ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 584
January 18, 2016
Astronomers Think They’ve Found The Second-Largest Black Hole In The Milky Way
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An artist's impression of the new intermediate-mass black hole. Tomoharu Oka/Keio University
There are thought to be three types of black holes out there, each a different sized, star-swallowing, spacetime-warping colossus. A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters claims to have discovered a fourth intermediary type hiding within our very own galaxy.
Engineer Designs Cabin That Can Detach Itself From An Aircraft In An Emergency
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Владимир Татаренко/YouTube
Around a third of people suffer from some level of anxiety when it comes to air travel, with even the most cool-headed of travelers often needing a stiff drink before a long flight. But would you feel any more comfortable flying if your plane was installed with this new "safety system" design?
Ukrainian aviation engineer Vladimir Tatarenko has been working for over three years on this project to make air travel safer.
Air Pollution Becoming A Serious Global Health Issue
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Air pollution around the world is thought to contribute to 7 million premature deaths per year. elwyn/Shutterstock
Last year saw Beijing choked in smog, while it only took eight days this year for London to breach its air pollution limits for 2016.
Patients Previously Paralyzed By Multiple Sclerosis Able To Walk Again
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Ten months after recovery, one patient managed a mile swim. Minerva Studio/Shutterstock
Patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS) who were given a treatment normally used for cancer have shown an incredible recovery, with some who were previously paralysed even being able to walk again. Leading to what some experts have described as “miraculous” results, the technique could be used more frequently on those who suffer from the debilitating condition, although they do warn that patients have to be fit to survive the harsh chemotherapy.
January 17, 2016
The death of an immortal
Photo credit: New Humanist
By Daniel Sitole
Heaven and hell are no more and God’s final judgement will never come; God, the creator of generations and everything on earth, is gone for ever. The news about the death of Jehovah Wanyonyi, leader of the Lost Israelites Church, has shocked his followers in Kenya and Uganda. His death remains a mystery to his closest acolytes, despite the Kenyan government’s confirmation that it issued a burial permit.
“Jehovah our god is alive, and he will never die, not even for a single day like Jesus,” Eliab Makokha, who held the position of “Angel” in Wanyonyi’s sect, told me. “The ‘death’ of our god is a creation of the media, how can the giver of life die?”
But Christopher Wanjau, the deputy commissioner for Uasin Gishu County in Kenya’s Rift Valley, home (until recently) to Wanyonyi, begs to differ. “It is true Wanyonyi died of malaria at his home,” he said. “The area chief Daniel Busienei issued a permit to Jehovah’s son Nelson Wanyoni to transfer the body to Cherangani hospital in Kitale.”
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In Rural Alabama, a Longtime Mistrust of Medicine Fuels a Tuberculosis Outbreak
Photo credit: Meggan Haller for The New York Times
By Alan Blinder
When Patricia Church, a 41-year-old warehouse worker, felt sick recently, she suspected that she had a cold. But she also feared something more deadly that has been going around this small, impoverished city: tuberculosis.
“I feel like I had been around someone that had it, and I might die from it if I don’t find out whether I got it or not and get it treated,” Ms. Church said after she learned last week that she did not have the disease. “I was nervous. I was real nervous.”
Marion is in the throes of a tuberculosis outbreak so severe that it has posted an incidence rate about 100 times greater than the state’s and worse than in many developing countries. Residents, local officials and medical experts said the struggle against the outbreak could be traced to generations of limited health care access, endemic poverty and mistrust — problems that are common across the rural South.
“There’s not a culture of care-seeking behavior unless you’re really sick,” said Dr. R. Allen Perkins, a former president of the Alabama Rural Health Association. “There’s not support for local medical care, so when something like this happens, you have a health delivery system that’s unprepared.”
In Marion, a city of fewer than 3,600 people, the toll of the slow-growing bacteria, commonly referred to as TB, has been staggering. Since January 2014, active tuberculosis has been diagnosed in 20 people, nearly all of them black; three have died. (Six people who live in other cities in Alabama have also received diagnoses of active tuberculosis and have been linked to the outbreak here.)
More than two dozen others have been infected but have not shown symptoms and can be easily treated. State officials expect that figure will increase as hundreds, and possibly thousands, more people are tested.
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Short Answers to Hard Questions About Zika Virus
Photo credit: Felipe Dana/Associated Press
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned pregnant women against travel to several countries in the Caribbean and Latin America where the Zika virus is spreading. Infection with the virus appears to be linked to the development of unusually small heads and brain damage in newborns. Here are some answers and advice about the outbreak.
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Isis fighters abduct up to 400 civilians in major attack on Deir ez-Zor
Photo credit: Ahmad Aboud/AFP/Getty Images
By Kareem Shaheen
Islamic State fighters have abducted more than 400 civilians after capturing new ground in a major assault on the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor that left dozens dead, according to reports.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Isis killed at least 135 people in the multi-front attack that began on Saturday.
The dead included 85 civilians and 50 regime fighters, according to the human rights monitor, which said on Sunday that Isis also kidnapped more than 400 civilians from captured territory.
“Those abducted, all of whom are Sunnis, include women, children and family members of pro-regime fighters,” said the director of the Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman.
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Anglican Leaders Censure Episcopal Church For Stance On Homosexuality
Photo credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
By Camila Domonoske
The Episcopal Church has been disciplined by the Anglican Communion, the international faith fellowship of which the church is a part, over deep disagreements about homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
The church has not been removed from the communion. However, it will be barred from Anglican decision-making for three years and will no longer represent the community in ecumenical or interfaith bodies, the Anglican organization has decided.
The Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop in 2003. In 2012, the church voted to allow blessings over same-sex unions, while not calling them identical to marriage. Then last year, the church’s highest body voted to formally approve Episcopalian same-sex marriages.
More-conservative churches within the international Anglican community disagree with those decisions.
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Butchered Mammoth Suggests Humans Lived in Siberia 45,000 Years Ago
Photo credit: Pitulko et al., Science (2016)
By Laura Geggel
The slashed and punctured bones of a woolly mammoth suggest that humans lived in the far northern reaches of Siberia earlier than scientists had previously thought, a new study finds.
Before the surprising discovery, researchers thought that humans lived in the freezing Siberian Arctic no earlier than about 30,000 to 35,000 years ago. Now, the newly studied mammoth carcass suggests that people lived in the area, where they butchered the likes of this giant animal about 45,000 years ago.
“We now have an enormous extension of the space that was inhabited at 45,000 years ago,” said Vladimir Pitulko, a senior research scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences and co-lead researcher on the study.
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