Science

Chemical analysis of rocks found in South Africa shows that ancient microorganisms sustained themselves in a variety of ways, adding to evidence for an early origin of life on Earth

Wakefield redux? Antivax scientist Byram Bridle just took the "new school" antivax movement old school by implying that COVID-19 vaccines might cause an "epidemic of autism." Everything old is new again, sort of.

The post “New school” antivax goes old school as Byram Bridle asks if COVID-19 vaccines will drive an “epidemic” of autism first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A few decades ago, the idea of private individuals travelling to the International Space Station was as much science fiction as a time travelling police box.  Yet here we are, in 2024 and a crew of four private astronauts are on board the ISS. The team will spend about two weeks undertaking various experiments, commercial activities and outreach tasks. 

Axiom Space was founded in 2016 by Michael Suffredini and Kam Ghaffarian. Their goal, to arrange private missions into space, chiefly the ISS but they are also developing spacesuits for NASA’s future missions to the Moon. In realisting these goals, the team at Axiom Space have the wonderful dream ‘We are on a mission to reveal it [space] to as many humans as possible’.

On the 18th January four private astronauts were launched to ISS on the Dragon spacecraft, propelled by the Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket. The private mission was the third such enterprise by Axiom Space, the first mission flew in April 2022 and the second in May 2023. The crew for this mission composed of Commander Michael López-Alegría, Pilot Walter Villadei, and Mission Specialists Marcus Wandt and Alper Gezeravci.

An illustration shows SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule approaching the International Space Station. (Credit: SpaceX)

The crew arrived at the ISS on Saturday 20th January when the Dragon module autonomously docked with the Harmony module. When the hatch opens the Axiom crew will be welcomed by the Expedition 70 crew including NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA astronaut Furukawa Satoshi and cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. 

AX-3 (as this mission is called) is due to depart from the ISS on Saturday 3rd February, weather permitting.  They will have spent two weeks on board before returning to Earth, touching down to a wet arrival off the coast of Florida.

Axiom Space, and their partnership with NASA are doing great things, opening up low Earth orbit to more and more people. In the 1950’s and 1960’s we saw the space race where America and Russia were in a battle to become the first to get into space and to put a human on the Moon. Now the landscape for space travel and exploration has changed. Partnerships between large space organisations like NASA and private enterprises like Axiom are driving a thriving commercial space economy that may once and for all, open up space to us all. 

Source : NASA, Partners to Welcome Private Crew Aboard Space Station

link :

The post Private Axiom Mission 3 is Off to the Space Station appeared first on Universe Today.

Scientists working on biological design should focus on the idiosyncrasies of biological systems over optimization, according to new research.

SpaceX is often in the headlines, unfortunlatey its not always good news. On 18th November we saw the second of the Starship and SuperHeavy booster get off the launchpad successfully, it failed before reaching orbit. In a recent event, Elon Musk explained how a fuel venting near the end of the burn was responbie but entirely avoidable next time!

The Starship and SuperHeavy booster are an impressive combination. Standing at over 120 metres tall together they are one of the most powerful and versatile rocket systems ever built. It can produce 16,700,000 pound force of thrust making it twice as powerful as Saturn V that took the Apollo astrnauts to the Moon. 

The Apollo 10 Saturn V during rollout. Credit: NASA

The first launch attempt failed when the rocket spun out of control, exploding about four minutes from liftoff.  Following the disaster, the team identified that the flight termination system which was supposed to destroy the vehicle if it went out of control, failed to do its job. 

Musk reported on the second launch test from an event at Boca China in Texas where he explained that the lack of a payload meant that it needed to vent some of the liquid oxygen propellant. It almost made it to orbit and would have succeeded if it had a payload. The liquid oxygen would have been consumed by the mighty Raptor engines instead of being vented which was as per design. Musk however did not elaborate on how this all led to a fire. 

Elon Musk on stage at his September 27th presentation at the IAC. Image: SpaceX

The third test flight is slated for February and Musk is confident it will reach orbit this time. On the assumption of a succesful launch they plan to test the de-orbit process, the payload door operations and transferring propellant from header tank to main tank. This latter test is part of the NASA Tipping Point program to test fuel transfer from one vehicle to another.

Whether its the third or even the fourth test launch that brings success for SpaceX their long term goals remain unchanged. They still hope to be able to carry up to 100 people on interplanetary missions and become a pivotal part of the return to the Moon. 

Source : SpaceX, X feed.

The post Now We Know Why Starship’s Second Flight Test Failed appeared first on Universe Today.

We have no complete skeleton of the ancient megalodon shark, but new evidence points to it being more long and slender than previous depictions, say researchers

We went to the grocery store, and, lo and behold, I found this. Look at that apartheid settler-colonialist candy! I didn’t buy it since I adhere to the BDS (Boycott and Divestment of Sweets) policy.

Photo by Phil Ward

As I said, the more the world comes down on Israel due to anti-Semitism, hatred of the Israeli government, and general distaste for Jews, the more Zionist I get, though of course I’ll never accept the superstitions of Judaism. It’s hard to remember that there was a time—not that long ago—when Israel barely crossed my mind.

The Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE) project is an ambitious plan to build a space telescope with four independent mirrors. The array would allow the individual mirrors to move closer or farther apart, similar to the way the Very Large Array (VLA) does with radio antennas. LIFE is still early in its planning stage, so it would likely be decades before it is built, but already the LIFE team is looking at ways it might discover life on other worlds. Much of this focuses on the detection of biogenic molecules in exoplanet atmospheres.

Earlier studies looked at simulations of how our solar system would appear as an exoplanetary system. If aliens used LIFE to view our solar system from 10 parsecs away (about 32 light-years), then the array would be able to directly observe Venus, Earth, and Mars. Using a process known as phase-space synthesis decomposition (PSSD), LIFE would also be able to detect several basic molecules in their atmospheres such as water and carbon dioxide.

Simulations of the inner solar system as if seen by LIFE. Credit: LIFE Initiative / Matsuo et al

Of course, lots of potentially habitable worlds are expected to have atmospheric quantities of these molecules, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate the presence of life. A stronger case for life would be made if astronomers could detect more complex molecules that are biogenic in origin, meaning that they aren’t likely to form through any geological process.

This new study focuses on three types of molecules: nitrous oxide (N2O), also known as laughing gas, methyl chloride (CH3Cl), and methyl bromide (CH3Cl). All three of these are produced by ocean biology on Earth, so their presence in an exoplanet atmosphere would be a reasonable indication of life. Based on their simulations, the authors argue that LIFE would be able to detect these molecules in atmospheric atmospheres for worlds within 5 parsecs of Earth, and should be able to gather sufficient data within 10 – 100 days of observation time. A nearby system such as Proxima Centauri, just 4 light-years from Earth would take only a few days of observation. But even for a more distant system such as Trappist-1, which is 40 light-years away, LIFE has a decent chance of detection given enough time.

The Large Interferometer for Exoplanets is currently one project being considered by the European Space Agency, but there are other life-seeking projects being proposed as well. It will be years before LIFE or another mission will be approved, and a decade or more after that before it is launched. But studies such as these are needed to make those decisions. The search is on, and finding exoplanet life could be just a matter of time.

Reference: Matsuo, Taro, et al. “Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE)-XI. Phase-space synthesis decomposition for planet detection and characterization.” Astronomy & Astrophysics 678 (2023): A97.

Reference: Angerhausen, Daniel, et al. “Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE): XII. The Detectability of Capstone Biosignatures in the Mid-Infrared–Sniffing Exoplanetary Laughing Gas and Methylated Halogens.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.08492 (2024).

The post The Next Generation LIFE Telescope Could Detect Some Intriguing Biosignatures appeared first on Universe Today.

In last year’s case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court ruled, as expected, that affirmative action (the preferential admission of students based on race or ethnicity) was illegal, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. As Wikipedia notes:

The majority opinion, written by Roberts, stated that the use of race was not a compelling interest, and the means by which the schools attempted to achieve diversity (tracking bare racial statistics) bore little or no relationship to the purported goals (viewpoint and intellectual diversity and developing a diverse future leadership).

Indeed, the arguments of my own graduate school in this case, angered me: not only did Harvard lie about its own admissions practices, but advanced the argument that Roberts shot down: racial diversity = intellectual and viewpoint diversity. This was the view that propelled the earlier Bakke decision: diversity was seen, sans evidence, as an innate good.  Had affirmative action been justified as a form of reparations for people who were still suffering the effects of bigotry, I would have been more in favor of Harvard’s practices. But for years the justification of affirmative action has been rife with dissimulation.

Colleges, determined to keep racial diversity high, perhaps up to the point of equity (representation of racial groups among students equal to their proportion in the population), quietly began working on ways to violate or at least obviate this ruling. Fortunately for colleges, the Supremes had left a loophole. As the Independent notes:

While the ruling says race may not be a conscious factor in admissions, it does not prevent universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected their life “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university”.

After this, you could have predicted the results: colleges and universities would immediately begin to ask students to write essays in which they were asked how they overcame obstacles. And of course every student in a minority group, knowing the scheme, would somehow find a way to argue that their race or ethnicity imposed high obstacles to achievement, but that they had somehow surmounted these obstacles. This would of course tip off admissions offices that the applicant was in a racial or ethnic minority, and give their applications a boost. (Of course in some cases an overcoming-bigotry story would be true and could indeed speak to a candidate’s value, though it would probably say little to help universities increase their ideological or viewpoint diversity.)

Moreover, opponents of affirmative action would find this form of “holistic admissions” hard to detect, and lawsuits like last year’s would be much harder to bring.

I predicted this change in applications, which did take effect, but of course it isn’t rocket science. Universities are wedded for life to increasing racial diversity; the Supreme Court said that this was largely illegal, but left a loophole; and so colleges would exploit this sole loophole in a big way. And that, according to the article from the NYT, has come to pass. Click the headline below to read, or you can find the article archived here.  The subtitle tells the tale:

This being the NYT, they begin the article by showing the advantages of this loophole, which enabled some students to “find themselves”. But the overwhelming impression you get is that both universities and students are gaming the system to get an admissions advantage.  After all, why do colleges even need to ask students how they overcame adversity?

Have a look, for example, at the essay questions the University of Chicago posed during the last application cycle (as well as some questions from previous years): there’s one mandatory question and seven optional questions from which you pick one to answer. None of them involve “overcoming obstacles,” though question #7 gives you some leeway to sneak in race and ethnicity. Here’s a typical one (questions are often suggested by students):

Essay Option 2

“Where have all the flowers gone?” – Pete Seeger. Pick a question from a song title or lyric and give it your best answer.
– Inspired by Ryan Murphy, AB’21

The clear goal of these questions is to look for creativity and novel viewpoints—in other words, to seek out and harvest viewpoint diversity.

I don’t think this will be the case at Chicago next year, but we shall see. But here are some quotes from the NYT article (indented). The piece begins with the upside:

Astrid Delgado first wrote her college application essay about a death in her family. Then she reshaped it around a Spanish book she read as a way to connect to her Dominican heritage.

Deshayne Curley wanted to leave his Indigenous background out of his essay. But he reworked it to focus on an heirloom necklace that reminded him of his home on the Navajo Reservation.

The first draft of Jyel Hollingsworth’s essay explored her love for chess. The final focused on the prejudice between her Korean and Black American families and the financial hardships she overcame.

WHAAT? The corruption of an essay on chess into one on bigotry, solely to gain a racially-based admissions advantage, is ludicrous. But you can’t blame the student—you have to blame the unnamed university. The piece continues:

All three students said they decided to rethink their essays to emphasize one key element: their racial identities. And they did so after the Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action in college admissions, leaving essays the only place for applicants to directly indicate their racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Notice that all three students didn’t really intend to dwell on their racial identities, but were forced to because a). that’s what the unnamed college asked about, and b). they realized that mentioning their race and heritage would help them get admitted.  This is what’s known as “gaming the system.”

There’s more:

[The Supreme Court decision] led many students of color to reframe their essays around their identities, under the advice of college counselors and parents. And several found that the experience of rewriting helped them explore who they are.

Sophie Desmoulins, who is Guatemalan and lives in Sedona, Ariz., wrote her college essay with the court’s ruling in mind. Her personal statement explored, among other things, how her Indigenous features affected her self-esteem and how her experience volunteering with the Kaqchikel Maya people helped her build confidence and embrace her heritage.

For Julia Nguyen, a child of Vietnamese immigrants based in Biloxi, Miss., rewriting her essay made her more aware of how her family’s upbringing shaped her. Julia, 18, said she felt “more proud to have this personal statement because of the affirmative action case.”

In Keteyian’s case, he said he felt “a lot more passionate” about his essay after changing his approach. As a Black student interested in engineering — a field that has struggled to diversify its ranks —Keteyian concluded his personal statement with a mix of fear and hope.

“Coming to terms with the possibility I may be one of the few Black individuals at my workplace is intimidating,” he wrote, “but something to prepare for if the ruling stands, and an opportunity for me to rewrite reality.”

Now of course some of these answers may enable colleges to really increase their viewpoint diversity, ideological diversity, or even socioeconomic diversity, but one gets the impression that this is simply a way to obviate the law and the intent of the Supreme Court’s decision. And there’s another way to accomplish these aims, a way used by the University of Chicago. (I’m not bragging here; it’s just that our school is famous for its quirky and creative application questions.)

These essays on how you surmounted obstacles will spread throughout the country. I doubt, in fact, that more than a handful of colleges won’t have a question about “overcoming adversity” on their applications.  But, of course, if you have more than two neurons to rub together, you know what’s going on here: in effect, admissions offices are asking students, in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling, to “tick a box” indicating their race.  And then admissions officers can proceed with the same kind of race-based admissions they used before. In fact, some colleges explicitly admit this.

What this will produce is a spate of anodyne admissions questions and answers and, worse, a decrease in viewpoint diversity. Identity politics will become stronger than ever, and every student will absorb a narrative about how their racial identifies were crucial in getting them into college. More than ever, one’s race will become the dominant feature of one’s persona.

But there is the expected pushback, and at least the NYT mentions it. Many authorities and lawyers, as well as most Americans, don’t like it:

The court’s ruling was meant to make college admissions race-blind — answers to the race and ethnicity question on applications are now hidden from admissions committees. A recent Gallup poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans showed support for the ban on affirmative action. Some strongly believe race should not be considered during the admissions process.

“I think it’s wrong,” said Edward J. Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, the group that brought the case to the Supreme Court.

But the ruling also allowed admissions officers to consider race in personal essays, as long as decisions were not based on race, but on the personal qualities that grew out of an applicant’s experience with their race, like grit or courage.

Who are they fooling? If you think that mentioning that you’re black or Hispanic isn’t going to ring a bell in the admissions office, I have some land in Florida to sell you. And of course if you mention that you overcame difficulties imposed on you as an Asian or Jew, fuhgeddaboudit!

Further, even some students and parents don’t like it:

While some parents said they were glad their children got to reflect on their identities in their essays, others feared that the court ruling would make it harder for their child to find community while in college.

“Even with affirmative action in place, it’s always a struggle for people in our community to get to college and to succeed in college,” said Deshayne’s mother, Guila Curley, a college counselor on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.

Not all students appreciated the rewriting experience as much. Some found that the ruling made them feel like they were not writing for themselves, but for someone else.

Indeed! That is precisely the case. They are writing to alert admissions officers to their race, and then embroidering a story around that nucleus.

In her initial essay, Triniti Parker, a 16-year-old who aims to be the first doctor in her family, recalled her late grandmother, who was one of the first Black female bus drivers for the Chicago Transit Authority.

But after the Supreme Court’s decision, a college adviser told her to make clear references to her race, saying it should not “get lost in translation.” So Triniti adjusted a description of her and her grandmother’s physical features to allude to the color of their skin.

The new details made her pause. “It felt like I was abiding by somebody else’s rules,” she said. Triniti added, “Now it feels like people of color have to say something or if we don’t, we are going to get looked over.”

There you go. If this is not “ticking a box”, I don’t know what is. And some students are conflicted, as their guidance counselors force students to explicitly mention race against their wishes.

Some decided to leave out their race entirely. Karelys Andrade, who is Ecuadorean and lives in Brooklyn, kept her essay focused on her family facing eviction during the pandemic and being forced to live in a shelter. “That experience was a story that needed to be told,” said Karelys, 17.

In past years, some Asian American students avoided writing about their heritage, thinking affirmative action was largely unfavorable to them, said Mandi Morales, an adviser with Bottom Line, a nonprofit for first-generation college applicants catering mostly to students of color. But the end of affirmative action in colleges led some to reconsider, counselors said.

Ms. Morales cited one student who added a mention of his “conservative” Chinese family as an example. “The explicit disclosure of his ethnicity would not have made it to the final draft prior to the ruling,” she said.

Some experts argue that the court’s ruling encourages students to write on racial conflict, trauma and adversity.

Of course it does! Again, this is bloody obvious. But even some counselors who don’t push the “adversity” scenario still insist that the students mention their identities as people of color, merely noting that students should say that their race has been a salutary factor. But again, what’s emphasized is not the content of one’s character, but the color of one’s skin.

. . . Joe Latimer, the director of college counseling at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, said he believes it is not necessary for students “to sell their trauma.” Instead, he advises his students to present their identities as “strength based,” showing the positive traits they have built from their experiences as a person of color.

The NYT article begins with a positive nod towards identity applications, but ends with some people speaking truth to power:

Critics of affirmative action say they are worried about essays becoming a loophole for colleges to consider an applicant’s race. “My concern is that the system will be gamed,” said William A. Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell University who founded the nonprofit Equal Projection Project.

Since the court ruling, colleges and universities have affirmed their commitment to diversity, and some officials said their institutions will continue to foster it through outreach and tools like Landscape, a database with information about an applicant’s school and neighborhood. And officials have said race can still inform decisions, as long as they are based on the applicant’s character and its connection to the university’s mission.

But some students, including Delphi Lyra, a senior at Northfield who is half-Brazilian, have reservations about the new admissions environment.

“The idea behind the ruling is to not check a box,” said Delphi, 18, referring to the race and ethnicity question on applications. “But I think, in some ways, it has almost even created more of a need to check a box.”

Absolutely!

Again, I’m not denying that if one’s heritage does increase intellectual or ideological diversity, then that does meet the requirements of the court. But you know what will happen; I outlined it above.

It’s clear that although I favor some type of affirmative action to increase intellectual and ideological diversity, it has to be done in a way that doesn’t violate the law. After all, diversity of thoughtm does increase the proliferation of opposing viewpoints that’s essential for a good college education.  So what do we do? I have two suggestions.

1.) Eliminate all questions on college applications that require you to explain how you overcame adversity. My suggestion would be to use questions that show your creativity or ability to think outside the box—in other words, questions like the University of Chicago used in the past. This increases creativity, quirkiness, and discussion.  By concentrating on racial identities and how they held one back, the new system simply strengthens identity politics.

2.) Enforce the law.  While it will become harder for authorities to determine if colleges are ticking racial boxes, it’s not impossible. Authorities can simply determine (given that recommendation #1 is followed) whether mentioning race somewhere on your application that you’re a member of an oppressed minority correlates significantly with your chance of admission. Again, you have to be careful, but it’s not hard if you use Chicago-style questions like this—the mandatory question that all applicants had to answer last year.

How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.

It’s not an inventive question (you have to answer an inventive one besides this), but neither does it prompt you to concentrate on your ethnic/racial identity. Admissions officers will be tearing their hair out, for now they have to judge solely on thoughtfulness and character.

One of the epicenters of life in Davis, California is the Farmer’s Market downtown, held every Wednesday and Friday. As it was rainy and miserable, and the market is largely covered, we got ourselves there to inspect the local foodstuffs. (Only locally grown or caught items are sold.)

Fust, two photos of the venue, the second a panorama:

Click (twice in succession) to enlarge:

It wasn’t exactly the food season, but here’s what was on offer:

Two old friends (biology professors), both buying the market’s famous cumin-laced Gouda cheese. If you are a biologist from Davis, you’ll recognize them.

Squashes: I hate ’em all except for pumpkin, and then only in pumpkin pie. I do like eggplant if it’s cooked properly, and I guess that counts as a squash.

Local almonds, fresh, crunchy, and tasty:

Meyer lemons, grown widely in Davis back yards (we have a tree):

I guess berries were in season, as they had four varieties. They ain’t cheap!

They offered us a gratis strawberry to taste, and it was fantastic, juicy and sweet. They don’t put the inferior ones at the bottom of the basket, an old and nefarious supermarket ploy:

Fresh bread:

. . . and several varieties of apples. These, called “Arkansas Black,” I’d never seen before, and they were quite dark. (The only apples I really like are Granny Smiths, which are tart, the way a good apple should be. Nowadays most commercial apples have all the flavor bred out of them, so they may be crispy but all you taste is sugar:

 

Though I didn’t bring my wildlife-photo folder to California, John Avise kept his record going by seemailingnding me another batch of bird photos from South Africa. And so we shall have a wildlife post today (though I count the warthog post yesterday as wildlife).

This if the fourth in John’s series of South African birds.  His narrative and captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

South Africa Birds, Part 4 

My seminar trip to South Africa in 2007 took me to many parts of the country:  Cape Town, Durban, Grahamstown, Pretoria, Potchefstrom, Johannesberg, Kruger National Park, and elsewhere.   This week’s post is Part 4 of a mini-series on birds that I photographed during that trip.  It shows another dozen or so species from that marvelous avian-rich part of the world.

Chinspot Batis (Batis molitor), female:

Common Ostrich (Struthio camelus) male:

 Common Ostrich female:

European Stonechat (Saxicola rubicola) male:

Crested Barbet (Trachyphonus vaillantii):

Crested Francolin (Ortygornis sephaena):

Crowned Cormorant (Microcarbo coronatus):

Crowned Hornbill (Tockus alboterminatus):

Crowned lapwing (Vanellus coronatus):

Egyptian Goose (Alopochen aegyptiaca):

Fairy Flycatcher (Stenostira scita):

Fiscal Flycatcher (Sigelus silens), male:

Fiscal Flycatcher, female:

Fiscal Shrike (Lanius collaris), male:

Fiscal Shrike, female:

There is a vast menagerie of potentially habitable worlds in the cosmos, which means the Universe could be home to a diversity of life beyond what we can imagine. Creatures built on silicon rather than carbon, or organisms that breathe hydrogen instead of oxygen. But regardless of how strange and wondrous alien life may be, it is still governed by the same chemistry as life on Earth, and that means it needs a chemical solvent.

On Earth that solvent is water (H2O). Water dissolves some molecules into solution, giving organisms access to a range of materials. Since it is a liquid, water also makes it easy for complex molecules to mix together and interact. Terrestrial life isn’t possible without the solvent and fluid properties of water, and since water is a common molecule in the Universe, its central role for life is not surprising. But are there other common molecules that could serve as the solvent of life? Could alien life arise on distant worlds without the need for water? That’s the question studied in a recent article on the arXiv.

The authors begin with four general conditions for life-friendly solvents: they must dissolve some molecules but not all; they must be able to play a role in the metabolism of living things; a wide range of complex organic molecules must be able to survive in the solvent; and it must commonly exist on certain rocky worlds for billions of years.

Of all the known common solvents, only water clearly satisfies all four conditions. Ammonia (NH4) satisfies the first three, but is unlikely to meet the fourth condition because it breaks down readily when exposed to ultraviolet light, and wherever ammonia is likely to survive water is likely as well. So while ammonia can play a role in life on other worlds, it isn’t likely to be the main solvent. There are two molecules, however, that come pretty close to water.

The first is concentrated sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Although it’s extremely dangerous to life on Earth, sulfuric acid satisfies three main conditions. What’s not known is whether a diverse range of organic molecules can exist within it. Like water, it can provide ions for the exchange of electric charge, and it can participate in the interactions of certain compounds such as aromatic molecules. But there is one molecule that comes even closer to the usefulness and abundance of water: carbon dioxide (CO2).

Carbon dioxide is quite common. The atmospheres of both Mars and Venus are composed mostly of CO2, and it is likely that most rocky exoplanets are rich in carbon dioxide. It isn’t a solvent in its gaseous state, so life on warm planets such as Earth would rely upon it. But more distant exoplanets such as a cold Venus might. Liquid CO2 is geologically stable and tolerates a wide range of organic molecules. What isn’t known is whether its solvent properties are suitable for complex metabolism. CO2 is a very benign solvent, so it may not stir the chemical pot enough for life to arise within it. But since it plays well with so many types of molecules, it might work in collaboration with other molecules to become a foundation for life. The authors conclude this is a topic worth further study.

On one level this work confirms what we’ve already known, that water is the most abundant and useful solvent for life. But it also raises interesting questions. Other common molecules come close, and they might work together to form a home for alien life. The seas of Titan, for example, are rich in hydrocarbons and other complex organic molecules. Cold exoplanet moons similar to Titan could have oceans of CO2, NH4, and H2O, each capable of serving part of the role that water does on Earth. There is still much we don’t understand about cryogenic chemistry on cold exoplanets. So while the waters of life are likely in the cosmos, the seas of life on some worlds could be much more exotic.

Reference: Bains, William, Janusz J. Petkowski, and Sara Seager. “Alternative solvents for life: framework for evaluation, current status and future research.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.07296 (2024).

The post Life on Earth Uses Water as a Solvent. What are Some Other Options for Life as We Don't Know it? appeared first on Universe Today.

The Cholera continues.

The post Skeptics in the Pub. Cholera. Chapter 8a first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Here’s an eight-minute clip from Bill Maher in which he touts a new rule: 2024 is supposed to be “The Year of Sanity”.

Maher gives several examples of pervasive insanity, the most prominent being the likely reelection of Trump as President.  He also mentions tolerance of shoplifting, pro-Palestinian activists, admiration for the Houthis, frantic rumors that Taylor Swift is gay, claims that men can get pregnant, recent laws preventing abortion of fetuses that won’t live, and sundry other insane things.

After hearing all this, I decided that Maher is right: we need a Year of Sanity. Will we get one? I’m not holding my breath.

h/t: Mary

Last night we went to an unusual restaurant: Stand Up Kebab, located in South Davis. It’s open only on Friday and Saturday nights, and the rest of the time the owner runs a car-repair garage (attached to the restaurant) as well as a used-car lot.

It’s an unprepossessing place. You order outside and they bring you your food inside.

The long table below had three people who were either tired, drunk, or dead. They may have been workers at the garage, but they eventually returned to life and left.

But the food was good, and here’s what we ate.  Beers first, of course:Persian (Iranian) ones:

We started with an unusual Persian soup called Ash e Reshteh. I discovered the ingredients from Wikipedia:

Ash reshteh or ash-e-reshteh (Persian: آش رشته) is a type of āsh (Iranian thick soup) featuring reshteh (thin noodles) and kashk (a sour dairy product, made from cooked or dried yogurt) commonly made in Iran.

It was absolutely delicious:

This was followed by a typical Iranian meal: kebabs. We had both chicken kebabs and lamb/beef kebabs, served with sauce, pickle, and plenty of rice. I’m not sure why there was a pat of butter on my plate

Lamb and beef kebabs:

And for a postprandial treat, we repaired to a store in downtown Davis that sells boba tea and mochi donuts. We had green-tea donuts; specimen below:

These are photos taken by reader Rosemary, who lives in South Africa near Kruger National Park, and runs an organization (GMFER: Global March for Elephants and Rhinos) that protects the local wildlife by partnering with local communities to raise awareness about trafficking in animals and poaching. GMFER also works to change laws to lessen poaching of elephants and rhinos and, mainly, to end trophy hunting of “iconic” animals.  Finally, they concentrate on educating children and rangers to appreciate local wildlife and the need to protect it, and teaching them to remove snares.

Rosemary has kindly helped me make arrangements for my visit to Kruger and environs in August; these arrangements can be quite complicated.

I’ll be in South Africa (Capetown and the Kruger area) for roughly a month. When I’m not traveling or staying in wildlife camps, I will be putting up in the small town of Hoedspruit near Kruger—in the house of Rosemary’s landlady.  Since the animals roam fairly freely around that area, which is in a fenced wildlife estate, that house is visited daily by common warthogs (Phacochoerus africanus), who come by for handouts of corn.  (Sometimes leopards also appear.)

One of the hogs is a huge and magnificent male whom I’ve named Ozymandias—Ozy for short.  Here he is; isn’t he gorgeous? (Photos by Rosemary).

The “warts” are protuberances formed from cartilage, and are presumably used to protect the animal’s head. They are sexually dimorphic.  The Fresno Chaffee Zoo describes them:

Males have 3 pairs of “warts,” 1 near the eyes, 1 on the snout and 1 pair on the lower jaw. The female’s two pair of warts are smaller, with none on the snout. The eyes are set high on the head. They have a typical pig’s disc-like nose pad.

Warthogs are underrated, and don’t count as one of the “Big Five” animals that tourists come to Africa to see. But they should be, as they are amazing animals.  They have four tusks, which are simply overgrown teeth, and these are used for fighting, excavating their burrows, and digging for roots (warthogs are grazing herbivores).

The lower pair of tusks become razor sharp by rubbing against the upper pair, and, besides digging, are used for fighting, particularly between males.  I would like to pet Ozy when I meet him, but I cannot as there’s a danger of being slashed!

The hogs are poached for their tusks, which are considered analogous to elephant ivory, and are also sometimes hunted as “trophies” (I despise this practice).

Warthogs are fearless animals, and mothers will defend their babies vigorously. Below is a YouTube video showing a family being stalked by wild dogs, but the mother drives them off. Then a single warthog baby gets attacked by lions, and even gets picked up in their mouths, but then recovers, goes to ground, and, despite its tiny size, goes after the lions and drives them off!

Note the speed of the mother, and the fact that warthogs run with their tails held vertically:

And an adult escaping lions, one of their most common predators.

Warthogs can run fast: up to 30 mph (48 kph), and they forage by grazing on their knees, as is in this Wikipedia picture (they drink the same way).

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Here’s Ozy again in all his glory. When he arrives for a snack, all the other warthogs, including smaller males, females, and babies, leave him alone.  With one shake of his head they know they must stay away (photo by Rosemary):

Warthogs like to bathe and wallow in mud to cool themselves. But they also have a unique symbiotic relationship with mongeese. I was stunned when I saw this video of a warthog letting mongeese crawl all over it to remove its ticks. This of course is a symbiotic relationship: the mongeese get a meal and the pig gets cleaned (it’s similar to the cleaner wrasses in the ocean):

Rosemary’s landlady has built a cement pond in her yard for the warthogs to lie in. But a big male like Ozy will drive the other hogs out of the water and mud, so they have to wait for their bath.

Ozy again, photo by Rosemary:

I have made a deal to adopt Ozy. In return for paying a monthly fee to support him as well as other animals in the area, I will ensure that Ozy will get extra food, including vegetables, and I will get photos and a monthly letter from Ozy giving me an update on his doings.

One problem with Ozy is that, according to Rosemary, he is a Republican. He likes Trump because, like Ozy, Trump is a bully. Also, Ozy is keenly aware that there are two sexes, of which he’s one stupendous example, and he doesn’t like the Biden administration’s weakness for the “sex spectrum” argument. Here he is wearing his MAGA hat. But I will help take care of him anyway:

Stay tuned for more on Ozy. He hurt his leg, presumably in a fight with another male, and it is healing, but taking a while to do so.