ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 548
March 1, 2016
Bioluminescent Bacteria Could Light Up The Streets Of Paris
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Paris has been known as "The City of Light" since the 19th century. Glowee
A French company is harnessing the power of bioluminescent bacteria to light up public areas.
Glowee, a Parisian start-up, plans to use bacteria found in squid to illuminate shop fronts, public spaces, and installations, with the hope of lighting up whole streets with these microbial lamps.
Location Of Fast Radio Burst May Be Mistaken, Say Astronomers
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Artist's impression of an active galactic nucleus. Some astronomers are arguing that something like this is the source of the radio waves thought to have been the afterglow of a Fast Radio Burst. ESA/NASA/AVO/Paolo Padovani
A week after a major astronomical announcement, doubt has been thrown on the claim that the source of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) has been found. The findings challenging last week's big news have yet to be peer reviewed, but if they stand up they will send the search to understand FRBs back to square one.
Why Do Planet And Stars Come In Different Sizes?
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The Solar System, illustrated in this artist's conception, contains both large and small objects. Researchers from Duke have proposed a new explanation for why the size diversity exists. NASA
The evolution of celestial bodies takes a very long time, so our understanding of how planets and stars form is still incomplete. Now a new approach is trying to fill some gaps.
Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University, North Carolina, and his student, Russell Wagstaff, aimed to answer why planets, stars, and other bodies come in all shapes and sizes, rather than all being the same size if matter is evenly distributed. They suggest that a system reaches equilibirum much faster when objects form to be different sizes, known as hierarchy, and so it will usually go down this route.
Why Are Teenagers More Likely To Become Addicted To Drugs?
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Adolescents are more susceptible to addiction than adults. Sergio Sallovitz/Shutterstock
Adolescents are more likely to get hooked on drugs than adults, and two new studies are helping us understand why. Using both animal models and humans, researchers based in the U.S. have attributed these differing susceptibilities to addiction to the activity of a cellular molecule called eIF2α.
There Will Be A Total Solar Eclipse Next Week – Here’s How To Watch It LIVE
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The May 20, 2012, solar eclipse, as seen from Japan. Hiroki ONO/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
If you’re in the Eastern stretches of the world early next week, you might just be treated to a solar eclipse.
A total solar eclipse, where the Sun is completely obscured by the Moon, will be visible from certain regions of Indonesia (and the middle of the Pacific Ocean, if you happen to be out there). However, larger chunks of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia will be able to see a partial eclipse, where some but not all of the Sun is obscured.
A Crack in the Denial Machine?
What’s the deal with ocean acidification? The ocean acts as a sink for some of the carbon dioxide being pumped into our atmosphere via burning fossil fuels. As people produce more and more carbon dioxide, 24 million tons of it are absorbed by our planet’s oceans each day. The reaction of carbon dioxide with water produces carbonic acid. Since the start of the industrial revolution, our oceans have become about 30% more acidic. This is already leading to ecosystem stress and contributing to the extinction of marine species. Scientists anticipate that acidification will intensify in the coming decades. Shelled organisms, such as clams, scallops, and mussels, are especially vulnerable to acidification. Their shells, made mainly of calcium carbonate, literally dissolve as pH drops.
Recently, the Iowa City Science Booster Club put together a suite of activities related to ocean acidification for the Cedar Rapids STEM Fest. We wanted to spread the word about this serious aspect of climate change. Some of us were worried we’d face a negative public reaction, as we have gotten a few negative comments at our other climate change exhibits, and acidification is potentially quite upsetting. But the overall public response we’ve gotten at our climate change events has been so positive, and this material is so important, that we decided to go for it.
Ocean acidification is really easy to explore in a hands-on way. We had people breathe into cups of water with straws. This activity was especially popular with kids. Using simple pH strips, everyone could see that the carbon dioxide they were breathing out had a serious effect on the water’s pH. Vigorous bubbling drops the pH from about 7 to between 4 and 5.
We also had a bunch of mussel shells. One of our volunteers boldly sacrificed his menu plans for the week in order to eat as many of these tasty creatures as possible before our exhibition. We let kids touch the shells, and we let people put the shells into a clear plastic box filled with vinegar. Everyone could see that the shells began visibly bubbling as they started to dissolve in the acid.
How did people react to these rather dystopian displays? They were really interested. We didn’t have any negative pushback. None of the disgust or despair reactions we’ve seen occasionally at our previous events. Some people were skeptical. A couple of people asked if the bubbling shells were really representative: surely, the vinegar had a much lower pH than the acidified water they had just produced. Using the pH strips, we were able to show that the reaction between the vinegar and the shells had in fact lowered the solution’s pH comparable to that of the acidified water. People looked thoughtful.
I like it when I find skeptical people. By which I mean people who approach new information with skepticism and rigor, not people whose minds are made up about climate change but call their position “skepticism” about the science. Often, people with a skeptical mindset are curious about science, and they really want to understand the data behind important phenomenon. These same people are, however, often predisposed to accepting misinformation labeled as skepticism by biased media outlets. Untold fortunes have been spent to convince the public that there is a debate regarding the scientific consensus on climate change. But it would appear that ocean acidification is a topic that the denial machine has not bothered to misrepresent. So few people know about it that no one seems to have any serious misconceptions on the subject.
This presents us with an interesting opportunity to educate. Using hands on, inexpensive, safe, highly accessible activities, we can allow people to see for themselves what carbon dioxide does to water, making ocean acidification a powerful opportunity to expose skeptical people to the science behind climate change. Plus, you get to make bubbles by blowing into a straw. You get in trouble for that at home!
What a cool thing to find through the Science Booster Club Project. I would never have imagined that this exhibit would be so popular, or that literally no one we encountered at this fairly large event would have heard of ocean acidification- not even teachers! This really pushes home the importance of working on the ground, in communities. Not only will the Science Booster Club project help communities grow a pro-science culture, it will help us at NCSE figure out great methods to approach crucial scientific issues in ways that push controversy aside in favor of personally experienced evidence.
Syrians Are Using Raspberry Pi Computers To Broadcast Independent Radio
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The entire device is about the size of a shoebox. MiCT via YouTube
Raspberry Pi, the credit card-sized computers available for as little as $5, are now being deployed in Syria as radio transmitters. Cheap, resilient, and with a range of up to 8 kilometers (5 miles), these devices are allowing Syrians to communicate outside of areas controlled by the Assad regime or the so-called Islamic State (IS).
China’s Coal Consumption Drops For The Second Year Running
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The amount of coal decreased, despite the economy growing. ArturNyk/Shutterstock
For the second year running, the consumption of coal in China, the world’s largest consumer of the fossil fuel and consequently the largest emitter of CO2, has decreased. The news has risen the hopes of environmentalists that the nation might have reached peak carbon emissions, years earlier than the country’s intended target of 2030. However, it could be a little premature to make such claims after just two years of decline.
This Bizarre Illusion Makes You See A “Hole” In Your Hand
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Ring not included. BrainCraft/YouTube
Vanessa Hill has shown a simple and brain-bending optical illusion on her YouTube channel BrainCraft that makes a "hole" emerge in the palm of your hand.
February 29, 2016
As Evangelicals Lose Faith In Cruz, His Campaign Could Be Beyond Resurrection
Photo credit: Jae C. Hong/AP
By Jessica Taylor
The crux of Ted Cruz’s campaign has long been mobilizing the Christian right to his side, working to galvanize enough evangelical voters to topple Donald Trump.
The Texas senator even launched his campaign at Liberty University, which claims to be the world’s largest Christian college, declaring that “God isn’t done with America yet.”
Cruz talks with the cadence of a megachurch pastor, and exhortations of his faith are a mainstay at every campaign rally. His strategy in targeting the most conservative religious voters worked in Iowa, but the wheels came off in South Carolina and Nevada.
Now, if he can’t fully convert religious voters in many critical Southern states set to vote on Super Tuesday, his campaign could be beyond resurrection.
“I think for him to continue to lose evangelical votes to Donald Trump is a fatal blow to the rationale for his campaign,” said Bruce Haynes, a GOP strategist and president of the bipartisan consulting firm Purple Strategies. “He speaks openly of the relevance of his candidacy in churches and has openly identified that a key part of their winning strategy is evangelical voters. That’s his base, but he’s not carrying that base.”
Cruz Battling Trump And Rubio For Evangelical Voters
The so-called SEC primary runs through states that are likely to have even more evangelical voters than the states that have voted so far. Cruz himself has only raised expectations about Super Tuesday, calling it “the most important day in this entire cycle.”
According to 2012 exit polls, in Alabama 80 percent of GOP primary voters described themselves as evangelical. In Tennessee, 68 percent of Republican voters were born-again Christians. And in Georgia, 68 percent of primary voters four years ago were evangelicals.
Those states could have higher evangelical turnout than states that have already voted this year, according to 2016 exit poll data. In Iowa, 64 percent of GOP caucusgoers were evangelical, while in South Carolina 72 percent described themselves as born-again. Those numbers were up from four years ago. Super Tuesday states could see a record number of voters, including more evangelical voters, go to the polls.
With a heavy ground game, Cruz won 34 percent of evangelical voters in the Hawkeye State; Trump got 22 percent, while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio captured 21 percent. In South Carolina, though, Cruz finished third behind Rubio and lost the evangelical vote to Trump by 6 points, 33 percent to 27 percent. Rubio again got almost a fourth of that voting bloc though.
Now, just hours away from Super Tuesday, polls show Cruz’s grasp on evangelical voters slipping away from him even more. And it’s complicated by a rising Rubio, who is now getting nearly as much of the evangelical vote as Cruz is in some places.
“Cruz is basically splitting the evangelical vote with Trump, and Rubio’s getting a share of that too,” said Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta.
NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls released Sunday showed Trump easily beating Cruz in Tennessee and in Georgia. In Tennessee, that’s fueled by a 15-point edge for Trump among white evangelicals and, in the Peach State, the bombastic billionaire is winning those voters by 8 points. Cruz does have a lead over Trump in his home state of Texas in those same surveys and wins evangelical voters there by 23 points.
The biggest loss for Cruz could come in Alabama, a state where 80 percent of GOP primary voters four years ago identified as evangelical. A Monmouth University poll released Monday showed Trump winning 42 percent of voters, while it was Rubio in second with 19 percent followed by Cruz with 16 percent. The split of evangelical voters in that survey follows the same trajectory — 43 percent for Trump, 18 percent for Rubio and 15 percent for Cruz.
The Texas senator got another blow on Sunday when Alabama’s senior senator, Jeff Sessions, endorsed Trump over him. Cruz has frequently invoked his work and relationship with Sessions on the trail, particularly on immigration. But the hard-line conservative chose to throw his support behind Trump, and not his fellow senator.
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