been years since I read any Ayn Rand, and her philosophy never fetched me. However, a reader called my attention to the article below on a Rand-ian site that dilates on the “KerFFRFLE”: what I call the fracas about the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s censorship of my critique of their fellow Kat Grant’s piece, “What is a woman?”. I won’t reprise all that; you can see the summary in the collection of posts here.

The  new article, which you can access by clicking on the screenshot below, comes from the New Ideal site, whose motto is “Reason/Individualism/Capitalism”. And it seems a site thoroughly devoted to osculating the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Its own summary:

At New Ideal, we explore pressing cultural issues from the perspective of Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism.

Here you will not find the categories that define today’s intellectual world. We are neither of the right nor the left, but we reject “the center.” We are atheists, but we are for reason, not merely against religion. We champion science, but also free will. We are staunch individualists, but also moralists—embracing a new kind of morality, in which selfishness is a virtue and none of us is bound to be our brother’s keeper. We don’t just oppose “big government,” we eagerly support the right kind of government—one limited to protecting individual rights.

Right off the bat I find a bug: “We champion science, but also free will.”  I disagree heartily with that, for libertarian free will is incompatible with what we know of science. But let’s move on.

Short take of the piece: the author, Ben Bayer, (a Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute) agreed with my critique of the FFRF’s self-definition of sex, a critique that ultimately led to the FFRF’s censorship and my resignation from the organization, along with Steve Pinker and Richard Dawkins.  But Bayer also argues that scientists should be “proud” rather than “humble,” an approach that the person who sent me the article said was “very Ayn Randian.”  I presume some readers will tell me what that means, but it seems to comport with New Ideal’s dictum that selfishness is a virtue. I presume, then, that Bayer equates “pride” with “selfishness” and “humility” with “being a weenie.”

But read below:

As I said, Bayer sides with Pinker, Dawkins, and me on the sex binary, but does take issue with some of the statistics I cited (the stats were supposedly the reason the FFRF found my piece “harmful”).  An excerpt from Bayer:

While Coyne’s arguments about the biological sex binary sound plausible to me, as a non-biologist I’m not fully qualified to evaluate the debate. But I find little to no assistance from his critics. After deciding to unpublish Coyne’s piece, the FFRF offered no specific criticism apart from the claim that the piece did not align with the organization’s values.4 Subsequent defenders of the FFRF’s decision for the most part ignored Coyne’s arguments for the sex binary.5 (One tried to challenge the binary by sharing an article that admits that sex is a biological binary but which attacks its utility for failing to explain everything about the behavior of sexed individuals — a straw man if ever there was one.6)

Instead of offering an argument to show why Coyne is wrong on a matter of his expertise, his critics instead focused on his remarks at the end of the piece addressing Grant’s claim that “Transgender people are no more likely to be sexual predators than other individuals.” They’ve made sensible criticisms of Coyne’s use of statistics in claiming that trans women are more likely to be sex predators.7 (Notably, the study he cites draws on a very small sample size and probably classifies non-predatory behavior like consensual prostitution as a “sex offense.”) So far as I can tell, neither Coyne nor his defenders have responded to these criticisms. They should.

So I’ll respond first to the “statistics” argument. The site I used, and the only one to have any decent statistics, is from Fair Play for Women, and I summarized the data in my vanished FFRF piece this way:

Under the biological concept of sex, then, it is impossible for humans to change sex — to be truly “transsexual” — for mammals cannot change their means of producing gametes. A more appropriate term is “transgender,” or, for transwomen, “men who identify as women.”

But even here Grant misleads the reader. They argue, for example, that “Transgender people are no more likely to be sexual predators than other individuals.” Yet the facts support the opposite of this claim, at least for transgender women. A cross-comparison of statistics from the U.K. Ministry of Justice and the U.K. Census shows that while almost 20 percent of male prisoners and a maximum of 3 percent of female prisoners have committed sex offenses, at least 41 percent of trans-identifying prisoners were convicted of these crimes. Transgender [-identifying prisoners], then, appear to be twice as likely as natal males and at least 14 times as likely as natal females to be sex offenders. While these data are imperfect because they’re based only on those who are caught, or on some who declare their female gender only after conviction, they suggest that transgender women are far more sexually predatory than biological women and somewhat more predatory than biological men. There are suggestions of similar trends in Scotland, New Zealand, and Australia.

Note that I am emphasizing transgender women here, that is, biological men who identify as women. And my main conclusion is this: transgender women are far more sexually predatory than biological women.  That is to be expected simply because transgender women are men who retain some of the biological propensities of men as well as their strength, and thus are expected to commit sex offenses more often than do natal women. In this sense, at least, you can’t say “trans women are women”, for the data show the expected biological differences that result in imprisonment,

Yes, the statistics are based on a small sample size, and there are problems with them–problems that I noted. But I will say two things.

First, Kat Grant gives NO data, saying only that “Transgender people are no more likely to be sexual predators than other individuals. . . “.  Well, that’s not true, at least for transgender women compared to natal women, which was my point. Note that I was not saying that trans people are, in general, more likely to be sexual predators than cis people. My point was about trans women versus natal women. And that leads to my second point:

I predict that when more data are collected in the future, this pattern vis-à-vis women will hold up. While trans men (biological women) may not be sexual predators more often than are natal women, I will bet that, based on behavioral differences between the sexes, trans women will be more violent—and more guilty of sex crimes—than are natal women.

I hope that clarifies what I was trying to say. But of course we do need better statistics, for data on trans prisoners are hard to get.

However, the statistics were a small part of my argument, which was mainly about how self-identification is a lousy way to define sex (“a woman is whoever she says she is”, as Grant asserts), but also about how one defines sex has very little bearing on the rights of groups. As I said, “The first [point] is to insist that it is not ‘transphobic’ to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology.” Except in a very few cases, like where one goes to prison or in what sports group one competes, trans people should have all the rights and dignity as everyone else. It is simply dumb to accuse me of trying to “erase” them.

On to Bayer’s accusation that both atheists and those who share my views on biological sex affect an attitude of humility but really should be proud.  Bayer doesn’t define humility right off the bat, but eventually gives us a definition before showing us why we shouldn’t even emphasize “humility” as a scientific virtue:

. . .  “humility,” which in an ordinary definition means “a modest or low view of one’s own importance.” No one who appreciates the power of scientific reason to discover progressively more truth can see it as modest or lowly.

On this basis Bayer excoriates atheists and scientists for affecting an attitude of humility, when in reality we are evincing fierce pride. Thus we should simply drop the “humility” bit:

In recent years, atheists including Dawkins and Pinker have followed a trend in the broader rationalist community of paying homage to the value of intellectual or epistemic humility. Dawkins claims that science by its nature is “humble” insofar as it doesn’t pretend to know everything.  Just a few years back, the house journal of one of Dawkins’s allied organizations, Skeptical Inquirer, published a piece calling on the skeptical movement to embrace the value of humility as its “guiding credo,” as against a consistent “take-no-prisoners” approach that invites the charge of arrogance or elitism.

Yet when atheists fight back against transgender ideology, they are clearly not practicing anything like the now-fashionable intellectual humility. Not only are they asserting with strident certainty the biological reality of the sex binary, they’re doing so knowing that other very intelligent atheists disagree with them. They’re also intransigent about this biological reality even though they know a whole subpopulation of vulnerable people find their assertion not only offensive but threatening to their identities.

That’s not an exercise in humility, but in pride. It’s precisely this pride that Coyne’s critics are condemning; it’s precisely humility that they’re demanding.

Unfortunately, any atheists who otherwise advocate epistemic humility but take the strident approach against transgender ideology are, frankly, hypocrites. Fortunately, there’s a rational way to escape this contradiction and reclaim the moral high ground: they should give up the humility fad.

But when scientists say they are being “humble,” they do not mean “being modest or lowly”.  No, what we mean is that we should never assert that we have the absolute truth about the universe. All scientific “facts” and “knowledge” are tentative, subject to revision in light of new observation.  Now some observations (e.g., the Earth goes around the Sun and a molecule of regular water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atoms) are about as certain as you can get, and I’d bet all my possessions on their objective truth. But certainty has been overturned so often in science that the proper attitude is to adhere to this well-known and eloquent passage written by Stephen Jay Gould in 1994 (my bolding)

Moreover, “fact” does not mean “absolute certainty.” The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

THAT attitude is what we mean by “humility”: the idea that one considers something “true’ when it’s supported by so much evidence that you’d be crazy to withhold assent. But even Gould would agree that we never have 100% certainty about anything.

I guess there’s an Ayn-Rand-ian reason for what Bayer does next, which is to argue that having pride in adhering to science and being rational helps us form a set of objective moral values:

The following proposal itself has to be weighed carefully against the balance of the evidence. Recognizing that the very practice of science involves commitment to these real virtues reveals not just a guideline for scientific practice, but the possibility of a rational code of morality. The rational commitment to truth is not just the source of our knowledge, it also helps to create the values that help us survive. Respecting the power of truth to give life means respecting the needs of the minds that pursue it, both one’s own needs and those of others. Though it goes far beyond the scope of this article, there’s an argument here that unlocks a code of moral virtues and values we need to live on earth.

Atheists need to do the work to defend a rational moral code now more than ever. It was a major scandal for the atheist movement that its long-celebrated heroine Ayaan Hirsi Ali converted to Christianity. In her statement explaining her conversion, she argued that the West needs guidance to fight off the triple threats of resurgent authoritarianism, Islamist militancy, and “woke” ideology. “Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?” She argued that only religion can offer such guidance. Someone needs to show anyone who sympathizes with her concern that the values of the Western Enlightenment can form the basis of a powerful moral code — and that religion, by contrast, is at the root of the irrational rivals of the West.

To do that, atheists need the courage of their convictions. The latest row over transgender ideology dramatizes this for all to see. When religious-style dogmatism infiltrates atheism itself, it’s a sign of religion’s pervasive influence on our culture, and thus of the need for the courage to challenge widespread conventional assumptions like the alleged virtue of humility.

But atheists have defended a “rational moral code”: the code of humanism.  Such codes have been set forth by atheists for centuries, including by people like Spinoza, Rawls, Kant, Singer, Mill and Grayling.  The specifics of how one derives morality differ (Rawls, for instance, offered a “veil of ignorance”, Kant offered deontology, and Singer and Mill were utilitarians). And I assert that, in the end, however you derive a moral code, in the end it is subjective, leading to a structure of society that you prefer but cannot justify as “the right structure.”

So what is the sweating Professor Bayer trying to say?  I guess I could review Ayn Rand’s philosophy, but I don’t have the stomach for it.

Yes – it is well-documented that in many industries the design of products incorporates a plan for when the product will need to be replaced. A blatant example was in 1924 when an international meeting of lightbulb manufacturers decided to limit the lifespan of lightbulbs to 1,000 hours, so that consumers would have to constantly replace them. This artificial limitation did not end until CFLs and then LED lightbulbs largely replaced incandescent bulbs.

But – it’s more complicated than you might think (it always is). Planned obsolescence is not always about gimping products so they break faster. It often is – products are made so they are difficult to repair or upgrade and arbitrary fashions change specifically to create demand for new versions. But often there is a rational decision to limit product quality. Some products, like kid’s clothes, have a short use timeline, so consumers prefer cheap to durable. There is also a very good (for the consumer) example of true obsolescence – sometimes the technology simply advances, offering better products. Durability is not the only nor the primary attribute determining the quality of a product, and it makes no sense to build in expensive durability for a product that consumers will want to replace. So there is a complex dynamic among various product features, with durability being only one feature.

We can also ask the question, for any product or class of products, is durability actually decreasing over time? Consumers are now on the alert for planned obsolescence, and this may produce the confirmation bias of seeing it everywhere, even when it’s not true. A recent study looking at big-ticket appliances shows how complex this question can be. This is a Norwegian study looking at the lifespan of large appliances over decades, starting in the 1950s.

First, they found that for most large appliances, there was no decrease in lifespan over this time period. So the phenomenon simply did not exist for the items that homeowning consumers care the most about, their expensive appliances. There were two exceptions, however – ovens and washing machines. Each has its own explanations.

For washing machines, the researchers found another plausible explanation for the decrease in lifespan from 19.2 to 10. 6 years (a decrease of 45%). The researchers found that over the same time, the average number of loads a household of four did increased from 2 per week in 1960 to 8 per week by 2000. So if you count lifespan not in years but in number of loads, washing machines had become more durable over this time. I suspect that washing habits were formed in the years when many people did not have washing machines, and doing laundry was brutal work. Once the convenience of doing laundry in the modern era settled in (and perhaps also once it became more than woman’s work), people did laundry more often. How many times do you wear an article of clothing before you wash it? Lots of variables there, but at some point it’s a judgement call, and this likely also changed culturally over time.

For ovens there appears to be a few answers. One is that ovens have become more complex over the decades. For many technologies there is a trade-off between simple but durable, and complex but fragile. Again – there is a tradeoff, not a simple decision to gimp a product to exploit consumers. But there are two other factors the researchers found. Over this time the design of homes have also changed. Kitchens are increasingly connected to living spaces with a more open design. In the past kitchens were closed off and hidden away. Now they are where people live and entertain. This means that the fashion of kitchen appliances are more important. People might buy new appliances to make their kitchen look more modern, rather than because the old ones are broken.

If this were true, however, then we would expect the lifespan of all large kitchen appliances to converge. As people renovate their kitchens, they are likely to buy all new appliances that match and have an updated look. This is exactly what the researchers found – the lifespan of large kitchen appliances have tended to converge over the years.

They did not find evidence that the manufacturers of large appliances were deliberately reducing the durability of their products to force consumers to replace them at regular intervals. But this is the narrative that most people have.

There is also a bigger issue of waste and the environment. Even when the tradeoffs for the consumer favor cheaper, more stylish and fashionable, or more complex products with lower durability, is this a good thing for the world? Landfilled are overflowing with discarded consumer products. This is a valid point, and should be considered in the calculus when making purchasing decisions and also for regulation.  Designing products to be recyclable, repairable, and replaceable is also an important consideration. I generally replace my smartphone when the battery life gets too short, because the battery is not replaceable. (This is another discussion unto itself.)

But replacing old technology with new is not always bad for the environment. Newer dishwashers, for example, are much more energy and water efficient than older ones. Refrigerators are notorious energy hogs, and newer models are substantially more energy efficient than older models. This is another rabbit hole, exactly when do you replace rather than repair an old appliance, but generally if a newer model is significantly more efficient, replacing may be best for the environment. Refrigerators, for example, probably should be upgraded every 10 years with newer and more efficient models – so then why build them to last 20 or more?

I like this new research and this story primarily because it’s a good reminder that everything is more complex than you think, and not to fall for simplistic narratives.

The post Is Planned Obsolescence Real first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Any advanced civilisation needs power. Don’t know about you but I’ve been camping lots, even wild camping but the experience is a whole lot easier if you have power! It’s the same for a long-term presence on the Moon (not that I’m likening my camping to a trip to the Moon!) but instead of launching a bunch of solar panels, a new paper suggests we can get power from the lunar regolith! Researchers suggest that the fine dusty material on the surface of the Moon could be melted to provide a type of crystals that can produce solar electricity! This would allow solar panels to be built on the Moon with only 1% of components sent from Earth!

"Just where is that extensive 5000 word longform apology from Adam Cifu over at Sensible Medicine, begging forgiveness for legitimizing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr?"

The post Doctors Who Fluffed RFK Jr.: Here’s What You Own So Far first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A research team is developing a 3D-printed skin imitation equipped with living cells in order to test nanoparticles from cosmetics without animal testing.

Engineers have created new technology that can move cells without touching them, enabling critical tasks that currently require large pieces of lab equipment to be carried out on a benchtop device.