ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 766

Earth’s climate is starting to change faster, new research shows

Image courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

By Science Daily

An analysis of changes to the climate that occur over several decades suggests that these changes are happening faster than historical levels and are starting to speed up. The Earth is now entering a period of changing climate that will likely be faster than what’s occurred naturally over the last thousand years, according to a new paper in Nature Climate Change, committing people to live through and adapt to a warming world.

In this study, interdisciplinary scientist Steve Smith and colleagues at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory examined historical and projected changes over decades rather than centuries to determine the temperature trends that will be felt by humans alive today.

“We focused on changes over 40-year periods, which is similar to the lifetime of houses and human-built infrastructure such as buildings and roads,” said lead author Smith. “In the near term, we’re going to have to adapt to these changes.”

See CMIP run

Overall, the Earth is getting warmer due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that trap heat. But the rise is not smooth — temperatures bob up and down. Although natural changes in temperature have long been studied, less well-understood is how quickly temperatures changed in the past and will change in the future over time scales relevant to society, such as over a person’s lifetime. A better grasp of how fast the climate might change could help decision-makers better prepare for its impacts.

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3 Ways Pi Can Explain Practically Everything

What’s irrational and never ends? Pi! Hank explains how we need pi to explain some of the most basic but most important principles of the universe, in honor of Pi Day.

Hosted by: Hank Green

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Sources:

Inverse square law: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/isq.html

Gravitation: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/03/13/einstein-and-pi/

SciShow Talk Show: The History of Gender & Kiki the Domestic Cat

This week on the show Dr. Lindsey Doe, host of Sexplanations, walks us through a history of cases that have altered our understanding of gender identity. Then Jessi from Animal Wonders joins the show with Kiki, a domestic cat.

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Doctors Announce World’s First Successful Penis Transplant

Health and Medicine





Photo credit:

Stellenbosch University

A South African surgical team has just announced the world’s first successful penile transplant. On December 11, 2014, a young man received a donor’s penis during a nine-hour procedure performed at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town.

Ancient Whale Had a Killer Bone-Breaking Bite

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

Stress distribution in Basilosaurus isis biting on its upper third premolar / 2015 Snively et al.

Researchers studying the bite marks left behind on a fractured fossil skull have calculated the incredible bone-crushing bite of an ancient whale: Basilosaurus isis chomped down on other whales with the force of over 1,600 kilograms (3,500 pounds). The findings were published in PLOS ONE this week. 

First direct observation of carbon dioxide’s increasing greenhouse effect at Earth’s surface

Credit: Jonathan Gero

By Science Daily

Scientists have observed an increase in carbon dioxide’s greenhouse effect at Earth’s surface for the first time. The researchers, led by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s increasing capacity to absorb thermal radiation emitted from Earth’s surface over an 11-year period at two locations in North America. They attributed this upward trend to rising CO2 levels from fossil fuel emissions.

The influence of atmospheric CO2 on the balance between incoming energy from the Sun and outgoing heat from Earth (also called the planet’s energy balance) is well established. But this effect has not been experimentally confirmed outside the laboratory until now. The research is reported Feb. 25 in the advance online publication of the journal Nature.

The results agree with theoretical predictions of the greenhouse effect due to human activity. The research also provides further confirmation that the calculations used in today’s climate models are on track when it comes to representing the impact of CO2.

The scientists measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s contribution to radiative forcing at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one on the North Slope of Alaska, from 2000 to the end of 2010. Radiative forcing is a measure of how much the planet’s energy balance is perturbed by atmospheric changes. Positive radiative forcing occurs when Earth absorbs more energy from solar radiation than it emits as thermal radiation back to space. It can be measured at Earth’s surface or high in the atmosphere. In this research, the scientists focused on the surface.

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Researchers develop the first-ever quantum device that detects and corrects its own errors

Credit: Julian Kelly

By Sonia Fernandez

When scientists develop a full quantum computer, the world of computing will undergo a revolution of sophistication, speed and energy efficiency that will make even our beefiest conventional machines seem like Stone Age clunkers by comparison.

But, before that happens, quantum physicists like the ones in UC Santa Barbara’s physics professor John Martinis’ lab will have to create circuitry that takes advantage of the marvelous computing prowess promised by the quantum bit (“qubit“), while compensating for its high vulnerability to environmentally-induced error.

In what they are calling a major milestone, the researchers in the Martinis Lab have developed quantum circuitry that self-checks for errors and suppresses them, preserving the qubits’ state(s) and imbuing the system with the highly sought-after reliability that will prove foundational for the building of large-scale superconducting quantum computers.

It turns out keeping qubits error-free, or stable enough to reproduce the same result time and time again, is one of the major hurdles scientists on the forefront of quantum computing face.

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Religion should not dominate in our schools

Photo: Flickr/mrgarethm

By Graham Walker

Many will remember the education scandal associated with the so-called ‘Operation Trojan Horse’ in 2014. A letter was given to the authorities which purported to be evidence of a plot by hardline Islamists to replace leadership in Birmingham schools with a high proportion of attendees from Muslim backgrounds, in order to instil a much more religiously conservative ethos and curricula. Though the letter was widely suspected to be as a hoax, it triggered several investigations into 21 different schools in Birmingham.

This triggered at-the-time Education Minister, Michael Gove to demand that we must start teaching ‘British values’. There was much controversy at the time of what constituted British values, and for some these questions have not been satisfactorily answered. In its response to Mr Gove’s consultation, while remaining generally positive towards the proposed requirements, the British Humanist Association (BHA) pointed out that ‘none of the values listed are uniquely British’. It is interesting to reflect with this that David Cameron, also in 2014, called England a ‘Christian country’, which many saw as an archaic view of the country not acknowledging the cultural diversity of the UK, nor the fact that 48% (later that year revised to 51%) of the British population identified as having ‘no religion’.

These points raise serious questions about the role of religion in school. In a multicultural and pluralistic British society, can we identify the country as having one religion? Is it worth stating a religious identity at all? And either way, what does this mean for our education system?

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Homeopathy Is Not An Effective Treatment For Any Health Condition, Australian Government Declares

Image credit: Pixabay

By Amy Nordrum

The remedies that homeopathic practitioners mix from plant and animal tissues do not work for treating any medical condition, says Australia’s leading health agency. Such treatments have not proven effective for any of the 61 health problems that the agency evaluated in a large review published Wednesday.

Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council examined 176 studies of homeopathic treatments for 61 medical conditions including asthma, anxiety, headaches, arthritis, ulcers and warts. The agency found that about half the treatments were no more effective than placebos, and ruled that the studies on the other half were not robust enough to determine whether the treatments worked. The agency concluded that homeopathy should not be considered an effective treatment for any condition.

Though it’s difficult to come by accurate estimates of the market for homeopathy, data from the World Health Organization indicate that it is likely an industry worth more than a billion dollars. France and Germany led the world in spending on homeopathic treatments in 2007 by handing over $408 million and $346 million, respectively. Australians spent about $7.3 million on treatments that year while Americans doled out $2.9 million.

Though Australia’s health agency did not evaluate the potential danger of treatments, officials did warn patients about relying solely on these methods. “People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness,” the report stated.

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Franklin Graham Claims That President Obama’s Mother, a Secular Humanist, “Must Have Been a Muslim”

President Obama‘s father was an atheist. Obama once said in a speech that his father “was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist.”

His mother was Agnostic (though Obama once referred to her as a “witness for Secular Humanism“).

But if you listen to Franklin Graham, the conservative who propels himself using father Billy Graham‘s name, Obama doesn’t really understand the religious beliefs of his own parents.

Yesterday, as a guest on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch,” Graham told host Tony Perkins that Obama’s mother was probably a Muslim and that’s why he’s so hesitant to attack ISIS: