November 11, 20243 min readWorker Protections for Extreme Heat in Peril after Trumps ElectionA Biden administration proposal that would require employers toprovide cooling measures under extreme heat conditions may be scuttled by the incoming Trump administrationBy Ariel Wittenberg & E&E NewsA worker adjusts his helmet on a construction site in Los Angeles during a heatwave in July 2024. Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | The return of former President Donald Trump to the White House puts at risk new heat protections for workers that were proposed over the summer by the Biden administration, say workplace advocates.Trump on the campaign trail never directly addressed the proposal from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which would force employers to provide their workers with water and cool places to rest when temperatures are high.But many of Trumps Republican allies in Congress panned the idea when it was announced, including House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.). Westerman called it one of the most idiotic things theyve ever done and said the heat protection rules ignored the realities of outdoor work.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.During Trumps first term, OSHA stopped work on many health regulations, including one slated to be proposed in October 2017 that would have forced the healthcare industry to prepare for an airborne pandemic such as COVID-19.Outright killing the heat protection proposal, however, would be difficult for the incoming Trump administration because of the laws governing the way OSHA issues public health standards, said Jordan Barab, who was OSHAs deputy assistant secretary of Labor for occupational safety and health during the Obama administration.But Barab said theres nothing that requires the next administration to finalize the rule which could put peoples lives in danger.If the Trump administration does not move forward, people will die, Barab said. I dont think theres any doubt about that.Heat killed at least 815 workers between 1992 and 2017 and seriously injured some 70,000 more, according to federal data. And health advocates say the toll is likely to increase as temperatures rise with global warming.OSHA has been under pressure to protect workers from heat for decades, starting with a 1986 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending heat standards.More recently, congressional Democrats put pressure on the agency at the end of the Trump administration with a bill co-sponsored by now-Vice President Kamala Harris that would have required the agency to issue a rule.But it was only this past summer that OSHA finally proposed the regulation which, if finalized, could protect some 35 million workers from extreme heat.Groups representing some of those workers now fear it wont be enacted.President Trump would have to actively work to undo that progress intentionally putting workers including many who no doubt voted for him in harms way, said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers. Whether these workers are killed by extreme heat on the job should not be a partisan issue.In the absence of federal action, workers and their advocates would have to lobby the 29 states that enforce worker safety rules to enact their own heat protections, Barab said.He added that state action could create a situation similar to the history of the right to know rule, which requires employers to inform workers about the hazardous properties of the chemicals they work with. In 1981, the Reagan administration froze work on such regulations that began under President Jimmy Carter.After labor advocates successfully convinced some 15 states to adopt their own rules over two years, OSHA was forced to publish its own right to know rule to standardize requirements across jurisdictions in 1983.Six states currently have heat protections for workers, but others are resistant to the idea. Texas and Florida recently passed laws blocking municipalities from requiring water and rest breaks for workers.One state that has moved forward with greater protections is Maryland, which enacted its heat standards in September spurred in part by the heat stroke death of a Baltimore sanitation worker.If theres any silver lining, its that there is no doubt that climate change is a problem, and that it is likely to be a record hot spring and summer again. These rising temperatures are not easy to hide, nor are the inevitable workplace deaths, Barab said. So its possible there will be some pressure to do something at the state and federal level.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

OpinionNovember 11, 20246 min readI Destroyed a Car to Explore Some Music MythsTwo years of experimentation taught a Nashville guitarist not every musical myth makes senseBy Jim LillJim Lill playing his guitar made from a car. Jim LillThis is the story of how (and why) I had to turn my car into a guitar and play it.I'm a country musician in Nashville. But right now I'm best known for changing a lot of people's minds about traditionally held and industry-backed opinions regarding what factors affect the sound of an electric guitar. I did it by myself, at home, and I'm not even a scientist.Its been an interesting journey, and I think everyone can learn a little from it about the power of experimenting even for nonscientists like me.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.When a guitarist plays a note, it travels electrically through all of the cables and gear until it gets recorded (or put through a PA system) and a listener can listen to it. The final sound of the note is called the guitar tone and its part of what makes different types of music sound different. There are many, many competing ideas about what affects guitar tone. The trouble is, most of the sounds that inspired me to play music in the first place were created by using a lot of prohibitively expensive vintage gear. But I wasnt born rich, have no industry bloodlines, and dont have a grandpa kept this old guitar under his bed since 1952 story to tell, so I was always worried that there was a financial barrier between me and the kinds of sounds I want to be able to make. It would be an enormous bummer if I spent all of this time honing my craft and still couldnt get that sound to come out of my fingertips because I didnt have the right equipment.Initially, the same as most kids, I was a sponge. I knew nothing, so I could absorb everything. I voraciously read anything had that to do with guitar, and collected tidbits like talismans that I superstitiously thought would help ward off bad guitar tone. I figured if I could just collect all of the individual bits of gear knowledge from the magazines and Internet forums, then like puzzle pieces it would all eventually fit together, forming a complete picture, and I could finally make my guitar playing sound like I wanted it to, wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. But that isnt what happened.Instead the next step of this journey was dissonance. I still sounded terrible about half the time and couldnt do anything about it. The temptation was to blame the venue, or the recording engineer, but I had a feeling my beliefs about guitar tone were off the mark. So I kept diving in and learning more, but I wasnt an empty sponge anymore. Some of the new things I was learning conflicted with the old ones I had already accepted. I tried to figure out which sources to trust, and which to take with a grain of salt, but no matter how I tried to sort the facts, it wasn't making sense and I wasn't sounding any better.The last leg of this journey was hard work. Instead of relying on outside information I started from scratch and collected the data myself. I set the goal of figuring out why my favorite guitar player sounded like he did when he recorded my favorite music. His name is J.T. Corenflos, and he was an under-the-radar session musician in Nashville, known by his peers for his exceptional guitar tone and responsible for a lot of the guitar you heard on the radio from the 1990s until his death in 2020. He had a legendary custom-made baby blue guitar that he used on countless hit singles, and the last thing I asked him a couple weeks before he died was Whats that blue body made out of? and he replied Alder.Alder is a medium-density hardwood that Leo Fender started making into guitar bodies around 1956. My main guitar is ash, not alder. I needed to know if this body wood difference could partly explain why I still couldnt get J.T.s sound. The traditional belief is that all of these things make a difference. Alder sounds different from ash, and they both sound different from mahogany (what Gibson guitars are often made from), and maple fretboards sound different than rosewood fretboards, and the way the neck is joined to the body changes the sound, and even the type and thickness of lacquer finish will alter the tone of the guitar. Therefore, if you took a professionally built guitar with an ash body and a maple neck and compared it to a set of guitar strings strung up across the gap between a bench and a shelf, they would have to sound different, even if they had the same electronics. So I did exactly that, and this is what that actually sounds like:But what about guitar amplifiers? I always learned that vacuum tubes, tube biases, rectifiers and component quality were the main reasons an amp sounds like it does (even if I didn't understand what those things were), and that if you took expensive flagship model tube amps of the major legendary brands like Fender and Marshall and compared them to an amplifier made of out an old tackle box, built by an amateur with solid state electronics on breadboards, they would have to sound different, even if some of the points in the circuit were kept the same. So I did exactly that, and this is what that actually sounds like:But what about speaker cabinets? I've read about solid pine resonating differently from birch ply, and different joinery methods producing different tones, and certainly if you had a professionally built heavy duty speaker cabinet and compared it to something made of styrofoam and caulk, they would have to sound different, even if they had mostly the same geometry. So I did exactly that, and this is what that actually sounds like:But what about microphones? My favorite music was recorded at Ocean Way Nashville with expensive vintage mics, and Ive been told that the types of tubes and quality of the components and the iron in the output transformers all contribute to the sound of the mic. So if you compared one of Ocean Ways vintage Telefunken ELA M 251 tube microphones with an amateur microphone built out of a pop can and a cheap circuit found on Craigslist, they would have to sound different, even if the capsules (the part that turns moving air into electricity) had a similar frequency response. So I did exactly that, and this is what that actually sounds like:This journey has gotten traction on the Internet, and some people have told me they're still torn between my tests and years of accepted tradition. Why should they believe me when people with more experience say something different?Heres the thing: I never asked you to believe me. I don't need to. The tests speak for themselves. If you read It sounds like X when you do this, and then someone actually does it and it sounds like Y, then it sounds like Y. Hopefully you get as much out of this as I have.But like I said up top, this journey isnt about convincing anyone else of anything. It's about making music, and answering questions about making music that couldn't be answered any other way.Last time I took my car to the mechanic, he said he wasn't going to fix it for me anymore. It was all rusted underneath, and he told me I shouldn't put another dollar into it. So I knew what I needed to do. I needed to string it up across the windshield and play some music on it. People say that a car shouldnt be able to sound like a guitar. It's not ash, alder or mahogany. But I did that. And this is what that actually sounds like:This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

November 11, 20246 min readThe Lucy Fossils Extraordinary Journey to Becoming an Icon of Human EvolutionThe 3.2-million-year-old human ancestor known as Lucy rose to fame through an incredible combination of circumstancesBy Bernard WoodThe 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as Lucy is the most famous fossil in the world. Dave Einsel/Getty ImagesFifty years ago researchers working in the Afar region of Ethiopia recovered a remarkable fossil of an ancient relative of ours. This specimen of a female hominin, or member of the human family, soon became the most famous fossil in the world. If youve ever had even a passing interest in human origins, you have probably heard of her. She goes by the name Lucy.One of the reasons Lucy is special is that she is a recognizable skeleton, albeit an incomplete one. Another is that the skeleton is enough like our own for researchers to think Lucys ilk could be a close relativeand possibly even an ancestorof modern humans. But Lucy is just one of many hominin fossils that have come to light since Charles Darwin surmised in 1871 that humans originated in Africa. Why does she play such an outsized role in the public imaginationand in the investigation of human origins? The answer lies as much in Lucys value as a symbol of humanitys deep evolutionary history in Africa as in her intrinsic worth as a source of evidence about human evolution.Lets page back to Lucys era. Nearly 3.2 million years ago a diminutive human ancestor with a mix of humanlike and apelike traits was living in the Horn of Africa on a grassy landscape dotted with trees and shrubs. She was part of a richer community of primates and a much more impressive variety of mammals than live in that region today. There is no reason to think that Lucy was special in any way during her relatively short life. What made her special was what happened to her after she died.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.When an animal dies on an open landscape, away from a lakeshore or stream channels, the soft tissuesmuscles and ligamentsare consumed by scavengers large and small. The bones of the skeleton soon separate and break up, and in a remarkably short time, only fragments of the skeleton are left. There is nothing recognizable to fossilize. If the animal dies close enough to a lake or stream, there is a very small chance that one or more of its bones and teeth will be covered by a layer of sediment. Not only will the bones be physically protected by the sediment from further damage, but also, under the right circumstances, they will be hardened by chemicals in the sediment. This process, called fossilization, gradually converts bones and teeth into bone- and tooth-shaped rocks.But even if all this occurs, we are still a long way from that individuals remains becoming a famous fossil. For that to happen, the sedimentary rock in which the bones were entombed needs to be exposed by erosion, a team of scientists and trained fossil hunters has to find those fossilized bones before they deteriorate beyond recognition, and the team must have the extensive resources needed to recover the many bits and pieces of the specimen that have been scattered across the landscape by the elements. The exceedingly slim odds of the bones and teeth of a single individual being preserved, fossilized, exposed, discovered and recovered make the Lucy skeleton an exceptional discovery. The number of such skeletons in the early stages of the human fossil record can be counted on the fingers of one hand.Another reason Lucy is exceptional is that among the various regions of her skeleton that are preserved are substantial parts of the bones that reveal the length of the limbs: the humerus and radius in the upper limb and the femur and tibia in the lower limb. One of the biggest differences between modern humans and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, is the relative length of the limbs. Whereas modern humans have long legs and short arms, chimpanzees and bonobos have long arms and short legs. Chimpanzees and bonobos also have relatively long forearms.All four of Lucys main limb long bones are damaged or missing parts of the shaft, so their maximum length has to be estimated. Even so, enough of each bone is preserved to make it pretty clear that Lucys limb proportionsand thus the limb proportions of Australopithecus afarensis, the species to which she belongsare closer to those of chimpanzees and bonobos than they are to those of modern humans. This is not to say that Lucy moved around like a chimpanzee or a bonobo: other fossils belonging to A. afarensis provide compelling evidence that the species walked upright on two legs. But it was practicing a form of bipedal locomotion that differed in significant ways from the bipedalism used by modern humans and our immediate predecessors. Whereas we Homo sapiens take longish strides when we walk, A. afarensis had a more lumbering gait because its feet were farther apart.Some experts think Lucy belongs on the line leading to modern humans, adding to her cachet. But ancestry is difficult to demonstrate and almost impossible to prove with the patchy fossil record we have for early hominins. I know the difference between my ancestorsmy parents, grandparents and great-grandparentsand my nonancestral close relatives, such as my uncles and aunts, and if I was not sure about anyones status, I could check using their birth certificates. There are no birth certificates in the fossil record, so we have to use shared morphology instead. The principle is that the more physical traits one species shares with another, the more closely related the species are, assuming that the morphology they share only evolved once in a recent common ancestor of the two species. We call this commonality shared derived morphology. But to return to my own family history, although I look more like my parents than a total stranger, once you go several generations into the past, my resemblance to my ancestors is not so obvious.The fly in the ointment when using shared morphology to reconstruct relationships is a phenomenon known as homoplasy, in which different lineages evolve shared morphology independently rather than jointly inheriting it from a common ancestor. In this case, shared morphology is telling us more about shared environmental challenges than it is about shared evolutionary history. Still, even if A. afarensis is not our ancestor, it is very likely to be a close relative.Lucy was found in 1974, almost exactly half a century after anatomist and anthropologist Raymond Dart had recognized the significance of a skull of a juvenile hominin found in Taung, South Africa. For three decades after the discovery of the Taung juvenile, the quest for human origins focused on southern Africa. That focus changed in the 1960s when paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey began to discover hominin fossils at Olduvai (now Oldupai) Gorge, in Tanzania, some of which looked as if they could even belong to our own genus, Homo. By 1974 that trickle of fossil discoveries in eastern Africa had become a torrent, with most of the finds coming from sites on the eastern shore of what is now known as Lake Turkana.Not only had paleoanthropologists turned their attention from southern to eastern Africa, but the age profile of the most successful fossil hunters was shifting from senior researchers such as Louis and Mary Leakey, Phillip Tobias and Clark Howell to field workers such as Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson, who were even younger than Dart was when he recognized the significance of the Taung skull. Richard Leakey and Johanson were half the age of their predecessorsand telegenic to boot. Every high schooler or college student interested in human origins could imagine themselves in their place.It was brilliant of Lucys discoverer, Johanson, to name the partial skeleton after a character in the popular Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Lucy ODonnell was a childhood friend of John Lennons son, Julian Lennon, who brought a drawing home from school one day and said it was Lucy in the sky with diamonds, inspiring the song. The name Lucy was a user-friendly way of referring to the A. afarensis skeleton that had the official catalog number A.L. 288-1. And the association with ODonnell injected vitality and relatability into a collection of bone-shaped rocks.But many things have changed since Lucy was named in the mid-1970s. For one, scientists are now more aware of the implications of the names given to fossils. Like John Lennon, Lucy ODonnell was from Liverpool, England. Much of the Beatles success was based on its members authenticity as Liverpudlians. By the time of the Beatles, Liverpool was in economic decline, but in its heyday in the 18th century, it was the preeminent port in the U.K. The economic foundation of Liverpools prosperity came from the major role its merchants played in the trade of enslaved African people.Lucy the fossil has another nickname. In Ethiopia she is known as Dinkinesh, which means you are marvelous in one of the countrys official languages, Amharic. As iconic as the name Lucy is, maybe it is time we all started to use Dinkinesh to refer to this extraordinary member of the human family.

November 11, 2024Mud Bath Really Does Make Baseballs Easier to GripDroughts in 48 of 50 U.S. states, evidence of microplastics mucking up wastewater recycling and the science of a baseball mud bath in this weeks news roundup. Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanSUBSCRIBE TO Science QuicklyApple | Spotify | RSSRachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman.First, I just want to say that I believe radical optimism is going to be an important part of our tool kit in the months to come. So Im going to do my best to bring you stories that show how innovation can help change the world for the better. Were going to keep introducing you to brilliant people who are working to solve problems that seem insurmountable. Were going to keep taking you to places youve never been to learn things that broaden your horizons and offer you new ways of seeing the world. Were also going to try to provide you with joy and levity and that indescribable wow, gee whiz feeling as often as we can because we know thats so important.Okay. So. Lets kick off the week by catching up on some of the latest science news.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The worlds first wooden satellite arrived at the International Space Station last Tuesday. The Japanese spacecraft is just four inches square. As Ive mentioned before on Science Quickly, the rapidly growing number of metal satellites in orbit pose a real threat to our planets ozone layer. Thats because spacecraft made mostly of aluminum produce hazardous aluminum oxide when they burn up in the atmosphere, which is an inevitable part of their life cycle. Ill spare you the inorganic chemistry, but those aluminum oxide particles can kick off reactions between ozone and chlorine in the Earths atmosphere. LignoSat contains electronic sensors, but its body is made of magnolia wood. Researchers hope to deploy the cubesat from the ISS and collect data as it orbits the planet for several months.Speaking of space: last Wednesday, NASAs Parker Solar Probe took a crucial step toward making a record-breaking pass of the sun. On December 24, the probe is expected to pass within 3.86 million miles of the solar surfacebreaking its own 2023 record of 4.51 million miles.Parker has been breaking records since its launch in 2018. That year the probe passed within 26.55 million miles of the sun's surface, surpassing a record set in the 1970s.Last Wednesday the probe flew by Venus to use the planets gravity to propel it into its new orbit. NASA says the December solar pass will bring the spacecraft close enough to pass inside a solar eruption, like a surfer diving under a crashing ocean wave.Back on Earth things are looking pretty dry. The U.S. Drought Monitor reports that nearly every state in the country is experiencing droughtAlaska and Kentucky are the only exceptions. From October 23 through 29 more than 150 million people around the U.S. were in a drought, which marked a roughly 34 percent increase over the week before.Climate change is contributing to drought in more ways than you might think. While some areas are seeing less rain in generalwhich of course creates arid conditionsothers are getting most or all of their rain all at once.Theres a limit to how much water soil can absorb, so an excessive dump doesnt necessarily leave behind extra moisture for us to rely on during not-so-rainy days. Instead that water becomes what we call runoff, which flows across the ground until it enters a stream or another body of water.Climate change seems to be making these big bursts of precipitation more common. So when it rains, it pours, and it floods, and were still liable to end up in a drought down the line. With such wide swaths of the country in drought right now, its not a bad idea to take water-conserving measures no matter how things look where you live. Consider taking shorter showers, and make sure you turn off the faucet while you brush your teeth and scrub dishes.Speaking of water, heres a news story to get you fired up about one of my favorite things to hate: plastics! If youre just joining us (on Science Quickly and also, like, on Earth), most plastics are literally made of fossil fuels, and theyve shown up pretty much everywhere, from Antarctica to the human brain.Last Wednesday a new study found that microplastics could even be mucking up our ability to clean wastewater for reuse. The researchers suspected that tiny plastic particles known as microplastics, which provide a happy home for microbes to create robust colonies called biofilms, might keep potential pathogens alive through the wastewater treatment process. Sure enough, the researchers identified a few nasty types of bacteria and viruses that persisted after the water was treated. This is just one more piece of evidence in a growing pile that shows we need to address our reliance on plastic.Lets end with a couple of fun stories.First: you know how sometimes, when someone is watching you work, it makes you kind of, like, knuckle down and really get the thing done, and sometimes having an audience can make you choke instead? Apparently those instincts are older than our species.In a study published last Friday, researchers reported that chimpanzees are subject to whats called the audience effect, too. The study reviewed years of data on chimps performing number-based tasks on touch screens. It turns out that the chimps performance was impacted by how many humans were watching and whether the animals knew the spectators. When it came to the toughest numerical tasks, the chimps seemed to perform better as an audience of experimenters grew. But they were more likely to fumble the easiest tasks in the presence of a crowd of experimenters and familiar audience members. The researchers are hoping to use these insights to better understand how humans developed similar behavior.Lastly, heres one for you sports fans. As you may already know, every single baseball used in every single major league game gets a special little spa treatment: its scrubbed down with mud that comes from a single secret spot somewhere along a tributary of the Delaware River. The idea is that this mud bath makes the balls easier to grip. No team is willing to mess around with substitutes, but the je ne sais quoi of this particular goop was only recently subjected to scientific study. In a paper published last Monday, researchers confirmed that the mud really does have a certain something going for it.The research team put some of the magic mud in a precision instrument called a rheometer, which applies different kinds of force to figure out the fluid flows, to quantify the spreadability of the substance. The researchers also used an atomic force microscope to measure how much force the mud resisted with as an instrument pulled away from itin other words, its stickiness. They even made a fake human finger out of rubberwhich they coated with whale oil to mimic the natural goop of human skinto approximate the friction of a ball against a pitchers hands.All that data proves what baseball players have been saying for years: the mud works. Its consistency makes it as easy to spread as face cream, which allows for uniform coverage on a ball. But the stickiness of the clay helps all the tiny particles of sand suspended within it adhere to the ball so the muck dries as grippy as sandpaper. Neat!Thats all for this weeks science news roundup. Well be back on Wednesday to learn how insects have helped shape human culture.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!

OpinionNovember 8, 20244 min readConsciousness Might Hide in Our Brains Electric FieldsA mysterious electromagnetic mechanism may be more important than the firing of neurons in our brains to explain our awarenessBy Tamlyn Hunt Hiroshi Watanabe/Getty ImagesThe neuron, the specialized cell type that makes up much of our brains, is at the center of todays neuroscience. Neuroscientists explain perception, memory, cognition and even consciousness itself as products of billions of these tiny neurons busily firing their tiny spikes of voltage inside our brain.These energetic spikes not only convey things like pain and other sensory information to our conscious mind, but they are also in theory able to explain every detail of our complex consciousness.At least in principle. The details of this neural code have yet to be worked out.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.While neuroscientists have long focused on spikes travelling throughout brain cells, ephaptic field effects may really be the primary mechanism for consciousness and cognition. These effects, resulting from the electric fields produced by neurons rather than their synaptic firings, may play a leading role in our minds workings.In 1943 American scientists first described what is known today as the neural code, or spike code. They fleshed out a detailed map of how logical operations can be completed with the all or none nature of neural firingsimilar to how todays computers work. Since then neuroscientists around the world have engaged in a vast endeavor to crack the neural code in order to understand the specifics of cognition and consciousness.To little avail. The most obvious chasm in our understanding is in all the things we did not meet on our journey from your eye to your hand, confessed neuroscientist Mark Humphries in 2020s The Spike, a deep dive into this journey: All the things of the mind Ive not been able to tell you about, because we know so little of what spikes do to make them.Brain researchers have long acknowledged that there are a number of ways other than firing by which neurons could communicate, including the little-known mechanism known as ephaptic coupling. This coupling results from electromagnetic (EM) fields at the medium and large scales of the brain interacting, alongside much smaller scale fields accompanying synaptic spikes (which themselves result from a type of highly localized EM field activity) operating at nanometer scales.Retinal neurons, for example, operate without any neural firing. These cells employ a type of electrodiffusion, the diffusion of charged particles without synapses, the connection points between neurons. Electrodiffusion passes along a signal to the optic nerve at very fast rates and with high bandwidth. We couldnt see without this.The ephaptic in ephaptic coupling simply means touching. Though not well-known, ephaptic field effects result from the textbook electric and magnetic interactions that power our cells. Intriguing experimental results suggest these same forces play a bigger role in the brain than one suspected and perhaps even in consciousness.Ephaptic field effects first came to my attention in a significant way with a remarkable 2019 paper from the Case Western Reserve laboratory of Dominique Durand. That lab demonstrated that the mouse cortex was affected without synaptic connectionsby definition, ephaptic field interactions. This remarkable effect was found by the Durand team after they cut a slice of mouse hippocampus in half and then measured the voltage potential going up and down the slice. There wasalmost no change in that measured voltage even after the slice was fully severed, demonstrating a strong influence from ephaptic fields.The influence did, they found, wane after a certain distance, as wed expect. Once the cut slices were separated by 400 microns or more, the ephaptic field effect mostly disappeared.These results were considered so remarkable by peer reviewers that they required the Durand lab to replicate the results not once but twice before they approved publication of the paper. One scholar stated at the time of the papers publication that the findings of Chiang and colleagues should probably (and quite literally) electrify the field.Another team compared the speed of ephaptic field effects in various tissues, finding that the speed of propagation of ephaptic fields in gray matter is about 5,000 times faster than neural firing.This means that what would take normal spike pathways one second to span through the brain, could be traversed 5,000 times during that same time interval with ephaptic effects. If we cube this over the volume of the brain we get an information density up to a staggering 125 billion times more from ephaptic fields than from synaptic firing.A key caveat to this statement is to stress that this is potential information density only, and it is not necessarily the case that this potential can actually be reached. More research will need to be done to see how much of this vast ephaptic potential is realized by our brains.Abundant evidence shows that synaptic firing is essential for moving, hearing, touching and much else, but given the vastly greater information density in the ephaptic fields, and the pervasiveness of ephaptic field effects, it would be exceedingly strange if evolution hadnt grasped upon this effect for important brain functions. Indeed, it seems that she has, in sundry ways.Walter Freeman, a legendary now-deceased neuroscientist from the University of California, Berkeley, stated in a 2006 paper that traditional synaptic firing speeds could not explain the speed of cognitive functions he had observed over the years in rabbits and cats.Instead, the recent spate of ephaptic effects findings suggest a solid mechanism to explain these speeds. Our recent theoretical paper, building on these findings, suggested that ephaptic field effects may in fact be the primary mechanism for consciousness and cognition, rather than neural firing.Another recent paper including as authors the University of California, Los Angeless Costas Anastassiou and former Caltech neuroscientist Christof Koch, provides strong support for the importance of ephaptic effects. They find that, indeed, ephaptic coupling can explain the fast coordination required for consciousness even in the absence of very fast synapses.This single paper could take the field of ephaptic field science from the fringes of neuroscience to the forefront. Its findings regarding the speed and pervasiveness of ephaptic field effects may presage a fundamentally new understanding of how cognition and consciousness work.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

November 8, 2024The Impact of Weight Stigma on HealthFocusing on size in health care might be doing more harm than good.By Rachel Feltman & Fonda Mwangi Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanSUBSCRIBE TO Science QuicklyApple | Spotify | RSSThis episode is part of Health Equity Heroes, an editorially independent special project that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals.Rachel Feltman: According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least one in five U.S. adults in each state are categorized as, quote, unquote, living with obesity. But for many of those people, having physicians focus on their size is far from helpful. In fact, theres research to suggest that our fixation on weight could be preventing us from actually helping people live healthy lives.For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, Im Rachel Feltman. Today were talking about a topic that might sound totally radical to some of you, but I hope youll listen with an open mind. My guest today is Ragen Chastain. Shes a speaker, writer, researcher and board-certified patient advocate. Her Substack newsletter, Weight and Healthcare, meticulous, evidence-based information on, you guessed it, weight and health care. Today shes here to talk to us about how weight stigmain other words, a systemic bias against bigger bodiescould potentially be to blame for many of the negative health outcomes weve been taught to associate with gaining weight.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Feltman: Ragen, thanks so much for coming on to chat today.Ragen Chastain: Oh, thank you for having me. Im so excited.Feltman: Im really excited. Im a big fan of your newsletter. I find it super helpful, soreally looking forward to chatting about it. But for folks who arent already familiar with you, how would you describe what it is you do?Chastain: Yeah, so my area of expertise is at the intersections of weight science, weight stigma and health care practice. And so I teach health care providers about best practices for working with higher-weight people. I help higher-weight people navigate weight stigma in the health care sphere, and I analyze and contribute to the body of research around weight-neutral health and weight science in general.Feltman: Awesome. And I do want to pause before we go further just to talk about, like, words we might end up using and words we might not use that might surprise some listeners. Could you tell me a little bit about the word choices you use in your newsletter and the work that you do?Chastain: In terms of language around higher-weight people, the terms obese and overweight are terms that were literally made up for the express purpose of pathologizing bodies based on shared size rather than shared metabolic profile or cardiometabolic status like we would see in a typical disease diagnosis.And the idea of pathologizing higher-weight bodies is rooted in and inextricable from racism and anti-Blackness. And I absolutely urge people to read Sabrina Stringss Fearing the Black Body and DaShaun Harrisons Belly of the Beast to learn more about how not only are these things rooted in racism and anti-Blackness but theyre continuing to disproportionately impact those communities.Feltman: Absolutely. Yeah, I really appreciate that because I think a lot of really well-meaning people and publications and institutionsI mean, probably also some very not-well-meaning institutions, but some of them are well meaningyou know, say, oh, were going to focus on person-first language.And, you know, as a self-identified fat person, I dont know any higher-weight person who ever was like, Person with overweightthats what makes me feel good.Chastain: As if weight stigma doesn't give me enough problems, lets make me grammatically problematic as well. Yeah, the thing about person-first language is that its being marketed as antistigma language, but it didnt come from weight-neutral health community, health-at-every-size community, fat activism.It came directly from the weight loss industry as part of their campaign to have simply existing in a higher-weight body, again, regardless of actual health status, be seen as a chronic, lifelong condition that requires chronic, lifelong treatment from them. And so its being pushed through, quote, unquote, patient advocacy groups that they fund.This is person-first language for higher-weight people. First of all, they co-opted it from disability community, where theres a lot of conversation and transformation and nuance. And again, urge people to listen to folks from that community to understand those nuances. But absent those nuances, the weight-loss industry sort of took it and plopped it onto higher-weight people.And the, the problem is, to me, its more stigmatizing because we don't talk about other bodies that way. Im not like, Oh, I hope my friend with tallness can come over so I can change that light bulb, or, I think that man affected by thinness on the busI believe I know him. Thats not how we talk about bodies.And so when we suggest that its so stigmatizing to simply accurately describe a higher-weight or fat body that we need a semantic workaround, that actually creates stigma. It doesnt reduce it.Feltman: Yeah, I think thats really well put. Well, and this is a great segue because I think some of our listeners probably assume that its common sense that being in a bigger body brings all sorts of health risks. But of course now many researchers are pushing back on that. So could you walk us through what the data actually says about higher weights and what it doesnt say?Chastain: Sure. So itIve been studying this research for 20 years, and I came to it believing exactly what youre saying, right, believing being higher-weight is a healthy issue and weight loss is the solution to it. And in digging into the research, I found that neither of those things were actually what the research was saying. And so what happens is we get this research that correlates being higher-weight to a health issue and, you know, so your first day of research methods class, they teach you correlation is not causation, right?You cant assume one thing causes the other because they happen together at the same time. And this gets tricky in medical research because we use correlation all the time, but its not responsible to do that without investigating what are called confounding variables, right? Basically, what else happens to higher-weight people that could lead to higher rates of these health issues?And in terms of the research, there are three well-researched confounding variables: weight stigma, weight cycling, or yo-yo dieting, and health care inequalities. And these things independently are correlated to the same health issues that get blamed on body weight. And in these studies, theyre rarely even mentioned and never controlled for.And so when we talk about, you know, quote, unquote, weight-related or, quote, unquote, obesity-related conditions, what we might be actually talking about are weight-stigma-related conditions, weight-cycling-related conditions and health-care-inequality-related conditions. For example, [Linda] Bacon and [Lucy] Aphramor [noted research that] found that weight cycling could account for all of the excess mortality that was attributed to, quote, unquote, obesity in both [the] Framingham [Heart Study] and the NHANES [National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey].And so were talking about serious confounders that are not being explored at all in the research. And, you know, a big part of that, from my perspective, is that the research is often being conducted and funded by the weight-loss industry. And I have sort of developed over time a bit of a subspecialty in the ways that the weight-loss industry has and continues to infiltrate and manipulate the health care industry.And this research is one of those ways.Feltman: Yeah, well, I definitely want to get more into that because I think you do some really incredible work in that space. But for folks who are, like, maybe having their minds blown right now, you know, what do we know about where this conflation comes from? I know that you already mentioned some recommended reading on the origin of weight stigma, but I would love to hear a little bit more about that.Chastain: Yeah. So, and I want to say, too, if youre listening to this and youre having, like, anger, denial, defensiveness, incredulousness, I have had all of those feelings in the last 20 years as Ive been researching this. So I want to name that as valid and say, when you do have those feelings, I just offer that as an invitation to dig deeper and ask more questions.But in terms of weight stigma, so the research on weight stigma shows that the experience of weight stigma and even perceived weight stigma is correlated independently with things like higher rates of type 2 diabetes, higher rates of hypertension, suicidality, substance use, lower health-related quality-of-life scores, almost 60 percent greater risk of overall mortalityso were talking about serious correlations here between experiencing weight stigma and these health risks and issues that end up getting attributed to weight.Feltman: And what do we know about, you know, how this impacts, sort of public health overall?Chastain: So at some point, public health became less about helping the public be healthy and more about making fat peoples bodies the publics business, with the goal of eradicating higher-weight people and making sure no more ever exist, rightthe, quote, unquote, treatment and prevention of, quote, unquote, obesity.And its helpful, I think, to substitute higher-weight people existing for the term obesity to get a clear picture of how this impacts higher-weight people in public health. And I don't think most people were doing this from an ill-intentioned perspective, right, but what we ended up with is public health that is hyperfocused on eradicating higher-weight people and preventing higher-weight people from existing in ways that end up harming higher-weight people and make it almost impossible to support the health of higher-weight people directly.And you get a co-opting and twisting of the concept of anti-weight stigma that ends up like, We dont want to treat fat people badly, but we definitely want to rid the Earth of them and make sure no more ever exist but, you know, like, in a nonstigmatizing way, and thats not actually possible.And so, through public health, this focus on, this hyperfocus on manipulating body size rather than an evidence-based option to support peoples health based on their own priorities and definitions at the size that they are has ended up creating a public health system that is hostile and harmful to higher-weight people.Feltman: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think again, for our listeners who are, you know, maybe very new to this, lets talk about some of the ways that, you know, sort of, um, health-based interventions can be decoupled from, you know, weight-loss and weight-based interventions and sort of the kinds of health care that people have difficulty accessing or [are] even outright denied because theyre in a higher-weight body.Chastain: Yeah, thats a huge, like, area of concern. So there's a lot of ways that this happens. Theres implicit and explicit bias from health care providers, right, where, either subconsciously or consciously, theyve got these stereotypes and preconceived notions about higher-weight people that lead them to treat, you know, us differentlyeither give us less time, fewer recommendations, make assumptions about our behaviors.There's also structural bias. And this happens when the things that higher-weight people need simply don't exist for us in the spaces we are. And that could be anything from a chair in a waiting room to an MRI machine. And all stigma requires systemic solutions, but structural bias can only be solved systemically.Because you can have a fully fat-affirming provider, a fully fat-affirming patient, but if the MRI is too small, that patient cannot get care. And so, within the health care system, those are all issues that face higher-weight people on a daily basis.Theres also, as you talked about, accessing health care. So as a patient advocate, often what Im working on, and as a researcher and writer, is the idea of BMI-based health care denials. And this is when a person is refused a health care procedure that a thinner person would get unless or until they become a certain BMI or they lose a certain amount of weight.And this is holding health care hostage for a weight-loss ransom that most patients are not able to pay. And it can sort of float into the ridiculous, whereI had a patient who was denied the gender-affirming care that they wanted but then was referred to weight-loss surgery. And thats an actually a pretty common thing, and in this case, I dont expect this to ever work again, but the argument we made was, you know, youre saying that youre denying this surgery because of anesthesia risk, but youre now going to offer this patient weight-loss surgery. Whoevers going to do the anesthesia for the weight loss surgery, could they just, like, come down the hall and do the surgery this patient actually wants and needs?And they ended up agreeing, but Im not sure that will ever work again. But, like, this is where were at in terms of health care for higher-weight peoplethat it can be a fight just to access basic care. And then the other piece of that is what I call provider weight distraction, where the provider becomes so hyperfocused on the patients weight and manipulating the patients size that theyre not listening or responding to the patients actual complaint presentation, why theyre there, what they want in health care.And so this can really lead to patients who disengage from care or patients who simply cant access the care that they want and need.Feltman: And how do you think that drugs like Ozempic are impacting this, you know, weight-centric health paradigm? And then, you know, how is weight stigma impacting the way that we talk about these drugs?Chastain: Sure, I, now, I take a very firm view of bodily autonomy. Right? So I think people can do what they want. But I think people deserve good information, and in terms of health care, they deserve ethical, clear, informed consent.Feltman: Mm.Chastain: I have done breakdowns of the research on these weight-loss drugs since they started, and I am not nearly as excited as the people who are reading the marketing language versus the research.For example, uh, Wegovy, or semaglutide, Novo Nordisks drug, their four-year outcomes have just come out, and they claimed that people were able to maintain 10 percent loss. But if you look, they started with almost 9,000 people, and they ended with only 900 in four years. So thats massive attrition that did not make the headlines, right?So I think these arefirst of all, I want to be clear, these are solid type 2 diabetes drugs.Feltman: Absolutely.Chastain: Right. They work well for people who are contraindicated on other drugs. They work well for people who couldnt get the glycemic management they wanted on other drugs. and they have benefits in terms of only working when blood sugar goes high, so there are fewer hypoglycemic episodes.But so what happened was they realized that these drugs had a small side effect of weight loss. And so what the drug companies asked was, Well, if we gave people megadoses of these type 2 diabetes drugs, would that increase the weight loss? And they found out that yes, it would, and thats how these turn into, quote, unquote, weight-loss drugs. And so theres a big titration difference because with type 2 diabetes, the goal is to give the smallest dose necessary to achieve the glycemic control that somebody wants and reduce or minimize side effects. But with weight loss, theyre just trying to get people to take as much as they can for the express purpose of maximizing side effects.And these drugs have serious, sometimes fatal side effects, and so thats not a small issue.Feltman: Right. And how are you seeing the prevalence of these drugs, you know, with the goal of weight loss, impact the way mainstream physicians talk about and treat higher-weight patients?Chastain: Yeah, so, and sort of to continue from your other question about how weight stigma is involved, its important to understand that the approval of these drugs by the FDA was based on a risk-benefit analysis that suggests that its worth harming or killing some higher-weight people to make others a bit thinner.And thats a view thats based in weight stigma, right, often to cure or prevent health issues that thin people also get but from whom these risks are not asked. So theres that piece of it, and the weight-loss industry, and in particular the pharmaceutical companies who make these drugs, are now falling all over themselves to say, Oh yeah, behavior-based weight loss interventions dont work long-term.Right? And theyre, like, the last 15 people to figure this out. Weve been, people have been screaming this from the rooftops in my community since before I was born, right, that at this point, 100 years of research show that almost everyone will lose weight short-term and gain it back long-term because these behavior-based interventions physiologically change our bodies, making them into sort of weight-regaining, weight-maintaining machines.And so now doctors are sort of being honest with themselves about this, right, because this is what they had, so they would just tell every higher-weight person who came in, like, Eat less and exercise more, without typically asking even what we ate or how much we exercised. And now theyre saying, Oh, well, now theres a drug, so, like, its so much easier, and you just get on the drug.And Im hearing patients who are really being pressured to take the drug and/or who are saying, These side effects are intolerable to me and are being pushed to tolerate them.Feltman: Wow. Yeah.Chastain: Right? And being given an unclear picture of the likelihood of long-term success. The sort of best-case scenario is that at 65 weeks, people will have lost kind of whatever theyre going to lose.And if they go off the drug, all of the research shows theyre going to gain the weight back and lose the cardiometabolic benefits that they got. And so this is, basically theyve invented every weight-loss drug that ever existed. This is how weight-loss drugs work. But their marketing is that, oh, well, again, because of this idea that, quote, obesity is a, quote, chronic condition, you just have to take these drugs for the rest of your life.Now, their research doesnt support that this will work. In tirzepatides study, 10.5 percent of people who stayed on the drug had gained back 20 percent of the weight just in one year. So we dont know that thats even gonna work. Right? But thats the messaging. And so I think doctors are getting a view of this that is vastly overstating the research.And thats because a lot of the communication is coming from the companies themselves, who also have taken incredibly active roles in creating and running the research. Um, and again, in doing the breakdowns for these, they have strayed so far from what would be considered appropriate best-practice research methods and statistics in order to get these results that theyre publicizing. And so I think that its putting doctors at a disadvantage because theyre being misinformed, and then theyre misinforming their patients. And theres just, again, so much focus on the idea of making fat people thin rather than supporting their health directly that doctors and sometimes patients feel like its worth risking my life and quality of life for this. And that also is about not just health but escaping weight stigma, which is another piece of this, right: that were trying to change ourselves to suit our oppressors so that we can be treated better.And while individuals can make that decision, as a society, to say you should change yourself to suit those who, you know, oppress and bully and harm you is a dangerous, dangerous road to go on.Feltman: Yeah, absolutely. You know I think its so interesting how little medicine is expected to innovate to be better at, say, performing surgery on a person at a higher weight, you know, as opposed to having these BMI requirements for sometimes extremely necessary surgery.And as a science journalist, Im also just so struck by, like, the credulity I see in people talking about this class of drugs.Everything I learned in, you know, science journalism grad school tells me to be extremely skeptical of, like, these, quote, unquote, miraculous drugs, you know, in the words of the companies selling them. And it just feels bizarre to see not all but a lot of the media treating these drugs, like, completely differently than they would any other class of medication.Chastain: Yeah, thats such an important perspective, and it has been really frustrating to me. Things like the New York Timesthere was an article by Gina Kolata ... that every single expert quoted had taken money from the drug manufacturers.And there was no disclosure of that.Right? Im seeing a lot of that, and, for example, there was a study that looked at the effect of Wegovy (semaglutide), Novo Nordisks drug, on major adverse cardiac events. And instead of releasing the study, Novo Nordisk released a press release saying that it had been a 20 percent reduction [in relative risk] in adults with, quote, unquote, overweight and, quote, unquote, obesity.And that spread like wildfire through the international media. Novo Nordisks stock went up by 17 percent that day. But when the study came out, what we learned was actually a 1.5 percent reduction [in absolute risk]. The problem is, I dont want to put this all on reporters because weve got a 24-hour news cycle; there are fewer and fewer reporting jobs; people who never intended to be science reporters are being asked to report on science.So theres a lot of issues that put reporters at a disadvantage, but I think it does the public a tremendous disservice when reporting is not more critical in the way that they look at these headlines and these press releases and this research.Feltman: And when you think about a more equitable health landscape, particularly with regards to body size, what does that look like, and what needs to change for us to get there?Chastain: Yeah. So we have a good body of research that shows that behaviors are a better predictor of current and future health than is weight or weight-loss attempts. And obviously, much more impacts our health than simply behaviors, right? But when we're talking about What would a doctor recommend to a patient? theres an interesting study on this.[Traci] Mann, [Britt] Ahlstrom and [A. Janet] Tomiyama looked at this claim that 5 to 10 percent weight loss creates clinically meaningful health benefits and found in correlational analysis that they couldnt correlate the actual weight loss with the health issues, and they posited that it was, in fact, the behavior changes instead.[Eric] Matheson et al. looked at four behaviors. They looked at five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day, exercising more than 12 times a month, up to two drinks a day for cis men and one drink a day for cis women and not smoking. And they found that people who participated in all four of those habits had the same health hazard ratio, regardless of size.So I think what we need in general is a change in focus that, rather than trying to manipulate the weight of people, that were trying to support their health directly.Feltman: I definitely recommend that folks go check out your newsletter. Well absolutely link to it in the show notes. but if you could give just, like, one major takeaway to folks who arent going to go do that, what would it be?Chastain: I just want to say that even if Im wrong about everything, right, even if all fat people could become thin, even if by becoming thinner, they would become healthier, fat people would still deserve the right to exist without shame, stigma, bullying or oppression and would still deserve the right to complete access to society, including health care.It doesnt matter why theyre fat. It doesnt matter if there are health impacts of being fat. It doesnt matter if they could or want to become thinner. Fat people deserve equal rights and access to the world, again, including health care.Feltman: Ragen, thank you so much for coming on to chat today. This has been super informative, and I really appreciate your time.Chastain: Thank you so much for having me and for talking about this and for all the work that you do. Im honored to be a part of this.Feltman: Thats all for todays episode. Check out Ragens Substack Weight and Healthcare if you want to learn morelike, seriously, so much more, because she cites all her sources. Well be back on Monday with our usual news roundup.By the way, were still looking for some voice memos to help with an upcoming episode. Well be taking a look at the science behind earworms, those songs you just cant get out of your head, and wed love to feature some of your favoriteor maybe most infuriatingexamples. If youd like to share an earworm with us, make a voice memo on your phone or computer and send it over to ScienceQuickly@sciam.com. And, yes, we do want to hear you singing, or at least humming, the earworm in question. Make sure to tell us your name and where youre calling from, too.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Emily Makowski, Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great weekend!

November 8, 20245 min readHappy New Year! (If Youre a Martian)The Martian new year arrives with the Red Planets vernal equinox. Explaining why requires a deep dive into celestial mechanics and Earths calendrical historyBy Phil Plait Alones Creative/Getty ImagesYou may think its a few weeks early to celebrate the new year, but thats only because youre Earthist: November 12, 2024, marks the new year for Mars, when the calendar turns the page from 37 to 38.And here I am, still putting 37 on all my checks.Why would anyone pick November 12 as New Years Day for Mars? And why does our official reckoning of Martian time set the eons-old Red Planet only in its 38th year? The answer involves a combination of natural cycles and the human need to impose order via somewhat arbitrary timekeepingpretty much like on Earth.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Here on our home planet, most countries use the Gregorian calendar to keep track of the year. This was first adopted in 1582 (although it took quite some time to spread around the world) and is your standard 12-month calendar365 days every year, with a bonus day added on every fourth year (a leap year). The Gregorian calendar starts on January 1 as a holdover from its predecessor, the Roman Empires Julian calendar; to honor the god Janus, Julius Caesar proclaimed that day to be the years first.As an astronomer, I might wish we marked the first day of the year using a date of some astronomical significance. The problem there is Earth stubbornly refuses to play nice with any sort of organized calendar. For example, our planets path around the sun is an ellipse, or oval shape. That means there is a point in time when it gets closest to the sun, which we call perihelion. That seems like a natural date for the start of a new year.But Earths orbital shape changes subtly every year because of the gravitational influence of the other planets, altering the exact time of perihelion. Another tweak to perihelions timing comes from Earths moon, which tugs on our planet to make it wobble a bit as we co-orbit the sun. These make perihelion an unworkably complicated way to start a calendar, even though perihelion also happens to occur in January. (Aphelionwhen Earth is farthest from the sunoccurs in July.)If you know a little bit more about astronomy, you might try to tag the new year with the equinoxes or solstices. These dates are based on Earths axial tilt, our planets roughly 23-degree pitch relative to the plane of its orbit (which is why you always see classroom globes tilted over on their stand). The June solstice, for example, occurs when the planets north pole is tipped most toward the sun, which happens on or about the 21st of that month every year. (Note that this is in winter for people in the Southern Hemisphere, which is why astronomers tend to shy away from calling it the summer solstice.)Astronomers prefer to measure everything in the sky relative to the March equinox, also called the vernal (relating to spring) equinox as a holdover from Northern Hemispherefocused timekeeping. There are many ways to think about the March equinox, but astronomers think of it as the time when the suns position on the sky crosses the celestial equator, the projection of Earths equator onto the sky. Thats a handy point in time and space to use for measuring things like the positions of the planets and stars.But again, because of the changing shape of Earths orbit, using that to mark the new year would be a hassle. The calendar date changes every year, adding unwieldy layers of chronological complexity.So what does all this have to do with Mars?Early in the 20th century, as humans began scrutinizing Mars with more powerful telescopes, we saw global changes sweep across that planet in sync with its changing position in its orbit. Then, as exquisite in situ observations emerged from our probes sent to the Red Planet, it became clear we needed some sort of Mars calendar.Such a calendar would have to be very different from ours. The most obvious reason is that Mars is farther out from the sun and takes almost two Earth years to complete a single orbit around our star; a Martian year is about 687 Earth days!A Mars daycalled a sol, to distinguish it from an Earth dayis also a little bit longer than our terrestrial one, lasting 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds. There are about 668 sols in a Martian year.But these differences are actually liberating because they free us from our historic legacy of arbitrary sociopolitical machinations. At Mars, we were able to get a fresh start, defining when we wanted the year to begin essentially from scratch.So planetary scientists decided to start the Martian new year at the time of the planets vernal equinox. Like Earth, the spin axis of Mars is tipped over relative to its orbit, and Mars even has a relatively Earth-like axial tilt of about 25 degrees. That means it has seasons similar to ours, creating the global changes earlier astronomers had witnessed. As temperatures rise in the Martian spring, dust storms arise, and some grow so large they can cover much of the planet. The onset of summer in a given hemisphere heats the respective polar ice cap, which shrinks in size as it sublimates (turns from solid to gas).Why not use the equinox as a starting date, then? If we have to choose a date, that one makes as much sense as any.If only things could be so simple. Earths orbit around the sun is very nearly a circle, and the seasons all last about three months. But Marss orbit around the sun is decidedly elliptical. When the planet is closest to the sun (in winter in its northern hemisphere) its orbital speed is faster than when its furthest (in northern summer), and combined with the oval orbital shape, this means the seasons have significantly different lengths. Northern spring is 194 sols long, while summer is 178, autumn is 142 and winter is 154 sols in duration.These odd seasons would make living on Mars weird. I mean, it would of course be hard: the suffocatingly thin atmosphere, high radiation levels, lack of quick and easy access to supplies from Earth, and so on would all make it extremely difficult to eke out a life there. But the wonky calendar would be a constant source of extra irritation.And what of the year numberthe bizarre fact that our Martian calendar has so far only advanced to Year 38? Scientists decided to mark Year 1 as the time a huge dust storm raged across the planets surface in 1956one of the most notable events on another planet during the early space age. The vernal equinox for that Martian year occurred on April 11, 1955, so thats now accepted as the planets first New Years Day. To make things less ambiguous, scientists also defined Year 0 as starting on the previous equinox, May 24, 1953. This prevents any weirdness like that of the Gregorian calendar, which, because it has no Year 0, creates strange situations such as new centuries starting on years ending with 01 instead of 00. (The 21st century, for instance, began on January 1, 2001.)Put this all together, and youll see that Year 38 on Mars begins on November 12, 2024, in the earthly Gregorian calendar, at around 16:00 coordinated universal time, or UTC (11 A.M. EST). Get your party hats and champagne ready!And dont forget: when the clock ticks down to zero, its time to sing Ares Lang Syne.

OpinionNovember 8, 20245 min readLet African Communities Manage Their Climate Adaptation PlansOutside groups often offer their solutions for climate adaptation in Africa. But the best people to manage the climate crisis are the people in those communities themselves. For climate adaptation to succeed in Africa, let communities and local leaders show the wayBy Kennedy OdedeA local resident of Kiamako slum planting a tree near a site of homes destroyed by floods along the bank of Mathare river Boniface Muthoni/SOPA Images/Sipa USA/Alamy Live NewsWhen I was a baby, a long drought drove my family from our rural village in Kenya to Kibera, the largest slum in the country. My single mother wanted to provide us a better life, but with few prospects we ended up in the most vulnerable part of Nairobi.Climate change has shaped my life and taught me much about our environment. Even my name, Odede, means after the drought. Now I run a globally recognized, community-based NGO across Kenya that undertakes projects to help people adapt to such changes. For one, we have built an aerial water system in Kibera that can withstand the kind of extreme flooding that seems to be becoming more common and brings with it intensifying cycles of drought and rain.In Kenyas most recent catastrophic rainy season, these rains displaced more than 300,000 people nationwide, led to a cholera outbreak and further strained access to food and clean water. The destruction from climate-related extreme weather events can last for decades. These disasters turn community leaders into frontline response workers, developing solutions to fight for their futures, but nongovernmental organizations that work in Africa often neglect to tap into local leaders deep understanding of both the people in a community and their needs.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.We must be more than just bystanders, the passive recipients of aid in adaptation. Community leaders and local organizations must lead adaptation efforts. We, not the external groups who work in our communities, are the most knowledgeable about our local environment, and we have the most at stake.We are living in a decisive moment. More than 110 million Africans were directly affected by climate-related hazards in 2022, and up to 700 million people are projected to be displaced by 2030 because of climate change.Global climate priorities historically focused only on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate global warming, but the IPCC, the United Nations program around climate change, has become increasingly vocal that climate change is already here, and we wont be able to slow it fast enough. This demands people instead adaptto hotter temperatures, more frequent or more intense disasters, and less water, among other things. According to Antnio Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, we are living in an adaptation emergency and must act like it. The 29th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), the U.N.s major climate change conference, will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, this month. And climate adaptation will be a hotly debated topic there. Developed countries will be making funding pledges to the Adaptation Fund, which aims to support locally led adaptation and has previously fallen short of its funding targets. Targets desperately need to be met this year to properly establish climate adaptation efforts at this precarious timeAfrica is home to 17 of the 20 countries most at-risk of disruptions from climate-related hazards, and where slum dwellers, who are vulnerable to extreme weather events, make up over 60 percent of the urban population. Our communities have a disproportionate environmental impact in comparison to more-developed nations such that mitigation has little effect at this point. Africa must adapt to remain livable, by investing in solutions that help us better prepare for the impacts of climate change. Otherwise, far more people will become climate refugees.With its pipes suspended overhead, the water system created by the organization I lead, Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO), provides the clean water vital to adaptation, and eliminates the dangers of contaminated water by drawing from an underground borehole. During the most recent floods and the outbreak of waterborne disease, the system continued to provide clean water to residents of Kibera.In Nairobis Mathare slum, young people have organized clean-ups of the Mathare river, planting trees on the barren, hardened clay riverbank to prepare for floods. Trees help flood prevention by slowing the flow of heavy rain from sky to ground, mitigating runoff and preventing erosion. Another group in Mathare has created rooftop gardens and set up rainwater collection systems to make sure they can manage during drought without having to pay for water. They are planting trees like avocado, mango and guava, which provide nutrition and the opportunity to sell surplus produce. Initiatives like this are virtually unheard-of in densely overcrowded slums worldwide, where green space and municipal waste removal is lacking. Youth see climate change for the immediate threat it is, and are using all the resources at their disposal to make their communities more livable, now and into the future.And yet, despite projects like these, international policy makers who set the climate agenda and direct funds toward adaptation projects often overlook community-based leadership. This is, in part, because of funding dynamics; funders are too far removed from the communities they intend to reach, and so are unwilling to give up control of project agendas or to invest in strengthening local leadership.While local leaders may lack scientific expertise to forecast weather patterns, we are uniquely qualified to drive change; top-down approaches led by outside groups typically fail because many community members do not trust outsiders. They are more expensive, and less sustainable long-term. Local organizations can deliver programming that is 32 percent more cost-efficient than international groups, based on savings from salaries and overhead costs. Trusted local leaders with cultural knowledge are best positioned to understand peoples specific needs and to involve community members at every turn.In Zimbabwe a savings collective called the Gungano Urban Poor Fund offers loans for climate projects in poor, urban communities. In Namibia a government-funded small grants program called Empower to Adapt enabeled dozens of communal conservatories and community-managed forests to undertake projects to improve fire management, clean water supply, access to solar energy, and more. Many other climate adaptation projects are happening in rural Kenya, including distribution of drought-resistant seeds and tree nurseries and the transforming of food waste into organic fertilizer through composting. A recent three-year drought killed 80 percent of the regions cattle in northern Kenya, and the local Samburu tribe has begun to farm camels as a drought-resistant alternative, as they are able withstand more extreme conditions.Despite the success of these projects, climate adaptation has yet to receive the level of attention and investment needed, especially in the worlds most vulnerable places. This is, in part, because of the long-standing belief among some scientists and policy makers that moving to adaptation signals to people that the mitigation battle is lost. They fear people and governments will stop trying to promote renewable energy. And so, governments have not moved quickly enough to increase their adaptation targets. Globally, adaptation receives only 5 percent out of all climate-related investments measured, andonly 20 percent of that goes to Africaabout $13 billion annually. A U.N. economist has estimated that Africa, by 2030, will be $2.5 trillion short of the financing it needs to adapt to climate change.Despite the commitments laid out in the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals, there is a growing divide between international financing flows and the needs on the ground. Adaptation financing from both public and private sector sources has fallen further off-track, and many African countries are struggling to access existing funding, instead relying on emergency response funding to cope with climate impacts. It is nowhere near enough. The longer we wait, the greater and more costly needs will become. International funders need to come to us, and trust us, because the next generation of climate leaders on the continent will be African. Give them what they need to survive, in place, at home.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

November 8, 20245 min readWhat Trump CanAnd Probably CantDo to Reverse U.S. Climate PolicyThe new president-elect can go beyond just pulling out of the Paris Agreement. But it may be more difficult to roll back clean energy policiesBy Gautam Jain & The Conversation USIn 2019, then-President Donald Trump visited a liquid natural gas facility in Hackberry, Louisiana. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty ImagesThe following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.As the U.S. prepares for another Trump administration, one area unambiguously in the incoming presidents crosshairs is climate policy.Although he has not released an official climate agenda, Donald Trumps playbook from his last stint in the Oval Office and his frequent complaints about clean energy offer some clues to whats ahead.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Exiting the Paris climate agreementLess than six months into his first presidency, Trump in 2017 formally announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord the 2015 international agreement signed by nearly every country as a pledge to work toward keeping rising temperatures and other impacts of climate change in check.This time, a greater but underappreciated risk is that Trump will not stop at the Paris Agreement.In addition to exiting the Paris Agreement again, Trump could try to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 1992 treaty is the foundation for international climate talks. A withdrawal from that treaty would make it nearly impossible for a future administration to reenter the UNFCCC treaty because doing so would require the consent of two-thirds of the Senate.The reverberation of such a step would be felt around the world. While the Paris Agreement is not legally binding and is based on trust and leadership, the stance taken by the worlds largest economy affects what other countries are willing to do.It would also hand the climate leadership mantle to China.U.S. funding to help other countries scale up clean energy and adapt to climate change rose significantly during the Biden administration. The first U.S. International Climate Finance Plan provided US$11 billion in 2024 to help emerging and developing economies. And commitments from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation surged to almost $14 billion in the first two years of Bidens presidency, versus $12 billion during the four years of Trump. Biden also pledged $3 billion to the United Nations Green Climate Fund.Under President Trump, all these efforts will likely be scaled back again.Targeting clean energy might not be so simpleIn other areas, however, Trump may be less successful.He has been vocal about rolling back clean energy policies. However, it may be harder for him to eliminate the Biden administrations massive investments in clean energy, which are interwoven with much-needed investments in infrastructure and manufacturing in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.Since both are laws that Congress passed, Trump would need majorities in both Houses to repeal them.Even if Republicans end up with a trifecta controlling both houses of Congress and the White House repealing these laws will be challenging. Thats because the laws benefits are flowing heavily to red states. Trumps allies in the oil and gas industry also benefit from the laws tax credits for carbon capture, advanced biofuels and hydrogen.However, while the Inflation Reduction Act may not be repealed, it will almost certainly be tweaked. The tax credit to consumers who buy electric vehicles is likely on the chopping block, as is the EPA regulation tightening tailpipe pollution standards, making battery-powered cars uneconomical for many.Trump may also slow the work of the Department of Energys Loan Program Office, which has helped boost several clean energy industries. Again, this is not a surprise he did it in the first term except that the impact would be greater given that the offices lending capacity has since skyrocketed to over $200 billion, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. So far, only about a quarter of the total has been doled out, so there is a rush to ramp up the pace before the new administration starts in January.Drill, baby, drill?Trump also talks about increasing fossil fuel production, and he almost certainly will take steps to boost the industry via deregulation and opening up more federal lands for drilling. But prospects of massively ramping up oil and gas production seem dim.The United States is already producing more crude oil than any country ever. Oil and gas companies are buying back stocks and paying dividends to shareholders at a record pace, which they wouldnt do if they saw better investment opportunities.The futures curve indicates lower oil prices ahead, which could be further weighed down by slowing demand from any resulting economic weakness if Trump follows through on his threat to impose tariffs on all imports, leading to the risk of lower profitability.Trump will likely try to roll back climate policies related to fossil fuels and emissions, which are the leading source of climate change, as he did with dozens of policies in his first administration.That includes eliminating a new federal charge for methane emissions from certain facilities the first attempt by the U.S. government to impose a fee or tax on greenhouse gas emissions. Methane is the primary component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas.Trump has also promised to support approvals of new liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export terminals, which the Biden administration tried to pause and is still working to slow down.The markets have a say in clean energys futureOne clean energy source that Trump is likely to rally behind is nuclear energy.And despite his criticism of wind and solar power, investments in renewable energy will likely continue rising because of market dynamics, especially with onshore wind and utility-scale solar projects becoming more cost effective than coal or gas.Nevertheless, a U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the regulatory and policy uncertainty under Trump would likely slow the pace of investments. The expected inflationary impact of his economic policies is likely to negate the benefits of lower cost of capital that were expected to flow through with central banks lowering interest rates this year. Its an outcome that the warming planet can ill afford.This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

OpinionNovember 7, 20245 min readRainwater Could Help Satisfy AIs Water DemandsA few dozen ChatGPT queries cost a bottles worth of water. Tech firms should consider simpler solutions, like harvesting rainwater, to meet AIs needsBy Justin Talbot Zorn & Bettina Warburg Yamada Taro/Getty ImagesIn late September Microsoft announced that it had reached a deal to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power its growing network of data centers. Reviving the plant, home to a partial meltdown in 1979, is one of several extraordinary moves that tech companies are willing to make to meet the increasing energy demands of artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other technologies. Industry analysts at Transforma Insights predict the world will reach nearly 30 billion Internet of Things devices by 2030up from less than 10 billion in 2020.Still, as big tech companies tout nuclear power and other low-carbon energy plans, theyve presented surprisingly few ideas to meet their rapidly growing use of another scarce resource: water.Data centers require massive amounts of water for liquid cooling systems to absorb and dissipate the heat generated by servers. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have found that between five and 50 ChatGPT requests can consume up to 500 milliliters of water (close to the amount in a 16-ounce bottle). Those gulps add up. Google used 20 percent more water in 2022 compared to 2021 as it ramped up AI development. Microsoft's water use rose by 34 percent over the same period. By 2027 the amount of water AI uses in one year worldwide is projected to be on par with what a small European nation consumes. Worse, large numbers of data centers are located in water-stressed regions. Recently, a Google-owned data center in The Dalles, Oregon commanded one third of the city's water supply amid drought conditions.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.While some tech companies are making investments in water recycling, others are imagining long-shot innovations such as transporting seawater inland or even moving data centers under the ocean. Many are simply ignoring what their water use could eventually cost, not to mention the specter of drought. To date, only a few tech companies have taken steps to apply what might be the simplest, most proven and most promising strategy to mitigate water risks: catching rainwater from the sky.People have been gathering rainwater since ancient times. Now theres growing interest among water conservation advocates to collect rain from rooftops and send it down gutters into tanks. Then, at data centers, this water would be piped through cooling systems. Recent studies show that harvesting even a small portion of the rain that falls in a given area can eliminate water shortages while simultaneously recharging groundwater and reducing pollution from stormwater runoff. Theres no utility middleman needed when water is collected from a roof, meaning rainwater harvesting can be less expensive than purchasing equivalent amounts from a municipal supplyand avoid the greenhouse emissions associated with pumping water between sites.For years some states and municipalities restricted residential and industrial rainwater harvesting because of concerns about water quality or reductions in the water supply. But more recently state after state has authorized the practice as evidence for conservation benefits mounts. Cities like Tucson and Austin are now encouraging rainwater collection by offering incentives and establishing requirements. Apple, Ford and Toyota have recently integrated rainwater harvesting systems into corporate campuses and manufacturing facilities.But we believe that data centers are the biggest untapped opportunity for water conservation through rainwater harvesting. Its not just that data centers have the pressing need for waterits also that their large, flat roofs are well-suited to harvest water. A 50,000-square-foot roof can collect about 31,000 gallons of water from a single inch of rainabout as much as fills an average residential swimming pool. Many data centers feature roofs larger than 100,000 square feet, and some hyperscale data centers owned by major tech companies feature roofs of up to one million square feet.Why arent more data centers relying on rainwater harvesting? The cost, for one. Setting up a system for a commercial facility like a data center typically costs between $2 to $5 per square foot, depending on the systems complexity, storage and filtration needs. If the cost of municipal water in an area is low, it might not make sense to invest in rainwater capture. Whats more, rainwater systems rarely cover the total amount of water needed to cool a data center. Some massive facilities can consume a million gallons of water daily.But the economics of rainwater harvesting make more and more sense as both the cost and uncertainty of water resources increase, especially as the climate changes. Much like installing solar panels, installing a rainwater harvesting system is a one-time investment that reduces long-term utility costs. In some cases companies can leverage their existing stormwater management budgets toward rainwater harvesting. In places such as the greater Dallas area, home to many of the nations data centers, rainfall averages means that rainwater harvesting systems could cover up to a third of a data centers cooling needsdepending on size and storage systems. While the numbers are lower in arid regions, higher costs of water in those areas typically make the economics of rainwater harvesting more attractive. As public concern grows about the environmental effects of AI and other technologies, companies will likely need to consider both the financial and reputational risks of inaction on water.Some industry leaders are beginning to see the potential. A Google data center in South Carolina is using rainwater retention ponds for harvesting rainwater. A Microsoft data center has implemented rainwater harvesting in Sweden, reducing reliance on local water sources. Amazon Web Services highlights the potential of rainwater harvesting in its water positive strategy.On a policy level, green banksthe clean energy-focused financial institutions that are expanding all over the country following a $27 billion federal investment through the Inflation Reduction Actcould soon start helping to provide financing for rainwater projects. Rainwater has potential to win bipartisan supportand potentially even tax credits along the lines of recent renewables legislation. While the approach can be a popular cause among Democrats on climate resilience grounds, Republicans can support rainwater harvesting without needing to accept the science of climate change or oppose fossil fuel lobbies.At a time when Silicon Valley is turning to energy solutions like long-dormant nuclear plants, it might seem odd to address a pressing global challenge using a technology thats as old as civilization itself. But sometimes the best solutions can fall out of the sky.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

November 7, 20245 min readTrumps Administration Will Attack Health Care from Multiple AnglesThe new Trump administration is likely to reduce subsidies for Affordable Care Act insurance plans and roll back Medicaid coverage. Public health authorities worry that antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will be empoweredBy Stephanie Armour & KFF Health NewsPresident-elect Donald Trump at a campaign rally at the PPG Paints Arena on November 4, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesFormer President Donald Trumps election victory and looming return to the White House will likely bring changes that scale back the nations public health insurance programs increasing the uninsured rate, while imposing new barriers to abortion and other reproductive care.The reverberations will be felt far beyond Washington, D.C., and could include an erosion of the Affordable Care Acts consumer protections, the imposition of work requirements in Medicaid and funding cuts to the safety net insurance, and challenges to federal agencies that safeguard public health. Abortion restrictions may tighten nationwide with a possible effort to restrict the mailing of abortion medications.And with the elevation of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Trumps inner circle of advisers, public health interventions with rigorous scientific backing whether fluoridating public water supplies or inoculating children could come under fire.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris with 277 Electoral College votes, The Associated Press declared at 5:34 a.m. ET on Wednesday. He won 51% of the vote nationally to Harris 47.5%, the AP projected.Trumps victory will give a far broader platform to skeptics and critics of federal health programs and actions. Worst case, public health authorities worry, the U.S. could see increases in preventable illnesses; a weakening of public confidence in established science; and debunked notions such as a link between vaccines and autism adopted as policy. Trump said in an NBC News interview on Nov. 3 that he would make a decision about banning some vaccines, saying he would consult with Kennedy and calling him a very talented guy.While Trump has said he will not try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his administration will face an immediate decision next year on whether to back an extension of enhanced premium subsidies for Obamacare insurance plans. Without the enhanced subsidies, steep premium increases causing lower enrollment are projected. The current uninsured rate, about 8%, would almost certainly rise.Policy specifics have not moved far beyond the concepts of a plan Trump said he had during his debate with Harris, though Vice President-elect JD Vance later said the administration would seek to inject more competition into ACA marketplaces.Republicans were projected to claim a Senate majority, in addition to the White House, while control of the House was not yet resolved early Wednesday.Polls show the ACA has gained support among the public, including provisions such as preexisting condition protections and allowing young people to stay on family health plans until they are 26.Trump supporters and others who have worked in his administration say the former president wants to improve the law in ways that will lower costs. They say he has already shown he will be forceful when it comes to lowering high health care prices, pointing to efforts during his presidency to pioneer price transparency in medical costs.On affordability, Id see him building on the first term, said Brian Blase, who served as a Trump health adviser from 2017 to 2019. Relative to a Democratic administration, he said, there will be much more focus on minimizing fraud and waste.Efforts to weaken the ACA could include slashing funds for enrollment outreach, enabling consumers to purchase more health plans that dont comply with ACA consumer protections, and allowing insurers to charge sicker people higher premiums.Democrats say they expect the worst.We know what their agenda is, said Leslie Dach, executive chair of Protect Our Care, a health care policy and advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. He worked in the Obama administration helping to implement the ACA. Theyre going to raise costs for millions of Americans and rip coverage away from millions and, meanwhile, they will give tax breaks to rich people.Theo Merkel, director of the Private Health Reform Initiative at the right-leaning Paragon Health Institute, which Blase leads, said the enhanced ACA subsidies extended by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 do nothing to improve plans or lower premiums. He said they paper over the plans low value with larger government subsidies.Other Trump supporters say the president-elect may support preserving Medicares authority to negotiate drug prices, another provision of the IRA. Trump has championed reducing drug prices, and in 2020 advanced a test model that would have tied the prices of some drugs in Medicare to lower costs overseas, said Merkel, who worked in Trumps first White House. The drug industry successfully sued to block the program.Within Trumps circles, some names have already been floated as possible leaders for the Department of Health and Human Services. They include former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Seema Verma, who ran the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during the Trump administration.Kennedy, who suspended his independent presidential run and endorsed Trump, has told his supporters that Trump promised him control of HHS. Trump said publicly before Election Day that he would give Kennedy a big role in his administration, but he may have difficulty winning Senate confirmation for a Cabinet position.While Trump has vowed to protect Medicare and said he supports funding home care benefits, hes been less specific about his intentions for Medicaid, which provides coverage to lower-income and disabled people. Some health analysts expect the program will be especially vulnerable to spending cuts, which could help finance the extension of tax breaks that expire at the end of next year.Possible changes include the imposition of work requirements on beneficiaries in some states. The administration and Republicans in Congress could also try to revamp the way Medicaid is funded. Now, the federal government pays states a variable percentage of program costs. Conservatives have long sought to cap the federal allotments to states, which critics say would lead to draconian cuts.Medicaid will be a big target in a Trump administration, said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.Less clear is the potential future of reproductive health rights.Trump has said decisions about abortion restrictions should be left to the states. Thirteen states ban abortion with few exceptions, while 28 others restrict the procedure based on gestational duration, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization focused on advancing reproductive rights. Trump said before the election that he would not sign a national abortion ban.State ballot measures to protect abortion rights were adopted in seven states, including Missouri, which Trump won by about 18 points, according to preliminary AP reports. Abortion rights measures were rejected by voters in Florida, South Dakota, and Nebraska.Trump could move to restrict access to abortion medications, used in more than half of abortions, either by withdrawing the FDAs authorization for the drugs or by enforcing a 19th-century law, the Comstock Act, that abortion opponents say bans their shipment. Trump has said he generally would not use the law to ban mail delivery of the drugs.KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

November 6, 2024Medieval Elites Cared about Their Zodiac Signs, TooIn medieval times, astrology was considered a serious science, a branch of astronomy. Curator Larisa Grollemond of the Getty Museum, walks us through the medieval zodiac and how someones sign decided their day-to-day life.By Rachel Feltman & Fonda Mwangi Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanSUBSCRIBE TO Science QuicklyApple | Spotify | RSSRachel Feltman: These days, science and magic are generally thought of as being diametrically opposed: fact versus fiction, reason versus fantasy, modern sensibilities versus archaic misconceptions. But that hasnt always been the case.For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, Im Rachel Feltman. My guest today is Larisa Grollemond, assistant curator in the Manuscripts Department at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Shes behind an exhibit called Rising Signs: The Medieval Science of Astrology, which the Getty Center is presenting until January 5, 2025.Larisa, thank you so much for joining us today.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Larisa Grollemond: Im so happy to be here.Feltman: So I understand that you curated an exhibit on a really fascinating topic at the intersection of history, art, science, culture. Would you tell us a little bit more about it?Grollemond: Sure, the exhibition is called Rising Signs: The Medieval Science of Astrology. And what I really wanted to do with this exhibition, because I think astrology is still something that is such a relevant topic for so many peopleand even increasingly so; I think people know their sun sign, of course, but they also know things about lunar eclipses and Mercury retrograde. And I feel like its part of our contemporary visual culture and our contemporary culture in a way that is really integrated with our daily lives.And for the Middle Ages and for people living in medieval Europe, astrology was also really a part of daily life, and it was utilized in ways that I think we would be unfamiliar with today: so in terms of making medical decisions, but italso in terms of predicting the future in certain ways; in terms of seeing what you should do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis or a monthly basis; this idea of astrology and especially the zodiac and the constellations of the zodiac being really integral to the way that people experience time as well. And so thinking about it as almost a timekeeping device in medieval Europe, that was also something people were thinking astrologically about.And so with the exhibition, I really wanted to not just connect the idea of contemporary astrological thinking or practice to what is really a long legacy of both the visual culture of the zodiac but also the inclusion of astrological thinking in kind of day-to-day decisionmaking, but, you know, really think about the ways that astrology functions in both medieval and contemporary society.Feltman: Yeah, that is super interesting. I guess lets start with the historical perspective. You know, if Im in the medieval era and Im, like, your average person, how am I interacting with astrology?Grollemond: This is a really great question because theres so many different kinds of people who are interacting with astrology in the Middle Ages, so theres really two aspects of this. So we think of astrology as kind of a pseudoscience today, I think. But in the medieval period, people were really thinking of astrology as part of astronomy. And so we can think of astronomy in the Middle Ages as the observation of the heavens, the movement of celestial bodies, all of these kinds of pursuitsmore scientific pursuits, I would say, we would categorize them as today. Astrology is the interpretation of those movements and the effect of those movements of those celestial bodies on people on Earth and on earthly events.So astrology was part of astronomy, and so its a real science. And so in some ways its the purview of very educated people, of elites, of very literate people thinking about scientific topics, people in university settings, people writing astronomical treatises, people really trying to figure out how all of this stuff works and the ways that it can be interpreted. And so theres a whole body of literature and scientific writing that really is trying to explain what astrology is all about in the Middle Ages. And so that is, I would say, the intellectual pursuit of astrology.And then theres the more kind of daily experience of astrology and astrological thinking. And the books that are on view in the exhibition range from illuminated manuscripts to printed books of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, when you really have an explosion of astrological literature and really books meant for everyday people.So I would say most people have a sense of the zodiac as more of a timekeeping device. They may have seen the representations of the signs of the zodiac on a church portal or on monumental public sculpture in some way. But there are also lots of medieval books that we know as books of hours or other kinds of devotional books, especially, that include zodiac signs as part of calendars and the idea of keeping track of a year based on the movement of the zodiac. And so there was a sense that each zodiacal season, or each astrological season, was a good time for doing certain things or a bad time for doing others.And so medieval astrology is a little bit less of a personal pursuit than today, where we sort of think of it as trying to figure out individual personalities, compatibilitythese really personal sorts of issues. I would say, in the Middle Ages, people are thinking about astrology more as a seasonal thing.But really, toward the end of the Middle Ages and especially in the 15th century, astrology is really bound up with the idea of humoral balance and humoral thinking: so the idea that the body has four main fluids in itthats black and yellow bile, blood and phlegmand the astrological sign that youre born under influences your personal humoral balance, or your kind of tendency toward having too much blood in your body or having too much black bile in your body. And that affects all sorts of things: It affects the way that youre treated medically, the potential course of an illness that you might have. It may also affect your day-to-day diet. So Im a Virgo, so Im a melancholic personality, which means I have an excess of black bile in my body. And the kind of humoral tendency of that is cold and dry. And so my diet, I wanna eat warm and moist foods.And so theres this really complex system that develops toward the end of the Middle Ages where your sun sign, your rising sign, the position of the celestial bodies at your birth starts to affect not just your personality but really the kinds of things you should be doing to maintain optimal health. And so theres really an explosion of books and literature in the late 15th and early 16th centuries that is really aiming to give people really practical advice about that. And so if you are literate, which an increasing number of people are toward the end of the Middle Ages, you might have access to something like that, which might have a, a series of simple woodcuts or sort of simple representations of the signs of the zodiac and other kinds of things related to this idea of the humors and of medical treatment especially.So its a little bit of a complicated question, like, How do people interact with astrological thinking in the Middle Ages? because it really is such a spectrum of people really thinking hard about the science of it and then people who are really interested in knowing, Well, what is the best time to bloodlet? Or, What should I be eating this season?Feltman: Yeah, that is fascinating. And I think today theres obviously a really wide range of ways that people interact with the idea of astrology. I mean, Im definitely in the camp of, like, you know, this is basically just another personality quiz and nothing more, but I have to admit, I love stupid memes about being an Aquarius, and I pay enough attention to know that the fact that Im a triple Aquarius is, likemeans something maybe not so good [laughs] for people who care. But anyway, there are, of course, people who engage with it on a much deeper level, too.Im curious: When do we start to see the separation of astrology and astronomy happening? You know, the, the history of science is full of that kind of intersectionwe have alchemy and chemistry pulling apart from each other. But when does astrology stop being this mainstream academic pursuit thats tied up with any study of the stars?Grollemond: I think this is really a, a process that happens over several centuries. So with the increasing technology developed to actually observe the movement of celestial bodies, to really, with more precision, understand how the Earth moves around the sun and how the stars move, theres a greater understanding of the kind of mechanics of astronomy. And once that starts to happen, astrology gets decoupled from astronomy a little bit more. But I would say that that really takes quite a long time to happen. And its not really until the Enlightenment, the 17th and 18th centuries, that you start to see a real kind of fissure between astronomy and astrology.But there are still very much ways that I think astronomy is affected by astrology. And it isnt really, I would say, until the modern periodor something, as a medievalist, I would consider the modern period, like the 19th and 20th centuriesthat you really start to get that full separation of astronomy and astrology.But they are so closely related as pursuits that I would say astrologers today have a really extensive understanding of astronomy, and its so connected to the idea of observation and of these really precise astronomical events, like eclipses, and kind of understanding natal charts down to the minute and things like that. So I would say as technology progresses, you have a kind of a slow pulling apart of these topics, but theyre still so closely related.Feltman: Yeah, bringing us into the modern era, I know that youre doing some events with prominent astrologers in relation to the exhibit. So what are you hoping that people gain from learning about this connection between astronomy and astrology and history?Grollemond: I always think its useful for contemporary people to understand not just that the things theyre interested in have a long history, because so many of the things do, but this is one, I think, connection point foralmost about human behavior, like, a very basic human behavior: that we would like to figure out a way to understand not just ourselves but our place in the universe. And the medieval people who were thinking astrologically or interested in their zodiac signs or using astrology to figure out what to do day to day, I think thats such a powerful idea because we want to have that connection, I think, across time. And Im hoping that people will see themselves in medieval astrology in some ways. And even though, I think, some of the ideas seem so outdated and sort of funny in that waylike the idea of humoral balance and these sorts of scientific ideas that were really informing how people thought of themselves and how they thought of themselves being affected by these cosmic forces that also shaped the universesome of those ideas seem sort of quaint and funny to us, but they have such a logical basis, and when you start to sort of understand the system, you start to see our contemporary systems in that.We have certain patterns of thought and certain, I think, predilections toward wanting something to tell us the answers that it feels really universal in some way, and so I hope that people will not just understand that, like, the representation of the zodiac signs has this long visual history, and theres a real sort of, I think, familiarity with that, and if people can come to a medieval book and understand, like, Oh, thats Taurus, or, Thats Virgo, and theres still the symbols that we know today, thats a really fun, I think, point of connection. But theres something bigger, I think, about the universality of looking to the stars for answers that still seems so relevant and so contemporary and I think really uncovers a little bit of a point of connection with the Middle Ages, which can seem so distant and sort of so far away in our imaginations.Feltman: Absolutely. Thanks so much for joining us today! This was a really interesting chat.Grollemond: Thank you so much. And I, I hope people come see the show if theyre in LA, and there will be plenty online to discover as well.Feltman: Thats all for todays episode. If youre gonna be around the LA area anytime between now and January 5, definitely check out Rising Signs: The Medieval Science of Astrology. Well be back on Friday with a super important conversation about how weight stigma can impact health care.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time!

November 7, 20242 min readEarth Will Exceed 1.5 Degrees Celsius of Warming This YearThis year wont just be the hottest on recordit could be the first to surpass the 1.5-degree-Celsius threshold laid out in the Paris climate accordBy Andrea Thompson Amanda Montaez; Source: Copernicus Climate Change Service (data)It is virtually certain that 2024 will be the first year to be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than in the preindustrial era, before heat-trapping fossil fuels began accumulating in the atmosphere, the European Unions Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced today.These dubious distinctions mean 2024 will surpass the remarkable record annual temperatures set just last year, one of the clearest markers of the unfolding planetary climate catastrophe. This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29, Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said in a news release.Amanda Montaez; Source: Copernicus Climate Change Service (data)On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The likelihood of that happening is placed in doubt, though, with the news that former U.S. President Donald Trump has won reelection. Trump has promised to increase U.S. fossil-fuel production and to weaken federal rules that limit the emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases. Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris administration took the most action to address the climate crisis of any U.S. presidential administrationprimarily through enacting the Inflation Reduction Act. The continuation of funding for renewable energy and other climate-related provisions in that and other laws is now up in the air.Trump has also said he will once again remove the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, under which countries agreed to try to limit warming to under 1.5 degrees C and well under 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F). Those limits would not officially be reached until the global temperature averaged those temperatures over multiple years. The world will see several individual years periodically surpass those milestones before such long-term averages are achieved.Already several months have surpassed the 1.5 degree C mark. This October was 1.65 degrees C (3 degrees F) above the preindustrial period, generally defined as the late 19th century.Climate scientists have said these temperature records are overwhelmingly the result of ever rising levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed last month that CO2 reached a record high of 420 parts per million last year. CO2 levels in the preindustrial period were around 280 ppm.Thousands of climate studies have shown that the moreand fasterthe world can bring emissions down to zero, the more humanity can avoid the harmful impacts of warming, such as harsher and more frequent heat waves, larger destructive floods, and crop damage that can drive up food prices.

November 6, 20245 min readMisinformation Really Does Spread like a Virus, Epidemiology ShowsGoing viral appears to be more than just a catchphrase when it comes to the rampant spread of misinformationMisinformation really does spread like a virus, suggest mathematical models drawn from epidemiology. Paulo Buchinho/Getty ImagesThe following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.Were increasingly aware of how misinformation can influence elections. About 73% of Americans report seeing misleading election news, and about half struggle to discern what is true or false.When it comes to misinformation, going viral appears to be more than a simple catchphrase. Scientists have found a close analogy between the spread of misinformation and the spread of viruses. In fact, how misinformation gets around can be effectively described using mathematical models designed to simulate the spread of pathogens.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Concerns about misinformation are widely held, with a recent UN survey suggesting that 85% of people worldwide are worried about it.These concerns are well founded. Foreign disinformation has grown in sophistication and scope since the 2016 US election. The 2024 election cycle has seen dangerous conspiracy theories about weather manipulation undermining proper management of hurricanes, fake news about immigrants eating pets inciting violence against the Haitian community, and misleading election conspiracy theories amplified by the worlds richest man, Elon Musk.Recent studies have employed mathematical models drawn from epidemiology (the study of how diseases occur in the population and why). These models were originally developed to study the spread of viruses, but can be effectively used to study the diffusion of misinformation across social networks.One class of epidemiological models that works for misinformation is known as the susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) model. These simulate the dynamics between susceptible (S), infected (I), and recovered or resistant individuals (R).These models are generated from a series of differential equations (which help mathematicians understand rates of change) and readily apply to the spread of misinformation. For instance, on social media, false information is propagated from individual to individual, some of whom become infected, some of whom remain immune. Others serve as asymptomatic vectors (carriers of disease), spreading misinformation without knowing or being adversely affected by it.These models are incredibly useful because they allow us to predict and simulate population dynamics and to come up with measures such as the basic reproduction (R0) number the average number of cases generated by an infected individual.As a result, there has been growing interest in applying such epidemiological approaches to our information ecosystem. Most social media platforms have an estimated R0 greater than 1, indicating that the platforms have potential for the epidemic-like spread of misinformation.Looking for solutionsMathematical modelling typically either involves whats called phenomenological research (where researchers describe observed patterns) or mechanistic work (which involves making predictions based on known relationships). These models are especially useful because they allow us to explore how possible interventions may help reduce the spread of misinformation on social networks.We can illustrate this basic process with a simple illustrative model shown in the graph below, which allows us to explore how a system might evolve under a variety of hypothetical assumptions, which can then be verified.Prominent social media figures with large followings can become superspreaders of election disinformation, blasting falsehoods to potentially hundreds of millions of people. This reflects the current situation where election officials report being outmatched in their attempts to fact-check minformation.In our model, if we conservatively assume that people just have a 10% chance of infection after exposure, debunking misinformation only has a small effect, according to studies. Under the 10% chance of infection scenario, the population infected by election misinformation grows rapidly (orange line, left panel).A compartment model of disinformation spread over a week in a cohort of users, where disinformation has a 10% chance of infecting a susceptible unvaccinated individual upon exposure. Debunking is assumed to be 5% effective. If prebunking is introduced and is about twice as effective as debunking, the dynamics of disinformation infection change markedly.Sander van der Linden/Robert David GrimesPsychological vaccinationThe viral spread analogy for misinformation is fitting precisely because it allows scientists to simulate ways to counter its spread. These interventions include an approach called psychological inoculation, also known as prebunking.This is where researchers preemptively introduce, and then refute, a falsehood so that people gain future immunity to misinformation. Its similar to vaccination, where people are introduced to a (weakened) dose of the virus to prime their immune systems to future exposure.For example, a recent study used AI chatbots to come up with prebunks against common election fraud myths. This involved warning people in advance that political actors might manipulate their opinion with sensational stories, such as the false claim that massive overnight vote dumps are flipping the election, along with key tips on how to spot such misleading rumours. These inoculations can be integrated into population models of the spread of misinformation.You can see in our graph that if prebunking is not employed, it takes much longer for people to build up immunity to misinformation (left panel, orange line). The right panel illustrates how, if prebunking is deployed at scale, it can contain the number of people who are disinformed (orange line).The point of these models is not to make the problem sound scary or suggest that people are gullible disease vectors. But there is clear evidence that some fake news stories do spread like a simple contagion, infecting users immediately.Meanwhile, other stories behave more like a complex contagion, where people require repeated exposure to misleading sources of information before they become infected.The fact that individual susceptibility to misinformation can vary does not detract from the usefulness of approaches drawn from epidemiology. For example, the models can be adjusted depending on how hard or difficult it is for misinformation to infect different sub-populations.Although thinking of people in this way might be psychologically uncomfortable for some, most misinformation is diffused by small numbers of influential superspreaders, just as happens with viruses.Taking an epidemiological approach to the study of fake news allows us to predict its spread and model the effectiveness of interventions such as prebunking.Some recent work validated the viral approach using social media dynamics from the 2020 US presidential election. The study found that a combination of interventions can be effective in reducing the spread of misinformation.Models are never perfect. But if we want to stop the spread of misinformation, we need to understand it in order to effectively counter its societal harms.This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

November 6, 20247 min readTrump Victory Is a Gut Punch to U.S. Climate ActionPresident-elect Trump vowed to promote fossil fuels, weaken pollution regulations and reverse Biden administration climate effortsRepublican former president Donald Trump was elected to a new term in the White House. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | President-elect Donald Trump won a second term Wednesday morning after promising to unleash fossil fuel development, slash pollution regulations and dismantle President Joe Bidens climate agenda.Climate change was dwarfed by issues like the cost of living, immigration and the future of democracy during the campaign. But Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris immediately cast doubt over the future of U.S. climate measures and raised questions about the country's commitment to cutting planet-warming pollution.This is obviously a difficult result to stomach for those of us who care about our democracy as well as healthy communities and a safe and livable planet for our children, said Sam Ricketts, a prominent climate hawk and former aide to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D). There's no sugar-coating it: This is a gut punch.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The stakes for the planet could hardly be higher. Scientists have warned that 2024 is almost certain to become the hottest year on record. Global ocean temperatures broke records for much of this year, helping fuel a devastating Atlantic hurricane season. Climate disasters have wreaked havoc worldwide in 2024, an indicator of the growing consequences of steadily rising temperatures.A recent United Nations report warned that global climate action is moving too slowly and that if world leaders dont immediately and dramatically step up their efforts, there is "virtually no chance" of meeting the international target to limit temperature increases.Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to once again pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a nonbinding pact to slash emissions that are driving up temperatures. His victory comes as international climate negotiators prepare to meet next week in Azerbaijan, where countries will hash out a new target for climate aid that some developing nations say should exceed $1 trillion annually.Without U.S. contributions, other countries will be reluctant to step up funding, making deeper emissions cuts harder to achieve, diplomatic analysts say.But Trump has often rejected the presence of climate change, or shrugged off its damaging effects on people and the environment."America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate," Trump said in a victory speech early Wednesday morning, vowing to increase the production of oil, which he called "liquid gold."Domestically, Trumps victory raised immediate questions about the future of the landmark climate legislation signed by Biden. Trump has pledged to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which funnels hundreds of billions of dollars into greening the economy. He will be bolstered by a Republican majority in the Senate after the GOP picked up seats in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. Republicans also had narrow leads in Senate contests in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Control of the House of Representatives remained up for grabs as of 6 a.m. Wednesday.Analysts were split about what Trumps election will mean for the climate law. Some noted growing support among congressional Republicans, who have seen federal dollars flow to factories that make electric vehicles, solar panels and batteries in their districts and states. Clean energy has received bipartisan support in the infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Energy Act of 2020, said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell, a lobbying firm.This and infrastructure happened to be one of the areas where Republicans can find common ground, Maisano said.Others were skeptical.Its one thing to say you dont want these tax credits repealed. Thats a good start, said Adrian Deveny, who helped write the Inflation Reduction Act when she worked for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Its another thing to vote no on a [future] tax package put forward by the president.Observers expect Trump to follow a pattern from his first term, when he appointed well-known climate deniers to top roles at agencies responsible for climate research, including EPA, the Energy Department, NOAA and NASA.Trumps budget proposals sought deep cuts to climate science initiatives, from NASA Earth science satellite missions to EPA research and development. While Congress blocked many of the cuts, hundreds of federal scientists left the government during his administration, and some left the U.S. altogether.At the Labor Department, Trump adopted a rule that made it harder for U.S. investment firms and employers to put workers retirement savings into investments with a focus on ESG, or environmental, social and governance, priorities. In 2023, Trump vowed in a campaign video to ban what he called insidious ESG investments and to protect Americans savings and investments from woke financial scams.And Trump is expected to rescind a host of EPA environmental rules including climate standards for power and petroleum producers just as he did when he took over from former President Barack Obama in 2017.'Climate fanaticism'Trumps victory means the Justice Department will likely notify federal courts that it does not intend to defend EPA rules for power plant carbon or oil and gas methane emissions against challenges from conservative states and industry. EPA will likely start the process of repealing and replacing the standards soon after Trump is inaugurated Jan. 20.New rules might take years to complete, but they are likely to be looser than the Biden standards and to demand less of industry.Trumps administration is also likely to target the Securities and Exchange Commissions controversial climate risk disclosure rule. The rule is on hold amid legal challenges from trade associations and conservative groups. But Trumps victory means the SEC will come under Republican control and could take a range of steps to ensure the rule never takes effect or is short-livedTrump has continued to downplay the seriousness of climate change, recently referring to global warming as one of the great scams of all time.Project 2025, a conservative policy template written by former Trump administration officials, calls for overhauling federal science agencies. It urges a new administration to reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates federal research on climate and the environment and oversees the National Climate Assessment.The Biden Administrations climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding, the plan says.'Frack, frack, frack'The oil and gas industry also stands to profit from the $75 million it invested in supporting Trump's candidacy. Loosening regulations on the industry was one of the few clear policy positions Trump espoused on the campaign trail.We will frack, frack, frack and drill, baby, drill, Trump said at an October rally in Detroit, asserting that such efforts would slash energy costs and reduce inflation. Independent experts doubt that cutting red tape in the U.S. would have much impact on the prices of global commodities like oil and natural gas.Trump and his supporters have vowed to roll back the wave of electrification that has swept through the auto industry. Theyve pledged to get rid of the Biden administrations regulatory regime thats intended to incentivize the manufacture and purchase of EVs and to make broader cuts in spending for mass transit and other low-emission forms of transportation.On the stump, Trump described Harris' support for EVs as a threat to U.S. jobs and an opening for China to dominate the U.S. car market.I've been against cars and car factories being taken out of Detroit and being taken out of our manufacturing of automobiles being taken out of our system, out of our country, Trump said in an Oct. 27 rally at New York's Madison Square Garden.Analysts said the transition of the U.S. energy sector from one dominated by fossil fuels to carbon-free power sources is likely to continue but at a much slower pace. That's largely because solar energy installations are cheaper to build in most U.S. markets than other energy technologies.But the government support that helped drive down the cost of solar projects and is cutting the price for wind power, geothermal energy and battery storage projects is likely to diminish in a second Trump administration, especially if Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Subsidies for cleaning up existing industrial facilities and opening new low-emission manufacturing plants could also be on the chopping block as the White House looks for ways to offset an extension of Trumps 2017 tax cuts for individuals and corporations.The debates are playing out against the backdrop of an ever warming world. NASA has already concluded that this June, July and August amounted to the hottest summer humans have ever documented, with global temperatures hovering around 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the long-term average.U.S. residents are already feeling the effects of a warming world. Extreme high temperatures have killed an estimated 815 U.S. workers between 1992 and 2017 and seriously injured 70,000 more, according to federal estimates.The federal government is trying to improve heat safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed in July a regulation to protect workers from extreme temperatures by requiring most employers provide them with water and time to rest and cool off during the work day.Republicans swiftly criticized the proposal. House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman of Arkansas called it one of the most idiotic things theyve ever done.Trump hasnt mentioned the regulation himself but did make light of high temperatures during campaign events this summer. At one Las Vegas rally held outdoors in 100-degree heat, Trump joked that his supporters should drink more water.I dont want anybody going on me. We need every voter, he said. I dont care about you, I just want your vote."Six people at that gathering were sent to a hospital for heat-related treatment, and 24 were treated on-site.The Trump administration will pick up the pieces from a pair of historic hurricanes. Helene and Milton are likely to be two of the costliest U.S. disasters, with each estimated to have caused tens of billions of dollars in damages. Studies have suggested that the events were worsened by human-caused climate change.The federal response to natural disasters has been proudly nonpartisan for decades. Trump has vowed a change, saying on the campaign trail that he would use disaster aid to reward supporters and punish opponents.During his presidency, Trump withheld or delayed aid to California and Washington state after wildfires because of disputes with the states Democratic governors.Although Trump has focused on Federal Emergency Management Agency aid, refusing to declare a disaster would block impacted communities from receiving billions of dollars from departments such as Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, and the Small Business Administration.Trump also could resurrect a policy that FEMA proposed a month before he left office in 2021 to raise the amount of damage that a disaster must cause for a state to qualify for federal aid. The proposal, aimed at giving states more responsibility for disaster recovery, was opposed by many state and local officials.Reporters Jean Chemnick, Avery Ellfeldt, Thomas Frank, Chelsea Harvey, Mike Lee, Sara Schonhardt, Scott Waldman, Ariel Wittenberg and Lesley Clark contributed.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

November 6, 20247 min readElection Grief Is Real. Heres How to CopeUnderstanding the psychology of ambiguous loss can help people struggling with grief and depression in the wake of the 2024 election resultsBy Meghan BartelsA supporter reacts to election results during an event for U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 5, 2024. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty ImagesAn impassioned election has come to an end, but the emotions of the past few months have not. One of the emotions a lot of people are experiencing is grief, more often associated with death than the voting process. Scientific American spoke with Pauline Boss, an emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota, who spent 45 years as a psychotherapist. She coined the term ambiguous loss in her work with wives of soldiers missing in action in the 1970s; more recently, she has applied the idea to what people around the world have experienced during the COVID pandemic.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]What is grief?On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Grief is simply the outcome of loss, but theres a caveatthe criterion for what you lost is that you were attached to it.You can grieve things that are both clear and unclear. Most of our literature is based on a clear lossdeath or the loss of money, things that can be quantified or proven. But there are many, many kinds of losses that remain ambiguous. Its a term I came up with in the late 1970s that apparently gave a name to a kind of loss that heretofore went unacknowledged. People felt sad; they felt like they wanted to grieve, but nobody would come to their house to comfort them; there were no religious rituals for this kind of loss. There just was no acknowledgment of it.Now we know there is such thing as ambiguous loss, and I think thats what people might be experiencing now.During the COVID pandemic, for example, we had loss of trust in the world as a safe place because of the virus. Many of us baked bread because that was a couple hours of being in control again and having a good outcome. It was certainty, two hours of certaintythat, by the way, is a good way to cope with a situation you cant control.Now we have a kind of loss that I think is causing some grief for people who wanted a different outcome of this election. Its really quite important to understand the feeling. It is a normal response if youre in the midst of something you didnt expect and you dont like, and it came suddenly, unexpectedly. Its a major loss.Do we need to change the way we think about emotions such as sadness and anger?We should normalize the anger and the sadness. I think we jump too quickly to pathologize emotions that are scary. I think you need to be patient with yourself if youre feeling angry, sad, grieving right now. I think thats a normal reaction to a surprising outcome and an outcome that, in our view, is going backward and not forward.So accept your feelings. Know theres no closure to grief. Know you had a loss. List your lossesI would recommend people actually write them down.What are some of the psychological losses people might be feeling after the election?The loss of hopes and dreams and plans that they thought were coming from the other candidate; a loss of certainty in the future that was what they wanted; loss of trust in the world as a safe place; loss of feelings of freedom over your own body; the loss of support for people who have lesser means than the rest of us do; the loss of support for your neighbor and people who are different from youits a grief that remains unresolved.Its not like a grief of a person for whom you have a death certificate and a funeral after and rituals of support and comfort. Were stuck with this. I wrote about it as frozen grief.What is it that freezes that grief?A lack of proofa lack of certainty that you have lost something, because you cant see it. If someone died, you can see the body or the ashes; you can see the death certificate. Theres something official that says this person you loved and were attached to is now gone, and while that is very sad, you at least have certainty.With a more abstract kind of loss, there is no proof that you have lost trust in the world except your perception. And if you perceive it to be true, it is true for youthat youre feeling helpless or powerless that things didnt go your way.With frozen grief, you could be immobilized. Thats the danger. Dont be immobilized. You need to do something active in order to deal with a situation you cant control. Be active in your neighborhoods at the grassroots level. It will help to be active, not just to sit back and grumble and not just to lash out either. Action is psychologically what helps when youre feeling helpless.That sounds like maybe a long-term strategy. You talked about the example of baking bread; would that be a sort of short-term strategy for managing this type of grief?Absolutely. Short term, you have to do something you can control when youre in a situation you cant control. Do something you can controlin your house, in your home, with your family. Go running, listen to music, go to a movie, do something that requires action, that makes your body move. Youll feel better for that. Go see a neighbor.Long term, get involved. Get involved with whatever works for change that will bring us closer to the future, not take us backward.Do you have any words of wisdom for sort of how people can make space for grief over time?It doesnt go away. Grief sort of turns itself into sadness, but dont expect it to ever go away. You may even shed a tear or have an emotion of sadness 20 years from now if you remember this timeand thats normal. That is normal grief. You do not have to find closure. If you were attached to some thing, some person, some idea, and you lost it, you will carry a sadness about that forever. You will remember it. You wont forget it, nor should you have to.When people say to you, Arent you over it yet? please respond to them and say, the current knowledge is that you dont have to get over loss and grief. You learn to live with it, and you learn to live with loss by finding a new purpose in it, finding something you can do to change things. You have to find a purpose in your loss, and that purpose should be something active.I could see someone feeling really cynical and sad saying, like, If losing things youre attached to causes grief, then Im just not going to be attached to things. Is that actually a healthy response?No. Im using attachment rather loosely. In psychology it has a narrower definition, but it is a motivation for our actions and our beliefs and values.So attachments are really important, even if they do cause you pain sometimes?Thats right. Its a good time to sit and reflect on your own life and your own attachments. What do you care about? What do you care about in your own body? What do you care about in your own family, in your neighborhood, in your nation and in the world? I care about climate change not because it will matter in my life so much anymore, given my age, but because I care about my grandchildren and their children.Is it possible to cultivate more resilience to this kind of grief in the future?Yes. Increase your tolerance for ambiguity and keep increasing your tolerance for uncertainty. We hate uncertainty in this culture.There is, in fact, a tolerance for ambiguity scale. It was born out of a scale now called the authoritarian personality scale. [Editors Note: That scale was originally developed in the aftermath of World War II by philosopher Theodor Adorno as a response to Nazism. A higher tolerance for ambiguity is related to lower susceptibility to fascist ideologies.]Change is necessary. If a system of human beings doesnt change, they die. And right now I think were on the precipice of not wanting to change, and thats not a good thing. Thats going backward. I think we should work toward bringing about change now at the community level, wherever you have power and agency, whatever level you have it at. Maybe its just in your family, maybe its just in yourself, or maybe it is in your community or state or nation or globally. But work for changebecause change is the one thing that will keep us going.Are there any strategies that people can use to cultivate that tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty in themselves?Yes. Go see some improvisation at the theater. Go to listen to some jazz music, which is totally improvisation. Do something different that youve never done before. Learn a new language; go travel in a foreign country alone. Get to know some people you never knew before that are unlike yourself. Stretch yourself; reach out; do something different. Take a hike on a new path.Im not against certainty. I want my accountant to think in binary. And in our sports world, you either win or you lose. Thats a binary. But in human relationships and in our human condition, the binary does not work so well. Were often in that shadowland of ambiguity and uncertainty.Is there anything else you want to say about grief people might be feeling right now?Dont be afraid of it. Just know that its a normal reaction to an outcome you didnt want or expect. And it doesnt need to go away, but hopefully it doesnt immobilize you. The grief is frozen; you yourself shouldnt be.

November 5, 20242 min readThese Bird Nests Show Signs of an Architectural CultureCulture may play a role in how birds build collectively in the Kalahari DesertBy Gennaro TommaWhite-browed Sparrow-Weaver nests and roosts. Wolfgang Kaehler/Alamy Stock PhotoFrom long and winding migration flights to intricate songs and clever tool use, many bird behaviors are known to be transmitted socially and persist across generationswhat scientists define as animal culture. Now a study suggests culture might play a role in avian architecture, too.Researchers analyzed more than 400 structures built by 43 different groups of White-browed Sparrow-Weavers in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. These birds live communally, and the entire cohort works together to build a nest and multiple roosts from grass. The groups dominant female then lays eggs in the nest, which has a long, tubelike entrance. Individual birds slumber nearby in the U-shaped roosts, which have both an entrance and an exit.The scientists found that different gatherings of birds, even those living only a few meters from one another, built very different tube structures. The biggest difference was in how short or long the structures are, says study lead author Maria C. Tello-Ramos, a cognitive ecologist at the University of Hull in England. Tube width also varied between groups. Furthermore, each group maintained the same architectural style over timeand when outsiders joined, they adapted to this style.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.To examine why the groups built differently, the team analyzed factors that can determine a nests size and shape for a given bird species: weather conditions, tree height, individuals body size and genetic relatedness. (If closely related birds build similar structures, for instance, one might assume a genetic element.) Yet none of these factors seemed to play a relevant role in shaping how the Kalahari sparrows built their nests, the researchers reportin Science.Then we say, Okay, so what is left? Tello-Ramos explains. She and her colleagues proposed that cultural transmission might be key to nest building. In our paper, we havent gotten there yet with experiments, but we have very good clues that that might be it, she says.These are important questions that are understudied, says Christina Riehl, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University. Shes not convinced the studys data are enough to fully rule out genetic influence. They cant actually look at the effect of, say, genetic differences, because they dont have really good genetic information on all the individuals in these groups, she says. I think theres a lot left to be done, and I think this paper will inspire future research in a really good way.

November 5, 20245 min readClimate Is on State Ballots This ElectionSeveral downballot races in the 2024 presidential election will carry implications for climate policy far beyond state linesBy Adam Aton & E&E NewsVoters on November 5, 2024, in Tryon, N.C. Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | Some of this elections most important battlegrounds for climate policy have nothing to do with the Electoral College.Governors mansions, legislatures and even climate policy itself are on the ballot across the country.In Washington state, voters will render an up-or-down verdict on one of the countrys most aggressive systems for cutting emissions. In North Carolina, the next governor could gain some legislative support to boost electric vehicles or the governor's office could flip and go to a Republican who denies the reality of climate change. And in Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Walz enacted major climate laws before becoming the vice presidential nominee, Democrats are looking to defend their narrow control over the Legislature.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.These down-ballot races will carry implications far beyond state lines. After years of preparing and finally passing climate policy, Democrats are about to discover how popular those actions truly are and whether its safe for lawmakers elsewhere to copy them.Once you have climate policy in place, can you implement it? Can you hold it? Can you extend it? said Craig Segall, senior vice president of environmental group Evergreen Action.This years contests come after the 2022 midterms delivered Democrats the power to govern in states like Michigan and Minnesota. Democrats used that power to pass major new climate laws, like clean electricity standards for both states.As the election nears, Democrats say they are encouraged at how their laws have played on the campaign trail.Climate is a huge part of our platform, said Michigan House Speaker Pro Tem Laurie Pohutsky, one of the Democrats who helped shepherd the state's clean energy package into law.Republicans have ceded almost the entire climate issue, she added, even policies that align with conservative ideas, like Michigans new law making it easier for landowners to get renewable energy projects permitted on their own property.All of these bills were party line votes and that's wild to me, Pohutsky said. Being able to kind of make that comparison and contrast has been really, really helpful.Thats true across the country, as state lawmakers overwhelmingly echo the narratives dominant within their own parties.Minnesota House Majority Leader Jamie Long, the author of the states clean electricity standard, sees that as an advantage for Democrats. Former President Donald Trump, he said, has made it difficult for Republicans to talk about climate without alienating some segments of voters.These issues are on the ballot, Long said, and its certainly something that a lot of our candidates are talking about and voters care about.Here are the states where down-ballot races will shape climate policy.WashingtonA referendum on Washingtons cap-and-invest system has become one of this years most consequential ballot initiatives, with billions of dollars and the future of state climate policy in the balance.Since it began last year, Washingtons system has raised more than $2 billion by auctioning carbon allowances for major polluters, like utilities and fuel refiners, with the number of allowances declining each year to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. That money has financed emissions-cutting projects like electrifying mass transit. Washington policymakers are also exploring linking the states carbon market with California and Quebec a major expansion that other states are watching closely.But amid voter concern about inflation, some blamed cap-and-invest for raising Washingtons gas prices.Initiative 2117 would repeal the system. The referendum was financed by GOP megadonor Brian Heywood, a hedge fund manager who has spent millions of dollars in an effort to repeal various policies put in place by Democratic lawmakers.The fossil fuel industry has largely stayed away from the repeal, and supporters of the cap-and-invest system buoyed by big-dollar donors of their own, like Bill Gates have launched a campaign to defeat the referendum.Another Haywood-funded referendum, Initiative 2066, would block state and local governments from banning gas in buildings.Voters will also choose a successor to outgoing Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who over three terms made climate a central focus of state government and in turn made Washington a hub for climate policy wonks. Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson faces Dave Reichert, a former Republican representative.MinnesotaIn 2023, Minnesota Democrats used their one-vote majority in the Legislature to pass a clean electricity standard, an overhaul of the states transportation system, clean energy subsidies and a bevy of other climate policies.Dubbed by progressives the second Minnesota miracle (the first was the states education reforms a half-century ago), that flurry of policymaking helped the midwestern states low-profile governor leap onto the Democratic presidential ticket.Now, the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party is working to hold onto the majority that passed those policies.Every seat is up in the House, where the DFL holds a 70-64 majority. And theres a special election for one seat in the Senate, which is currently split 34-34.Climate policy has become a significant issue in the races that could determine majority control.For instance, the Republican candidate in the state Senate race is Kathleen Fowke, a real estate agent whose husband was the CEO of the utility Xcel Energy from 2011 to 2021. She faces Ann Johnson Stewart, a former DFL state senator and civil engineer.Those candidate backgrounds have made for a very sharp contrast, Long said.Climate has been a big, front-and-center topic in that district," the state House Majority Leader said.MichiganMichigan is another state where, after Democrats passed major climate policies after they narrowly retook legislative control after the midterms.Chief among them are the states new electricity standard requiring all power to come from clean sources by 2040, zoning reforms that ease the way for landowners to site renewable energy and other policies aimed at pulling in federal climate funding.Democrats control the House by 56-54, meaning Republicans need to flip just one seat to achieve a tie that would block bills from advancing. (The Senate, which Democrats control 20-18, is not up for election this year.)Republicans possibly got a late-breaking boost when Ford recently announced it would idle its Dearborn production of the F-150 Lighting, the companys flagship electric truck, until 2025 due to sluggish sales.Pohutsky, the Democratic speaker pro tem, downplayed the impact that could have on either the presidential or statehouse races.The auto industry is no stranger to ups and downs, she said. Whats important is that voters see Democrats fighting to bring jobs to Michigan.People who live in those communities are at least appreciative that we did our best to get these projects here, she said. Were not just letting the industry, the technology pass us by.North CarolinaRepublicans have watched the Tar Heel States governorship slip further from their grasp after CNN reported that their nominee, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, called himself a black NAZI! and said "slavery is not bad" on a pornography site over a decade ago. Robinson has denied he made the posts.But the current Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, has repeatedly had his climate plans steamrolled by the Legislature, where Republicans hold a supermajority. The GOP Legislature has blocked the governor from adopting Californias vehicle standards and from joining the Northeasts cap-and-trade program for electricity.The same dynamic would await Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein if he wins the governorship unless Republicans lose a single seat in the House.Republicans gained their bare supermajority in 2023, when state Rep. Tricia Cotham changed parties before casting the deciding vote in favor of new abortion restrictions.Democrats have made Cothams seat a top priority this year, with millions of dollars pouring into the district.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

November 4, 20249 min readClean Energy Is Bringing Electricity to Many in the Navajo NationThousands of homes in Navajo and other tribal lands dont have access to electricity. A $200-million federal funding effort aims to fix that problem with solar power and other clean energyBy Scott Waldman & E&E NewsIn an aerial view, the Kayenta Solar Plant is seen on June 23, 2024 in Kayenta, Arizona. Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | ON NAVAJO LAND, Arizona It was a solar panel array that finally gave Norma Toledo a place to call home.For nights at a time this year, Toledo slept outside a Walmart in the cab of her Toyota Tacoma. But on one milestone day last month, as temperatures dipped below freezing, Toledo found herself in a warm RV that for the first time had access to electricity.Her new solar power hookup was made possible by two of the biggest measures of the Biden administration: the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. Its installation is part of a more than $200 million effort to build out clean energy resources on tribal lands, including the Navajo reservation where Toledo lives.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.I'm out of this world right now. It's like I finally got a homestead I'm a homesteader, said Toledo, 65, with a grin. I didn't think I'd ever get this far, but I kept trying, you know, I just kept trying and trying.Her time without electricity is a common experience on the Navajo reservation. About 17,000 homes on tribal lands nationally dont have energy access. Most of them about 15,000 are on Navajo lands or the Hopi reservation contained within its borders.The lack of electricity means tens of thousands of people must figure out a way to live without an amenity many Americans take for granted.Food is stored in coolers that have to be continually stocked with ice. Diesel generators must run 24 hours a day to power refrigerators that store life-saving medication. Kerosene lanterns keep the lights on at night. Fuel runs can take an hour or more to reach a gas station.The Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law are designed to change that. But electrifying tribal homes with solar power could come to a halt if former President Donald Trump is reelected. The Republican presidential nominee has called the laws a Green New Scam and pledged to gut them.I will immediately terminate the green new scam, that will be such an honor, the greatest scam in the history of any country, Trump said at a rally in New Mexico on Thursday.The Trump campaign did not respond to questions from POLITICOs E&E News on whether he would continue the Biden administrations push to bring more power to tribal lands if he defeats Vice President Kamala Harris this week and wins back the White House.In the three months since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, she has said very little about the Inflation Reduction Act. Nor has she introduced any new initiatives to address global warming. But Harris is broadly expected to continue the climate policies put in place during the Biden administration.Navajo housing in the desert of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park near Kayenta on the Arizona-Utah border.Nik Wheeler/Corbis via Getty ImagesWhen we invest in climate, we also invest in families, in communities, in opportunity and prosperity for all people, Harris said in a video she posted to X on Saturday. When we invest in climate, we invest in America.The federal money for tribal energy projects, estimated at more than $200 million, represents a tiny fraction of the $1.6 trillion in climate and infrastructure spending that was passed into law under Biden.Even so, supporters say the initiative can be a life-changing experience for the people it connects to the grid. And it can be a boon for local businesses, too.Navajo Power Home, one of several installers working to connect people to solar, recently received a $5 million grant from the Inflation Reduction Act as part of its effort to install off-grid battery storage solar in 1,000 homes by the end of 2025.Local workers benefit, too. Solar companies on the reservation largely train and hire local people for installation and repairs an opportunity that can be transformative for many families because good-paying jobs on tribal lands can be scarce.And for the people receiving electricity for the first time, it offers something more than a working light switch. The power gives them a chance to live in their ancestral home.It supports their understanding of who they are, their relationship to their land, their homeland, their identity and so much more, and it allows them to stay where they're from, said Wahleah Johns, director of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs.Johns would know.She grew up on the Navajo reservation without power and running water even though her family lived near the Navajo Generating Station, a massive coal power plant that closed during the Trump administration.She said the 1936 Rural Electrification Act which connected people outside cities to the grid largely skipped over tribal lands. The legacy of that decision from the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt means that today many tribal homes are still cut off from power.Thats true beyond Navajo Nation. Most homes on Native American reservations across the country are electrified. But in the Southwest and in Alaska where isolated communities are far from transmission lines tens of thousands of people still dont have power and running water.Clean energy and electrification efforts funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law are designed to correct such injustices, Johns said.The communities that have been left behind we are bringing them up forward and prioritizing them, Johns said. I think probably one of the biggest investments in our history in Indian country is from this administration.Navajo Nation helped swing Arizona to BidenArizona is expected to play a decisive role in the presidential election this week as its one of a few swing states left in play. That means Navajo voters could have an outsize impact on who wins the White House.Biden beat Trump in Arizona four years ago by less than 11,000 votes, and a part of his support came from Navajo Nation. About 60,000 Navajo and Hopi voters cast ballots in 2020; the three northeastern Arizona counties that overlap the Navajo reservation and the Hopi reservation went for Biden by 57 percent.But some of those votes could be in danger this year. In the wake of the 2020 election, Republican state lawmakers in Arizona passed a series of voter identification laws that could disproportionately disenfranchise Native Americans.That includes a measure that requires proof of citizenship upon voter registration. Opponents say the new rule could depress Native American turnout because many homes on tribal lands do not have street addresses due to their geographical isolation. In addition, there are older Native Americans who were born at home and do not have birth certificates.Jaynie Parrish, executive director of Native American Votes, a nonprofit group, described the new measures as the latest attempt by Republicans to suppress the Native American vote.She said the voter identification efforts are driven by racism and fear as well as a desire to weaken a voting bloc that favors Democrats. There's a fear of more black and brown people speaking up and voting, she said.Arizona Republicans have said the measures are necessary to prevent alleged voter fraud.Opponents of the proof of citizenship law challenged it in court, but it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in August.Navajo lands may be remote it takes hours to get to the nearest city, Flagstaff, Arizona, from most spots on the reservation but theyre hardly cut off from the presidential election.A recent visit found the roadways dotted with campaign signs. Protect our sovereignty, no king, vote Democratic, read one sign. Another one in front of one of the only grocery stores for 100 miles read, Trump low prices, Kamala high prices.In more than two dozen interviews, some residents said they were concerned Trump would not only end programs such as the solar electrification efforts but also ignore what makes the community unique.I think everybody's gonna be in trouble, especially the Natives, because weve got a completely different life, said Karl Kascoli, 64, a former coal miner who was laid off and now works at Lowes.Weve got our own songs, our own prayers and different culture even. We even have a different language, he added. The government, they don't really listen to us because they don't understand our language.For Kameron Isaac, 31, the macho tenor of the Trump campaign is one reason he feels motivated to vote for Harris.The masculinity of that generation, it just needs to change, said Isaac, who added that this year is the first time hes voting in a presidential election.He spoke to a reporter in between efforts to break in a wild colt he had captured by motorcycle on the mesa behind his family ranch.The toxic people that come with him, what happened in the White House, what he's trying to do next, I feel like I can't believe him, he said. Basically, he betrayed my trust.But support for Harris isnt universal.At the Cameron Trading Post a restaurant, art gallery, hotel and tourist stop that is a hub of tribal employment a Navajo man named Charles said he was eager to vote for Trump because of his anti-immigration views.Charles, who refused to give his last name, said his great-grandfather battled white settlers to protect his land. He compared that fight to what he sees as the threat of undocumented immigrants, who could take land from Americans.Its just the reverse, it's happening to the white people now, he said. Theyre going through what we went through with Europeans.Clean energy offers chance to right past wrongsThe drive to bring more solar power to those living on Navajo lands seeks to fulfill two major goals of the Biden administration: It expands the use of green energy, and it aims to address longstanding environmental inequities.About half the total amount of solar installed in the U.S. came online during the Biden administration, according to Bidens top climate adviser Ali Zaidi. Solar manufacturing quadrupled in that time. There are now more than 5 million solar installations in the United States, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.No matter what happens in the election, the administration will be running through the tape to make sure Inflation Reduction Act dollars reach as many recipients as possible, Zaidi told POLITICOs E&E News.Arizona in particular is well suited for solar power, ranking second nationally for solar potential the state averages 270 sunny days a year.But progress has been slow due in part to resistance from Republican state officials who have tapped the brakes on the transition to clean energy.Still, there have been some bright spots for solar power.In Arizona, the Inflation Reduction Act has yielded about $12 billion in public and private clean energy investments, including battery plants and utility-scale solar installations, according to Climate Power.Support from the Biden administration also has helped create more than 18,000 clean energy jobs in Arizona. Those include solar manufacturing and installation jobs, as well as temporary construction jobs.And at least 1,300 more homes on Navajo and Hopi lands will be electrified with solar panels and batteries by the end of next year because of the Inflation Reduction Act.Clean energy offers a chance too to break from past injustices of fossil fuels, supporters say.Part of that history includes the Navajo Generating Station, a massive 2,250-megawatt coal-fired power plant that provided electricity to the Phoenix area on transmission lines that ran through native communities and polluted their land, water and air without providing them power.Brett Isaac, Navajo Powers founder and executive chair, said energy companies also mined the reservation and sold its natural resources for billions of dollars while giving only a paltry share of revenue to the Navajo.Green power can help reset that exploitative relationship, he said.We got a lot more purview into how this industry works and the reality of what can come out of it, said Isaac, who serves on the Presidents Export Council. The same validation that I use to help people get comfortable with solar technology on their home is what I'm using to get leaders and decisionmakers comfortable with what it will do for their communities.Access to power also taps into the Navajo history of adaptation and self-sufficiency, Isaac said.After the U.S. government forced the Navajo off their land and destroyed their homes and livestock, they had to find a way to thrive in the hard, arid landscape. As Navajo people, adaptation is kind of our thing, Isaac said.In addition, bringing power to existing homes helps the Navajo people maintain a connection to the land, he said. Navajo tradition dictates that a babys umbilical cord should be buried on family land, a ritual intended to keep him or her spiritually linked to the place.Isaac recalled a story in which his company helped bring power to a hogan a traditional circular Navajo home often made of stone and timber.The Navajo elder who owned it had been using it as a storage space. But when he checked on her a few weeks after connecting it to a solar power array, she greeted him at the door of the hogan with a huge smile.Inside, she was cooking, her family had gathered around the ancestral dwelling, and her grandchildren were on the couch watching Netflix. Bulbs were glowing in light fixtures that had been dormant for 50 years.'The fact that you guys got me power,' Isaac remembers her telling him, 'it's just changed the way I think about things.'Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

November 4, 20244 min readThe Myth that Musicians Die at 27 Shows How Superstitions Are MadeFamous people who die at 27, such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Amy Winehouse, get even more famous because of the mythology surrounding that numbera look at how modern folklore emergesBy Rachel Nuwer"Club 27" mural by Eduardo Kobra, 170 Forsyth Street & Rivington Street on New York City's Lower East Side. Edward Westmacott/Alamy Stock Photo.Zackary Dunivin, a sociologist now at the University of California, Davis, was watching a movie about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat when something in the epilogue caught his attention. Basquiat, the explanatory text stated, died of a drug overdose at the age of 27. Dunivin felt that something about this particular age seemed to lend additional weight to the tragedy of Basquiats death, and he quickly realized why: Basquiat was a member of the 27 Club. This widespread myth holds that famous people, especially musicians, are unusually likely to die at age 27.The film, Basquiat, made Dunivin wonder about how the 27 Club myth propagates itself and what that means for the people who are caught up in it. In a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA paper, he provides some answers: more attention is paid to people who die at the age of 27 because of the existence of the club, he found, and this creates a positive feedback loop that both strengthens the legends potency and the fame of those it pertains to.The weird thing about this particular myth is: even if you dont know about the 27 Club, you encounter more famous dead people who died at 27, Dunivin says. Weve made this myth appear to be true because the appearance that more people who die at 27 is real.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The idea that especially talented people are prone to untimely deaths goes back to ancients. As noted by the Greek playwright Menander in the Fourth Century B.C.E., Whom the gods love die young.The idea that musicians, artists, actors and other creative people are more likely to die specifically at the age of 27, however, emerged more recently, after a series of high-profile deaths in the early 1970s. Between 1969 and 1971, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison each died at that age. By chance, these rock stars were all icons of the counterculture movement, and the first and last of their deaths occurred two years apart to the day. We are meaning-making machinesthats what we do as human beings, Dunivin says. You look at that and say, It cant be a coincidence!The fact that people latched on to this particular group of deaths in the 1970s is somewhat justified, Dunivin continues, because of just how unusual it was. In the new paper, he calculated a steep one in 100,000 chance that four 27-year-olds at the top of a Wikipedia list of famous peoplethe lists 99.9th percentile, true superstars, as Dunivin sayswould die in a two-year period.The myths popularity has been revived and reinforced over the years, he adds, by other headline-making deaths of famous 27-year-olds, including Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.Dunivin did not set out to debunk the myth itselfthat had already been done by another group of researchers in 2011. Instead he wanted to untangle how a legend that emerged out of a random but truly strange series of events went on to have a real-world impact by shaping the legacies of other famous people who subsequently died at 27.For the data, Dunivin and his co-author, sociologist Patrick Kaminski of Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Stuttgart in Germany, turned to a database of notable people that includes nearly everyone with a Wikipedia page in all languages. They limited their analysis to people who were born after 1900 and who died before 2015, leaving them with 344,156 individuals. The researchers used page visits as a proxy for fame.Statistical models that they used reconfirmed that there is no increased risk of famous people dying at age 27. Among those in the 90th percentile of fame and higher, however, those who died at 27 did experience an extra boost in popularity that could not be accounted for by other factors. The effect was particularly pronounced for the most famous of the famous, or individuals who roughly achieved the 99th percentile of fame. That bump indicates that people who die at age 27 are considerably more likely to be more famous than those who die at 26 or 28, Dunivin says.Cultural myths are generally very hard to study empirically, says Omar Lizardo, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the work. But by using a clever approach, he says, Dunivin and Kaminski did a good job of providing a lot of circumstantial evidence that the phenomenon is real and that artists who die around that age garner more attention and notoriety.Timothy Tangherlini, a folklorist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the research, calls it a major contribution to what is known as computational folklore.The authors succeed in leveraging sophisticated statistical models and novel data to understand the feedback mechanisms of belief, storytelling and their real-world effects, Tangherlini says. Ultimately, they provide a mechanism for understanding how, in death, these young musiciansbecause of an unusual coincidence of timinghave grown in fame because of the emergence of a coordinating narrative that clearly resonated among fans and the broader public.

November 4, 20242 min readEpic Gravity Lens Lines Up Seven-Galaxy ViewA galaxy cluster bends light from seven background galaxies around it, letting astronomers peer into space and timeBy Tom MetcalfeThe Carousel Lens (center) bends the light of seven background galaxies. DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys/LBNL/DOE & KPNO/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURAAn almost impossible alignment of galaxies that forms a giant magnifying lens could give astronomers an unprecedented deep view of the universe.The Carousel Lensnamed for its concentric circular patterns, like the reflections in a fun-house mirrorincorporates a cluster of galaxies about five billion light-years from Earth whose gravity is so intense that it magnifies the light of seven galaxies behind it, between 7.6 billion and 12 billion light-years away. This phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, occurs only when galaxies line up precisely from our perspective.As seen from Earth, the massive gravitational lens creates multiple images of six of the seven background galaxies, each of whose light arrives to us by a slightly different path. If a transient event, such as a supernova, occurs in any one of those galaxies, astronomers here will have up to four views of it at slightly different times.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.If we had a supernova exploding, we would have as many images of the supernova as we have images of the source, says cosmologist Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratorys physics division, which took part in the lenss discovery. That would provide just amazing information.Careful observations of both the foreground clusterwhich may itself be made up of hundreds of galaxiesand the background galaxies can help astronomers better understand how dark matter and dark energy behave, as well as more about the universes ancient past. The farthest background galaxy is so distant that it must have developed in an early phase of the universe, which most scientists think is around 13.7 billion years old.Researchers used artificial-intelligence systems to find potential gravitational lenses by sorting through millions of galactic survey images. They then arranged for the Hubble Space Telescope to image the location, revealing the Carousel Lens at high resolution.William Sheu, an astrophysics graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead author of a new study about the discovery in the Astrophysical Journal, says analysis of the Hubble images could reveal even more background galaxies that have been magnified by the gravity of the same foreground galaxy cluster.Gravitational lensing follows Einsteins 1916 general theory of relativity, which predicted that gravity would bend light; the first such lens was found in 1979. Boston University astronomer Tereasa Brainerd, who was not involved in the discovery, says the lenses have become powerful tools for studying many of the open questions of the cosmos.This is an especially remarkable object, Brainerd says. Its the result of outstanding good luck that the lens and the seven background galaxies are almost perfectly lined up along our line of sight.

November 4, 2024Your 2024 Election Rundown, from Immigration to EducationThe outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election could set the climate agenda, reshape public education and shift the dynamics of global science collaboration. Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanSUBSCRIBE TO Science QuicklyApple | Spotify | RSS[CLIP: Theme music]Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman. We usually start off the week with a news roundup, but today were doing something a little different. On Friday we talked to a few Scientific American editors about how the upcoming election could impact issues of science and health policy. Today were back to hear from a few more SciAm staffers before we run out of time to hit the polls.First up well see where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris stand on climate change and energy policy.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Andrea Thompson: Im Andrea Thompson. Im associate editor for Earth and environment.So were in a little bit of a mixed bag on climate and energy. You know, were not where we need to be in terms of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but President [Joe] Bidens efforts have been by far the most any presidential administration has taken to try and tackle that problem. A lot of that comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has put a lot of funding towards renewable energy and electric vehicles, but there are also efforts at the [Environmental Protection Agency] to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And all of those collectively will make, hopefully, the biggest dent that we can. But a lot of that depends on, you know, what happens in this election.[CLIP: "The Farmhouse," by Silver Maple]Vice President Harris hasnt talked a lot about climate change on its face in her public appearances or in debates, but it is widely expected that she would continue and likely build on what President Biden has done. Her record as a senator and before that as attorney general in California was very favorable towards environmental justice, towards climate change issues. Of the experts I talked to, a lot of them were really excited, particularly about her housing policy because where people live has a big influence on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their lifestyles.So one of the biggest things I think we would expect a Harris administration to do is continue to implement the Inflation Reduction Act and all the funding that it makes available. I think the Harris administration would also be expected to try to continue to strengthen EPA regulations to rein in emissions, although that is somewhat potentially hamstrung by what happens in the court system. But, you know, everyone I talk to expects a Harris administration to try to keep building on the Biden-Harris administration legacy.The one sort of caveat there is that Vice President Harris has signaled that she has been open to continuing oil and gas leasing and drilling in this country, which is something that has also happened in the Biden administration. Some of that is just, you know, legally, they have to allow certain leases; theres not a lot they can do about that. But it is, I know, a little bit of a concern among environmental advocates.So Trump is about as polar opposite as you can get. A few people I spoke to said, like, you know, there could not be a starker difference between the two candidates on a, on a policy.So Trump has widely signaled, and really straight-out said, that he wants to increase oil and gas extraction.[CLIP: Donald Trump speaks in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in October: And we will frack, frack, frack and drill, baby, drill [laughs].]Thompson: Nominally, that is to, I think his words are, to make America energy-dominant. And there has long been this sort of idea of energy independence, although thats a little bit of a misnomer because oil and gas are globally traded commodities, so they are always going to be subject to a global market.[CLIP: "The Mist 4 (Instrumental)," by Kreb]Just judging by his statements, by the Project 2025 blueprint and looking at what happened during his first administration, I think a Trump administration would be very antagonistic to the bedrock environmental and public health laws in our country, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. They rolled back something like more than 200 environmental regulations during their first administration. They definitely tried to reduce the amount that the EPA could actually regulate greenhouse gas emissions.Theres been some modeling of, you know, what would happen to greenhouse gas emissions if you had a continuation of the current policies versus what is laid out in Project 2025. Project 2025 would basically erase all of the gains made under the Inflation Reduction Act and some of the other policies that the Biden administration has put in place. And the thing with climate change is we have to act very rapidly, and if you lose four years, you cannot get them back.If Trump won, one of the things that would be really obvious in peoples lives, although its hard to say whether it would happen or not, would be disaster response. We just had two very major hurricanes hit in North Carolina and Florida that caused devastation, and the federal government is a huge part of those responses. [The Federal Emergency Management Agency] has funding to help people recover after a disaster, as [does] the Small Business Administration. And the Project 2025 plan basically guts that funding, so it would make it considerably harder for communities to bounce back after a hurricane or a wildfire or any other disaster. And its already, even with that funding, very hard to do.Whereas we would expect a Harris administration to continue in the vein of the Biden administration, which has very much put a push towards preparationso not just disaster response but getting ahead of the disaster to prepare communities so that they are less impacted when those flooding or wildfire events happen.[CLIP: "Krebeasy (Instrumental)," by Kreb]I would say the bottom line is that a Trump administration would be pretty disastrous for trying to continue any progress, even as limited as it is, on climate change. It would be a significant setback at the very least, and it could put achieving the Paris climate agreement goal of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius [2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] completely out of reach. We dont get there without the U.S. participating.The Harris administration, its harder to say exactly how that would go, but it would at least continue us on the path that the Biden administration has set. It could even put us ahead of where we are on that current trajectory.Feltman: This is Rachel again. There are few health policy issues more contentious than gun control. Earlier this year Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared firearm violence a public health crisis in the U.S. Its now the nations leading cause of death for children and adolescents. Firearms arent even in the top four causes of death for children in other countries that are comparable in terms of size and wealth, according to health policy nonprofit KFF. Heres where the two candidates stand on this devastating crisis.Meghan Bartels: My name is Meghan Bartels, and Im a senior news reporter at Scientific American.The first thing people should know about gun violence in the U.S. is that the country is actually home to more guns than people. That ends up meaning that guns killed nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. in 2022. More than half of those deaths were suicides. And guns are the leading cause of death for children between the ages of one and 17.The U.S. still doesnt have as much data as scientists really need to come up with clear and strong scientific conclusions about what policies do and dont reduce gun violence. Researchers are trying the best they can with the data that they have, but its really difficult to study.[CLIP: "Let There Be Rain," by Silver Maple]The vice presidents track record on gun policy begins during the 1990s and 2000s, when she held a string of district attorney offices in California.As vice president she has headed up the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which President Joe Biden founded. In 2022 Congress passed the first sweeping gun legislation in nearly three decades. It was primarily sort of funding mechanisms, but there were some really important policy changes in there as well. One is requiring stronger background checks on gun buyers who are under 21 years old, one is requiring more types of gun sellers to conduct background checks, and one is broadening a measure that keeps guns away from domestic violence offenders to also now include people who have abused dating partners.Vice President Harris has discussed the damage done by school shootings.[CLIP: Kamala Harris speaks in North Hampton, New Hampshire, in September: And its just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive. Its senseless. It, it isweve gotta stop it.]Bartels: Shes met with survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, who are actually old enough to vote in a presidential election for the first time this year.Harris has also talked about the fact that both she and her vice presidential running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, are gun owners, and she talks about how neither of them want to take away peoples guns.[CLIP: "Those Rainy Days," by Elm Lake]When Trump was president he primarily loosened restrictions on gun ownership. That said, his really big action on this front was that he appointed about 200 federal judges with gun-friendly records.The one key action that President Trump took in office that could have reduced gun violence was banning bump stocks, which are attachments that allow semiautomatic guns to shoot faster. However, the Supreme Court has since overturned that, including the three justices that Trump appointed.The Supreme Court has also overturned a New York state provision that limited concealed carry of weapons. Concealed carry provisions that allow people to have guns in more places do increase gun violence. And sort of the repercussions of the Supreme Court decision are still being understood, but experts are worried because most gun regulation happens at the state level, and rulings like this one can sort of eat away at states ability to regulate gun violence in this way.Trump also openly talks about being a defender of the Second Amendment. His campaign website has a Gun Owners for Trump web page.Trump hasnt shown any signs of changing his course of action on guns. That said, he hasnt necessarily given a whole lot of clear details. One idea that has come up from the Trump campaign via his running mate, Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, is this idea of hardening schools. Vance talked during the vice presidential debate about making doors lock better and making them stronger and making windows stronger.One other piece that has come up is Trump has expressed interest in the idea of concealed carry reciprocity, which is something that would basically eat away at concealed carry weapons bans where they do exist.There are a lot of policies that dont directly relate to guns but that do affect how gun violence plays out in the nation. One of the researchers that I spoke with talked about how gun violence is about desperate conditions. Its particularly prevalent in neighborhoods that are very poor and very disadvantaged. And so there are a host of socioeconomic proposals that dont include the word gun in them anywhere but could reduce gun violence nonetheless. And so its also important to look at the broader swath of socioeconomic policies that each candidate presents if youre interested in looking at the rate of gun violence.[CLIP: "Pushing Forward (XO Edit) (Instrumental)," by Ballinger]If Harris wins the election, I think we are looking at a president who genuinely wants to reduce gun violence and is willing to try a range of policies that could help make that a reality. If Trump wins a second term, I think were facing another presidential term of weakening gun policies and also continuing this focus on putting in place conservative judiciary members who will see to it that these sorts of policies last long beyond his presidency.Feltman: Now lets talk about another contentious issue: immigration. Debates and dog whistles about immigration certainly make the news on a regular basis, but you might not realize the impact related policies have on science and technology in the U.S.Gary Stix: Im Gary Stix. Im a senior editor at Scientific American, and Ive been writing about immigration policy related to the 2024 election.[CLIP: "Beautifully Moody Piano (Instrumental)," by Stephen Boda]The country has a significant need for filling jobs for STEM: science, technology, engineering and math. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the country will require one million more STEM workers in 2030 than were needed a decade earlier. The CHIPS and Science Act is an attempt to revitalize the semiconductor industry. It was passed with bipartisan support in 2022. However, some prognostications have been that without more immigration, this plan is either gonna be hindered or it could even fail if there are not more computer scientists, engineers and technicians to staff chip factories.The Trump plan and his overall policy would make it unlikely and perhaps virtually impossible to meet the needs for skilled workers. The plans that he has for undocumented immigrants will resonate throughout his policy for legal immigration as well. He has one of the most, if not the most, extreme anti-immigration policies that has ever been conceived of, which is witnessed in his plans to expel millions of undocumented immigrants, and perhaps other noncitizens as well, that he baselessly claims are committing crimes, planning to vote illegally and stealing jobs from U.S. citizens. It might even entail building detention camps for those waiting to be expelled.[CLIP: Donald Trump speaks at Julys Republican National Convention: The Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our countryeven larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.]Stix: Trump also [had policies] during his first administration of making it more difficult for legal immigrants to come to this country as well.[CLIP: "It Doesn't End Here (Instrumental)," by Nehemiah Pratt]Kamala Harris presents a fairly divergent perspective. The entire political system has grown more conservative as far as immigration policy. Harris has endorsed the bipartisan immigration bill that never went through because Trump did not want to give the Democrats a win on this issue. The bill would have enabled the administration to restrict asylum seekers at the border.At the same time, though, Harris has also endorsed a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. She has acknowledged that the current immigration system is broken and that there needs to be measures to address that.So the Trump and Harris positions on immigration provide voters with a highly divergent choice when they go to the polls very soon. If Harris wins, its quite likely that the bipartisan immigration bill that Trump opposed would pass, and it probably would be a good solution to the overwhelming numbers of asylum seekers encountered at the southern border.If Trump is elected, his plans to deport 11 million undocumented immigrantsand perhaps even more, because there are legal immigrants that he also wants to deport: the well-known case of Springfield, Ohio, where he baselessly said that migrants were eating pets. Its quite possible that the plans to deport anywhere from 11 to 20 million people will prove to be impossible.[CLIP: "Dream Trance (Instrumental)," by Ballinger]Immigration to the worlds best-performing economy is going to continue to be a major issue. There is a dire need for comprehensive immigration reform that would take the form of congressional legislation that regulates the number of people crossing the border and provide pathways to legalization for undocumented workers and allow for more immigration to meet employer needs. That probably would not happeneven in a Harris administration. If Trump continues with his deportation policy, it could completely upset the American economy. There would not be enough workers at every skill level, and it would undermine the basic functioning of the American political system.Feltman: Our last topic for today is education: How are Trump and Harris planning on changing American schools?Allison Parshall: My name is Allison Parshall, and I am an associate news editor here at Scientific American.[CLIP: "Lead," by Farrell Wooten]So education has been the subject of some of the candidates most ambitious promises on the campaign trail. For Harris, thats her promise to relieve student debt and work towards universal preschool education. For Trump, thats his promise to eliminate the federal Department of Education and install what he calls, quote, universal school choice around the country.Trumps promise to eliminate the Department of Education is part of a broader plan to just cut down on what he sees as government overreach in general, but here specifically, hes talking about what he sees as the department having undue influence over what students across the country learn. The education policy researchers I spoke with stressed that the Department of Education actually has very little say in setting curricula across the country, and they also pointed out that eliminating the department would require an act of Congress.But even if that happened, Trump hasnt said what he would propose to do with the departments many programs that fund education across the country. Most importantly, thats Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. So these two programs support the education of low-income students and those with disabilities, respectively, and provide about $34 billion in funding to schools and students across the country.Trump has been vague in his promises, but Project 2025 was more specific. It promises sending Title I funding and IDEA funding, which are normally earmarked for educating, as I said, low-income and disabled students, to states as no-strings-attached block grants, which they could effectively do with as they pleased. And Project 2025 also calls for phasing out federal Title I funding after 10 years. The policy experts I spoke with found this very concerning, as schools across the country, public and private, rely on this funding to educate their disadvantaged or disabled students.Harris, in contrast, has spoken out against Trumps plan to shutter the Department of Education, and her platform calls for fully funding IDEA. Also on the topic of federal spending, Harris has promised to build on the Biden-Harris administrations programs to forgive student debt. So you may recall the Biden administrations plan to forgive $10,000 of student loans across the board; that was axed by the Supreme Courts conservative supermajority that had been installed by Trump.Despite this, though, Harris has cited the administrations successes so far in saying that theyve approved [nearly] $170 billion in student loan forgiveness through different programs, but she has not made any specific promises about what future debt relief would look like if shes elected.Harris has also voiced her support for universal pre-K, which the Biden-Harris administration has repeatedly pushed for but which has stalled repeatedly in Congress. And shes also put forward economic proposals like the expanded child tax credit and an income cap on child care costs that would all support parents of young children.[CLIP: "Breaking the Barrier (Instrumental)," by Kreb]And then theres another big area of difference between Harris and Trump, and thats public K12 education. Since the pandemic, movements to privatize public education have really gained steam. State and local governments across the country are enacting voucher programs and other types of school choice programs, which give public funds directly to parents to fund private education.This is something that Harris opposes because these programs decrease funding available for public schools, but these are also programs that Trump has long supported. In his first term he appointed school choice advocate Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, and his appointees to the Supreme Court have ruled on pivotal cases, which now require voucher programs to include religious schools.So while these statewide voucher programs are increasingly popular, research has shown that they have a largely negative effect on student achievement; thats been the case in Louisiana and Indiana. Often thats because the choices that it opens up for families are more limited than you would expect, and private schools funded by vouchers are also allowed to turn away students who need additional accommodations, like those with disabilities and those who are learning English as a second language. And they can also discriminate against LGBTQ+ students on religious grounds, too.Of course, that is all pretty in line with Trumps stated goals for education in the country under what he calls, quote, his Agenda47. Roughly speaking, thats to increase the presence of Christian religion in public schools and to censor teachers and student speech about important topics that he doesnt like, such as LGBTQ+ issues and structural and historical racism.His movement has led to increasing book bans, teacher gag order laws across the country, and despite being ostensibly against federal involvement in curricula, hes repeatedly threatened to use federal powers like opening civil rights investigations or withholding federal funding to get states and schools and teachers to comply with his vision for curricula.And this is something that Harris has called out on the campaign trail.[CLIP: Kamala Harris speaks at Julys American Federation of Teachers Convention: And while you teach students about our nations past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nations true and full history.]Parshall: One of the experts I spoke with, I think, summed up the moment that were in pretty well. Her name is Elizabeth DeBray; shes an education policy researcher at the University of Georgia. And she said that the pandemic has left many people unsatisfied with the education system in this country: a lot of learning gaps, especially in STEM; high teacher turnover; and just kind of a general dissatisfaction with the status quo.[CLIP: "Anchor (Instrumental)," by Stephanie Schneiderman]And so now, as were looking forward to the election, if Trump wins, you can probably expect to see the school choice movement gaining even more steam and seeing more support behind these efforts to move funding away from public education and to kind of say, you know, The learning gaps are too great; we cant overcome this. Were gonna almost divest and move to a more private model for our education.And if Kamala Harris were to win, I think we would see something fairly similar to what weve seen with the Biden-Harris administrationnot proposing too many upheavals but proposing a reinvestment in the systems that we have now that people are dissatisfied with and hoping to create something that works better.Feltman: Thats all for our comprehensive election roundup. Now all thats left to do is vote!Well be back on Wednesday with something to take your mind off election news because, yeah, we're all gonna need it. We have an episode lined up all about a time when magic and science were one and the same.[CLIP: Theme music]Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and co-hosted by Andrea Thompson, Meghan Bartels, Gary Stix and Allison Parshall. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Dont forget to vote!

OpinionNovember 4, 20245 min readThe Law Must Respond when Science ChangesWhat was once fair under the law may become unfair when science changes. The law must react to uphold due processBy David L. Faigman & Jeff KukuckaLos Angeles County District Attorney George Gascn shakes hands with Joan VanderMolen, sister of Kitty Menendez, after announcing his decision on a possible resentencing recommendation for Erik and Lyle Menendez. The brothers are in prison for the 1989 murders of their parents, Jos and Kitty Menendez. Apu Gomes/Getty ImagesIts been an astounding couple of weeks in the world where science and law intersect. Robert Robersons execution is delayed because everybody but the highest courts in Texas and the U.S. now realize that the medical theory on which he was convictedshaken baby syndromeoriginally rested on bad science. The life-without-parole sentences for Lyle and Erik Menendez, convicted of killing their parents, are also in question because researchers at the time did not understand the mental health effects of the abuse they suffered as children.Whereas the law seeks to provide fair process in a timely fashion, science seeks to discover truth over time. This means that what was once fair may become unfair; the justice of yesteryear may be unjust today. Roberson and the Menendez brothers are the victims of that very divide.In both cases, scientific understanding changed years ago. Shaken baby syndrome was called into question in the early 2010s, and, years before that, psychologists identified the relationship between the trauma of childhood abuse and violence. Yet all three men have struggled to reopen their cases. An essential principle of science is that it might change as research accumulates. That is a principle that the law has largely failed to come to grips with. This failure threatens the constitutional guarantee of due process.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The Roberson and Menendez cases are not abnormal. The annals of the law are replete with examples of what we once thought was scientific truth, upon which judges and juries decided both civil and criminal cases, where we later understood the science to be wrong. In 2004 the state of Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for the 1992 arson murders of his family. At the time of his execution, the forensic science that linked him to the fire had been categorically invalidated. In a 2015 press release, the FBI reported that in their ongoing review of non-DNA-based microscopic hair identification, 90 percent of cases had errors. Similarly, prosecutors use of a questionable theory known as comparative bullet-lead analysis was eventually abandoned after scientific reports debunked its statistical bases. Even today, courts continue to allow bite mark identification testimony, even though people who say they are bite mark experts cant even agree on whether a bite mark is from a personor a dog. And what we know about firearms identification and fingerprints are changing there could be scores of convictions based on what is no longer true.Society shifts quickly when science changes. Once upon a time, scientists told us that butter was bad for us, and margarine was better; then we learned how much worse margarine could be and started eating more butter again. With lives at stake, justice demands we shift quickly. Indeed, the Constitutions guarantee of due process is so important that it appears in both the Fifth and 14th Amendments, and promises that "life, liberty, or property" will not be deprived without due process.The law, never a sophisticated consumer of science, needs to become one. When scientific evidence is part of a criminal prosecution, there are two critical things the legal system in the U.S. needs to do to ensure due process.Judges are supposed to be gatekeepers against bad science brought into their courtrooms; this is how the Supreme Court interpreted an evidentiary rule in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals in 1993. They must do more to fulfill this obligation. In fact, their failure to fulfill this responsibility means that defendants will be wrongfully convicted, and future courts will be called upon to correct these miscarriages of justice.For example, the scientific literature supporting pre-1995 arson investigation use or non-DNA hair identification or bite marks, wasand still isdemonstrably inadequate to be admitted in court, much less to alone support a conviction. In 2009 the National Academies of Science published a scathing report on the state of the science of forensic science. In 2016 the Presidents Council of Advisers on Science and Technology reviewed the scientific research on several areas of forensic pattern-matching evidenceincluding DNA, latent fingerprints, bite marks, firearms, hair, and footwearfinding scientific support only for DNA profiling, and giving fingerprints a barely passing score.Second, the law must provide mechanisms for post-conviction relief based on changed understanding of science, which of course includes when the courts got it wrong the first time around. They can do this, for example, through judicial interpretation of the due process clauses or legislative action. Texas has just such a law on its books, though its enforcement has so far been anemic. Under the Texas statute, a habeas corpus petition may be considered if relevant [and admissible] scientific evidence is currently available and was not available at the time of the convicted persons trial because [it] was not ascertainable through the exercise of reasonable diligence before the date of or during the convicted persons trial. In other words, a person who has been convicted, like Roberson, can ask the court to reconsider his case because the scientific evidence has changed.California has a similar statute, which allows challenges to false evidence that was introduced at trial. False evidence is defined as including opinions of experts that have either been repudiated by the expert who originally provided the opinion at a hearing or trial or that have been undermined by later scientific research or technological advances. Other states are following suit.But these efforts are illusory at best, and unconscionable at worst, if courts do not enforce them. Roberson has been on death row for two decades, and the Menendez brothers were sentenced over 28 years ago. The state of Texas has denied Robersons attempts at appeals, despite what we now know about shaken baby syndrome. The time that it has taken to reconsider the Menendez brothers conviction far surpasses the time required for the science around abuse, trauma and violence to change.American law has traditionally provided mechanisms to ensure that everyone has their fair day in court. Fairness requires the opportunity to have their cases tried in light of the best science available in the moment. And when the stakes are especially high, as is true in the cases of Roberson and the Menendez brothers, those criminally convicted should have the ongoing right to reopen their cases when our understanding of the science on which their jeopardy resulted has changed. Such an outcome would allow fairness and truth to come together to ensure that justice is done.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

November 2, 20246 min readVoting Has Never Been More Secure Than It Is Right NowEfficient machines, paper ballots and human checks make the U.S. voting system robustBy Ben GuarinoA voter has their ballot scanned at a polling place during the 2022 election. George Frey/Getty ImagesNow is the best time in the history of the U.S. to cast a vote. Yes, American elections have flaws. Theyre marred by voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, the inherent weirdness of the electoral college and recent cases of ballot box arson. But the act of voting itself has been unfairly tarnished, most notably by former president Donald Trumps Big Lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent. That claim is especially preposterous because modern voting procedures are only becoming more robustand those casting ballots by mail or machine in this years presidential election can, in fact, be more confident than ever that their votes will be tallied accurately.One reason for that confidence is the adoption of voting technology that combines machine efficiency with the verifiability of a paper trail. This is the result of a shift that began two decades ago, after system jams and punch-card fragmentsFloridas infamous hanging chadsled to a fiasco that left the 2000 election results unclear for five weeks. Congresss response, the 2002 Help America Vote Act, phased out the use of punch-card ballots and lever machines in federal elections. Most Americans now vote with optical scanners, which process marked selections on paper sheets. In the 2020 presidential election, Georgias polling sites used hand-fed optical scanners; an audit of the nearly five million votes cast in the state, the largest hand count of ballots in recent U.S. history, confirmed that President Joe Biden won. County error rates were 0.73 percent or less, and most had no change in their tallies at all.Amanda Montaez; Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Data + Science LabOn supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Although U.S. voting machines are not totally tamperproofno machine is invulnerableas precaution against remote hacking, the vast majority do not connect to the Internet (potentially problematic exceptions aside). In a recent election security update, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, said the intelligence community does not have evidence of adversaries attempting to compromise the U.S.s physical election infrastructure. Interfering in a meaningful way with the countrys diverse, decentralized systems would be essentially impossible, the ODNI update noted. Instead foreign actors prefer the easier route of psychological influence, trying to sway voters or undermine election confidence through propaganda and disinformation.For a host of reasons, the potential vulnerability of individual voting machines doesn't translate into systemic vulnerability, says political scientist Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, a nonprofit group that tracks election systems across the country. Hackers dont get to go one-on-one with voting machines. Theres a whole set of procedural safeguards to protect them. Physical ballots add trustworthiness to the system, too, because they are verifiable, auditable and recountable. Scientific American spoke with Lindeman about why Americans, despite experiencing so much voting agita, in fact live in a golden age for casting ballots.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]Verified Voting estimates that nearly 98.6 percent of registered voters live in jurisdictions where votes have a paper trail of some form. Why is that important?Its twofold. A paper trail provides a fail-safe. If something does go wrong with the systemsand what weve seen in certain elections is machines miscounting votes, never because of hacking, always because of an error in how they were configuredthe paper ballots have been available to correct those mistakes.Perhaps an even greater value of paper ballots that voters have verified, and that election officials use in audits and recounts, is to provide assurance. Instead of arguing about whether the machines counted votes accurately, we can look at the paper ballot evidence and find out. We can move away from abstract speculation about technology into observable reality.Voting machines in the U.S. generally arent connected to the Internet. In fact, Verified Voting has opposed proposals for Internet voting. Why is that?Were all about paper ballots that voters can verify and that election officials then can use to verify the counts. We see electronic ballot transmission, Internet voting of any form, as a step away from what has made elections in recent years more secure than they were 20 years ago, when Verified Voting was founded. The country is just now getting to the point where practically everyone votes on paper ballots that they can verify. Internet voting is the antithesis of that.If anyone claims that an Internet election (or an election where a lot of votes have been electronically transmitted) has been hacked, I dont know how anyone can convince people otherwise.If youre voting in this election, how confident are you that your ballot will be counted?I voted early here in the state of New York using a hand-marked paper ballot and a scanner. New York State has a 3 percent audit, and Im very confident that my vote will be counted accurately.Whats a 3 percent audit?New York randomly selects 3 percent of the scanners that are used in the election and hand counts those ballots to make sure they were counted accurately. Most states conduct some kind of postelection audit. The details vary, but to have a percentage-based audit of some form, as New York does, is the most common model.Was there ever a voting heyday prior to this? (A recent Pew Research Center survey of registered U.S. voters found that about one in four believe the presidential election will be run at least somewhat poorly.)I dont think there's ever been a better time to vote in the U.S. There was also a time when everyone voted on paper ballotsbut election administration, frankly, was riddled with corruption. No one is really calling to go back to the days of Tammany Hall [laughs].Its not necessarily that paper ballots by themselves are inherently secure. Paper is fragile. But the checks and balances that have been put into place around paper ballots have never functioned more effectively in the U.S. than they do now. Election administration is far more professionalized than it was even 20 years ago. Election officials are better trained. Theyre more aware. It feels kind of strange to talk about this as a golden age of elections amid all the anxiety, but I dont see any other way to interpret the facts.What can we do to restore confidence in American voting?[Lets out a weary sigh.]I felt that in my bones.Im a child of the Enlightenment. I think that reflecting on reality is the place to start. Some of that reality is the basic technology in place: the fact that our votes are recorded on paper ballots; procedurally, the fact that those paper ballots are protectedthat in most states, theyre used in audits to verify the counts.Beyond that, a large majority of Americans actually do trust their local election officials. In my experience, that trust is well placed. The election officials Ive worked with around the country are very focused on the mission of making elections work for their voters. So I dont really know what it takes to convince people to appreciate the good around them instead of fear spiraling or morbid speculation about terrible things that might be happening. That might be above my pay grade.If you could improve one thing about the mechanics of American voting, what would that be?We can do better on truly accessible voting than were doing now. I think that accessibility has been grafted onto most of the voting systems on the market. If we focus more on accessibility from the ground up, we can do better for a wider range of voters.Can you give me an example of accessible voting?Many states provide some kind of touch screen interface that also can be equipped with [rocker pedals, large buttons that can be operated with feet, hands or other body parts], and with what are called sip-and-puff interfaces [devices that are operated by breathing]. These all provide ways for voters with various abilities and disabilities to interact with a voting machine. They can adjust the contrast; they can adjust the font size. And with audio interfaces, if you cant see the ballot, you can have the ballot read to you.These are all interfaces that provide a greater range of voters with the ability to mark and cast their ballots independently. And theyre a great improvement over nothing. But also, I think that voters with disabilities, in many cases, can testify that those interfaces dont work as well in practice as they are built to do in theory.Were in the early days of accessibility, and I would like us to level up.

November 1, 20244 min readHow Superman Helped Launch the Hubble Space TelescopeLong before it orbited Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope starred in a famous Superman comicBy Paul CornishAction Comics, No. 419; published in 1972. Paul Cornish/DC ComicsAs a huge Superman fan, I have long wanted to own Action Comics No. 419, the issue published in 1972 with an iconic cover showing the Man of Steel hurtling into the sky, seeming to fly right off the page. Thats why, earlier this year, I was delighted to finally track down a copy in the secondhand section of my local comic shop.But I quickly discovered that this comic has another claim to fame. Within its pages, Superman became involved in one of the most significant chapters in the history of space science.On the first page, reporter Clark Kent, Supermans alter ego, covers the launch of a new NASA satellite while onboard a space shuttle. Im in orbit with NASAs Large Space Telescope, the LST. Here, well above the haze of our atmosphere, astronomers will get a crystal-clear view of the stars and planets, Kent says in the comic.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Right there on the page was a dead ringer for the real-life Hubble Space Telescope. I was baffled: How did the cartoon version of a space telescope that launched in 1990 get into a comic published in 1972?On the first page of Action Comics No. 419, Superman visits the Large Space Telescope.Paul Cornish/DC ComicsThere was a clue in the storys credits. Pete Simmons, then director of space astronomy at Grumman Aerospace Corporation (now Northrop Grumman), is credited with technical assistance. This was enough information for a Google search, which turned up a documentary clip from 1997.What I learned amazed me. The Large Space Telescope was Hubble. While the project was named after astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1983, NASA had been developing plans for what it called a Large Space Telescope since the late 1960s. The agency had successfully launched its first successful space telescope, the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 (OAO-2), in 1968, and by 1971 it had begun to conduct feasibility studies for a larger instrument to peer deeper into the cosmos.But such an expensive project would be a tough sell in Congress. Simmons, who had previously worked on the OAO-2, took on the challenge of demonstrating to the publicand to Congressthat the LST was a worthy scientific investment. One day Simmons was on a plane to New York City when he noticed a child in the seat next to him reading a Superman comic, he recalled in an episode of the documentary series People Near Here, produced by Mountain Lake PBS.I thought, Gee, those are pretty popular, he said in the documentary. He invited employees of DC Comics to the Grumman labs and showed them models of the LST, which convinced them that they should feature the telescope in a Superman story. The result was Action Comics No. 419. The comic sold well, as Superman comics usually did, giving Simmons tangible evidence of the American publics interest in the LST that he could share with Congress.I went down to Washington, [D.C.]..., and we gave every member of Congress a copy of this Superman comic, he recalled. I remember asking as many as I could find..., If I can get the Large Space Telescope talked about in Superman comics, would you think its popular enough...? Then Id give them a copy of this issue.I needed to know more. My two great interestscomic books and space sciencewere colliding. Could we really have Superman to thank for all the important discoveries and stunning images made by the Hubble Space Telescope?Sadly, Simmons died in 2018. So I contacted Charles Robert ODell, an observational astronomer and lead scientist on the Large Space Telescope project from 1972 to 1983.ODell told me that in the early days of the project, the fate of the LST was not solely in the hands of Congress. Proponents also had to convince their fellow astronomers, many of whom would have preferred the money be spent on Earth-based telescopes, that the LST was a worthy investment.We organized what we called dog and pony shows of NASA engineers and managers, he says. [We] went to [Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology] and spoke at those places, proselytizing the LST. And this did sway people.But in the eyes of astronomers, Action Comics No. 419 wasnt exactly a selling point for the LST. In fact, it was a turnoff, ODell says. Remember how conservative astronomy was as a body at that time.... And so, seeing a comicit was just an alien concept.To convince Congress, ODell believes that the comic would only really have been useful in the hands of a natural salesperson like Simmons. [Simmons] would go in with this enormous salesmans enthusiasm for the project and pull that comic out.... He could pull something like that off, ODell says.ODell cant confirm how much influence the comic had on Congress. And the telescope still had a tough fight for funding ahead. In 1974 and 1976 astronomers undertook campaigns to lobby support for the project in Congress. They sent letters and telegrams and even made personal visits to Capitol Hill.In 1977 the legislature finally approved funding of the LST. Thirteen years later, under a new name, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. It has been operating for more than three decades, and it was the first observatory to detect elements from the early universe, image the surface of a star besides the sun and confirm the presence of supermassive black holes. And it owes its existence, I learned, more to the hard work and passion of people like ODell and Simmons than to any fictional superhero.But somehow I think Superman would prefer it that way.

OpinionNovember 1, 20246 min readRecord-breaking Prime Number, 41 Million Digits Long, Blows Mathematicians' MindsThe discovery of a new prime number highlights the rising price of mathematical goldBy Jack MurtaghAfter Euclid revealed that infinitely many prime numbers exist in 300 B.C.E., mathematicians have been on the hunt. Tostphoto/Getty ImagesThousands of computers across the world are currently scouring the number line in a scavenger hunt for rare mathematical gems. Prime number enthusiasts, looking for larger and larger numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves, muster vast amounts of computing power and algorithmic ingenuity in hopes of etching their name into the scrolls of math history.The latest entry comes from Luke Durant, a researcher in San Jose, Calif. Durants discovery overturned the former record holder, which sat uncontested for nearly six years, an unprecedentedly long reign in the modern search for ever larger prime numbers. The gap makes sense: as primes grow, they spread further apart, making each new find harder than the last.The new prime contains a mind-boggling 41,024,320 digits. To put that in perspective, the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe clocks in at around 80 digits. Every additional digit increases a number by 10 times, so the size of the new prime lives far beyond human intelligibility. Primes play a major role in pure math, where theyre main characters in a field called number theory, and in practice, where, for example, they underlie widely used encryption algorithms. A prime with 41 million digits wont immediately join the ranks of useful numbers, but for now, it adds a feather in the cap of a community that longs to apprehend the colossal.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Durants success stems in part from new clever software from the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search and in part from heavy-duty hardware and computational muscle that he personally mobilized for the pursuit. By assembling a cloud supercomputer spanning 17 countries, he ended a long tradition of personal computers discovering primes.Prime numbers are often called the building blocks of math because every whole number greater than 1 has a fingerprint as the product of a unique collection of primes. For example, 15 is the product of the primes 5 and 3, whereas 13 cannot be subdivided like this because 13 is prime. The study of these numbers dates back at least to the ancient Greeks. In 300 B.C.E. Euclid proved in his textbook Elements that infinitely many primes exist, and mathematicians, both professional and amateur, have relished the hunt for them ever since.While the first string of primes2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and so onis easy to find, the task gets considerably more challenging as the numbers get larger. For millennia, people found primes by handuntil 1951, when computers took over the search. But even silicon bounty hunters struggle to spot primes in the far reaches of the number line because testing the primality of an enormous number is nontrivial. To cope, researchers deploy every little optimization trick they can to speed up their tests or narrow their hunting ground, thereby boosting their chances of finding a new prime.Consider the number 99,400,891. How would you determine whether or not its prime? You could simply divide it by every smaller number and check if it has any divisors (in addition to 1 and itself). But thats nearly 100 million cases to check for a relatively puny eight-digit number. You would save significant work by realizing that you dont need to check every number up to the target, just the prime numbers. Why? You only need to find one divisor (one number that cleanly divides 99,400,891 with no remainder). We know that any nonprime divisor could be further broken down into its prime factorsif your target is divisible by 15, then its also divisible by the primes 5 and 3, so you only need to check the latter to determine primality. Further savings would come from the insight that you dont need to check every smaller prime either, only those up to the square root of 99,400,891 (the number that when multiplied by itself gives you this eight-digit result). If none of those smaller primes divide it cleanly, then you can stop looking because the product of any two numbers larger than the square root of 99,400,891 will exceed it. These efficiency tricks slash our search drastically, from around 100 million numbers to only 1,228 (the number of primes less than the square root of 99,400,891). For those curious, 99,400,891 = 9,967 9,973, so its not prime.Those shortcuts did wonders for an eight-digit number, but how did Durant reach 41,024,320 digits? To graduate the search from the merely massive to the truly gargantuan, he and many other seekers focus on particular types of prime numbers. Mersenne primes, named for Marin Mersenne, the French theologian who studied them in the 17th century, take a special form. You get them by multiplying 2 by itself some number of times and then subtracting 1, as described in the equation 2n 1. Mersenne noticed that when you plug in different values for n, you sometimes get a prime number. Specifically, 2n 1 can only yield a prime when n itself is prime, and even then its not guaranteed. What makes Mersenne primes special from a prime hunters perspective is that we know a fast method (called the Lucas-Lehmer primality test) for checking whether numbers of the form 2n 1 are prime. That test is much faster than any known general methods for numbers without that special form.The Lucas-Lehmer test fuels the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search project, which launched in 1996 and enables any volunteer to download a free code that searches for Mersenne primes to run on their computers. The crowdsourced approach and the focus on Mersenne primes have proved successful. The seven largest known primes are all Mersenne primes and were all found by participants of the project. Note that smaller unknown primes certainly exist, but because we dont know efficient methods for checking them, theyll remain in the shadows for now.All told, project volunteers have found 18 new Mersenne primes, 17 of which owe their discovery to the personal computers of hobbyists. Durant, a 36-year-old former Nvidia engineer, just broke that streak. Nvidia, which recently briefly overtook Apple as the worlds most valuable company, designs specialty computer chips called graphics processing units (GPUs). As the name suggests, GPUs were originally invented to accelerate the rendering of graphics, but they also excel at other tasks involving highly parallelized computation, in which many processors run simultaneously to solve problems. Those problems include training neural networks such as GPT-4, mining cryptocurrency and, as it turns out, foraging for primes. Durant assembled a global supercomputer by buying processing time from various cloud GPU providers. At its peak, Durants project churned through about 12 times as many numbers as every other computer involved in the Mersenne prime search combined.In addition to the heavy-duty hardware, the Mersenne prime search software also got a notable upgrade since the last discovery. It replaced the superfast Lucas-Lehmer test for certifying Mersenne primes with a super-duper-fast probable prime test. Given a number to check, the latter test either confirms that its not prime or says that its probably prime. Probable primes have a very small chance of turning out to be nonprime. Only once a computer finds a probable prime do Mersenne prime search volunteers run the full-fledged Lucas-Lehmer test to remove any doubt. Durants new prime passed the probable prime test on October 11. Then, on October 19, a year after Durant started searching, independent tests by the Mersenne prime search confirmed that he had indeed found a needle in a haystack: 2136,279,841 1 is the largest known prime number.It exceeds the previous record holder by more than 16 million digits. If that didnt earn enough glory, Durant has also unearthed the largest known perfect number. A perfect number equals the sum of its divisors (excluding itself); 6 is perfect because its divisible by 1, 2, 3 and equals the sum of 1 + 2 + 3. The second perfect number is 28. The 18th-century mathematician Leonhard Euler proved that every even perfect number can be generated from a Mersenne prime, so finding one promises a two-for-one deal on math discoveries.The well could dry up any time, though. We dont know whether an infinite number of Mersenne primes (and therefore even perfect numbers) exist. Curiously, we dont know whether any odd perfect numbers exist, a question that some call the oldest unsolved math problem.When asked how much money his project cost in an interview with Numberphile on YouTube, Durant said, I believe its under $2 million. Thats a hefty investment compared with the prime search project prize money of $3,000, which he plans to donate to the high school he attended, the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science. At this point, you might wonder why so many people spend their time and money trolling for primes that dont have obvious real-world applications. In part, their efforts celebrate human curiosity and serve as a benchmark for our progress in mathematical computation. But I think the founder of the Mersenne prime search project, George Woltman, when asked this question in a Numberphile video, said it best: Its fun.

November 1, 20245 min readHow to Calm Your Election AnxietyEven After Polls ClosePeople are really stressed about the U.S. presidential election. A psychiatrist offers several self-help methods to reduce feelings of despairBy Josh Fischman Jena Ardell/Getty ImagesJust about everybody is really worried about the U.S.s Election Day, which is coming up on us fast. In a recent poll from the American Psychological Association, 72 percent of people said they were concerned that the results of the election could lead to violence. And 56 percent said it could end democracy in the country. Nina Vasan, a psychiatrist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who has researched Internet-based anxiety treatments and sees patients at her clinical practice, says she has never encountered this level of depression and concern about the future. And she is seeing it both in people who support Kamala Harris and in people who support Donald Trump. Scientific American senior health editor Josh Fischman spoke with Vasan this week about the reasons for this extreme stress level. Vasan also described several self-help methods that people can use to reduce their fears and worriespractices that they can employ even if uncertainty over the winner extends past Election Day.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]Are people exceptionally on edge for this presidential election?On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Oh, yes. Im hearing things like I dont want to get out of bed in the morning and I wake up in the night, or I cant even sleep because Im so anxious and Im having nightmares of what could happen in two weeks or next year. I have one patient who lives in Washington, D.C., but is going to stay with her mother in Oregon because shes afraid of the possibility of violence in the nations capital. There are a lot of real symptoms of anxiety and depression. Some people feel it very physically. They feel nauseous, or their heart is racing, or theyre sweating, or they feel incredibly tired. We all experience anxiety and fear differently.Is this level of stress worse than what youve seen in past elections?Definitely, and I think there are several reasons for that. One is that a sense of stress has been building up for years. Its not just this election. Go back to October 7, 2023, and Hamass terrible attack on Israel and then the awful destruction and loss of life brought by Israels war in Gaza. Before that there was Russias ongoing war with Ukraine. Here at home there are mass shootings and the mob attack on the Capitol on January 6, [2021]. Whether its the New York Times or Facebook or TikTok, we get this constant stream of very negative news about humanity that has really made people depressed and sad and upset about the world.Now its Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Trump was already president four years ago, right? If youre a Republican, you probably think of his four years as when life was great. If youre a Democrat, you likely think of those four years as when life was horrible. For both, theres this fear that if all that returns, my life is going to suck.Does this fear take its toll on relationships, too?Were a diverse country with diverse beliefs. Now opinions are so divided that people feel they cant talk to their boss or friends or family because theyll disagree about politics. People feel silenced or harassed into silence. Ive heard some people say theyre not going home for Thanksgiving because theyll just argue about politics with family.Just reading news about politics seems to make people upset.There are people who are just consuming news nonstop. They get overwhelmed and anxious. They stop spending time with friends and doing the work they need to do because its this huge thing thats taken over their lives.What can people do to relieve this sense of dread?The recommendation that I give to everyone is that you have to put very strong boundaries around your consumption. So when I wake up in the morning, I can read the news for 30 minutes, I can scroll TikTok or Instagram or whatever for 10 minutes. But then I stop, and Im not allowed to go back until tomorrow morning.Do you really tell people 30 minutes and youre done?I do. I think in half an hour, you can consume what you need, especially if youre a daily news reader. Whether its politics or sports or entertainment or stocks or whatever. Beyond that, it gets repetitive. I see that people watch or read something, get concerned by it and feel driven to read four more articles on the same subject, thinking that will make them feel better. And you know what? It never makes them feel better. They feel worse.You have to check in with yourself. Ask if youre happier or more upset after reading something. If youre feeling more negative, then you really should stop.But its not easy to just stop doomscrolling.Smartphones and computers that run media and social media apps make it easier. My research group worked with TikTok on ways to set limits a year or two ago. The idea was to put in the ability to say, Im not going to do more than 30 minutes or 60 minutes. A little pop-up will come up and say, Hey, its been 60 minutes. So its time to get off. I have an iPhone and you can set a limit of, say, 15 minutes for all social media. I think I have a five-minute limit.Do you obey it?I do press the Ignore button every now and then. Everyone does that, but I think its good that we have the ability to see that pop-up and make that change.Are there other things people can do themselves to stop this spiral into despair?Absolutely. Things that are really good to do, especially for anxiety, include meditation, deep breathing, exercise, time in nature and journaling. Figure out what things bring you peace and calm. They could be different for many of us. Maybe its reading a book. Maybe its building a fort with your kids, right? But just do something that is not about the election.You mentioned writing in a journal. Why does that help?Journaling is actually something that Ive really seen aid people a lot, particularly folks who have trouble sleeping because of their anxiety. Its just writing down your feelings and thoughts about the day before you go to bed. I think that theres just something very powerful about the physicality, the connection to body, of having a pen in hand and writing on paper.Is connecting to your body also why time in nature is valuable?Yes. Taking a walk in nature and really listening to every sound and smelling every scentits connecting with the world, connecting with your thoughts, connecting with your body in a meaningful way. These are sensations you dont get if youre scrolling through TikTok for an hour.You also think doing something called a body scan is helpful.A body scan is this form of meditation and relaxation where you either start with your head or your toes, and depending on that, you go up or down. You isolate each part of your body and just focus on it for a few seconds. Like, you can start with your scalp. Just focus, close your eyes, think about your scalp. Feel it. Then tense it and release it. And then do that with your forehead and then with your eyes and then with your cheeks and then with your lips, and so on.Are these things you can do for an extended period of time? A lot of people worry this election isnt going to be decided on Election Day and that challenges and uncertainty will go on for months.Certainly. This is not just for the election; this is for any type of anxiety. When you find something that works for you, stick to it.

November 1, 20245 min readThe Virus That Causes Mpox Keeps Getting Better at Spreading in PeopleAnalysis of a strain of the virus circulating in Central Africa shows genetic mutations indicative of sustained human-to-human spreadBy Max Kozlov & Nature magazineColorized transmission electron micrograph of monkeypox virus particles (pink and yellow) found within an infected cell, cultured in the laboratory. NIH-NIAID/IMAGE POINT FR/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesYet another strain of the virus that causes mpox might be readily spreading from person to person, according to an analysis of the pathogens genome. This development could further complicate efforts to halt the spread of the disease in Central Africa, which has seen a surge in infections over the past year. And it has left researchers scratching their heads over what is currently driving this surge.The findings hint that the strain, called clade Ia, is spreading in a sustained fashion between people possibly through sexual contact in an outbreak in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Previously, the viral variant was known to transmit predominantly from animals to humans in Central Africa.We know that viruses evolve we have seen it with Ebola, we have seen it with COVID and we expected to see it with mpox as well, says Placide Mbala, head of epidemiology and global health at the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, who co-led the analysis. We dont know how far these adaptations can go, and we are gathering data to understand how this evolution is occurring.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The preliminary results, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, were posted on 22 October to the genomic-epidemiology discussion forum Virological.Mpox diversifiesThere are four known variants of the monkeypox virus: clades Ia, Ib, IIa and IIb (see Quick guide to the strains of monkeypox virus). Historically, clade I viruses have appeared mostly in Central Africa, and clade II viruses have cropped up in West Africa.This all changed in the mid-2010s, when a clade II strain sparked an outbreak in Nigeria. At the time, some researchers suggested that the variant might be capable of transmission through sexual contact. Their insights proved prescient: a similar clade II strain, called IIb, sparked a global outbreak of mpox in 2022 that has infected more than 90,000 people and continues today.Meanwhile, clade I viruses have caused sporadic infections in people for more than 50 years largely in rural regions of Central Africa. But in late 2023, researchers identified a rapidly growing outbreak in more densely populated, urban areas in eastern regions of the DRC that disproportionately affected sex workers, suggesting that this strain of the virus could, like IIb, spread readily between people.Genomic sequencing confirmed that the variant causing this outbreak contained several key differences from other clade I viruses, leading researchers to name it Ib. This strain has been detected in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Thailand, India, Germany and six African countries that had never reported mpox infections before. The DRC has been hit particularly hard: the country has reported nearly 36,000 suspected infections and more than 1,000 deaths from mpox in 2024.But now about one year after researchers detected an outbreak of clade Ib in eastern DRC clade Ia is worrying health officials, too. The strain has also been on the rise in western regions of the DRC and in Kinshasa. In particular, having both Ia and Ib circulating in the capital city threatens the 17 million people living there and raises the possibility of clade I spreading internationally, given that Kinshasa is a travel hub.Quick guide to the strains of monkeypox virusClade Ia: a strain that has been spreading in Central Africa since the virus was first discovered to infect humans in 1970. Most infections have been in children, and it was known to mainly transmit from animal to human until recently.Clade Ib: the strain that has caused a surge of cases in Central Africa since its discovery in late 2023. Known to spread from person to person, including through sexual contact.Clade IIa: the least-studied mpox strain. It has mainly spread in Guinea, Liberia and Cte dIvoire. Modes of transmission are not fully understood; there is no documented evidence of sexual transmission, but it is likely that all forms of close contact contribute to its spread.Clade IIb: the strain responsible for the still-simmering 2022 global outbreak. Known to spread from person to person, including through sexual contact. Most affected population has been men who have sex with men.Signs of evolutionHealth officials have been using genomic-sequencing tools to track the outbreak. As part of the effort, Mbala and his colleagues sequenced virus samples from infections in Kinshasa. In samples of both the clade Ia and Ib virus, they found a specific pattern of single-letter genetic mutations indicative of the ongoing battle between the human immune system and the virus a pattern that would be unlikely to appear unless there was sustained human-to-human spread.However, the pattern did not show up in a report posted to a preprint server in August. In that study, a team sequenced clade Ia virus samples collected between 2018 and 2024. That the researchers didnt spot the pattern suggests that it might be a recent development. We didnt pick up on strong signs of evolution in the more rural and endemic regions of the DRC, says Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, who collaborates with Mbala and co-authored the August preprint as well as the Virological one. But in Kinshasa, it seems that there is something unique going on.Clade Ia might also have the ability to spread through sexual contact: researchers reported the first probable case of sexually transmitted clade I mpox last year, and another such publication is forthcoming, Kindrachuk says.Given that clade I has been circulating between animals and people in the DRC since 1970, Kindrachuk adds that it will be important to investigate why clade Ib suddenly emerged in 2023, and why Ia has caused a surge in the number of detected infections in the past two years. Is it because were better at surveillance, or because were more conscious of mpox at the community level? Is it because people have been moving around more after the [COVID-19] pandemic, or because theres been a greater reliance on contact with wildlife? he asks.For now, plans to roll out the continents first doses of mpox vaccines are unlikely to change in light of these findings, says Nicaise Ndembi, a virologist at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Addis Ababa. Health officials have already been allocating doses to regions that have a higher number of infections, regardless of the specific strain found in the area, he says.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on October 30, 2024.

November 1, 20245 min readThe Three Types of TwilightAt dusk and dawn, the sky dances with three phases of in-between lightBy Phil Plait Katrin Ray Shumakov/Getty ImagesThere is something transformational about twilight.When the sun has just set in the west, the sky changes from the vibrant blue of afternoon to a more relaxed hue, as if its settling down for the evening. Soon the east will darken even as the west goes through a riot of reds, oranges and yellows. And then, at last, the black of night will reign once again.Theres a poetry to it, a liminal feeling of being between two existences, that of night and day. The prefix twi- in Old English means in two ways, and certainly this twofold state of in-betwixt-ness has inspired its share of literary verse. Another term for twilight is gloaming, a word so rich in texture I can feel it.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.But besides poetry, there is a science to twilight, too. Astronomers (among others who eagerly await the night) are so familiar with twilight that weve classified its various stages. If you havent spent much time gazing at the sky as the sun drifts below the horizon, then youve missed out on some wonderful visual treats.First, lets give it up for Earths atmosphere. Without air, wed have some fairly serious problemssuch as not being able to breathethough given how turbulent and opaque it can be, some astronomers would rather do without it. But one interesting thing the atmosphere does is scatter sunlight: photons from the sun hit molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the air and bounce off. Many of those photons wind up caroming toward the ground, so when we look up, we see the light coming from the sky itself.At night, when the bulk of the solid Earth blocks the sun, theres no sunlight to scatter, so the sky is dark, and, depending on weather, we can see what lies beyond. Between these two times lies the lair of twilight. But the gloaming doesnt come all at once; instead twilight slides over the sky in eliding stages.The first that occurs after sunset is called civil twilight, so named because its when the sky is still bright enough for people to conduct typical daytime outdoor activities. By definition, civil twilight is the range in time when the sun is just below the horizon to when its six degrees lower (roughly the same span as three fingers held parallel in your outstretched hand).The reason the early twilight sky is bright is because our planet is round. Our atmosphere curves along with Earths surface. To someone standing on the ground, the sun becomes invisible once it sets, but an observer at higher elevationmany kilometers up, for examplecan still see the sun. From their loftier perspective, it hasnt dropped below Earths edge yet. This means sunlight is still scattering off the air up there, offering a brief reprieve from the onrushing night.Civil twilights duration varies from location to location and season to season. For very high latitudes, near the poles, the suns path across the sky takes our star below the horizon only at certain times of the year, and its not always low enough for the night to get truly dark. Twilight can last for many hours in these regions. Closer to the equator, the sun dives in a more perpendicular fashion toward the horizon, and civil twilight there lasts less than half an hour.During civil twilight the brightest celestial objects may become visible if cloud cover or glare from artificial light sources doesnt intervene. The moon can be seen in broad daylight but becomes easier to spot as the sky darkens. Venus and Jupiter can easily be bright enough to see toward the end of civil twilightor earlier if you know exactly where to look.This is also when youre likely to see the most colors in the sky toward the west. Those same molecules that scatter sunlight dont do so randomly; the angle of scattering depends on the color of the light. Blue light is scattered much more than red, which is why the sky is blue during the day. Red light, however, tends to stream right past those molecules. So at dusk, all the blue light from the sun is scattered away, leaving only the redder colors to shine through, creating those gasp-worthy polychromatic sunsets.Still, the darkening inexorably continues. The next phase is nautical twilight, when the sun is between six and 12 degrees below the horizon. The sky may be a deep purple, and stars begin to appear. The term nautical twilight came about because sailors used the stars to get their bearings, and its at this time of the early evening that celestial navigation becomes possible.After that comes astronomical twilight. This is when the sun is 12 to 18 degrees below the horizon and the sky finally appears black, with the stars truly shining. We call it astronomical twilight because it may look dark to your eye, but through a telescope, the sky is still bright enough to interfere with some observations. This last phase of twilight concludes once the sun drops below 18 degrees; the sky becomes fully dark, and astronomers can enjoy the beginning of their work night.Of course, this is all for dusk, after sunset. The process happens in reverse order at dawn, when the sun rises. I remember many a telescopic observing session running all night long; I could always tell when the sky would just start to brighten, signaling the time to close up shop, back up my data and head home for a good mornings sleep. Being up from dusk till dawn was my way of life.That isnt to say that sunset and sunrise are perfectly symmetrictheyre different! The dawn sky tends to be clearer and cleaner than dusk. Thats because during the day, light from the sun, especially ultraviolet light, interacts with molecules in Earths air to boost levels of aerosols, particles that float high in the atmosphere. These tend to scatter light differently, giving the sky a whitish, hazy appearance. This is usually more obvious in summer, when circulation patterns are lazier and the haze can stick around longer.Still, I have always loved twilight at dusk. The world quietens, and the sky itself heralds the coming of the stars. For an astronomer, twilight signals a welcoming to the universe, and the anticipation of that is one of the best things I know.

November 1, 20246 min readThe International Space Station Has Been Leaking for Five YearsPesky leaks on the International Space Station arent the most serious issue facing U.S. human spaceflightBy Meghan BartelsThe International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a flyaround of the orbiting lab that took place following its undocking from the Harmony modules space-facing port on Nov. 8, 2021. NASA (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)In the hostile conditions beyond Earth, a spacecraft is all that stands between an astronaut and certain death. So having yearslong seemingly unfixable leaks on the International Space Station (ISS) sounds like a nightmare scenario. Its also a reality, one that a recent agency report calls a top safety risk. Amid months of headlines about astronauts stranded by Boeings Starliner vehicle and NASAs announcement of a contract with Elon Musks SpaceX to destroy the ISS early next decade, the ongoing concerns about the leaks come as another reminder that supporting a long-term population in space is a challenge thats quite literally out of this world.Simultaneously, the stations leaks are mundaneperhaps shockingly so for those of us who are neither engineers nor astronauts. When youre on the space station, its like your life here, says Sandra Magnus, an engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a former NASA astronaut who previously served on NASAs Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, an independent panel that monitors safety concerns. You dont run around in your daily life and wonder if youre going to get hit by a car when you cross the street, right? Its your lifeyou just live your life.The disconcerting truth is that the ISS leaks some air every dayand it always has. All spacecraft leak, says David Klaus, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. The space station is just the most high-profile spacecraft there is, and its leaking more now than it used to.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Its indeed leaking more but still not all that much, says Michael Kezirian, an adjunct professor of astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California. The current leak is bigger than a pinhole, maybe two pinholes, he says. Youre talking about something relatively small. The worst rate of leakage shared publicly comes from April, when the station was losing 3.7 pounds of atmosphere per day. (For context, all the air above any given square inch of Earths surface at sea level stretching to the end of the atmosphere weighs, on average, a bit shy of 15 pounds.)Its not even particularly surprising to experts that NASA and the international partners who run the space station have had so much trouble tracking down and fixing the leaks. Leaks are hard to sort out, Magnus says. The station is huge; theres a large volume of air. So trying to isolate a teeny tiny leak or anything thats not leaking a lot, its hard. (Much of the stations hull is also difficult to access from inside because of the sheer amount of equipment, cargo and general stuff cluttering its corridors.)Dont PanicYetThe troublesome leaks, which were first detected in September 2019, were traced to a tunnel in the Russian Zvezda service module, which launched in July 2000. The tunnel connects a docking port to the main part of the moduleand to the rest of the space station. Magnus describes the tunnel as the back porch, mainly used to store trash scheduled for incineration in Earths atmosphere.Astronauts have had some luck over the years tracking down precise locations where the station is losing air and have even tried to patch the tunnel up. In theory, spacecraft leaks are straightforward to seal from the inside. All you have to do is get something up against that leak with some sort of adhesive, and it becomes self-forcing up against the leak, Klaus says. The pressure in the spacecraft helps to hold the seal against the leak. But these patch efforts have only reduced the flow of the leaks rather than eliminating them entirely.While astronauts and ground control continue their troubleshooting, NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, have decided to keep the leaky tunnels hatch closed when possible. Its an elementary solution but a reasonable one, Magnus says, given the back porchs relatively low importance. As long as the leaks stay steady, Klaus says, the only real issue is that astronauts may need more frequent or larger deliveries of air, which is one of the many so-called consumables, such as food and water, that cargo vehicles supply to the station.In the long term, should the leaks worsen, the stopgap strategy can become a permanent one without serious impact, all three experts say. Losing access to the port on the tunnels far end would be inconvenient, requiring tighter coordination of the crew and cargo vehicles that visit the orbiting laboratory and the material they deliver. Theyll have to sharpen their pencils in the logistics community and figure out how to compensate, Magnus says of this scenario. Is it going to be a disaster? No. Is it going to be a little more challenging? Perhaps.Even that approach comes with its own complications: according to the September report, NASA and Roscosmos disagree on the threshold at which the leaks will become serious enough to necessitate shutting the hatch permanently.Still, the leaks themselves, while far from ideal, are essentially under control. No one should be panicking, Magnus says. Its a serious problem, and theyre taking it seriously, thats really the bottom line.Wear and TearThe leaks, however, are also a nagging reminder of how long the ISS has spent in orbit. The oldest segments launched in 1998; since then they have endured a host of stressors. Spacecraft arrive and depart, rockets push the ever sinking laboratory higher above Earth, and materials degrade from exposure to cosmic radiation. And the suns heat comes and goes 16 times every single day as the station swoops over Earths nightside and dayside, causing its components to expand and shrink each time.Sooner or laterhopefully laterthe toll of all that mechanical stress will manifest in something more serious than pinprick leaks. We know that the space station cannot be up there forever, Kezirian says. Its a little bit easier with an old house to paint and replace components that fail. Home repair on a space outpost is both more expensive and more finnicky, and at some point, entropy will win out.NASA hopes that wont happen this decade and aims to keep the space station operational through 2030. (Russia has so far only committed to the orbiting laboratory through 2028.) But the leak challenges give additional urgency to a concern that the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has been raising for years: that the orbital laboratory will fail before it can be safely destroyedand will fall uncontrolled through Earths atmosphere, with its debris potentially doing serious damage to people and buildings. Earlier this year NASA commissioned SpaceX to develop a vehicle to safely deorbit the space station in 2031, targeting a 2029 launch. Thats a very tight timeline for a program of this scale, so the anxiety continues.A second ticking clock looms over the agency: in whatever condition the space station meets its fiery doom, it will leave the U.S. with no viable long-term orbital habitats. NASA officials have spent years promoting the idea that companies will take over low-Earth orbit by launching and maintaining space stations to continue the ISSs 24-year streak of continuous human occupation.Abandoning Orbit Again?In 2020 the agency contracted Texas-based Axiom Space to construct the first habitable, commercially built module on the station, which the company is hoping to launch in 2026 and to then undock to fly free when the space station retires. In 2021 NASA also awarded funding to companies, including Washington Statebased Blue Origin (owned by Amazons Jeff Bezos) and Texas-based Nanoracks, to develop additional commercial destinations in space. NASA has said that Axioms module is under construction and that components of Blue Origins station have undergone testing, but progress remains slow. Company representatives for each station that were contacted for this article did not provide additional details on their current status to Scientific American. Meanwhile Axiom is reportedly facing serious financial troubles.These proposed commercial stations may be able to learn from the ISSs leak troubles, Klaus says. Once youve identified this as a potential concern, you can be smarter about future designs, he says. If youre clever, you dont have the same failures twice. It happens once; you fix it and move on.But fears are mounting that these stations wont be operational by the time the ISS needs to be retired or becomes uninhabitable, leaving the U.S. capable of only brief excursions into Earth orbit.For NASA, the prospect bears uncomfortable similarity to the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle fleet with no active replacement. For nearly a decade afterward, the agency purchased its astronauts seats on Russian spacecraft to reach the ISSan expensive strategy in the financial sense but also in terms of lost knowledge and expertise in the U.S. space industry.You really dont want to see that whole thing happen again, Magnus says. If were going to be a nation that explores space, then we need to do so in an intelligent, cost-effective and maximal way. [An approach in] fits and starts is just nonoptimal, and its wasteful.

November 1, 20243 min readHow the Brain Summons Deep Sleep to Speed HealingA heart attack unleashes immune cells that stimulate neurons in the brain, leading to restorative slumberBy Mariana Lenharo & Nature magazineAmple sleep after a heart attack dampens inflammation in the organ, aiding recovery. show999/Getty ImagesImmune cells rush to the brain and promote deep sleep after a heart attack, according to a new study involving both mice and humans. This heavy slumber helps recovery by easing inflammation in the heart, the study found.The findings, published on October 30 in Nature, could help to guide care for people after a heart attack, says co-author Cameron McAlpine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who studies immune function in the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Getting sufficient sleep and rest after a heart attack is important for long-term healing of the heart, he notes.The implications of the study go beyond heart attack, says Rachel Rowe, a specialist in sleep and inflammation at the University of Colorado Boulder. For any kind of injury, your bodys natural response would be to help you sleep so your body can heal, she says.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The heart needs its sleepScientists have long known that sleep and cardiovascular health are linked. People who sleep poorly are at a higher risk of developing high blood pressure, for example, than are sound sleepers. But how cardiovascular disease affects sleep has been less explored.To learn more, the authors induced heart attacks in mice and investigated the animals brainwaves. The researchers found that these mice spent much more time in slow-wave sleep a stage of deep sleep that has been associated with healing than did mice that hadnt had a heart attack.Next, the authors sought to understand what was causing that effect. One obvious place to look was the brain, which controls sleep, notes McAlpine. After a heart attack, immune cells trigger a massive burst of inflammation in the heart, he says, and the researchers wondered whether these immune changes also occurred in the brain.The team found that, after a mouses heart attack, immune cells called monocytes flooded its brain. These cells produced large amounts of a protein called tumour necrosis factor (TNF), which is an important regulator of inflammation and also promotes sleep.To confirm that these cells were linked to the increased sleep, researchers prevented monocytes from accumulating in the rodents brains. As a result, the mice no longer had this increase in slow-wave sleep after their heart attack, McAlpine says, supporting the theory that the influx of monocytes to the brain contributes to the post-heart-attack sleep boost. Similar experiments confirmed TNFs role as a messenger to sleep-inducing brain cells.Slumbering towards recoveryTo understand the purpose of the extra sleep, the researchers repeatedly interrupted slow-wave sleep in mice that had had a heart attack. The team found that these mice had more inflammation in both the brain and the heart, and had a much worse prognosis than mice that were allowed to sleep undisturbed after a heart attack.The authors also studied humans who had experienced acute coronary syndrome, a term for conditions, including heart attack, that are caused by a sudden reduction of blood flow to the heart muscle. Those who reported poor sleep in the weeks following such an episode had a higher risk of developing heart attacks and other serious cardiovascular problems over the next two years than did those who were good sleepers.Given the findings, clinicians need to inform patients of the importance of a good nights sleep after a heart attack, says Rowe. This should also be considered at the hospital, where tests and procedures would ideally be conducted during the daytime to minimize sleep interruptions.She adds that the findings highlight the bidirectional relationship between sleep and the immune system. When your grandma says, if you dont get enough sleep, youll get sick, theres a lot of truth to that.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on October 30, 2024.

October 31, 20244 min readScientists Spy a Dandelion Supernova around a Zombie StarA strange supernova remnant first appeared as a guest star seen in 1181 by sky watchers in China and JapanBy Tom MetcalfeAn artists concept of a supernova remnant called Pa 30the dandelion-shaped debris from a thermonuclear cosmic explosion that was witnessed from Earth in the year 1181. W.M. Keck Observatory/Adam MakarenkoAstronomers best view yet of the aftermath of a guest star supernova seen in 12th-century China and Japan has revealed one of the strangest objects in the heavens. It consists of hundreds of spectacular filaments of gas and dust arranged like the seeds of a dandelion around a zombie white dwarf.Such white dwarf stars are the hot, glowing stellar cores left behind when dying sunlike stars blow off their outer layers.This onecalled Parkers Star, the remnant of the supernova SN 1181, named for the year it appeared in Earths skieslies about 8,000 light-years from our solar system, near the northern constellation of Cassiopeia. And its nestled within a geometric spray of ejected material known as the planetary nebula Pa 30.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Scientists cant yet explain the nebulas eye-catching shape, but a new study has revealed hidden details of its formation, and researchers now hope to learn more about the mysterious thermonuclear processes that caused it.Its absolutely amazing, says study lead author Tim Cunningham, a research fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. It has really captured the imagination of many international groups of astronomers.A Resurrected MysteryAlthough the nebula was discovered in 2013 and its central star described in 2019, the object wasnt recognized until 2021 as the remnant of the supernova witnessed in 1181.Historical accounts indicate the guest star was visible for 185 days, flaring to become as bright as Saturn where no star had been seen before. But after the celestial outburst faded from view, its exact location was lost for centuries.Multiple enigmas accompanied its rediscovery a few years ago. Besides its curious dandelion-shaped nebula, the white dwarfs very existence is a conundrum: such stars normally dont survive a supernovas blast, making this one a rare member of the stellar undeada so-called zombie star.Most supernovae happen when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse under their own weight.But sometimes they occur by other mechanisms, explains study co-author Ilaria Caiazzo, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. One variety, known as type Ia, happens when a white dwarf star merges with another white dwarf or strips gas from a companion star. In either case, that additional material pushes the star over a critical threshold, causing a mind-numbingly massive thermonuclear explosion that destroys the star.Because the amount of detonating material is roughly the same for every type Ia supernova, these cosmic cataclysms all shine with a similar brightness and can be seen far beyond their host galaxy. This allows astronomers to use them as standard candles to estimate vast cosmic distances.The supernova seen in 1181, however, was an even rarer type Iax supernova, in which part of the central white dwarf star somehow survivesalthough just why isnt yet known, Caiazzo says.To date, astronomers have found the remnants of tens of thousands of regular supernovae and more than a thousand type Ia supernovae. But less than a hundred type Iax supernova remnants are knownand this is the only one found in our galaxy.This remnant allows us to study the evolution of the central star and of the ejecta, about 1,000 years after the explosion and in our own backyard, she says.A Skewed Supernova?Cunningham, Caiazzo and their colleagues used the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI), a spectrograph attached to one of telescopes at the W.M. Keck Observatory, near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Spectrographs are workhorses of astronomy that split light into its constituent wavelengths, or colors, allowing observers to discern the chemical compositions and even the subtle motions of cosmic structures.KCWIs sharp spectral eyes allowed the team to create a precise three-dimensional map of part of the strange supernova remnant and its filaments, which are now about three light-years long. The data show that the filaments are moving at about 1,000 kilometers per seconda speed theyve apparently held ever since the supernova occurred, a little more than 840 years ago.The gas and dust ejected by supernovae typically moves much fastertens of thousands of kilometers each secondand the zombie white dwarf at the center of the nebula is also emitting powerful stellar winds.But Cunningham says that, against expectations, these stellar winds seem not to be significantly sculpting the filaments.Instead the filaments may have arisen from the interaction of ejected gas and dust with the reverse shock caused by the supernova blast colliding with the interstellar medium.Caiazzo adds that this process could also explain the sharp inner edge of the dandelion nebula as a space filled with ejected gas and dust that has yet to condense and become part of the dense filaments.The researchers also saw hints of an asymmetry in the explosion, with more filaments pointing away from Earth than pointing toward it.Its unclear if this tantalizing potential asymmetry will be validated in follow-up studies of the nebula, but if real, it may help explain how the central white dwarf managed to survive the supernova partially intact, Cunningham says.Parkers StarThe strange star caught the attention of University of Hong Kong astronomer and astrophysicist Quentin Parker, who wasnt involved in the latest study but who co-authored research papers about the star in 2021 and 2023.The 2021 paper was the first to link the nebula and remnant with the 1181 supernova, dubbing the object Parkers Star.Parker has now discovered more than 1,000 planetary nebulaemore than anyone else in history.But hed never put his own name on any of them before this one.This object is going to be a gold mine to study, he says. Im not surprised a lot of other people are studying it, because it is so fascinating and so unique.

OpinionOctober 31, 20244 min readVote for a Healthy Climate for Our ChildrenThe 2024 presidential election will have enormous consequences for the climate, and the health and future of childrenBy Frederica PereraTourists walked on the National Mall as smoke from wildfires in Canada caused an acrid smell and hazy conditions in Washington, DC, on June 7, 2023. Washington authorities warned that the air quality was "unhealthy for people with heart or lung disease, older adults, children and teens" and canceled all outdoor activities in public schools, including sports lessons. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty ImagesFor Americas children, the coming election will be one of the most consequential in our nations history. Climate change is taking a huge toll on childrens health, and the election will determine whether we continue to curb fossil fuel pollution and slow global warming, or whether we reverse the hard-won achievements of recent years with catastrophic consequences.The Republican candidate, former president Donald Trump, has dismissed global warming as a scam and has vowed if elected to vigorously expand drilling for oil and gas. He has pledged to roll back or repeal the clean energy and climate policies of the Biden administration, notably targeting the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that has provided about $370 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to clean renewable energy. The deregulatory road map for a second Trump administration called Project 2025 similarly features unlimited fossil fuel production, and a repeal of the IRA and other climate and environmental regulations.In contrast, the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, describes climate change as an existential threat. As vice president she cast the tie-breaking vote allowing passage of the IRA and supported new emissions standards that will curb pollution from oil and gas operations, cars, trucks and dirty power plants. Harris announced more than $1 billion in grants in 2022 for states to address flooding and extreme heat exacerbated by climate change, and she has championed environmental justice programs to reduce the impact of climate change and fossil fuel pollution on marginalized communities.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Researchers like myself who study the health effects of climate change and air pollution in children, from in utero through adolescence, have found that climate change is a threat multiplier, placing nearly every child in the U.S. and around the world at risk from at least one climate-intensified hazard: extreme heat, severe storms and floods, wildfires, food insecurity and insect-borne diseases.The toll on the physical and mental health of children is hugeand growing. More babies are being born preterm or at low birth weight consequent to a mothers prolonged exposure to severe heat or forest fire smoke during pregnancy. Babies, young children and adolescent athletes may experience hyperthermia, kidney disease and even death from exposure to severe heat. Every year wildfires in the U.S. West expose over seven million children to lung-damaging smoke, often triggering asthma attacks. Infectious diseases like Lyme have been on the rise among children, largely because of climate change. Children are also experiencing physical and psychological trauma from severe storms and floods, and many suffer from PTSD and depression as a result. Awareness of the health effects of climate change heightens kids risks of anxiety and other mental health problems, to the point where almost half of young people recently surveyed said that their worries about climate change were negatively affecting their daily lives. Extreme heat exposure can cause children to have poor cognitive function and reduced ability to concentrate, learn and perform academically, potentially affecting future income.Air pollution is now recognized as a parallel health crisis for which fossil fuel emissions are largely responsible. Long recognized as a trigger of asthma attacks in children, air pollution is now understood to be a direct cause of asthma and other respiratory diseases. Everything from infant death and childhood asthma to mental health conditions has been linked to air pollution. Like climate change, air pollution exposure is affecting childrens ability to learn. In a New York City study, my colleagues and I found that IQ scores and academic achievement dropped in children prenatally exposed to air pollution from cars, construction and industry.While all children are vulnerable, low-income, Black and Hispanic children face disproportionate exposure to air pollution in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Discriminatory policies, such as redlining, have created urban heat islands in communities of color where there are fewer trees and shaded areas.On the healthy side of the ledger, the climate and energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by one billion metric tons in 2030, putting us in reach of our nations target of at least 50 percent emissions reduction. By then, the IRA would also sharply reduce levels of small inhalable particles, preventing up to 4,500 premature deaths, 119,000 asthma attacks, and about 179,000 cases of respiratory symptoms and bronchitis, plus thousands of hospital admissions and respiratory ER visits every year. The avoided deaths would be concentrated in communities of color, which have historically experienced the greatest harm from air pollution. The estimated economic benefits are as high as $49 billion for 2030 alone. The global climate benefits of the IRA for that same year amount to $137 billion.This isnt the first time policies have been shown to greatly benefit health and the economy. The U.S. Clean Air Act and Amendments achieved an average 78 percent reduction in national emissions of common air pollutants between 1970 and 2020. In 2020 alone, Clean Air Act programs had a net economic benefit to public healthlives saved, hospital visits avoided and school days keptup to $3.8 trillion, plus more than $21 billion in avoided climate-related economic damages.The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the U.S. Northeast required power plants to cut carbon dioxide emissions, which led to pollution reductions that averted up to an estimated 830 premature deaths, along with a total of 12,000 heart attacks, respiratory illnesses, preterm and low weight births, and cases of asthma and autism spectrum disorder.Government policies can protect our health and the economy, with our children being the greatest beneficiaries. This election will impact the health of our children now and in the future.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

October 31, 202422 min readTo Develop Tamoxifen, Dora Richardson Took Her Research UndergroundWhen chemist Dora Richardsons employer decided to terminate the breast cancer research on the drug Tamoxifen in the early 1970s, she and her colleagues continued the work in secret.This episode of Lost Women of Science was created with funding from AstraZeneca.Although initial clinical trials of tamoxifen as a treatment for breast cancer were positive, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) did not believe the market would be commercially viable. The company had hoped for a contraceptive pill, not a cancer treatment, and tamoxifen didnt work for contraception. In 1972 the higher-ups at ICI decided to cancel the research. But Dora Richardson, the chemist who had originally synthesized the compound, and her boss, veteran scientist Arthur Walpole, were convinced they were on to something important, something that could save lives. They continued the research in secret. Tamoxifen was eventually launched in the U.K. in 1973 and went on to become a global success, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Richardsons role in its development, however, was overshadowed by a male colleague and all but forgotten.LISTEN TO THE PODCASTOn supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.TRANSCRIPTKatie Couric: Hi, I'm Katie Couric. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Lost Women of Science is bringing you part two of the amazing story of Dora Richardson, the British chemist behind the groundbreaking breast cancer treatment tamoxifen. The compound that she synthesized in 1962 would not only go on to save lives, it would change the way we look at how cancer could be treated. Not as a death sentence, but as a chronic condition that could be managed through medical therapy. Today you'll hear about how that out-of-the-box thinking made a global impact, and the never before heard story of the life saving drug that almost didn't happen.Katie Hafner: This is Lost Women of Science, and I'm Katie Hafner.This is the second episode about Dora Richardson, the organic chemist who was so lost to history we almost despaired of finding enough information to tell any story at all. But here we are, in Episode Two. It's 1970, and Dora is working in the Fertility Regulation Division at chemical giant, ICI, in the north of England.She and division head, Arthur Walpole, are investigating two possible uses for tamoxifen. As a possible oral contraceptive or as an anti-tumor agent. On the one hand, there was disappointment. Tamoxifen was not turning out to be the contraceptive ICI had hoped for. But it was beginning to show some promising results in reducing estrogen receptor positive tumors.It was an entirely new approach. And the best word for it is groundbreaking.Viviane Quirke: At that time, When Dora Richardson synthesized tamoxifen, there were no drugs specifically targeting the organs of the reproductive system. There wouldn't have been any.Katie Hafner: That's Viviane Quirke, the historian we met in last week's episode.The longstanding goal of Drs. Walpole and Richardson was to take this groundbreaking compound and test its efficacy on the people who needed it most. Those with advanced breast cancer, and that is just what they did.At a clinical trial in 1970, tamoxifen, which went by the brand name Nolvadex, was given to 60 late stage breast cancer patients.Katie Hafner: After 10 weeks, tamoxifen had shrunk tumors substantially in 40 of those women, with very few side effects. This was truly a breakthrough moment. No chemo, no surgery. Just anti-estrogen drug therapy. The research team was elated.In that once lost and now found paper that we unearthed in the last episode, Dora described that early trial in 1970, and she wrote this, Patients with breast cancer treated with Nolvadex felt capable of doing a day's work.For women who had been subjected to debilitating, sometimes ineffective cancer treatments, this was very big news.Viviane Quirke: Dora Richardson describes, with some emotion, the reports they were getting, the team were getting, of clinical trials with tamoxifen in breast cancer patients. And describing how women who were able to leave hospital without being crippled by pain from their cancer was obviously very encouraging to the team.Katie Hafner: And not only that, these results confirmed the early hunch of Drs. Walpole and Richardson: That an anti-estrogen, like tamoxifen, could mark the beginning of a whole new treatment approach.Michael Dukes: Just to make it abundantly clear, manifestly, you know, ICI, the inventors including her had been correct back in 1963 in predicting these compounds would be useful in treating cancer.Katie Hafner: That's Michael Dukes, a chemist who started working at ICI in 1967, just two years after tamoxifen received its patent.Michael Dukes: My area of research did not impinge upon Dora, but I had the great fortune to be allocated a desk next to Dora.Katie Hafner: But even with the encouraging results from that first trial in 1970, tamoxifen's development was moving at a molasses-like pace.Michael Dukes: It was partly because of the way tamoxifen emerged and developed. By the standards of that time, it was very slow to get to clinical trial.Katie Hafner: So where, logically, might you think ICI would go from here? Do you think they'd double down on the positive results from the breast cancer trials? Would they expand the research staff in order to understand the drug's potential more quickly?Well, the best description of the higher ups at ICI was narrow minded. The company wanted to find an anti-estrogen to compete on the contraceptive market, and tamoxifen was not that. As the top executives at ICI saw it, the market for cancer drugs was not necessarily a lucrative one, especially in a patient population that suffered from advanced cancer.As Michael Dukes describes it, Arthur Walpole felt intense pressure from ICI to produce results, and quickly.Michael Dukes: He knew the facts. He knew the issues. He knew the problems. They weren't things you could deal with quickly. It inevitably took quite a long time.Katie Hafner: So what would Arthur Walpole's bosses decide to do?Much of Dora Richardson's once lost paper is a compendium of detailed notes on the process of isolating the isomers in the pure version of tamoxifen. That's all very interesting, especially if you happen to be a chemist, but there's a section I find even more interesting. Dora describes a meeting that she attended at ICI in which the successful results of that breast cancer trial were presented.She wrote, This encouraging result was not universally received with enthusiasm within ICI, as it was said the team were supposed to be looking for an oral contraceptive, not an anti cancer agent! Exclamation mark. There are a few exclamation marks in Dora's history of Nolvadex, four to be precise, and a bit of punctuation wouldn't normally draw attention to itself, but in Dora's case, an exclamation point does, especially coming from a very quiet person.Katie Hafner: And this one speaks volumes. It marks a sort of unfiltered version of Dora, a way that she was noting, even if it was to herself, the exasperation she felt, especially given what came next.She wrote, Shortly after this meeting, it was proposed that Nolvadex be dropped from development since it was never going to cover the research and development costs and bring an appropriate return to the division.Ouch.Here's Michael Dukes again.Michael Dukes: So drug sales for the treatment of breast cancer. Were very small at that time. The commercial people felt we're only going to take part of that market. So is it worth it? And that was why they were very, very lukewarm.Katie Hafner: The mood of the research team, Dora wrote, turned from elation to despondency. But ICI hadn't planned for what came next.Barbara Valcaccia: We actually did officially drop the project and we worked, you could say, semi-secretly to continue it.Katie Hafner: That's Barbara Valcaccia, who was Dora Richardson's colleague and Arthur Walpole's lab assistant. As Barbara describes it, her frustrated boss went rogue. He conscripted Barbara and Dora to continue with the tamoxifen research in stealth mode.Barbara Valcaccia: Nobody, well Dora knew about it. But nobody else knew what we were doing. And this was something squeezed into lunch breaks and coffee breaks and goodness knows what else.Katie Hafner: The entire tamoxifen project went underground. Literally.Barbara Valcaccia: At that time, I had a room with animals in, and it was in the sub-basement of a dark little place. I did the experiments for several months, for Dr. Walpole, and just the two of us knew about itKatie Hafner: For her part. Dora continued making the compound needed for the underground experiments, which couldn't have been easy.Barbara Valcaccia: Dora had managed to, was still working with us though by that time. She must have been shifted onto another project, but she still found time to do bits for us.Katie Hafner: Arthur Walpole was affectionately known in the division as Wallop, and he had the reputation of being a brilliant scientist who could work effortlessly in both chemistry and biology. Colleagues described him as an absent-minded professor type.Barbara Valcaccia: He was very intense in that he wanted his work done properly and evaluated properlyhe wasn't a nitpicker. He just wanted to know that the work was reliable.Katie Hafner: He wasn't a nitpicker, but he was tough. After several months of toiling in secret, Dr. Walpole gave ICI an ultimatum. The company could give tamoxifen research its formal blessing, or he could resign.Barbara Valcaccia: He threatened to resign and the project was reinstated.Katie Hafner: Tamoxifen research was back on. In her understated way, Dora recounted what one person running the clinical trial said at the time. ICI could not morally withdraw the drug in light of the encouraging results. ICI's motives for continuing are unclear to this day. Whether ICI leadership reinstated research because they recognized the moral imperative or because they were afraid of losing the brilliant Arthur Walpole, no one really knows.And that April, in 1972, the company did find a reason to resume research.Michael Dukes: Fortunately, Walpole was able to see it through.Katie Hafner: But let's stop here for a moment to reflect. Of course, with any drug development, there are any number of reasons why a particular drug might not make it to market. But in the case of tamoxifen, which began as a treatment for women with late stage cancer and was later approved as a preventative treatment for breast cancer in high risk patients, the absence of this treatment would have been devastating to so many women who have since benefited from tamoxifen.Indeed, it's hard to fathom what might have happened without tamoxifen. Boy do we women have a lot to thank Dora Richardson, Arthur Walpole, and Barbara Valcaccia for. Not just their determination, but their grasp of the moral imperative to keep going. It was a long uphill climb.Barbara Valcaccia: It is really, um, something that is so effective and has helped so many people to have had to struggle to such an extent to get it onto the market.Katie Hafner: Once the research started up again, officially that is, the team conducted more clinical trials. Some of which took place at the very hospital where Dora had visited her dying grandmother. The place where Dora was inspired to become a chemist in a cancer research lab. The researchers continued to see positive results. Tamoxifen's genius at fighting estrogen receptive breast cancer was becoming clearer.When you read Dora's unpublished paper, you get the feeling that she knew the early story of tamoxifen's development needed to be written down, if only to make sure it was told correctly one day, just in case anyone went looking for it.Julie James: I think a lot of science is hidden until it gets to a certain point.Katie Hafner: That's Julie James, the archivist who combed through those 40 boxes looking for the history of Nolvadex for us. In Julie's work at the archive, she notices that researchers might look back to the moment a drug is launched, but they don't go back much further than that.Viviane Quirke: The people that were before that point just get forgotten.Katie Hafner: Tamoxifen's story is no different. By looking back beyond the launch of the drug on the market, we can see why the worldwide success of this drug was by no means a foregone conclusion. It was a revolutionary approach.Ben Anderson: Well, you know, we talk about cancer in general, and we tend to think of, well, there's cure, and then there's not cure.Katie Hafner: That's Dr. Benjamin Anderson, the former breast surgeon we met in the last episode. In his role working with the Global Breast Cancer Initiative at The World Health Organization, he's seen the impact tamoxifen has made on the health of women around the world. That's due, Dr. Anderson explains, to the elegance of tamoxifen's mechanism of action.Ben Anderson: Well, tamoxifen comes from this group called Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulator, SERM. What tamoxifen does is, it's a molecule, it's a medicine, and it sits on the estrogen receptor and blocks it. So it blocks the hormone stimulation of the cancer.You're really using the biology of the cancer against it, as opposed to just doing something that kills cells. It's not just a toxic substance. It's manipulating the hormone receptor pathways to cause the cancers to either be suppressed or, or to die.Katie Hafner: In this way, tamoxifen acts like a key broken off in a lock. It keeps that lock from being opened. This was a radical departure from the way cancer was treated at the time.Ben Anderson: I think that what's really impressive about what Dora did, and what others who were making progress in similar areas, was just how limited their tools were for these purposes. But I think from what I understand, not only was she good at working with the medicine, but she was thoughtful about where this might go and how it might be used in the best way.Katie Hafner: Dr. Susan Galbraith, Head of Oncology Research and Development at AstraZeneca, agrees that it was the team's ability to look at different possibilities for the compound that led to new discoveries.Susan Galbraith: So that was what was exciting to the team.Katie Hafner:. Their hypothesis that an anti-estrogen could work against cancer took time to prove, but it paid off in incredible patient outcomes. The more they tested it, the more encouraged they were by the results.Susan Galbraith: And again, different from what the original idea had been behind that project, but rapid adaptation into something which was applicable. And I think it was very exciting for the team altogether to sort of see those early results.Katie Hafner: Adaptation. That was key.Ben Anderson: And so the recognition that tamoxifen had something beyond the fertility roles that it wasn't panning out so well for, but recognizing, say, this might do something really important in another area, that's what genius is like.Katie Hafner: Genius is a good way of putting it, and clearly in the early development of tamoxifen there was a whole lot of genius going around, which raises the question, why have we forgotten the geniuses who were there at the very beginning?More after the break.Katie Hafner: And so we return to what's missing. In our last episode, Michael Dukes described Dora Richardson as an Agatha Christie-type character, and we couldve used an Agatha Christie character to help us find her. But aside from Viviane Quirke, and us, it's not as if anyone's been looking for her. In addition to that, Dora made herself hard to find.Michael Dukes has an idea as to why.Michael Dukes: I think because she didn't make much noise. You know, most chemists who have made a drug then tend to, you know, make a fair bit of noise about it themselves. Probably go to meetings, you know, scientific meetings and present on it where, you know, again, Dora, I don't think, did much of that.Katie Hafner: And if Dora is to be summed up in one word, Michael Dukes thinks that selfless is an apt one.Michael Dukes: I think that's the best word. She wasn't looking for her own personal sort of advancement in that sense.Katie Hafner: But selflessness alone is not enough to explain a disappearance, at least not in this case.In 1974, as tamoxifen saw increased success in patient trials just after it was launched in the UK, someone new joined the team, a pharmacologist named Craig Jordan.Katie Hafner: To this day, his is the name usually associated with the success of the drug, and his name is often accompanied by this description, the father of tamoxifen. Craig Jordan first came to Alderley Park as a summer student in 1967 and later in 1972, as a Ph.D. candidate. Dr. Walpole was assigned as Craig Jordan's thesis examiner, and Craig Jordan would stay close to ICI and tamoxifen for decades, working to expand its use in a growing list of patients.But he overshadowed the people who had been on the team up to that point, including Dora. Historian Viviane Quirke has an opinion about that.Viviane Quirke: He was publishing so much, he was drowning everybody in papers, you know?Katie Hafner: In other words, he was drowning everyone else out. At least, that's how I'm interpreting it.Craig Jordan would go on to write and speak about tamoxifen for the rest of his life. There's no shortage of information about how the drug was brought to market and Craig Jordan's role in that success.But when the spotlight shifted towards Dr. Jordan, it shifted away from the team that had been pushing the research forward for 14 years before he got there.Katie Hafner: There's no doubt that Craig Jordan had a major role to play in this odyssey, guiding tamoxifen through the lengthy clinical, legal, and regulatory battles. Craig Jordan was also a force behind the expanded uses of tamoxifen, including among younger women. But as far as we can tell, Craig Jordan mentioned Dora only briefly, if he mentioned her at all.In a paper on the 50th anniversary of tamoxifen's first clinical trial, he cited her once. He called her, quote, a talented organic chemist. And that was it. Barbara Valcaccia finds this unfair.Barbara Valcaccia: Her work was so important and she is so rarely mentioned as having anything to do with it.Katie Hafner: And Craig Jordan had the megaphone.Michael Dukes: That he managed to speak louder and more often, he became associated with it.Katie Hafner: To give you an example of just how disconnected Craig Jordan was from tamoxifen's early development, there's this. In early 1975, tamoxifen was caught up in a patent dispute in the United States. Michael Dukes was there, and so was Dora Richardson. Craig Jordan was not.Michael Dukes: I mean, the last time I saw her was at the trial in Washington, the, uh, federal circuit trial when ICI took the American Patent Office to court. We sued them for their failure to apply the law correctly, and as a result denied the tamoxifen, the 46474 patent.Katie Hafner: At that trial, it was Dora Richardson, not Craig Jordan, who was called as a witness, perhaps for one simple reason.Craig Jordan had not been there at the beginning. But he knew a good product when he saw it, and he knew how to position that product in the market. And for that, he deserves credit.Barbara Valcaccia: It's just that Craig had a particular type of personality. He was a self-publicist, but he moved in on something that was going to be successful and made sure his name was associated with it.Katie Hafner: Dr. Benjamin Anderson, who knew Craig Jordan, believes he would have recognized Dora Richardson's role, if asked.Ben Anderson: Dr. Jordan became known as Dr. Tamoxifen, but I think he would have been the first to stand up and say, I was standing on the shoulders of others. And, uh, Dora, I think, was one of those.Katie Hafner: When tamoxifen was finally launched in the U.K. in 1973, it was for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. It was an encouraging sign, but it didn't meet with much fanfare. An in house ICI paper stated, Whilst it is not a breakthrough drug and is not expected to achieve major sales, Nolvadex is nevertheless one of the most significant drugs to result from the division's research program.You can say that again. Because today, the uses for tamoxifen have increased exponentially from that underwhelming description, along with the patient populations that it treats. Here's Susan Galbraith again.Susan Galbraith: If you think about the impact that this particular drug has had on the outcome for breast cancer, the understanding of how we can change the, you know, the hormonal drive for that disease and led to a whole series of other drugs, a whole range of other hormonal therapies for breast cancer that this finding triggered. It's a remarkable impact.Ben Anderson: Tamoxifen reduced recurrence rates by about half and cut mortality statistics in ballpark figure, 50%. That is a really big number in oncology.Katie Hafner: Once it's determined that a tumor is estrogen receptor positive, tamoxifen can be prescribed. And, because it's well tolerated, it doesn't require any monitoring over the course of treatment. That makes it extremely accessible.Ben Anderson: You know, what do you need? You need a pharmacy. And, and so, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, uh, Latin America, you don't have to go to the super fancy hospital to get this prescription that you take once a day for five to ten years.Katie Hafner: Dr. Anderson explains that tamoxifen is so important to global health, it's on the WHO's list of most essential medicines.Ben Anderson: WHO created this concept of the essential medicines list. They've gone through pulling on expert opinion and knowledge. They've identified medicines that have a big bang for your buck. These are effective medicines and they're appropriate to have. It's important guidance.Katie Hafner: Dr. Anderson believes that this kind of accomplishment is possible only when a team pushes a revolutionary idea forward.Ben Anderson: And so it's that thinking out of the box. And I think that the work that Dora and others on this team did, they fit in that realm. And it isn't just about one person. It's about our system of science overall.And isn't it awesome that we all get to participate in this and see the benefits when we are able to bring it to the public.Katie Hafner: And here, Susan Galbraith of AstraZeneca echoes something that Dr. Anderson said earlier.Susan Galbraith: We stand on the shoulders of the people that have gone before.Katie Hafner: But wouldn't it be better if we knew whose shoulders today's scientists are standing on? Or is that just wishful thinking?I mean, is it really so surprising not to know the developer of an effective treatment? Do I know, for example, the name of the scientist who developed the Ibuprofen I took from my headache this morning? I don't. Historian Viviane Quirke.Viviane Quirke: The chemists who make things aren't usually the big heroes of the story, whether they're male or female.Nevertheless, The fact that there's this female chemist, and there weren't that many, especially synthetic chemists, making a breast cancer drug needs highlighting.Katie Hafner: That is an understatement. In his own version of the history of tamoxifen, Craig Jordan wrote, History is lived forward, but is written in retrospect.That was perceptive of him. Maybe he was looking back from his perch on Dora's shoulders and failed to notice who was below him. But depending on who is looking back, it's easy to see how certain characters get completely left out. Dora Richardson, who toiled away in Lab 8S14 to synthesize tamoxifen, is essentially unknown.Katie Hafner: On July 3rd, 2024,The New York Times published Craig Jordan's obituary and described him thusly in its first sentence: V. Craig Jordan, a pharmacologist whose discovery that a failed contraceptive, tamoxifen, could block the growth of breast cancer cells, opened up a whole new class of drugs, and helped save the lives of millions of women.We sometimes like to say that at Lost Women of Science, we're not mad, we're curious. Okay, we're a little mad. So yes, we're a little angry that the newspaper of record has credited Craig Jordan with being not merely the father of tamoxifen, but its discoverer. This is what people will come to believe, but it is simply untrue.Katie Hafner: At Lost Women of Science, we believe that the true origins of scientific discoveries matter. We care about getting the historical record right, and we believe that the rest of the world should care too. But why does it matter? Because the truth matters. Giving credit where credit is rightly due matters.If a building or a street is going to be named for someone who created something important, make sure it's the right someone. Here's Viviane Quirke again.Viviane Quirke: This is a breast cancer drug that saved the lives of women. I think the fact that it's a female chemist who synthesized a breast cancer drug is significant.Katie Hafner: Michael Dukes describes Dora Richardson as a woman from a particular time and place that required behavior that many women today would find unimaginable and unacceptable.Michael Dukes: She didn't, in any way, come over to me as a feminist in the sense that we're being downtrodden and all the rest of it, even though she had every reason to be. Because, of course, up until, I think, the early 70s, women in industry in Britain were only paid 80 percent of what their equivalent males were being paid.Katie Hafner: Even if Dora wouldn't have been called a feminist, from the fragments of her life that we know of outside of ICI, we know that she was a founding member of the local Soroptimists Club. The Soroptimists are still around today and they encourage the empowerment of women through education. Michael Dukes also believes that although Dora was quiet about it, she was well aware of the pivotal role she played in the success of tamoxifen in treating breast cancer.Michael Dukes: I think she was kept informed. I mean, it was in the press. She knew what it was achieving. I think she would have had, you know, drawn quiet satisfaction, pride, she was entitled to, you know, she had changed the planet in that sense.Katie Hafner: Dr. Arthur Walpole retired from ICI in 1977 and he died unexpectedly six months later at age 64.Sadly, he never got to see the full extent of his life's work. In Dr. Walpole's hometown of Wilmslow, England, just three miles from the old ICI headquarters, there's now a Walpole Way named after him, thanks to the efforts of Michael Dukes. It's a small tribute to a man who some say should have been considered for a Nobel Prize.Katie Hafner: It is some comfort to know that Dora Richardson lived to see tamoxifen's impact on women's health. And, before she retired, she also saw ICI's revenues explode thanks to tamoxifen. Dora's history of Nolvadex states that in 1980, its estimated actual sales worldwide were 30 million pounds.Or around 200 million dollars in today's money.Viviane Quirke: So her unpublished history finishes with, Oh, ye of little faith.Michael Dukes: Oh ye of little faith.Julie James: Oh, ye of little faith is a last sentence. That says it all, doesn't it really?Katie Hafner: The global market for tamoxifen is expected to reach over $712 million dollars in 2032.When Dora Richardson retired from ICI in 1979, there was an informal send off for her. Her lab manager at the time made a few remarks thanking Dora for her service. She graciously accepted and said in response, I have had a very gratifying and fulfilling career. Nolvadex is a once in a lifetime discovery and I feel lucky that I was in on it. I feel I have done something with my life.Katie Hafner: According to an ICI article, the division gave her the following going away gifts. A pair of binoculars. A radio cassette player. Some cut glass. And a book. That sounds so British. So restrained. So of its time. So small, it's almost heartbreaking.But if there's one thing we've learned about Dora, it's that she wasn't comfortable being singled out. It's also worth remembering that Dora's lifelong dream had been to work as a chemist in cancer research. And with that in mind, I think we can feel confident that Dora's true gratification might have been felt in other ways.Like on this otherwise ordinary day back at the ICI lab, when early trial results were coming in.Barbara Valcaccia: It was just after lunch one day, and we were all starting to work again. Dora burst into the lab and she was so excited, and she got this paper in her hand and she said read it, read it. So we read it and she couldn't keep still. She was hopping from one foot to the other. She was so excited and it was a letter from a patient who had been treated with tamoxifen and had recovered from a breast tumor.Katie Hafner: That patient was so grateful that she had written to ICI to find out who had developed the treatment that saved her.Barbara Valcaccia: She'd sought out the information about how the drug came, came to be made or who made it. And who was the chemist who synthesized it.And she'd actually written to the company, asking that, that Dora should be Uh, thanked for what she'd done. And Dora got this letter, and she was happy, embarrassed, delighted, grateful, because normally in that sort of work, nobody gets in touch with you, if you manage to get a drug onto the market.You've got a drug onto the market and that's that, and you move on to something else. Uh, but somebody had taken the trouble to write in and then say thank you for doing it, and she was so happy.Katie Hafner: When we found that long lost paper with the help of archivist Julie James, she had this to say.Julie James: It's lovely to think that someone's took the time to look back at who actually really did the science behind it and bring her forward into the limelight. Probably a little bit too late, but yeah.Katie Hafner: She's right. It is a little late. We wish this had happened a long time ago. And now we think of this as our little pink ribbon to Dora. A reminder about the importance of recognizing those who have made a difference in our lives. Who have, in some cases, saved our lives. And because of that, deserve our sincere gratitude.This is a long overdue shout out to a person who made very little noise and who probably wouldn't have wanted a shout out at all. But to rediscover Dora Richardson in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month feels especially poignant.Katie Hafner: Getting a breast cancer diagnosis is frightening at any time. And knowing that Dora Richardson never gave up on her research to find a better treatment, we hope, is both reassuring and inspirational.Thank you, Dora, on behalf of all the women tamoxifen has helped, and all the women tamoxifen will help. Thank you for your patience, your courage, and your brilliant mind.Katie Hafner: Marcy Thompson was Senior Producer for this episode, and Deborah Unger was Senior Managing Producer. Ted Woods was our Sound Designer and Sound Engineer. Our music was composed by Lizzie Younan. We had fact checking help from Lexi Atiya. Lily Whear created the art.Special thanks go to Dr. Susan Galbraith, who's on our advisory board and who first brought Dora to our attention.And thanks to AstraZeneca, which funded this episode. Thank you, as always, to my co-executive producer, Amy Scharf, and to Eowyn Burtner, our program manager.Thanks also to Jeff DelViscio at our publishing partner, Scientific American. We're distributed by PRX. For a transcript of this episode and for more information about Dora Richardson, please visit our website lostwomenofscience.org and sign up so you'll never miss an episode. I'm Katie Hafner. See you next time.GuestsKatie Couric is a journalist, TV presenter, podcast host, and founder of Katie Couric Media.Dr. Viviane Quirke is a historian of science, medicine and technology with a particular focus on drug development.Dr. Ben Anderson is a breast surgeon and former technical lead of the Global Breast Cancer Initiative of the World Health Organization.Dr. Susan Galbraith is executive vice president of oncology research and development at AstraZeneca.Julie James is an archivist at AstraZeneca.Barbara Valcaccia is a biologist who worked with Dora Richardson at ICI.Dr. Michael Dukes is a reproductive endocrinologist who worked with Dora Richardson at ICI.Further ReadingThe History of Nolvadex,. by Dr. Dora Richardson,. Imperial Chemical Industries, May 13, 1980.Careers for Chemists, in Imperial Chemical Industries Limited. Imperial Chemical House, 1955.National Cancer Institute for more information about cancer, cancer research, and todays cancer treatments.

October 31, 20246 min readBird Flu Is One Step Closer to Mixing with Seasonal Flu Virus and Becoming a PandemicHumans and pigs could both serve as mixing vessels for a bird fluseasonal flu hybrid, posing a risk of wider spreadBy Tanya LewisPeople who get infected with H5N1 bird flu, such as dairy farm workers, could be coinfected with seasonal flu, setting the stage for dangerous viral mixing known as reassortment. Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty ImagesAs the H5N1 avian influenza virus continues its rampage through U.S. dairy cow herds, it has also infected human farm workers. A different strain has also infected workers on poultry farms, most recently in Washington State. On Wednesday the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the virus had been detected in a pig for the first time at a farm in Oregon. Now, as the usual seasonal flu season approaches, some health experts wonder if it might give bird flu a dangerous boost.There have been at least 39 human H5N1 cases in the U.S. this year. Fifteen were in California, 10 were in Colorado, nine were in Washington State, two were in Michigan, one was in Texas, and one was in Missouri. (A second person in Missouri was likely also infected, but their blood test results didnt meet the official definition of a case. And officials say they have ruled out person-to-person spread there.) Known cases have mostly been mild, characterized by minor eye infections and respiratory symptoms.Apart from the Missouri case, all of these people had confirmed contact with infected farm animals. All nine of the Washington State cases and nine of those in Colorado involved workers on farms that culled infected chickens. The remainder of cases were dairy farm workers. A total of 395 cow herds have tested positive for H5N1 across 14 states.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The steady uptick in casesin both farm animals and humanshas some experts worried about the risk of a wider outbreak of this potentially pandemic-causing virus. Influenza viruses have several features that make them well suited for this: for one, they constantly mutate in a process known as genetic drift, which is why you need a new flu shot every year. If there are enough mutations of the right kind, the virus undergoes a quantum leap known as genetic shift, which can make it capable of unleashing a pandemic.Another tool in an influenza viruss kit is something known as reassortment. A flu viruss genetic material is made up of eight RNA segments. When multiple viruses infect the same cell and replicate, they can swap these segments, producing one of 256 possible combinations. This reassortment can create a virus that contains features of both parent viruses, which could make it more transmissible and virulent. The process is thought to have produced the 2009 H1N1 swine flu from a mix of U.S. and European strains of pig flu virus, launching a (thankfully mild) pandemic.Could such reassortment occur if a person were infected with both the H5N1 bird flu virus and seasonal influenza at the same time, leading to an H5N1 version that would be more transmissible in people? Thats certainly possible, experts say. But reassortment alone cannot create a virus capable of launching a human pandemic, says Richard Webby, an infectious disease researcher at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. The virus would also need to accrue certain specific mutations.To get from where we are now to a pandemic virus, reassortment alonein my mind, at leastis not going to get us there, says Webby, who directs the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds. Its going to take reassortment, followed by some critical mutations in [one specific] gene.So far none of the key mutations necessary for the virus to spread efficiently among humans has been detected in any of the genetically sequenced human cases.If H5N1 does develop those mutations, reassortment could help move the virus from an infected humans eye (the site of most known farm worker infections) to their respiratory tract, Webby says. If it occurred at all, such mixing would most likely happen in a human host, he says. Although cows can get infected with human flu viruses, its less likely that those viruses would replicate in the cows udders, which is where H5N1 seems to replicate best.Amanda MontaezHistorically, pigs have been viewed as the ideal mixing vessels for pandemic pathogens because they are susceptible to both human and avian influenzas. Spillovers of human seasonal viruses into pigs happen fairly regularly, says Amy Baker, a research veterinary medical officer at the USDA. Baker and her colleagues have shown that the 2.3.4.4b strain of H5N1 that is currently circulating in wild birds and dairy cows can replicate in pigs.The pig that tested positive for H5N1 in Oregon was housed in a backyard farm with poultry and other animals. Its not yet clear if the pig transmitted the virus to any other animals, but health authorities are investigating. All five pigs on the farm have been euthanized. Because the farm is a noncommercial operation, there is no concern about the nations pork supply, USDA officials said in a recent statement.This does seem to be a pretty limited episode on a backyard farm, so I think in itself, it doesn't pose any particular danger, assuming there wasnt any movement of animals to other farms, Webby says. But if this represents an actual infection of pigs and not just a positive nasal swab, he says, it does suggest that they are naturally susceptible to the virus.If H5N1 were to start infecting pigs on commercial hog farms, that would heighten the chances of reassortment with seasonal influenza. We know reassortment happens a lot in pigsthere are viruses in pigs that are very closely related to those humans. So, it would absolutely, absolutely increase the risk.There are still many unanswered questions about how the H5N1 virus got into cattle in the first place and began spreading, Baker says. She agrees with Webby that there is little risk of the virus reassorting with human seasonal flu viruses in cows because there is no evidence of the latter pathogens infecting the animals. But if a pig or person were to be coinfected with both viruses, she says, there is always a chance it could create a more dangerous hybrid virus.This risk is a reason the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged farm workers to get their seasonal flu shots. The U.S. has a stockpile of H5N1 vaccines, but it has not yet distributed any. There is some concern that low trust in vaccines could affect uptake. It remains unclear what various officials threshold for deploying H5N1 vaccines among farm workers and other susceptible individuals might be, although evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission would likely be a strong factor.Its not a bright-line rule, said the CDCs principal deputy director Nirav Shah to Scientific American at a press briefing last week. Its really a variety of factors that we think about as we evaluate the pros and cons of vaccination. These include the emergence of person-to-person spread and increasing virulence or severity of illnessand none of these factors has yet been seen, he added. In the meantime, people infected with H5N1 and their close contacts are being treated with the medication oseltamivir (Tamiflu).Some scientists have called for vaccinating cattle against H5N1, and the USDAs Center for Veterinary Biologics has approved a couple of vaccine field safety trials. I think theres an opportunity for using H5 vaccines in cattle because its the only subtype that have knowledge of infecting cattle at this point, Baker says. And if we could reduce the amount of virus thats being shed through the milk, I think that will be a benefit to both the milk production side of it, as well as protecting the farm workers and the public.Right now the chances of a farm worker getting H5N1 at the same time as seasonal flu are low,Webby says. But as flu season ramps up this winter, that risk could increase. Hundreds of humans have been infected with avian flu in the past quarter-century, and it hasnt yet started transmitting widely among us. That fact, Webby says, suggests the hurdles are high that this virus has to overcome to become a human virus. But anything that gives it more opportunity to do so is obviously a concernwhether thats just more human infections from farm animals or that potential of reassorting with a human seasonal virus. All of those things would increase the risk.

October 31, 20242 min readCatastrophic Floods in Spain Kill at Least 95 PeopleTorrential rain, made worse by climate change, has lashed Spain, with Valencia bearing the brunt of the floodwatersCars are piled in the street with other debris after flash floods hit the region on October 30, 2024 in the Sedav area of Valencia, Spain. David Ramos/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | Flash floods in southeastern Spain have killed at least 95 people and left dozens missing, officials said Thursday morning.The country has been lashed by torrential rain this week. The worst-hit region is the province of Valencia, where floods and landslides have swept away cars, roads and buildings.The process of recovering and identifying the victims is beginning, local authorities said Wednesday.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Snchez offered his condolences and support during a speech Wednesday morning.On behalf of the government of Spain and the whole of Spanish society, I would like to express all our solidarity and affection to the families of those who have died in this tragedy in the Valencian Community and Castilla la Mancha and to those who are still searching for their loved ones, said Snchez.We are going to help you with all the resources of the State. If necessary, the European Union, he added.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the floods represented the "reality" of climate change.In just a few months, floods have hit Central and Eastern Europe, Italy and now Spain," von der Leyen said Wednesday. "This is the dramatic reality of climate change, and we must prepare to deal with it all across our Union and with all tools at our disposal.The floods have caused widespread disruption to rail and air travel across the south and east of the country. A high-speed train with about 300 people on board derailed near Malaga on Tuesday but rail authorities said there were no fatalities.We are facing an unprecedented situation, Carlos Mazn, head of Valencias regional government, told reporters Wednesday.The disaster in Spain comes after devastating floods in central Europe last month killed at least two dozen people. The likelihood of such floods has been greatly increased by global warming, climatologists have warned.Further study of the specific storm would be needed to establish the amount of influence global warming had on the torrential rain, said Ernesto Rodrguez Camino, senior state meteorologist and member of Spanish Meteorological Association.We cant say anything on the fly, except that in the context of climate change, these types of events will be more frequent and more intense, he said.Camino said warning systems for such extreme weather measured only precipitation. But he said the resulting death and destruction relied on all sorts of other factors, including the local geography, flood defenses, obstacles to the water and upstream rainfall.Between heavy rainfall and its destructive power, there is a whole chain of actions that must also be considered, he said.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

October 30, 20244 min readWhy Are Close Elections So Common?When voters decide between two alternatives, as is effectively the case in the U.S. presidential election, it usually comes down to a neck-and-neck race. Researchers can now explain this mathematicallyBy Manon BischoffA ballot drop box in San Francisco. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images.The whole world is eagerly awaiting the U.S. presidential election on November 5, 2024. According to one polling average, in mid-October, around 49 percent of respondents said they would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris and around 47 percent said they would vote for Republican Donald Trump. The election appears to be a neck-and-neck race.Surprisingly, the U.S. is not an isolated case. When the population of a democratic country is deciding between two alternatives, the election is usually very close as was also the case with Brexit and with the Polish presidential election in 2020. The overriding question, then, is: What accounts for these observations?The answer certainly has a large psychological, demographic and sociological component. Nevertheless, the behavior of large groups of people can be described quite well using mathematical models. And this is exactly what physicists Olivier Devauchelle of Paris City University, Piotr Nowakowski, now at the Ruđer Boković Institute in Croatia, and Piotr Szymczak of the University of Warsaw have done.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.In a paper published in the journal Physical Review E in April 2024, they examined the electoral outcomes of democratic states from 1990 onward and created a model that describes them. In this way, they were able to identify a mechanism that explains close election results.In May 2016 a referendum shook the European continent. Contrary to expectations, the British electorate voted by a narrow majority of 51.9 percent to leave the European Union in the so-called Brexit decision. The result is all the more astonishing when you consider polling data from before the actual vote. In poll results, the votes were very unevenly distributed. For example, in October 2014 the remainers (those who wanted to remain part of the E.U.) were almost 20 percentage points ahead of the Brexiters. The closer it got to voting day, the more the polls pointed to a 5050 result.A similar picture emerges when we look at the Polish presidential election on July 12, 2020. At that time, President Andrzej Duda, who was seeking reelection and had no party affiliation but was supported by the nationalist Law and Justice party, ran against the economically liberal politician Rafał Trzaskowski. In the polls in May 2020, Duda was still leading with around 54 percent of the vote, but on election day he only received 1 percent more of the vote than his rival. Here, too, it became clear that the closer election day approached, the narrower the differences in the poll results became.In order to model an emerging equilibrium in sentiment for two parties, one could initially assume, as is usual in game theory, that each voter tosses a coin. The result would then be close to 5050, the chance of getting heads or tails. Such a simplified model does not reflect reality, however. If you look at the outcome of the Polish presidential election, for example, it quickly becomes clear that the votes were not distributed randomly. Citizens in the east of the country were more likely to vote for Duda, while those in the west were more likely to vote for Trzaskowski.So it seems that voters influence each other. To describe this mathematically, Devauchelle, Nowakowski and Szymczak used the Ising model, which is well known in physics. The model, among other things, simulates the behavior of magnetic materials. In the Ising model, these are made up of small magnetic units arranged in a regular grid. The units influence each other by trying to align themselves in the same way. The strength of the interaction between neighboring units determines the state of the material. If the interaction is weak, the result is a material that is chaotic (without magnetization), but as the interaction strength increases, a phase transition occurs in which magnetization occurs. In this case, the majority of all units have the same orientation.Applied to elections, this description would be tantamount to an unambiguous outcome. Such situations do indeed occur in history, but mostly in countries that do not have a large population. The researchers noticed this when they analyzed election results from the last 100 years. Countries with less than about a million voters tend to reach a consensus, Devauchelle told Phys.org, whereas the [electorates] of larger countries generally converge to [an equally divided state of voter sentiment], even when one camp was clearly leading in the polls at the onset of the election.To ensure that the Ising model can also model opinion polls and election results in populous countries, the physicists introduced a nonconformity factor that introduces a negative attitude toward the camp that is leading in the polls. Together with Nowakowski and Szymczak, he simulated such voter behavior. To do this, the three physicists used a network in which interconnected units influence one another.The nonconformity factor produced a surprisingly realistic result. An initially balanced state develops more and more into a 5050 election result over time. In addition, the network splits into two parts, with neighboring units usually occupying the same state. The researchers emphasized in the paper that social networks are much more complex, though. Their structure is not limited to two dimensions, and the connections between people can be much more complicated. Nevertheless, as a first approximation, the model delivers results that are close to real-life scenarios.The model is not so easy to apply to U.S. presidential elections, however. That is because citizens do not vote directly for a presidential candidate but through electoral college votes. This means that a majority of the population does not necessarily decide the outcome of the election. It is therefore unclear whether Harris or Trump will win the race. But one thing can be said: the election is unquestionably very close.This article originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission.

OpinionOctober 30, 20246 min readA Bird Flu Vaccine Might Come Too Late to Save Us from H5N1If the influenza virus infecting cattle workers starts a pandemic, help in the form of a vaccine is months awayBy Maggie FoxColor enhanced transmission electron microscope image (TEM) of Avian Influenza (Bird Flu). Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) variants such as H5N1 and H7N9 have been transmitted to humans. New variants of avian influenza viruses are emerging as a result of hosts carrying multiple viral variants that leads to the mixing of the viral genomes. Eye of Science/Science SourceH5N1 bird flu is here. Its moving from animals to people in ways not seen before. Its spreading to new species and new places, and this spread is largely happening under the radar.So far 36 human cases have been reported in six U.S. states: California, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Texas and Washington. Those are just the cases that health officials know about. Not all states are testing people or animals. The tests for the virus are flawed and in short supply.Most health officials say they are not really worried about H5N1 influenza just yet because the virus is so very rarely infecting people compared to the number of cattle and birds its affected. When it does, so far, it usually causes very mild symptoms and theres no evidence so far that it can be transmitted from person to person. Thats the scary scenario: a new virus that causes severe disease among people that can be easily transmitted from one person to another. We are not there yet.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Plus the U.S. government is stockpiling H5N1 vaccines. But dont count on those vaccines saving us if this virus does what flu viruses sometimes do, and turns into a pandemic form. It wont oblige humanity by slowly mutating, giving people a chance to ramp up vaccines quickly.It is going to happen fast, says Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health and a veteran of numerous disease outbreaks, from influenza to Ebola.The world just saw this happen. COVID appeared suddenly and spread globally before alarm bells rang. Even with the new, quick-turn technology of mRNA vaccines, it took just about a year after SARS-CoV-2 started its global spread to get the first doses into arms. By that point, 300,000 people had died in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands morepossibly millionsdied around the world before vaccines were fully deployed.Weve somehow not learned this valuable lesson to prepare early for a bird flu pandemic, even though this particular influenza virus has been scaring doctors, scientists and public health experts for far longer. H5N1 is a well-known and well-characterized virus, and in theory there could be a large bank of vaccines ready to go should it acquire the ability to spread easily from person to person.But there isnt. The U.S. currently has fewer than five million vaccines matched to the H5N1 strain that is circulating among cattle and occasionally infecting people right now. The federal government has contracts out that will stock up a supply of 10 million filled syringes, but not until spring of 2025. And because it will take two doses to protect, thats enough to fully vaccinate just five million people. Thats less than 2 percent of the U.S. populationto say nothing of the rest of the world.And, perhaps unbelievably after the COVID experience, the U.S. does not have a licensed mRNA vaccine against fluone that could be quickly adapted to match a mutating strain. Instead, vaccines being stockpiled to protect against pandemic influenza strains are made using mostly nearly century-old egg-based technology. Its an uncertain and slow method that would take months to ramp up in an emergency. We think 100 million doses within five months based on current capabilities, said Robert Johnson, director of the medical countermeasures program at Health and Human Services Departments Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.Those are the approved and licensed vaccines. Newer vaccines would have to finish testing and clear regulatory hurdles. There are currently no public plans for distributing or administering H5N1 pandemic vaccines, although that could change if person-to-person transmission occurs or if the virus becomes more virulent.Vaccine maker Modernawhich marketed one of the first COVID vaccines using the new, nimble mRNA technologysays it has an H5 flu virus vaccine in phase 2 trials. Its got a deal with the U.S. government. Pfizer, the other maker of mRNA vaccines, says it also has an H5 pandemic flu vaccine in the works but no U.S. government deal yet.Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has been working on an mRNA vaccine to protect against flu that he hopes would be quick to produce and easy to adapt to match a new pandemic strain. But he and his colleagues had to stop that work to deal with COVID, and theyre only just getting back up to speed.If a pandemic happened tomorrow there is no doubt that we would see conventional egg-based vaccines being deployed as well as mRNA vaccines. So lets hope a pandemic doesnt happen tomorrow, Hensley says.The trouble with making influenza vaccines starts with the flu virus itself. Its exceptionally prone to mutation or, worse, mixing with other viruses. This is why the flu vaccines usually change from one season to another and why flu vaccines dont fully protect against infection.The H5N1 virus now infecting cattle is different from the H5N1 viruses that first showed up in poultry in 1997 and the early 2000s and spread in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, by some estimates killing up to about 50 percent of people who were infected.Thus it makes no sense to make 600 million doses of H5N1 vaccine just in case the virus now infecting cattle decides to start infecting and killing people. It might change again, or even disappear. If this H5 causes a pandemic, it likely is not going to be identical to whatever is circulating in cows [currently], Hensley says. It will have to adapt to infect people.So government agencies and flu vaccine makers and researchers are walking a fine line, watching the virus and gambling that, if and when it changes, they will notice and can make the right vaccine quickly enough. Its simply not possible, because the virus continually evolves, to have a constant stockpilea large stockpileof vaccines, Johnson said at an October 8 meeting of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, a U.S. think tank.There is a theoretical solution to this problem: a flu vaccine that protects against all strains of flu, helping the bodys immune system identify parts of the virus that are consistent from season to season and from strain to strain. We need a moonshot project for a universal flu vaccine, Khan says.A universal vaccine would protect people against seasonal flu as well as against new pandemic strains, like the H1N1 strain that came from pigs in Mexico in 2009 to join the annual mix of circulating flu viruses.Hensleys team has something close in an mRNA vaccine that provides immunity against all 20 known influenza subtypes. But hes the first to say this wouldnt be a universal flu vaccine but rather a primer to give people an initial level of protection. It wouldnt replace seasonal vaccination. You are still stuck with this problem of making booster vaccines, he says, because his labs shot only targets known subtypes. Nonetheless this type of vaccine could address the stockpile problem. Ongoing production would be less wasteful than a one-off effort.Despite decades of work, no lab has been able to develop a vaccine that protects people against mutations that make flu subtypes drift from season to season. And theres been little to no political push for one.Thats in no small part a result of growing public hostility. When COVID broke out, people were largely open to vaccines. Then-president Donald Trump touted his governments rollout of the vaccine, but he has since helped feed vaccine skepticism. Neither Trump nor his Democratic opponent for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, mentions pandemic preparedness in their respective campaign platforms.Even uptake of routine childhood vaccines is falling. The lack of trust around vaccines does put us in a very bad place. We do know that people are dying because they are not getting vaccinated against COVID, Khan says. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that only 11 percent of adults and just 7 percent of pregnant women have received the latest COVID vaccine.Some states have loosened vaccine requirements and recommendations, something that worries Khan and other public health experts. Vaccines cannot help anyone if people dont get them. Politicians who dont promote the need for pandemic preparations are gambling that the next one wont hit during their terms in office. This is all going to potentially come home to roost with the next pandemic, Khan says.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

October 30, 2024Do Spiders Dream Like Humans Do? This Researcher Wants to Find OutDuring the pandemic, researcher Daniela Rler couldn't go out, so she started looking around her for her next research project. Then she found a really big one, and it had been right in front of her all along.By Luke GroskinDaniela Rler: From a research perspective, the whole visual being of jumping spiders really excited me. They have eight eyes and two really big ones that are forward facing. They totally hunt like cats. So they will stalk their prey and pounce on it. And when something is moving and jumping, spider will turn towards it to investigate. You get that feeling of the spider is actually looking right back at you, and no other spider will do it.For hundreds of years, people have looked at them and studied them, but obviously it's the times where we tend to not look at our animals that the interesting stuff happens. For example, when they're sleeping. I'm Daniela Rler and I'm a behavioral ecologist, and I study spider sleep. There's a lot of evidence that sleep is crucial for learning and memory formation.Sleep has been associated also with lots of health benefits. It's like, if you don't sleep, you will not function normally. And I think that is something we know across species. So sleep is incredibly important and super universal. And that includes animals like jellyfish which has not really a brain. But the truth is really is so far lacking an understanding of sleep evolution and where it originated and how the components of sleep evolved.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Because usually the way we sleep is study is, is like in single species and with different methods. So what I'm really trying to do is to study sleep with the same methods across spiders. So we can really link back how sleep sleep components, how they evolved. Do we see differences? Is there anything then that would hint at association between sleep and sensory processing?I have only very recently jumped into this endeavor. In the middle of the pandemic, I was forced to be at home, and that's when I found Evarcha. And they were rather big, easy to find. So I caught a bunch of them and I put them on the windowsill. And then one night I was just quickly glancing into the boxes and all of them was hanging like Christmas decorations suspended on a silk thread from the lid.And I got super curious what the hell they are doing? So the first clue was that this whole suspended position was exclusively something we see at night in these spiders that are only active during the day, hinting at them actually engaging in a sleep behavior. And the first night we saw those twitches, which was very in line with what you probably used to see in dogs and cats when they dream.And the twitches came in very regular intervals of about 20 to 30 minutes. That's when we said, okay, let's have a look at baby spiders because they're transparent and we could actually see the retinal tube. When we saw that all those twitching always occurred with movements of the retinas, that's when we were like, okay, well yeah, this could really be REM sleep.The definition of REM sleep is the atonia of muscles. So muscles are not active during this phase. Whereas we see increased activity in the brain, which is fundamentally different from deep sleep states when the brain is not active in animals that have movable eyes, you would see eye movements of sorts and muscle twitches generally not in a controlled way.From an evolutionary perspective, up to then it was the mammals, birds, reptiles and cephalopods. Here we have the spider, where it all looks very, very similar. But from a research perspective, proving that this is actually happening is a whole different idea. Spiders are notoriously difficult to study in terms of brain activity, because the hydraulic pressure of the spider just does not really allow that to be done easily.But we can demonstrate that this is actually REM sleep in a behavioral way. During REM sleep, you will find a big range of animals. You need much higher stimulus to wake up and react. So is very important right now that we actually demonstrate a reduced responsiveness during this leg curling time that we think is like our REM sleep, before we really will be able to say something definite.We see the leg curling behavior in orb web spiders. So we went out in the field and tested whether there are times where they are less responsive. So we went with a sound stimulus that is actually the wing beat frequency of wasps and bees. So the nice thing about this stimulus with common orb web spider Arenus diadimatus is that it will robustly display an anti-predator signal and what we see is that during the night when they're immobile, they need much higher stimulus to wake up and react at the same time.In the lab, we're starting to look at Portia. So Portia is really extremely special compared to other jumping spiders. So she's specialized in eating other spiders. And depending on the spider type, she will adjust her hunting strategy, which is obviously outrageously cool and comes with outstanding cognitive abilities. So we get a lot more information by studying this pair.So we make them fall asleep in little vials, and then we put them on top of the speaker, and we watch them and wait until they show one of those REM like behaviors before we apply the stimulus. You can just see the moment when the spider senses the stimulus and starts to move the grid, just starting this line of research and then putting the pieces together.I think we're going to know a lot more in a few years. So there are a lot of different experiments we could do to test the effect of sleep and sleep deprivation on cognition. So maybe if we sleep deprived Portia, will it be as efficient in hunting other spiders as a Portia that got a lot of sleep. So it's very easy to look at these videos and immediately fall into, Oh my god! Yes! Look at that. Look, it's dreaming, which is fair because obviously a lot of people will associate REM sleep with dreaming. But from a research perspective, we will never be fully able to prove that a non-human animal is dreaming. Like even in humans, the only evidence for dreams are basically dream reporting, and no other animals can actually do this.But I think research is showing us again and again, again that all these complex things have always been there in other forms. And it's not just that they evolve with humans, like, boom, everything's super complicated and complex and no one else does this. And seeing that, it's also present probably in dogs and cats and other animals, there's probably an evolutionary story behind it.Obviously their sensory systems are super different, so we have no clue what a dream could feel or look like. But to me, the most meaningful would be for a spider to dream about prey capture or running away from predators. But in the bigger picture of things, whatever version of dreaming could be present would also potentially have an evolutionary ecological purpose and benefit.So for me, obviously there's something here that needs to be explored.For a long, long time, REM sleep was really in the realm of complex brains mammals. But since the paper was published, we've looked at about 15 other families of spiders to see whether we see those REM like behaviors. And so far we do in all of them, completing this picture of no, this is really something much more universal, but I still can't believe that this has not been seen or documented before.This just a huge, vast knowledge gap because no one ever looked. And I totally want to tap into that.

October 30, 20242 min readOne in Three Tree Species Is at Risk of ExtinctionA review of 47,282 tree species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature found that more than one third are at risk of extinctionBy Nicole Norman & E&E News Ignacio Palacios/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | More than a third of the worlds tree species are at risk of extinction, according to findings by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.The group said that its first global assessment of trees determined that 38 percent of species are at risk of extinction.This comprehensive assessment presents the first global picture of the conservation status of trees, which enables us to make better informed conservation decisions and take action to protect trees where it is urgently needed, said Malin Rivers, the global tree assessment lead at Botanic Gardens Conservation International.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.BGCI coordinated with the IUCN in an effort that involved more than 100 partners and 1,000 tree experts. The IUCN maintains its Red List of Threatened Species the animals, fungus and plant species across the globe at risk of extinction. The group is an international mix of government and civil organizations looking to preserve wildlife and advance sustainable advancements.The experts examined 47,282 species of trees, determining that 16,425 or 34 percent are threatened, categorized on the Red List as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable.The group raised its estimate of how many tree species are imperiled to 38 percent to account for the tree species that they weren't able to survey.There are some species that are super-restricted so theres not very many of them, but theres also species that are really widespread that are also threatened like Fraser fir in the U.S., said Emily Beech, head of conservation at BGCI.Island trees face the largest threat due to elevated risks such as deforestation, invasive species and extreme weather.In South America, where there are more tree species than anywhere else in the world, more than 3,000 of 13,668 tree species are at risk of extinction because of crop farming and livestock ranching. The IUCN says that their assessments have aided local and national government planning to save seven species of magnolia trees in Colombia.The IUCN released its findings in Cali, Colombia, where the United Nations' COP 16 biodiversity summit is now in its second week.The groups involved in the tree assessments called for global actions to protect and restore trees and their habitats, saying seed banks and botanic garden collections are critical to prevent extinctions.Now that we have the data, we are sort of obligated to act, said Beech.This story first appeared in E&E News PM.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.