ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 596
January 5, 2016
Roll-Up Television Screen Announced
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The rolled-up OLED screen prototype. LG Display
LG Display is going full steam ahead to bring flexible screens closer to reality. The proof of concept, showcased at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, had its first hands-on review by the BBC.
Virus That Shrinks Babies’ Skulls Is Rapidly Spreading Through The Americas
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The virus is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. mrfiza/Shutterstock
You probably haven’t heard of the Zika virus, which among other things causes babies to be born with abnormally small brains. Belonging to the Flaviviridae family, it is nowhere near as well-known as many other familial viruses, including those that cause yellow, dengue, and West Nile fevers.
Americans value religious freedom, but mostly for Christians
by Cathy Lee Grossman
Eight in 10 Americans say it’s very or extremely important for people like themselves to be allowed to practice their religion freedom, but support for religious freedom plummets when people were asked about other traditions, a new survey found.
The survey of 1,042 U.S. adults , made public Wednesday by by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) for Public Affairs Research and The Associated Press, found that overall:
82% called religious liberty protections important for Christians
72% prioritized it for Jews
67% for Mormons
61% for Muslims
For Christians, the percentages were nearly identical when asked about people like themselves.The AP-NORC poll was conducted online and by phone. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 3.9%.
Charles Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute, told AP that ideas of religious liberty have become politicized and polarized.
“Religious freedom is now in the eye of the beholder. People in different traditions, with different ideological commitments, define religious freedom differently,” Haynes said.
Republicans and Democrats were statistically tied in prioritizing religious freedom for Christians but not for Muslims in the survey, conducted Dec. 10 to Dec. 13, while campaign rhetoric about Muslims was intense.
Read more by clicking on the name of the source below.
Futuristic Electric Self-Driving Car Unveiled With Adjustable Battery Design
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The car was revealed at CES 2016. Faraday Future
In this day and age, it seems everyone is bringing out new self-driving cars, and this latest vehicle is no exception. But where this concept from Chinese company Faraday Future stands apart is not just in its stylish look, but also the technology inside.
The car on show from the Chinese company was the electric FFZero1, revealed at the CES 2016 show in Las Vegas yesterday. The autonomous car is only a concept for now, and is merely meant to show off Faraday Future’s ideas.
Curiosity Delivers First Close-Up Pictures Of Martian Sand Dune
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The Namib Dune is the first sand dune on any planet other than Earth to be studied close up. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Curiosity rover is conducting the first-ever study of a sand dune on any planet other than Earth, and recently returned these panoramic images of Mars’s Namib Dune, providing a new glimpse of the Martian landscape.
January 4, 2016
Big Cats and People Live in Close Quarters in India
“In India, as a consequence of stricter protection of wildlife and increased tolerance, numbers of large carnivores are increasing in private lands and lands outside the protected-area systems.” Ullas Karanth of the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society and India’s Centre for Wildlife Studies.
“While this is a good thing for conservation it poses serious problems for management because occasionally these interactions turn hostile, between people and carnivores. And this issue is particularly serious with leopards.”
Karanth and his team studied interactions between people and leopards in Karnataka, a state in India’s southwest that’s home to more than 60 million people. Leopards can be found in 47 percent of the state, in areas outside parks and other sanctuaries. So people and leopards do, every once in a while, run into each other.
To gauge the frequency of such interactions, the researchers scoured media reports during a 14-month period from 2013 to 2014. The total tally was 245 separate incidents. Most were attacks on livestock or simple sightings of the leopards by people. But leopards did attack people 32 times, causing three deaths. Thirty-four leopards died in the study period, mostly from poaching and being hit by vehicles. Capturing and relocating the animals did not seem to be an effective way to cut down on animal-human contacts. The study is in the journal PLOS One. [Vidya Athreya et al, Spotted in the News: Using Media Reports to Examine Leopard Distribution, Depredation, and Management Practices outside Protected Areas in Southern India]
So how can the large carnivores and people better co-exist? The researchers think that an obvious but important step is to get a lot more data on just where leopards are most likely to be found in populated areas, so people can avoid the cats. And that farmers should be quickly and fairly compensated for any livestock losses. Which seems to be a better alternative than trying to hunt down and kill or move the offending animal.
—Steve Mirsky
(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)
A Freak Heatwave Has Hit The North Pole
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jele/Shutterstock
The holidays were hardly a winter wonderland this year, with December being one of the mildest winters for some time. While the U.K. and U.S. certainly had their fair share of spring-like warmth mixed with stormy wetness, not even the North Pole has been safe from freakishly unseasonable weather.
El Niño Is Still Growing And Set To Get Even Stronger In The Next Few Months
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Comparison between the current El Niño (left) and the one that hit in 1997 (right). NASA.
As we move into the New Year, it looks like El Niño is set to get worse, according to NASA, as the weather system is still growing. The strong winds currently going from the western to eastern Pacific that are driving El Niño are showing no signs of waning, with other data on ocean surface temperatures suggesting that it still hasn’t reached its peak yet.
Find the Answer. Save the World.
In November, I attended WGBH’s forum on digital media in STEM learning. The topic: climate education. NCSE’s friends from the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) were there in force, as were representatives from NOAA Education, NASA, PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, and Young Voices for the Planet. This is in no way a complete list of presenters. I saw presentations on everything from using video game environments to help students learn about anthropogenic impacts on climate, to an incredible demonstration on the power of spoken word poetry to spur understanding and change. It was all inspiring and energizing. I was enthusiastically texting Minda Berbeco, NCSE’s climate education guru, constantly.
Among all the awesome exhibitions was one standout. Juliette Rooney-Varga and Angélica Allende Brisk’s presentation on the Climate Interactive world climate negotiations simulation was mesmerizing. To accompany their talk, they showed a video. In it, Rooney-Varga is at Cambridge Ringe-Latin school presenting a unit on climate change. The kids are totally bored, disengaged, picking their nails, and staring at the floor. This is despite what Rooney-Varga insists was a really compelling lecture! Then, they begin the simulation. Cut to those same kids in a heated discussion about mandatory carbon reductions and reforestation They were almost yelling at each other! Not in a “Hey stop that!” kind of way, but more of a “whoa, you guys are into this” way. According to Allende Brisk, they played out the simulation over two days. In the night between sessions these formerly apathetic teenagers watched CSPAN to prepare for day 2. CSPAN! What got them so engaged? What was this simulation and why doesn’t everyone know about it?
Noel Zamut, our facilitator extraordinaire.
About a week later, I was very disappointed to learn that my church’s climate advocacy group had run the simulation on Halloween—I’d missed it! But then word got out that they’d be running the simulation for a second time in mid-December. I signed up right away and last Sunday, I got to see what all the fuss was about.
My simulation was run by Noel Zamot from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, one of the organizations that developed the interactive program. The basic set-up is that participants get divided into three groups: “developed nations” (led by the US, EU, Russia, and Japan) “developing A nations” (led by Brazil, India, and China), and “developing B nations” (which includes most of Africa, South and Central America, the Middle East, and small island nations). Once divided up, we experienced immediate stratification. The developed nations got a table with a nice tablecloth, cookies, a big, lovely pointsetta, water, and comfortable chairs. The developing A nations got a table and chairs, but no tablecloth. Cookies, but not such nice ones. A smaller pointsetta. As for developing B representatives, they got cushions on the floor.
The guilt cookies and the guilt pointsetta.
I was a member of the developed nations delegation. The cookies and tablecloth made me feel guilty…but also kind of important. Probably the exact intention of these props. Each delegation got a 2-page briefing that included background, data, and considerations. From mine, I learned that, unequivocally, the CO2 emissions that brought on this crisis were our doing. However, lately our emissions had been declining. Now the developing A nations were the top emitters. I also learned that most of the delegation came from countries whose citizens supported climate change action—but that powerful fossil fuel interests were doing their best to oppose meaningful change. Also of note, we have the most money—by a lot. The GDP of the developed nations was roughly 6–7 times that of the other nations.
With this information in mind, we huddled and came up with our first round pledges. When would we stop accelerating CO2 emissions? When would we start making emissions decline, and by how much? Would we pledge to plant forests? To stop clearing forests? And how much money would we kick in to help other countries?
Our goal: keep global warming below 2℃.
Find the answer. Save the world.
We were flying pretty much blind in this first round. My delegation proposed kicking in $67 billion of the $100 billion goal since we were, at present, emitting about 2/3 of global CO2. We thought that sounded fair. We also thought it’d take about five years to stop accelerating CO2 emissions and another fifteen to make them start to decline. Other groups presented their numbers. When they were put into the simulator we came nowhere near the < 2℃ goal. Sorry Boston, we just put you under water. Things looked bleak.
When we were sent back to the drawing board, our facilitator encouraged us to talk to each other more and to use outside resources (e.g., our phones) to help us make decisions. My group realized that we didn’t have to wait until 2020 to stop accelerating emissions. After all, we were already on a downward trend! Wonderful! We also learned from other delegations that they were going to contribute nothing to the pot. The developed nations were going to be footing this bill in its entirety.
We did it! We won!
That realization emboldened us. Okay, fine, we’ll pay for it—but in exchange, the other delegations were going to have to make deeper cuts and faster. We started making demands and then the other delegations would shoot back that this was all our fault, so we should back off. I found myself telling a high school student from the developing nations, in my best “strict mother voice,” that if they wanted our money, they had to reduce deforestation even further and start CO2declines by 2030—not 2040. After all, I said, you guys are the problem now. Meanwhile, the poor developing B nations were talking about how they’d really appreciate it if we could solve this so they wouldn’t be under water. Somewhere in there, they also stole some of our cookies. They said it was “the least we could do.”
I completely understood the passionate high school students now—I was one of them. Even though I knew it was a simulation, the whole thing got very emotional and we were all heavily invested in the experience. When our final negotiations—which came down to the wire—resulted in a warming of “just” 1.9℃, we cheered.
Truth.
Zamot ended the session by comparing our experience to that of the first group that ran their simulation during Halloween. They had failed to get below 2℃ warming. Most everyone left feeling frustrated and angry, not cautiously optimistic and energized like us. What was the difference, he asked? I offered: Well, we knew it could be done. COP21 was over, the deal was inked. It was possible—we just had to find the way. There were murmurs of agreement.
COP21 is already having an effect. The impossible is always possible. And, as the medal Zamot showed us as his last slide said, it's not going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it.
Are you a teacher and want to tell us about an amazing free resource? Do you have an idea for a Misconception Monday or other type of post? Have a fossil to share? See some good or bad examples of science communication lately? Drop me an email or shoot me a tweet @keeps3.
European Space Agency Plans To Build Moon Village By 2030
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Multi-dome lunar base being constructed, based on the 3D printing concept. Once assembled, the inflated domes are covered with a layer of 3D-printed lunar regolith by robots to help protect the occupants. By ESA/Foster + Partners
As a new era of space exploration seems to be dawning, and as we plan the exploration of Mars and deeper space, it’s only natural to make plans to go back to the Moon and use our natural satellite as the launchpad for our future interplanetary traveling.
However, the European Space Agency (ESA) wants to do more than just go back, and has presented its plan to construct a “Moon Village.” The habitat will be 3D printed directly on the Moon using lunar soil and will be assembled by robots.
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