ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 385

Mysterious flashes on satellite images of Earth explained

By Sarah McQuate

Mysterious flashes of light that show up on satellite images of Earth’s landmasses have puzzled researchers for a couple of years. Now, scientists have finally pinpointed the culprit: ice crystals floating high above the planet’s surface.

The finding could help refine ideas of how clouds regulate the Earth’s temperature. And it could aid scientists looking for Earth-like exoplanets orbiting other stars. Glinting exoplanets may contain water and be “potential Earth twins”, says Tyler Robinson, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who wasn’t involved in the study.

Alex Kostinski, a physicist at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, and his colleagues solved the mystery using images from an instrument on board the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). The satellite launched in 2015 and is parked 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth.

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As Ebola outbreak grows, question of using vaccine becomes more urgent

By Jon Cohen

As health officials and aid workers head to a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to respond to an outbreak of Ebola virus disease, a key question remains: Will the government authorize the use of a promising experimental vaccine? The vaccine had stunning results in a clinical trial in Guinea in 2015, but it has yet to be licensed for broad use.

As DRC officials weigh whether to use the vaccine, new details are emerging about the outbreak, which so far includes 20 suspected cases and three deaths, including the first, or “index,” case. Most cases are in the Bas-Uélé health zone that borders the Central African Republic. Three teams there are working on identifying suspect cases, educating the communities, and investigating villages where “non-secure” funerals have taken place. They are also contacting a traditional healer in Nambwa who “received the index case”–a 45-year-old man who first sought help on 22 April–for six days.

In Likati, the largest town in the area, another team is overseeing a database of the cases. Two mobile laboratories are on their way, as are personal protective equipment for frontline responders, reagents for 100 tests, and GPS’s for field crews. More experts from the government, the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and the Alliance for International Medical Action are on the way, and a helicopter is being arranged to bridge Likati to other places.

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Lab-grown blood stem cells produced at last

By Amy Maxmen

After 20 years of trying, scientists have transformed mature cells into primordial blood cells that regenerate themselves and the components of blood. The work, described today in Nature1, 2, offers hope to people with leukaemia and other blood disorders who need bone-marrow transplants but can’t find a compatible donor. If the findings translate into the clinic, these patients could receive lab-grown versions of their own healthy cells.

One team, led by stem-cell biologist George Daley of Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts, created human cells that act like blood stem cells, although they are not identical to those found in nature1. A second team, led by stem-cell biologist Shahin Rafii of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, turned mature cells from mice into fully fledged blood stem cells2.

“For many years, people have figured out parts of this recipe, but they’ve never quite gotten there,” says Mick Bhatia, a stem-cell researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who was not involved with either study. “This is the first time researchers have checked all the boxes and made blood stem cells.”

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Nearly a Decade Nursing? Study Pierces Orangutans’ Mother-Child Bond

By Steph Yin

Elizabeth Hunt Burrett, a mother from Australia, experienced a moment with an orangutan while breast-feeding her son at Melbourne Zoo last year.

As she tells it, the orangutan came over to watch, locked eyes with her and gave an affirming nod. “It was the most beautiful thing,” she wrote in a widely circulated Facebook post.

While it may be impossible to know exactly what this orangutan was thinking, it’s true that the critically endangered apes are exceptionally dedicated mothers. They give birth to one baby at a time, raising each for six to nine years, until it’s time to rear another. Mother and young sleep and spend most of their time with only each other. And young orangutans nurse longer than any other mammal — sometimes into their ninth year of life, according to a study published in Science Advances on Wednesday.

Because observing wild orangutans can be difficult, the authors recreated the nursing history of four orangutans by analyzing barium, an element absorbed from maternal milk, in teeth taken from museum collections. In doing so, the scientists also discovered a possible clue why the apes nurse for so long: The teeth showed cycles in barium, which might correspond to environmental fluctuations in food.

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Under Fire, Climate Scientists Unite With Lawyers to Fight Back

By John Schwartz

Lawyers and scientists do not always get along, but some are now finding common cause in an effort to defend the integrity of science — especially climate science — in government and academia.

Climate scientists are feeling the heat as Republicans cement control of the executive branch and Congress. The Trump administration has already rolled back about two dozen environmental laws and regulations, dismissed members of an important science panel and taken down web pages giving information on climate change. Republicans in Congress have also brought pressure to bear on climate scientists.

Now scientists and lawyers are fighting back, with well-attended public demonstrations and legal action. The push included a recent conference that brought law professors from across the United States to New York for training to protect scientists who come under scrutiny.

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5 Reasons why the 21st century will be the best one ever for astrophysics

By Ethan Siegel

“When we have found how the nucleus of atoms is built up we shall have found the greatest secret of all — except life.” –Ernest Rutherford

It’s been a staple of science throughout the centuries: the arrogant thinking that we’ve almost arrived at the ultimate answers to our deepest questions. Scientists thought that Newton’s mechanics described everything, until they discovered the wave nature of light. Physicists thought we were almost there when Maxwell unified electromagnetism, and then relativity and quantum mechanics came along. And many thought the nature of matter was complete when we discovered the proton, neutron and electron, until high-energy particle physics revealed an entire Universe of fundamental particles. In just the past 25 years, five incredible discoveries have changed our understanding of the Universe, and each one holds the promise of an even bigger revolution. There’s never been a better time to look into the deepest mysteries of existence.

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How can we blunt prejudice against immigrants?

By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

As summer turned to fall in 2015, Ulrich Wagner was glued to the news, watching decades of his social psychology research play out on TV.

Images beamed from Munich, Germany, more than 300 kilometers from Wagner’s home north of Frankfurt, showed thousands of refugees flooding the city’s train station. Their arrival marked the hopeful end of a journey begun in war-torn Syria and other Middle Eastern hot spots. And Wagner was impressed to see the welcome extended by his fellow Germans. Outside the station, tankards of water with plastic cups lined the sidewalk. Volunteers sorted through boxes of cereal and diapers. One photo showed a German police officer crouched and smiling, eye-to-eye with a young refugee boy who wore the officer’s forest green hat and a broad grin. The scale of the migrant influx into Munich and elsewhere in Germany was hard to fathom: one million people entering a country of 80 million. It was a test for Germany as a nation. “If we do this well,” Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel was quoted as saying, “we can only win.”

The influx also has morphed into a giant, ill-controlled social experiment. How much social support should the government provide? How can it find long-term housing for everyone who needs it? Will newcomers embrace the social norms of their adopted country, and what happens if they don’t? These are among the most pressing questions, but in the background hovers another: How can individuals, civic groups, and governments manage prejudice against refugees?

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How Trump’s science cuts could hurt states that voted for him

By Alexandra Witze

In the heavily fished waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the red snapper has made a notable comeback. Strict US government regulations have helped to rebuild its stocks after overfishing caused a population crash in the 1980s and 1990s. Now the fish faces a new challenge: President Donald Trump, a Republican who wants to cut roughly US$50 billion from the government’s civilian agencies in 2018.

Trump’s plan would eliminate the Mississippi-based Sea Grant programme that is poised to oversee a $12-million study of red-snapper stocks. Its findings are meant to guide future management decisions, and to protect a fishery that hauls in billions of dollars per year for the Republican-dominated gulf states. Now the study’s fate is uncertain — along with those of many other government science programmes, including some that largely benefit the voters who propelled Trump into office.

In 2014, about $35 billion — or nearly one-third of all federal research dollars — flowed to states that voted Republican in the most recent presidential election, a Nature analysis found (see ‘Red state, blue state’). Economists have documented how this type of government investment shores up local economies, says Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington DC. “Many smaller communities have a huge amount to lose,” he says.

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How damaging is ‘Comey memo’ for Trump?

By Anthony Zurcher

The White House has denied a report that President Donald Trump tried to persuade the FBI to end its investigation into former aide Michael Flynn.

It’s not the only Trump crisis of the last 24 hours, coming hard on the heels of the news that the president shared sensitive material with Russian diplomats.

The bombshell memo and the ‘I’ word

Donald Trump is discovering just how dangerous an adversary James Comey can be.

A person doesn’t rise as high as Mr Comey did in the federal government without learning how to cover his, er, posterior.

With this latest bombshell from the New York Times it’s clear that the former FBI director, who was unceremoniously sacked by the president, is poised to enjoy the last laugh. Thanks to his propensity for memo-writing, he may have constructed an arsenal capable of mortally wounding the Trump presidency.

At the moment the White House is denying Mr Comey’s reported characterisation of the conversation the two men had shortly after the president fired Michael Flynn. In a “he-said, he-said” situation, however, the man who wrote contemporaneous documents – memos plural – will have the upper hand.

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‘Baptism Barrier’ Bill launched as Irish politicians call for separation of Church and State

By Erica Doyle Higgins

A BILL to abolish the Baptism requirement to enlist children in Irish schools has been launched in Ireland. 

The Irish Solidarity Party launched the bill this morning in Dublin to end religious discrimination in admission to primary and post-primary schools.

The change to current legislature will also provide for full participation of pupils of all faiths and none in primary and post-primary educational establishments.

The bill, which is scheduled to be debated tomorrow in Dáil Éireann and voted on this Thursday, would see the abolition of the ‘Baptism Barrier’ which requires children to have received the Christian sacrament prior to enrolling as a pupil as, the party says, ‘education should be open to all, regardless of religion.’

The Solidarity Party’s ‘Equal Participation in Schools Bill’ would also make religious education an issue for after core school hours.

Currently in Ireland it’s ‘practically impossible’ to opt out of religious education, the party says, and instead should be an ‘opt-in’ system.

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