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Researchers have used mathematical analysis tools to study the effect of classical music on a fetal heartbeat and identify patterns in heart rate variability. They recruited 36 pregnant women and played two classical pieces for their fetuses. By attaching external heart rate monitors, the researchers could measure the fetal heart rate response to both songs, and by employing nonlinear recurrence quantification analysis, they could identify changes in heart rate variability during and after the music was played. They found evidence music can calm fetal heart rates, potentially providing developmental benefits.

The non-profit Arctic Ice Project was experimenting with using silica beads to slow ice melt in the Arctic, but tests showed the plan posed risks to the food chain

Yesterday we saw Ross Douthat helpfully advising New York Times readers how to find the “right” religion (nonbelief doesn’t count as faith); and today we find the Free Press touting religion by showing how “finding God” transformed the lives of nonbelievers for the better. (Note the implication that God is out there to be found!)

Rather than discuss the waning of religion in the West—something that Douthat avoided, too—Savodnik, an editor of the Free Press,  simply tells the stories of a few notables who became religious and how much solace the conversion gave them.  These are anecdotes, not a documentation of either the waning of religion or the overall benefits of religion to society. But, added together, they paint a picture of religion as something that people need, and something that will fill our “god-shaped” hole—our need to believe in the supernatural to give meaning to our lives. As I’ve said, I have no doubt that some people really can be helped by believing; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose crippling depression was cured by embracing Christianity, comes to mind. But what these anecdotes don’t convince me of is that we all need religion and would be better off following the people in the article (except for Dawkins).

Further, the piece doesn’t address the problem of forcing yourself to believe something that you’ve already rejected as false. I am not sure how Hirsi Ali, a former atheist, got herself to believe in the reality of Christianity (the status of Jesus as God/Son of God, the Resurrection, etc.), but of course people who reject something can really come to believe it if it’s important to believe it. (See Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.)

The notion that this article is slanted towards getting people to believe is buttressed by its unfair and snarky treatment of Richard Dawkins, an atheist who is lumped in with the “believers’ just to show how hollow his idea of being a “cultural Christian” is.

Why am I highlighting this article, as I did Douthat’s yesterday? It’s because I sense that vocal liberals are now trying to push belief on the rest of us, asserting that our lives are empty without faith. I’m not sure why that’s true, and will let the readers give their hypotheses below.  The Free Press may be soft on religion because its founder, Bari Weiss, is an observant Jew, and her partner, Nellie Bowles, converted when the got married. But that’s just a speculation.  However, I’d expect a journalistic venue that touts rationality to at least counter an article like the one below with one showing how intellectuals benefited by giving up their belief in God.

Click the headline below if you have a subscription, or find the article archived here.

I’ll just list the nonbelievers or “searchers” whose lives suddenly improved when they settled on a given faith, and then add a quote from the article. Note that the photos of the converts (and Dawkins, too) are surrounded by halos. First, the point of the article:

But something profound is happening. Instead of smirking at religion, some of our most important philosophers, novelists, and public intellectuals are now reassessing their contempt for it. They are wondering if they might have missed something. Religion, the historian Niall Ferguson told me, “provides ethical immunity to the false religions of Lenin and Hitler.”

There is something inevitable about this reassessment, Jonathan Haidt, the prominent New York University psychologist and best-selling author, told me. (Haidt’s books include The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.) “There is a God-shaped hole in every human heart, and I believe it was put there by evolution,” he said. He was alluding to the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who wrote extensively on the nature of faith.

“We evolved in a long period of group versus group conflict and violence, and we evolved a capacity to make a sacred circle and then bind ourselves to others in a way that creates a strong community,” Haidt told me.

Ferguson added that “you can’t organize a society on the basis of atheism.”

“It’s fine for a small group of people to say, ‘We’re atheist, we’re opting out,’ ” he said, “but, in effect, that depends on everyone else carrying on. If everyone else says, ‘We’re out,’ then you quickly descend into a maelstrom like Raskolnikov’s nightmare”—in which Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, envisions a world consumed by nihilism and atomism tearing itself apart. “The fascinating thing about the nightmare is that it reads, to anyone who has been through the twentieth century, like a kind of prophecy.””

I’m surprised that Haidt, whose religiosity I don’t know, would tout religion here and in other places. I thought he was more rational than that. And Ferguson’s claim that atheist societies can’t function because of nihilism is flat wrong. Look at Scandinavia, for crying out loud!

On to the believers:

Matthew Crawford. He was a “a searcher” who converted to the Anglican Church after he met an Anglican woman (whom he later married) while giving a talk in a church. He says this of being an Anglican:

“I liken it sometimes to a psychedelic experience,” Crawford said. “You feel like you’ve gained access to some layer of reality, but you just weren’t seeing it.” He meant God, but he also seemed to be talking about his wife.

“A lot of very thoughtful people who once believed reason and science could explain everything—why we’re here, what comes after we’re gone, what it all means—are now feeling a genuine hunger for something more,” he said.

“There has to be a larger order that comprehends us and makes a demand on us,” Crawford added. “It’s clear that we can’t live without a sense of meaning beyond ourselves.”’

Yes, but that “sense of meaning beyond ourselves” can include our love of friends and family, our work, our avocations, and, for me, science.  You don’t need God to get a “sense of meaning.”

Joe Rogan and Russell Brand.

In February 2024, podcaster Joe Rogan, in a conversation about the sorry state of America’s youth with New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, said: “We need Jesus.” Not five years earlier, Rogan had hosted Richard Dawkins on his show and poked fun at Christians.

In April, the comedian Russell Brand—who has emerged in recent years as a voice of the counterculture and amassed an audience of more than 11 million on X—announced that he was about to be baptized. “I know a lot of people are cynical about the increasing interest in Christianity and the return to God but, to me, it’s obvious. As meaning deteriorates in the modern world, as our value systems and institutions crumble, all of us become increasingly aware that there is this eerily familiar awakening and beckoning figure that we’ve all known all our lives within us and around us. For me, it’s very exciting.”

I guess the Jews, Hindus, and Muslims are deficient because they don’t, according to Rogan, need Jesus. As for Brand, well, he’s a loose cannon and I take no lesson from his conversion.

Jordan Peterson. What can you say about a guy who can’t even explain clearly what he believes? Now, however, he’s decided that God is “hyper-real”—whatever that means.

All drawings photoshopped by the Free Press.

Then in July, Elon Musk—the former “atheist hero,” the king of electric vehicles and space exploration, the champion of free expression—sat down with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who has studied the intersection of religion and ideology, to discuss God. “I’m actually a big believer in the principles of Christianity,” Musk said. Soon after, Musk took to X to pronounce that “unless there is more bravery to stand up for what is fair and right, Christianity will perish.”

Then, last month, Peterson’s book We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine was published. Peterson had always avoided saying whether he believed in a higher power. Now, sporting a jacket emblazoned with the Calvary cross, he was pushing back against the new atheists. “I would say God is hyper-real,” Peterson said in a recent interview with Ben Shapiro promoting the book. “God is the reality upon which all reality depends.”

I’d like to ask Dr. Peterson why he is so sure that there even is a god. But all I’d get was his usual preparation of word salad.

Paul Kingsnorth. Here’s another searcher who found “true” religion: Romanian Orthodoxy after he was at first a Zen Buddhist and then a “neopagan”:

When I asked Kingsnorth why he embraced Christianity after having steered clear of it for his entire life, he said it wasn’t a “rational choice.”

“If you ever meet a holy person, you look at them and you think, Wow, that’s really something—you know, I would love to be like that,” he said. “How does that happen?”

“The culture,” by contrast, “doesn’t have any spiritual heart at all. It’s as if we think we can just junk thousands of years of religious culture, religious art, religious music, chuck it all out the window, and we’re just building and creating junk.”

He said the story we’ve been telling ourselves for the last 100 years or so, of endless progress and secularism and the triumph of reason, is now “at some kind of tipping point.” Our great “religious reawakening” is just people “finding their way back to something that they never expected to find their way back to.”

Here we have another person asserting that we’re at a “tipping point”. Perhaps that’s true, but what’s the evidence? And, if we advance in rationality and discard religion, that doesn’t mean that we have to chuck out all the art and music that was inspired by religion.  Modern art and music are not inspired by religion, and yet the culture survives. You can admire Chartres without having to be a Christian. Yes, it’s a beautiful testament, but one of a pervasive delusion.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali. We’ve hear her story before: first a Muslim, then an atheist and then, after severe depression, found relief in Christianity, and embraces its empirical tenets, like the existence, meaning, and resurrection of Jesus.

Quotes:

Hirsi Ali recalled a conversation she had with the British philosopher Roger Scruton shortly before he died in 2020. “I was telling him about my depression,” Hirsi Ali said of Scruton, who belonged to the Church of England, “and he said, ‘If you don’t believe in God, at least believe in beauty.’ ” Mozart, opera, church hymns—they were a way out of the dark, she said. She couldn’t help but be moved by something Scruton said: “The greatest works of art have been inspired by some connection to God.”

Scruton is dead wrong here. What was Picasso’s or Monet’s connection to God? They were atheists! See a longer list here. And you can find a list of atheist composers and musicians here; they include Bizet, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Shostakovich, and Verdi. And don’t forget that before about 1850, nobody would admit that they were atheists, so the list is surely longer. Scruton is simply full of it. But I digress; back to Hirsi Ali

“It’s been a year, 15 months”—since embracing her new faith—“and I still feel almost miraculous,” Hirsi Ali told me.

On September 1, Hirsi Ali and Ferguson and their sons were baptized. “I had a spiritual void in my life, and Ayaan certainly did,” Ferguson said. “Her discovery of a Christian God saved her.”

When I asked Hirsi Ali and Ferguson whether their faith was real or just a political balm meant to combat the “cult of power”—whether they were, as Dawkins said, “theological Christians” or a “cultural” ones—they said their faith was “genuine.”

I do believe them, and I’m find with Hirsi Ali embracing Christianity if it helped relieve her crippling depression. But I don’t like her proselytizing about it, implying that others might find similar relief.

Jordan Hall. Another searcher who felt empty but filled his god-shaped hole by joining the Swannanoa Christian Church in North Carolina.

The emptiness he’d spent years fleeing was not just his emptiness, as far as he could tell. It was society-wide.

“We’re actually facing a clear and present danger,” Hall said. “It’s cultural termination, and it’s almost certainly going to come to a catastrophic end soon.”

He meant plummeting birth rates, imploding families, relationships that were pale shadows of real relationships—digitized friendship and love as opposed to genuine interactions between people who actually care about and know each other. “The horrifying brokenness of people.”

Well, you could say this about nearly every era, so the times we’re going through (with a lot of the horror that we face caused by religion) does not suggest, at least to me, that religion will fix the world. What religion? Islam? Christianity? Judaism? Or will the world be better if everyone embraces the faith they find congenial? That hasn’t worked so well if the world really is broken?

Finally,

Richard Dawkins, who also sports a halo:

The piece does everything it can to make Dawkins not only look bad, but also look as if he’s a quasi-Christian:

When we spoke—via Zoom, Dawkins in a brightly lit room at home in Oxford, England—he was a tad irritable. He was in a navy blazer, and there was a wall of books behind him, and he seemed a little exasperated with all the God talk.

Dawkins had created a furor when, in the midst of the often violent, pro-Hamas demonstrations in London and New York and elsewhere, he appeared on a British radio program and called himself a “cultural Christian.” He went on to say, “I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos, I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense.”

“I rather regret” having said all that now, he told me.

Yes, he caused a furor, but I don’t mind much. I am, after all, a cultural Jew, even though I’m not in a Jewish country. It’s just the tribe you belong to, just like the country you belong to, and you don’t have to believe a word of religions tenets, as neither Richard nor I do.

And the rest:

Dawkins underscored that he, like Sam Harris, is still very much an atheist. He did not see any contradiction in saying, as he had to Rachel Johnson on the Leading Britain’s Conversation (LBC) radio show, that he was “happy” with the number of Christians declining in Britain and that he “would not be happy if we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches.”

“The tendency you’re talking about,” he told me, alluding to Hirsi Ali, “is, I think, mostly people who don’t necessarily believe Jesus was the son of God or born of a virgin, or rose from the dead, but nevertheless think that Christianity is a good thing, that Christianity would benefit the world if more people believed it, that Christianity might be the sort of basis for a lot of what’s good about Western civilization.”

And yet, Dawkins did admit he was worried about losing the world that had been bequeathed to us by Christianity. “If we substituted any alternative religion,” he said in his April interview, “that would be truly dreadful.”

It wasn’t just about the danger of what was coming. It was about what we were losing, or might lose.

“Some of the greatest music ever written is church music, music inspired by Christianity,” he told me, echoing Roger Scruton. J.S. Bach would never have composed his Mass in B Minor—with all those violins, cellos, sopranos, and tenors weaving together, pointing us toward the heavens—without the divine, he said. Nor would Dostoevsky, as Paul Kingsnorth said, have written The Brothers Karamazov had he not been a believer. Had the world not been changed in countless unbelievable ways by that art? Had that art not changed us?

When I mentioned Dawkins’s distinction between cultural and theological Christianity to Kingsnorth, he said he thought Dawkins was deliberately sidestepping a deeper conversation about the nature of belief.

“As far as he’s concerned, it’s just chemicals in the brain,” Kingsnorth said of Dawkins. “But the reason religion persists is people keep having experiences of God, and Dawkins doesn’t seem to want to deal with that.”

Admiration for the artistry of churches, mosques and religious paintings does not constitute support for a psychological need to be religious, much less for the truth of religion.  Seriously, Richard should write an essay about that misconception, which I call “The Argument from Cathedrals.” And I bet the “alternative religion” he’s thinking about is probably Islam. I wouldn’t want to live in an America that had been founded by Islamists rather than Christians, either, but that speaks to how the religions make people behave rather than to their truth.

As for Kingsnorth, he’s just wrong: religion is indeed chemicals in the brain. And really, the “experiences of God” that people have consist largely of what you get from being proselytized.  There are many ways one could show the existence of God (stars spelling out Christian words, prayers being answered for Christians alone, etc.), but people’s “experience of religion” is not convincing evidence, especially given the way that people become religious. Have you ever seen something like this?

These people are having “experiences” of god so intense they’re speaking in tongues. (I love glossolalia!).  This is social contagion, and you can see similar things at football games.

Again, I’m floating the idea that liberals and intellectuals are pushing the idea that we have to go back to religion for our own and society’s good. I don’t know why—perhaps because times are rough now, and God is the Biggest Coughdrop.  But times will get better, and religion, at least in the West, will continue to wane.

Burrowing under soil opens up a whole new world, especially when that soil is on other planets. Getting under the top layer of regolith on a world such as Mars could give access to a world still extant with life, whereas, on the Moon, it could lead to discovering a water source. So, for almost 30 years, scientists have been developing robots based on that most well-known burrowing machine here on Earth – the mole. Unfortunately, the models that have made it into space so far have failed for various reasons, but that hasn’t stopped more research groups from trying to perfect their own version of a mole robot. A paper from a research group at Guangdong University of Technology in China describes their efforts and frustrations in mimicking one of nature’s more unique but capable specialists.

To be fair to the development teams working on previous versions of “mole” robots, the failure was not always their fault. The Planetary Undersurface Tool (PLUTO) robot was fitted to Mars Express and had a hammering mechanism unlike anything seen in nature. It made it to Mars but was not successfully tested because the Beagle 2 lander that Mars Express was attached to failed to deploy its solar panels properly, ending the mission before it began.

Insight, another mission to Mars, carried another probe with a similar mission. The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) probe was designed to burrow 5m down into the Maritan soil and measure the heat coming from the interior of Mars. Unfortunately, it ran into unexpected soil conditions and wasn’t able to burrow as intended—as we reported extensively. After multiple failed attempts, that part of the mission was eventually abandoned.

Moles are a common inspiration for robotics design, as described in this video from KAIST robotics lab.
Credit – KAIST Urban Robotics Lab YouTube Channel

In other words, burrowing on other worlds is hard. But that didn’t stop the team in Guangdong from trying. Their robot is meant to be much more similar to an actual mole than either HP3 or PLUTO was. The existing missions both used forms of drilling techniques, whereas the new robot uses actions intended to mimic what actual moles do.

There are two types of digging motions used by different types of moles. The first, and the one most commonly depicted in media, is shoveling away dirt from in front of them by using their massive forearms. Another, less commonly known method is using their huge teeth to bite away at the dirt and using their arms to push it underneath them. 

We know this because much research has been done into the kinematics of mole burrowing behavior. Those assessments showed the importance of the front and hind legs for mobility and moving the dirt around the mole’s body.

Mole Robot Progressively Burrowing.
Credit – Zhang et al.

Understanding kinematics is only the first step, and the team from Guangdong took the next step in building a prototype, which, admittedly, looks like a mole, though maybe not a cute and cuddly one. It has distinct forearms and hind legs, and its head is shaped like a mole’s, though given its lack of eyes, it almost looks more like a shell casing. Advanced electronics, power systems, and motors are hidden inside the robot’s body, allowing it to mimic the overall shape of a mole more fully.

To test their prototype, the researchers made a bed of plastic particles to simulate the size the robot would expect to see in lunar or Martian regolith. The robot successfully burrowed itself into the particles. However, it had difficulty moving forward and creating the kinds of tunnels that moles are famous for. That seemed to be because of more complex coordination between the forearms and hind limbs, which was modeled in the current iteration of the prototype.

That first prototype is a step toward a more complete model that might someday be used in another world. Future research would include developing techniques to allow it to burrow, crawl, run, and even swim, allowing the locomotion of this bot to become genuine”y “multi-mode,” as the paper describes it. It might be hard to find another world off Earth that would need all those capabilities, but as biomimetic design improves, expect to see more bots shaped like cuddly and furry things back home exploring new worlds.

Learn More:
Zhang et al – Mole-Inspired Robot Burrowing with Forelimbs forPlanetary Soil Exploration
UT – NASA Has Given Up on Trying to Deploy InSight’s Mole
UT – It Looks Like it’s Working! NASA InSight’s Mole is Making Progress Again Thanks to the Arm Scoop Hack
UT – InSight’s ‘Mole’ is Now Completely buried!

Lead Image:
Different orientations of the mole robot prototype.
Credit – Zhang et al.

The post Burrowing Mole-Bot Could Characterize Other Planet’s Soil appeared first on Universe Today.

Two canyons that splay out from a vast asteroid crater on the moon may have been quickly formed by chains of impacts that followed the initial one

A new understanding of our relationship with our "friendly" gut microbes shows they actually have a dark side and help cause ageing. Here's how to fight back

The Earth is bathed in high-energy particles. Known as cosmic rays, most of them are protons striking us at nearly the speed of light. Fortunately, the atmosphere protects us from any significant harm, though the particles can strike with so much energy that they create a shower of lower energy particles that do reach Earth’s surface. That’s actually how we can detect most cosmic rays.

We aren’t entirely sure what accelerates these particles so tremendously. There are phenomena that can do it. Nearby supernovae can generate lower energy cosmic rays, but the origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays is less understood. One clear source is quasars. These distant beacons are powered by supermassive black holes, which can generate tremendous jets of relativistic particles. Even across billions of light years, these particles can strike Earth with incredible energy. But the problem is that the number of particles quasars send our way isn’t enough to account for the number of cosmic rays we observe. So there must be another source as well.

The most obvious possibility is what are known as microquasars. These are exactly what they sound like. Whereas quasars are powered by supermassive black holes in the hearts of distant galaxies, microquasars are powered by stellar mass black holes in our own galaxy. Although they are tiny in comparison to quasars, they have very similar structures, with an accretion disk of material surrounding them and high-energy jets that stream away from their poles. Microquasars are so similar to their large cousins that astronomers can study them to better understand the evolution of quasars.

Not all stellar-mass black holes are microquasars. Regular quasars create jets by capturing material from the galaxy surrounding them, but microquasars need a companion star to pull material from. The amount of energy a microquasar can produce depends on the available material, so microquasars are often categorized by the mass of their companion star. For high-mass microquasars the black hole’s companion is several times the mass of the Sun, providing plenty of material to accelerate. Low-mass microquasars have small companion stars and therefore tend to be less energetic. One of the most energetic microquasars is SS 433, where the black hole’s companion is ten times the Sun’s mass.

Since high mass stars are much less common than low mass ones, high-mass microquasars are rare compared to low-mass microquasars. So there aren’t enough high-mass microquasars to account for all the cosmic rays we detect on Earth. But a new study finds that might not be a problem, since low-mass microquasars can also produce cosmic rays.

In this study, the team looked at a microquasar known as GRS 1915+105. It is a stellar-mass black hole with a companion star less massive than the Sun, so it shouldn’t be large enough to produce cosmic rays. However, using data from the Fermi satellite, the team found a source of gamma rays from the same location. The gamma-ray source is faint, so the team used 16 years of back data to confirm it. They found that some of the gamma rays have energies greater than 10 GeV, which is quite a kick. The gamma rays are likely produced when protons accelerated by the microquasar strike interstellar gas, generating high-energy photons. For this to work, the protons of the microquasar’s jets must have energies higher than 10 GeV. This puts them in the energy range of high-energy cosmic rays.

While this study shows that low-mass microquasars can produce high-energy cosmic rays, it doesn’t settle the question of whether this would solve the mystery of their source. Some low-mass microquasars don’t produce cosmic rays, so more study will be needed to determine why some microquasars are so energetic while others aren’t.

Reference: Martí-Devesa, Guillem, and Laura Olivera-Nieto. “Persistent GeV counterpart to the microquasar GRS 1915+ 105.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 979.2 (2025): L40.

The post Even Microquasars are Powerful Particle Accelerators appeared first on Universe Today.

Just to show you how, in the hiring process, New Zealand gives much more weight to identity than to merit, I enclose part of the job description for the position of Chief Operating Officer of Wellington Water, the water utility for the Greater Wellington region (Wellington, a lovely city, is the capital of New Zealand).  The document was sent to me by a Kiwi who, of course, wishes to remain anonymous (you are not allowed to point out things like this for fear of losing your job or being demoted).

At the end of the whole job description (I have it on pdf), there’s a “person specification”, which gives both the “essential” and the “desired” qualities of the person to be hired.  Note that experience in working in such a water system (“three waters” delivery refers to drinking water, storm water, and sewage) or having established a network in the water sector are only “desired” qualities (including a bachelor’s degree).

 But the essential qualities, part of which I’ve outlined in red, include “an understanding and knowledge of te ao Maori, tikanga and the principles relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.  Here’s the end of the ad:

I’ll explain the three terms. Teo ao Māori is defined this way by the University of Otago in NZ:

Te Ao Māori denotes the Māori World. While simple in definition, it is rich in meaning and vast in breadth and depth.

Here, Te Ao Māori refers to three key areas:

• te Reo Māori (Māori language)
• Tikanga Māori (protocols and customs)
• te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi)

Together, these three areas will provide you with a broad overview, and hopefully, a better understanding of Māori culture and Māori realities.

“Tikanga” is Māori social lore, defined this way:

Tikanga, or societal lore within Māori culture, can best be described as behavioural guidelines for living and interacting with others. Tikanga tends to be based on experience and learning that has been handed down through generations, also deeply rooted in logic and common sense. While concepts of tikanga are constant, their practice can vary between iwi and hapū. For example, the way in which a hapū greet and welcomemanuhiri (visitors) may differ from the way another hapū extends greetings to its manuhiri. However, both will ensure that they meet their responsibilities of manaakitanga (hospitality) to host and care for their visitors.

Participating in a different culture requires a base level of awareness and understanding, which takes both time and patience. If you are unfamiliar with tikanga, learn as much as you can from as many sources as possible; this will enrich your experiences with the culture and improve your ability to participate more fully, and with greater confidence . Remember, ‘When in Rome, do as Romans do!’

And, finally, to run the water system you have to know the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, regarded as a sacred document in New Zealand and used as the basis of the indigenous people’s attempt to gain power and equity.

Seriously, why do you even need these “qualifications” to run a water system?

Only if you know what’s going on in New Zealand can you see why the qualifications are given this way: identity—that is, Māori descent—is much more important than skills. As my correspondent wrote, quoted with permission:

So woke and DEI still rule in our capital city.  The Person Specification is also borderline racist, because it is unlikely that anyone other than a Maori would be deemed to be sufficiently steeped in te ao Maori and tikanga.

The correspondent added this:

Given the required skill set, it will not surprise you to learn that Wellington has the most poorly maintained and least efficient water supply and sewerage system of any major city in New Zealand, and routinely loses more than 50 per cent of the water stored in its supply dams because of an enormous number of leaks in the reticulation system.

When I asked for evidence that Wellington’s water system is indeed in bad shape, the reader sent me a bunch of stuff (too much to post), including this headline from the New Zealand Herald (check the photos, click to read):

As if that wasn’t enough indication of trouble, this is from the Wellington Scoop last May (click to read):

From Wellington Water‘s own website, highlighting the problems; click to read:

Their “story” (again on their website; click to read):

An important aspect of Wellington Water’s story is “te mana o te wai”, essentially meaning “the spirit of the water”. And that, of course, can be divined only by Maori.

Bolding below is mine. Note the prevalence of indigenous concepts involving superstition: 

Te Mana o te Wai

As a water services provider, on behalf of its shareholding councils, Wellington Water is required to give effect to te mana o te wai. Te mana o te wai is an expression in te reo Māori of the essential health of water, its significance to Māori, and the obligations everyone has towards water. Te mana o te wai is embedded as a fundamental concept in the management of water under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, and giving effect to te mana o te wai is a requirement of water services providers under the Water Services Act, overseen through Taumata Arowai.

Wellington Water carries out this duty by working with iwi mana whenua within its area of operations to understand and give effect to their expressions of te mana o te wai. This includes the aspiration to begin long term strategy and planning processes from a position of understanding iwi priorities, through to working with iwi  [“iwi” are Māori tribes] on service delivery.

To further support this work, Wellington Water carries out ongoing training for staff on the principles of Te Tiriti, in te reo Māori, and capability building in te ao Māori me nga tikanga Māori. [“The Māori world and the Māori culture”]

“Mana” is, according to the Māori, a supernatural force in a person, place or object”that pervades all objects and gives them “power, prestige, and authority”.

New Zealanders of all stripes should be embarrassed that they so blatantly put ancestry above merit. Perhaps if they prized merit more, the Wellington Water system would not be in so much trouble.

When spiders self-amputate two of their legs, they quickly adjust their running gait so they can return to full speed

Many countries have made it illegal to possess nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, and research now shows the drug can be picked up in someone's breath

Mark Sturtevant is back with some lovely insect photos (he got a bit excited about one of the wasps).  His captions and IDs are indented (he’s also provided links), and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. There’s one snail at the end.

Here is another set of critter pictures. All of these were taken in area parks near home, which is in eastern Michigan.

Readers may remember that my last post finished with pictures from the Magic Field, where large Cicada Killer wasps were provisioning their burrows with paralyzed cicadas. These wasps often concentrate burrows in the same area, probably because they favor the same soil conditions. It was noted that a smaller Mystery Wasp would frequent the area as well, perhaps because it too favored those conditions. I will start with those wasps, but their introduction will take a while to explain. Bear with me.

The blackish Mystery Wasps were common sights in Cicada Killer Town, running quickly on the ground and frenetically searching in various nooks and crannies. They would investigate my shoes, backpack, and I’d even see them go into the cavernous Cicada Killer burrows. What were they? There was zero chance to get pictures since they were dialed at “11” for hyperactivity. Oh, well, I thought.

But one day I saw one of the wasps was carrying an object under its body. I approached, and the wasp dropped the object and retreated only a couple feet. It was a field cricket, paralyzed, and its hind legs had been removed. This no doubt was to make it easier to carry and to stuff down a burrow somewhere. Such is the Economy of Nature, as Darwin would say. But to me this was a valuable clue about the Mystery Wasps. I put the cricket down, and the wasp immediately ran up and carried away its prize. Back home, I searched for “cricket hunting wasp” in BugGuide (which is my go-to place for identifying arthropods online), and bingo. It was the Steel-blue Cricket Hunter (Chlorion aerarium). From the pictures therein one could see that the wasp was a thing of great beauty! My discouragement about getting pictures turned to determination. I was going to get pictures, even if I had to cheat a little.

I returned to the Magic Field with the trusty butterfly net and quickly caught one of the wasps. Back at home again, I set up my light box which is a large enclosure made with foam board and netting across the front. I often use this to photograph flying insects when the need arises.

A favorite trick for getting an active subject to sit for pictures is to give them food or water. A drop of diluted honey definitely did the trick this time, as it made my hungry but hyperactive friend settle right down so that I could take pictures shown below.

Excuse me, but this is where ‘ol Mark has to completely lose it for a moment.

LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL CREATURE!! JUST LOOK AT IT!!!

Ok, sorry about that. The next pictures include a frontal view, and there you can see that she has impressive mandibles. This is typical of solitary wasps that carry prey to their lair. 

Next up are more insects. I always pass a field of sunflowers on the way to one of the area parks. But once I stopped to try for pictures. Here is a Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens) in a nice composition.

I think it was on that same outing that I found this this Nessus Sphinx Moth caterpillar (Amphion floridensis) that had been parasitized by what are probably Braconid wasps. Those are wasp cocoons anchored to the back of the caterpillar, which was quite moribund and soon would die.

Another caterpillar is shown in the next picture. This is the larva of the Beautiful Wood Nymph (Eudryas grata). What I think is rather interesting about this colorful cat is that it shows false head mimicry, where its rear end is presented as its head while the actual head is kept tucked away. “Beautiful Wood Nymph” does not conjure up what the moth looks like, as it is a bird dropping mimic, complete with splatter effects as shown in the link. Bird dropping mimicry has its advantages since one only has to sit out in plain sight.

Speaking of bird dropping mimics, here is another example. This is the young larva of the Eastern Giant Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio cresphontes), our largest butterfly. Unlike the previous example that resembles dried out bird poo, the oeuvre of the Giant Swallowtail cat is to look like the shiny fresh stuff. The caterpillar will grow to a size that is not so passable as a bird dropping, so once it reaches its last larval instar they look more like a scary  snake mimic, as the linked pictures show.

Next up is one of our Tiger Moths. There are several similar-looking species, but this is the Harnessed Tiger Moth (Apantesis phalerata).

Moving on to beetles, here is a pair of mating v (Harmonia axyridis). I might not bother taking this picture, but it provided an opportunity to show something a bit different. Those yellow thingies decorating the elytra are the fruiting bodies of entomophagous fungi that I suppose will doom these beetles.

To expand on this, one can hardly do better than Ze Frank who made an entertaining episode on fungi that parasitize insects, and here it is.  Everyone MUST watch it. It starts out with something awful, and then it gets a lot worse. What fun!

Next up is a brightly colored Swamp Milkweed Beetle, Labidomera clivicollis.

The restroom at one of the parks had numerous moth flies sitting on the tiles. These very small flies have a larval stage that feeds on – oh, I don’t know, presumably organic matter and algae. So the adult flies are common in restrooms. The species is Clogmia albipunctata, and I am rather bummed with the picture since in this otherwise good focus stack I managed to not focus on the interesting antennae. [JAC: Note how closely this fly resembles a moth!]

And for closure, here are a pair of terrestrial snails that I put together for pictures. They are Brown-lipped snails, Cepaea nemoralis. I had learned that they are native to Europe, but are now common over much of the U.S.

Emmy Noether was hailed as a mathematical genius in her own time. And her theorem on symmetry is still driving new discoveries in particle physics and quantum computing today

Designing research studies to determine what is going on inside the minds of animals is extremely challenging. The literature is littered with past studies that failed to properly control for all variables and thereby overinterpreted the results. The challenge is that we cannot read the minds of animals, and they cannot communicate directly to us using language. We have to infer what is going on in their minds from their behavior, and inference can be tricky.

One specific question is whether or not our closest ancestors have a “theory of mind”. This is the ability to think about what other creatures are thinking and feeling. Typical humans do this naturally – we know that other people have minds like our own and we can think strategically about the implications of what other people think, how to predict their behavior based upon this, and how to manipulate the thoughts of other people in order to achieve our ends.

Animal research over the last century or so has been characterized by assumptions that some cognitive ability is unique to humans, only to find that this ability exists in some animals, at least in a precursor form. This makes sense, as we have evolved from other animals, most of our abilities likely did not come out of nowhere but evolved from more basic precursors.

But it is still undeniably true that humans are unique in the animal kingdom for our sophisticated cognitive abilities. Our language, abstraction, problem solving, and technological ability is significantly advanced beyond any other animal. We therefore cannot just assume that even our closest relatives possess any specific cognitive ability that humans have, and therefore this is a rich target of research.

The specific question of whether or not our ape relatives have a theory of mind remains an open research controversy. Previous research has suggested that they might, but all of this research was designed around the question of whether or not another individual had some specific piece of knowledge. Does the subject ape know that another ape or a human knows a piece of information? This research suggests that they might, but there remains a controversy over how to interpret the results – again, what can we infer from the animal’s behavior?

A new study seeks to inform this discussion by adding another type of research – looking at whether or not a subject ape, in this case a bonobo, understands that a human researcher lacks information. This is exploring the theory of mind from the perspective of another creatures ignorance rather than their knowledge. The advantage here, from a research perspective, is that such a theory of mind would require that the bonobo simultaneously knows the relevant piece of information and that a human researcher does not know this information – that their mental map of reality is different from another creature’s mental map of reality.

The setup is relatively simple. The bonobo sits across from a human researcher, and at a 90 degree angle from a “game master”. The game master places a treat under one of several cups in full view of the bonobo and the human researcher. They then wait 5 seconds and then the researcher reveals the treat and gives it to the bonobo. This is the training phase – letting the bonobo know that there is a treat there and they will be given the treat by the human researcher after a delay.

In the test phase an opaque barrier is placed between the human researcher and the cups, and this barrier either has a window or it doesn’t. So in some conditions the human researcher knows where the treat is and in others they don’t. The research question is – will the bonobo point to the cup more often and more quickly when the human researcher does not know where the treat is?

The results were pretty solid – the bonobos in multiple tests pointed to the cup with the treat far more often, quickly, and insistently when the human researcher did not know where the treat was. They also ran the experiment with no researcher, to make sure the bonobo was not just reaching for the treat, and again they did not point to the cup when there was no human researcher to communicate to.

No one experiment like this is ever definitive, and it’s the job of researchers to think of other and more simple ways to explain the results. But the behavior of the bonobos in this experimental setup matched what was predicted if they indeed have at least a rudimentary theory of mind. They seem to know when the human researcher knew where the treat was, independent of the bonobo’s own knowledge of where the treat was.

This kind of behavior makes sense for an intensely social animal, like bonobos. Having a theory of mind about other members of your community is a huge advantage on cooperative behavior. Hunting in particular is an obvious scenario where coordination ads to success (bonobos do, in fact, hunt).

This will not be the final word on this contentious question, but does move the needle one click in the direction of concluding that apes likely have a theory of mind. We will see if these results replicate, and what other research designs have to say about this question.

The post Do Apes Have a Theory of Mind first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

What really happened — and what didn't — in the 2024 telecom cyberattack.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If confirmed, Kennedy will keep trashing science and will continue exploiting the trashed science he helps create for his own benefit.

The post The Trashing of Science by Robert F Kennedy Jr first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A groundbreaking study on the freezing of water droplets suspended in air sheds light on a key process in Earth's water cycle: the transformation of supercooled water into ice.

A new platform for studying neuroinflammatory diseases, utilizing advanced 3D bioprinting technology has been developed.

This Hubble image shows a supernova named SN 2022aajn in a distant galaxy about 600 million light-years away with the unwieldy name of WISEA J070815.11+210422.3. However, the obtuse yet scientifically descriptive names aren’t what’s important.

What’s important is that SN 2022aajn is a Type 1a supernova, also known as a standard candle, and this image is part of a critical effort in cosmology.

Standard candles are an important part of the Cosmic Distance Ladder (CDL). Astronomers use the CDL to determine accurate distances to objects at extreme distances from us. There are different types of standard candles, though Type 1a supernovae are considered the most reliable. What do all standard candles have in common?

They have a known intrinsic luminosity. That means that they emit the same amount of energy across all wavelengths in all directions. So no matter from what angle it’s measured, its the same luminosity. For clarity, our Sun has intrinsic luminosity.

Astronomers compare a standard candle’s intrinsic luminosity with its apparent or observed brightness. Note the different terms “luminosity” and “brightness.” Brightness depends on both an object’s luminosity and how that luminosity is diminished by distance and any intervening matter like dust.

The Cosmic Distance Ladder is ubiquitous in cosmology and does a good job. However, it still faces some problems. The primary problem has to do with calibration: How can astronomers determine what a candle’s absolute magnitude is? How can they accurately describe the class of objects called Type 1a SN so that they can recognize all of them? And how can they find enough of them at well-known distances in order to determine their intrinsic luminosity with extreme accuracy?

The Cosmic Distance Ladder starts out using parallax, but it has its limits. Astronomers rely on standard candles beyond paralax. Image Credit: By ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49212250

This Hubble image is part of the effort. As part of an observing program, the Hubble is observing 100 known Type 1a supernovae to more finely calibrate our understanding of standard candles and their distances.

The program’s name gives a good idea of its goal. It’s named “Reducing Type Ia Supernova Distance Biases by Separating Reddening and Intrinsic Color.” Prof. Ryan Foley of the University of California at Santa Cruz is the Principal Investigator.

If Type 1a supernova exploded in a Universe without any dust, astronomers’ work would be simplified. But, of course, they dont. They explode in galaxies with their own dust. There can also be a lot of intergalactic dust between us and distant SN. All that dust reddens the light from the supernova, making its intrinsic luminosity more difficult to determine.

Type 1a Supernovae occur in binary systems where one star is a massive white dwarf. As its companion ages and swells, the white dwarf draws material away from the companion onto its surface. Eventually, the white dwarf explodes. Image Credit: By NASA, ESA and A. Feild (STScI); vectorisation by chris ? – http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/star/supernova/2004/34/image/d/, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8666262

In observations, the reddening from dust gets tangled up with the reddening from redshift. Dust in the intergalactic medium is about the same size as the wavelength of blue light. The dust absorbs and scatters the light from distant objects, making their light more red by the time it reaches us. Professor Foley’s observing program is an effort to “remove” intergalactic dust from our observations.

“Accurate distance measurements and unbiased cosmological constraints from Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) rely on proper correction for host-galaxy dust reddening that may attenuate the observed SN brightness,” Foley and his co-researchers write. To get around this, astronomers use what’s called a “reddening law.” “A correction is made by comparing observed and intrinsic color, and using a reddening law to determine extinction,” they write.

But reddening laws can be difficult to work with. It’s a delicate matter. “This procedure is nontrivial since a SN’s intrinsic color correlates with its luminosity in a manner nearly indistinguishable from the effects of dust reddening at optical wavelengths,” Foley writes in the description of the observing campaign.

Astronomers use a somewhat simplified way to determine how red a distant supernova is by treating the reddening from both dust and distance the same. “The current standard for measuring SN distances treats both fainter-redder relations as a single SN color law,” Foley explains. However, this introduces a bias into measurements since both causes are unlikely to contribute equally and uniformly to the reddening.

“This issue is currently SN cosmology’s largest systematic uncertainty and if not addressed will prevent future cosmology experiments from meeting their goals,” Foley explains. He also says that the error can be as large as about 6%. That’s a lot when measuring objects that are hundreds of millions of light-years away, and even much further than that.

How can astronomers solve this problem? By getting better data and more of it. That’s the motivation for Foley’s campaign, which tries to get around the problem by observing across multiple wavelengths, something the Hubble is built to do.

“The path to breaking the degeneracy between SN color and dust reddening is to extend observations to the UV and NIR, where the dust and intrinsic color, respectively, dominate the observed color,” the observing program’s description states.

The researchers will try to get around the SN cosmology problem by using the Hubble to survey 100 Type Ia supernovae in seven wavelength bands from ultraviolet to near-infrared. The leading image is a combination of image data from four infrared wavelengths, since IR passes through dust more easily than either UV or visible light. The researchers will then compare the brightness of the SNe across the wavelengths and disentangle the distance reddening effect from the dust reddening effect.

We’re accustomed to the Hubble’s “eye candy” images that have been gracing web pages and magazines for decades now. They’ve transformed our understanding of nature. But the telescope’s purely scientific side is where some of its real transformative power lies.

An accurate cosmic distance ladder is integral to cosmology. By helping scientists determine accurate distances to standard candles, the Hubble is helping develop a more accurate cosmic distance ladder, paving the way for a better understanding of the Universe.

The post The Hubble Space Telescope is a Powerful Science Instrument Despite its Age appeared first on Universe Today.

It seems everyone is talking about the Moon and everyone wants to get their foot in the door with the renewed passion for lunar exploration. ESA too have jumped into the lunar landing game having just signed a contract with Thales Alenia Space to build its Argonaut Lunar Lander. Compared to other landers, it will be unique in its ability to handle the harsh night and day conditions on the lunar surface. Each mission is planned to have a 5 year life and will have a standard descent and cargo module but with different payloads determined by the Moon. If all goes to plan then the first lander will fly in 2031. 

The Moon, Earth’s only natural satellite, is a celestial body that has fascinated us for centuries. It orbits Earth at an average distance of about 384,400 kilometres and is a barren, rocky surface covered in craters, mountains, and vast plains of solidified lava. Its lack of atmosphere results in extreme temperature fluctuations, with daytime temperatures reaching up to 127°C and nighttime temperatures plummeting as low as -173°C. 

The occultation of Aldebaran by the Moon in 2016. Credit: Andrew Symes.

Since the Apollo missions of the 1960’s lunar exploration has become a central part of space science.  The first major milestone was achieved in 1959 when the Soviet Luna 2 mission became the first human-made object to impact the Moon. This was followed by Luna 9, which successfully landed and transmitted images from the surface. This was followed by Apollo 11 and humanity’s first steps on another celestial body. Since then robotic missions like China’s Chang’e program, India’s Chandrayaan missions, and NASA’s Artemis program have aimed to study lunar water ice, geology, and sustainability for long-term human presence. 

Apollo 11 launch using the Saturn V rocket

The European Space Agency have got in on the act now with their plans to build Argonaut, an autonomous lunar lander. It will launch on regular missions to the moon and can be used for delivering rovers, infrastructure, instrumentation or resources to the Moon for lunar explorers. The lander will compose of the descent module, the payload and the cargo platform which will act as the interface between the lander and the payload and will integrate operations between the two. 

ESA signed their contract with Thales Alenia Space in Italy, a joint venture and prominent player in the global space market. They have been delivering high-tech solutions for navigation, telecommunication and Earth observation for over 40 years. They will be leading the European group to build the descent module with the remaining core team from the Group’s UK and France. 

Artist’s impession of the Lunar Gateway with the Orion spacecraft docked on the left side. Credit: ESA

Once complete, Argonaut will become a key part of ESA’s lunar exploration strategy and will integrate with their Lunar Link on the new lunar Gateway. This new international space station is planned to orbit the Moon as part of the NASA Artemis programme. Argonaut will become one of Europe’s main contributions to international lunar exploration as nations work together to establish permanent presence on our nearest celestial neighbour. 

Source : Argonaut: a first European lunar lander

The post ESA is Building its Own Lunar Lander appeared first on Universe Today.

Seven years ago, researchers caught an unexpected phenomenon on film: A pool of red dye that somehow 'knew' how to solve a maze filled with milk. Propelled forward by a couple drops of soap, it unerringly found its way, avoiding dead ends and even making 90 degree turns in its path toward the exit.