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Chiral skyrmions are a special type of spin textures in magnetic materials with asymmetric exchange interactions. They can be treated as quasi-particles and carry integer topological charges. Scientists have recently studied the random walk-behaviors of chiral skyrmions by simulating their dynamics within a ferromagnetic layer surrounded by chiral flower-like obstacles. The simulations reveal that the system behaves like a topological sorting device, indicating its use in information processing and computing devices.

Chiral skyrmions are a special type of spin textures in magnetic materials with asymmetric exchange interactions. They can be treated as quasi-particles and carry integer topological charges. Scientists have recently studied the random walk-behaviors of chiral skyrmions by simulating their dynamics within a ferromagnetic layer surrounded by chiral flower-like obstacles. The simulations reveal that the system behaves like a topological sorting device, indicating its use in information processing and computing devices.

A new study examines the circumstances behind who is found at fault when cars hit pedestrians in an urban area. Results showed that the environment where the crash took place -- especially the types of roads and the amount of access to marked crosswalks -- played a key role in whether the pedestrian or the driver was blamed for the collision.

A team of scientists have demonstrated the first successful use of a neural prosthetic device to recall specific memories.

Researchers report successful results from a hand-held breast cancer screening device that can detect breast cancer biomarkers from a tiny sample of saliva. Their design uses common components, such as widely available glucose testing strips and the open-source hardware-software platform Arduino. A saliva sample is placed on the paper strip, which has been treated with specific antibodies that interact with the targeted cancer biomarkers.

Issues such as abrupt changes in speed limits and incomplete lane markings are among the most influential factors that can predict road crashes, finds new research. The study then used machine learning to predict which roads may be the most dangerous based on these features.

A central issue in discussions of particle physics’ present and future is known as the hierarchy puzzle. Although I discuss the hierarchy — its confusing nature and the debates that it generates — in my upcoming book, I do so rather briefly, and so, I’ll be putting up some new pages on this website with supplemental information. The same information is relevant for the cosmological constant problem. (Older pages already giving various perspectives on these issues can be found here, here and here.)

I have just posted the first new page, on “zero-point motion” and “zero-point energy.” It begins with a verbal, non-technical description of zero-point motion and zero-point energy. There follows a sketch of the details using pre-university math. Future pages will apply these ideas to quantum fields, addressing notions of “vacuum energy density” and the “cosmological constant”, and then turning to “Higgs feedback” and the core of the hierarchy puzzle.

A quick description of the hierarchy in question: it is a hierarchy of energy scales, or of mass scales. One way it can be described is in terms of particle masses:

• The masses [meaning “rest masses”] of all elementary particles are absurdly small compared to the Planck mass, the lowest possible mass for a black hole

The masses of the known elementary particles lie between 200 times larger or 2000 smaller than a proton’s mass, excepting neutrinos’ masses, which are even smaller, and the zero rest mass of photons, gluons, and (presumed) gravitons. But if our understanding of gravity is taken at face value (and maybe it should not be), the smallest possible black hole would have a mass of at least a billion billion protons.

Alternatively, we may rephrase the hierarchy in terms of forces:

• For all known elementary particles, gravity is astonishingly weak compared to the other elementary forces.

The strong nuclear force, acting on the quarks inside of protons, is about as strong as a force can possibly be; electromagnetism’s strength is about 1% of that; but gravity’s effects on a proton are a billion billion times smaller than that of the strong nuclear force.

The origin of the hierarchy is unknown. What makes the hierarchy puzzling is that when we look at the particles we know, organized in what is called the Standard Model of Particle Physics, it seems highly non-generic. If we consider the Standard Model not in isolation but as a representative of a large class of similar possible universes, it is unusual, in that almost all universes of similar type would have no such hierarchy. In most such theories, masses would either be zero or huge. To be precise, some particles might have no mass at all, while all others would have masses near the Planck scale — and for the latter, gravity would be as strong as the other forces.

Of course, we only live in one universe, and it doesn’t have to be generic. But in the past, when we’ve found an aspect of the universe that’s highly non-generic, there has usually been a story behind it — and so, on heuristic grounds, one might suspect that this gigantic and non-generic hierarchy might point toward some important facts about the universe that we still don’t know. The questions of how much weight to give that suspicion, and of whether the missing facts might lie within close experimental reach, is one we can return to after I’ve fully laid out the underlying scientific issues.

Remember “Woke Kindergarten”, a lesson plan for teachers to use in instructing propagandizing students in Hayward, California (see posts here and here)?  The program was designed by an extreme “progressive” named Akiea “Ki” Gross, who was given $250,000 in taxpayer money by the school.  And, lo and behold, performance in English and math actually dropped after the wokeness was sprayed on the students. (To see how completely bonkers this program is, go here or to the program’s website here.)  All power to the little people! Sadly, the program appears to be designed for black students and the students are 80% Hispanic.

After an article was published in the San Francisco Chronicle describing the program, there was a huge backlash from people who, properly, thought it was bonkers.  So what did the school district do? Did they drop the program? There’s no indication of that. Instead, they did what defies common sense:  they put one of the teachers who criticized the program in the article on leave (with pay) for unknown violations. They are actually defending Woke Kindergarten when they should be defunding it. I suspect, however, that we’ll see no more of the program. It’s simply too stupid, woke, and embarrassing.

At any rate, the Chronicle has a new article (click headline below, or find it archived here), discussing the firing and giving the school’s defense.

First, though, this is how the teacher critic was quoted in the first Chronicle article:

 Tiger Craven-Neeley said he supports discussing racism in the classroom, but found the Woke Kindergarten training confusing and rigid. He said he was told a primary objective was to “disrupt whiteness” in the school — and that the sessions were “not a place to express white guilt.” He said he questioned a trainer who used the phrasing “so-called United States,” as well as lessons available on the organization’s web site offering “Lil’ Comrade Convos,” or positing a world without police, money or landlords.

Craven-Neeley, who is white and a self-described “gay moderate,” said he wasn’t trying to be difficult when he asked for clarification about disrupting whiteness. “What does that mean?” he said, adding that such questions got him at least temporarily banned from future training sessions. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?”

And from the new piece, his punishment for such heresy:

The East Bay teacher who publicly questioned spending $250,000 on an anti-racist teaching training program was placed on administrative leave Thursday, days after he shared his concerns over Woke Kindergarten in the Chronicle. Hayward Unified School District teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley said district officials summoned him to a video conference Thursday afternoon and instructed him to turn in his keys and laptop and not return to his classroom at Glassbrook Elementary until further notice.

 

They did not give any specifics as to why he was placed on paid leave, other than to say it was over “allegations of unprofessional conduct,” Craven-Neeley said.

District officials declined to comment on his status or any allegations, saying it was a personnel matter.

A defense of Woke Kindergarten from the original article:

District officials defended the program this past week, saying that Woke Kindergarten did what it was hired to do. The district pointed to improvements in attendance and suspension rates, and that the school was no longer on the state watch list, only to learn from the Chronicle that the school was not only still on the list but also had dropped to a lower level.

Defenses in the second article. Yep, they refuse to say that adopting it was a bad move:

District officials declined to comment on their social media posts, given Gross was paid using taxpayer-funded federal dollars.

“We cannot comment on her personal political or social views,” Bazeley said.

Some teachers have defended the Woke Kindergarten program, saying that after years of low test scores and academic intervention, they believed in a fresh approach. The training was selected by the school community, with parents and teachers involved in the decision.

“We need to try something else,” said Christina Aguilera, a bilingual kindergarten teacher. “If we just focus on academics, it’s not working. There is no one magic pill that will raise test scores.

“I’m really proud of Glassbrook to have the guts to say this is what our students need,” Aguilera said. “We didn’t just do what everybody expected us to do, and I’m really proud of that.”

Sixth-grade teacher Michele Mason said the Woke Kindergarten training sessions “have been a positive experience” for most of the staff, humanizing the students’ experiences and giving them a voice in their own education.

These are clearly teachers who want to keep their jobs.  Finally, a bit about how Craven-Neeley was treated by his colleagues:

The Wednesday staff meeting, however, was tense, Craven-Neeley said, as he tried to explain that before going to the Chronicle, he approached school and district staff as well as the school board to raise questions about the program and the expense, with no response.

“There was so much anger toward me,” he said. “I was explaining my point of view. They were talking over me.”

. . . . Craven-Neeley said the meeting grew tense about an hour in, when another teacher stood up, pointed a finger in his face and said, “ ‘You are a danger to the school or the community,’ and then she walked out of the room.”

Not long after, a district administrator asked him to leave the meeting.

“I was shocked. This is my school. I didn’t do anything inappropriate,” he said. “I left. I was very shaky.”

Another Glassbrook teacher, who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions at the school, confirmed that a staff member put a hand in Craven-Neeley’s face and called him a disgrace and a threat to the school.

Craven-Neeley then had a video meeting with school officials and was told he’d be placed on paid leave pending an “investigation”. The university also “denied the district’s actions were related to Craven-Neeley’s participation in the story or his complaints about the program. The district spokesperson added, ‘We would not put any employee on leave as any sort of retaliation or squelch anyone’s free speech rights,” [Michael Bazeley] said’.”

Well that sounds like a flat-out lie to me. What Craven-Neeley said to the Chronicle was indeed free speech, and there’s no other indication of anything else for which he’d be punished.  All I can say is that it looks as if Woke Kindergarten affected the teachers (if not the students). They’re all censorious and defensive!

Remember the “woke wonderings” that were part of the program? Here’s one:

The answer, of course, is “not much!”

Dream engineers are developing technologies that can help you sleep more soundly and use your nighttime hours to your advantage - but there could also be a dark side

At midnight last night, FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) put up its list of the “10 Worst Censors of 2024”.

Part of the intro:

Each year, FIRE names and shames the worst-of-the-worst silencers, bowdlerizers, and steamrollers of free speech.

This year, we’ve included five free speech villains whose chilling misdeeds happened off of  college campuses. Thelist belowincludes people guilty of many forms of censorship  including raiding a small-town newspaper, punishing a middle schooler for wearing eye black at a football game, canceling students and professors for their views on the Israel-Hamas war, and retroactively censoring famous authors without their consent. The 13th annual Lifetime Censorship Award went to Harvard University, a university as censorial as it is famous.

Previous lists were limited to campuses, but no longer: off-campus censors were also in the running.  The list below is in no particular order, and there’s a longer explanation of each ranking at the website given at the top.

I was particularly interested in the Razzies given to the California Community Colleges (for requiring faculty to pledge allegiance to DEI) and Texas A&M (a state school) for its pattern of firing, deplatforming, and censorship.

• Muirlands Middle School disciplined a student for wearing eye black to a school football game, calling it “blackface”. The student is now suing.
• The Marion County Police Dept. raided a small town newspaper because the paper had dirt on a political ally, and the paper’s owner died the next day.
• Mayo Clinic College of Medical Science punished Prof. Michael Joyner for speaking to the press on COVID-19 and sports performance.
• Book censors & bowlderizers: Legislators across the country drafted a number of vague, overbroad policies to remove or limit access to books they believe are inappropriate. Book publishers edited out so-called “problematic content” from the works of authors like Roald Dahl and R.L. Stine in new editions through “sensitivity reading.”
• San Francisco State University students accosted former Olympic swimmer Riley Gaines after a speech about female sports and an admin disciplined a professor for showing a depiction of Muhammed in a class about the history of the Islamic world.
• Hypocritical college admins enjoyed a censorship frenzy after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. USC admins banned Prof. Strauss from the classroom for his anti-Hamas views, while Brandeis admins “unrecognized” a student group due to pro-Hamas comments made by the national org. This turmoil was exacerbated by the hypocritical testimony of Liz Magill, Claudine Gay, and Sally Kornbluth — presidents of Penn, Harvard, and MIT, respectively — at the “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism” hearing by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
• FIRE sued California Community Colleges  and other admins after CCC imposed draconian regulations forcing more-than-54,000 professors to teach and promote politicized conceptions of DEI.
• The Texas A&M University system landed in hot water due to censorship controversies involving the hiring of former New York Times editor Kathleen McElroy and Prof. Joy Alonzo’s criticism of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler also earned a lawsuit from FIRE and several students when he banned an on-campus charity drag show.
• FIRE sued NY state officials over a law urging online platforms to “stop the spread of hateful content” related to the Israel-Hamas war. After FIRE won an injunction against the law,  New York ignored the court’s order, sending investigation letters to FIRE’s client Rumble and other social media networks demanding that they disclose their policies for removing speech related to the conflict. Also in 2023, FIRE weighed in on New York’s censorial crusade against the National Rifle Association.
• Florida state officials derecognized Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, expanded the Stop WOKE Act, and banned drag.

Last but not least, Harvard University will receive FIRE’s sixth Lifetime Censorship Award, reserved for those colleges that deserve special recognition for their commitment to censorship. The school earned the award for landing at the bottom of FIRE’s annual free speech rankings, threatening the New York Post with a defamation lawsuit, driving out lecturer Carole Hooven for arguing that biological sex is real, and rescinding a fellowship for form

I wanted to show you why Harvard got the lowest ranking; and the ranking was assigned well before Claudine Gay and the Presidents of MIT and Penn were excoriated for their testimony before a House committee:

Harvard University came in dead last on this year’s College Free Speech Rankings — achieving a worst-ever score. When asked about Harvard’s abysmal ranking during her congressional testimony in December, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay said she didn’t think the ranking was “an accurate representation” of Harvard’s respect for free speech. But all one needs to do to understand Harvard’s disrespect for free speech is look at its record of censorship.

Only a few weeks before Gay’s testimony, Harvard hired self-advertised “media assassins” to threaten the New York Post with a defamation lawsuit and “immense” damages if the paper published a story alleging Gay plagiarized some of her scholarship. So much for placing “a high priority on freedom of speech” — or freedom of the press for that matter. Gay resigned on Jan. 2, after more than 40 allegations of plagiarism came to light.

Long before Harvard threatened news outlets with litigation for their reporting, it punished faculty and students for their speech. School administrators drove out lecturer Carole Hooven for arguing that biological sex is real. It rescinded a fellowship for former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth over his purported “anti-Israel bias.” It effectively fired an economics professor for an op-ed he published in India. It canceled a professor’s course on policing following student uproar. It fired professor Ronald Sullivan from his deanship after students protested his role on Harvey Weinstein’s criminal defense team. It bizarrely demanded students take down a Nicki Minaj flag because the community could find it “offensive.” And the list goes on.

Even outside speakers invited to campus aren’t safe from Harvard’s censorial glare. In 2022, feminist philosopher Devin Buckley was disinvited from an English department colloquium because of her views on sex and gender. Her talk was supposed to be on the separate topic of British romanticism.

Harvard students clearly feel the chill. Students report low administrative support for free speech and low comfort expressing ideas, placing the school near the bottom of FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings in both individual categories. Unfortunately, Harvard students themselves may also contribute to the problem. If the efforts to oust Sullivan and cancel the policing class aren’t evidence enough, an alarming 30% of Harvard students think using violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable in at least some circumstances.

For its long track record of censorship, Harvard is receiving FIRE’s Lifetime Censorship Award. It joins Georgetown University, Yale University, Syracuse University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and DePaul University in receiving this “honor.” It’s past time Harvard truly commits to its ostensible truth-seeking mission and the principles of free speech and academic freedom that make it possible. But that may be wishful thinking, the triumph of hope over experience.

The new President of Harvard hasn’t yet been chosen, but I suspect it will have to be another black woman lest Harvard be criticized for, well, Sarah Haider talks about this in her nice new analysis of DEI, including a tweet:

This is why there were numerous calls to replace Claudine Gay with another black woman. The honor was bestowed on Black Womanhood, the political category, not on the black woman herself. This illustrates one important sense in which modern tokenism is unlike its predecessor: far from being objected to as a sign of contempt and condescension, tokenism today is demanded by activists.

The next president of Harvard University MUST be a Black woman.

— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) January 2, 2024

Hill is a professor of CUNY and a “television personality”.

If we are ever going to have a solar power station in space, we will need to be able to transmit power from orbit - a feat that has now been achieved

Some pet dogs retain their baby teeth, creating two rows that resemble the mouth of a shark. A new analysis shows that the condition is more prevalent in smaller breeds and obese dogs

Battery technology has been advancing nicely over the last few decades, with a fairly predictable incremental increase in energy density, charging time, stability, and lifecycle. We now have lithium-ion batteries with a specific energy of 296 Wh/kg – these are in use in existing Teslas. This translates to BE vehicles with ranges from 250-350 miles per charge, depending on the vehicle. That is more than enough range for most users. Incremental advances continue, and every year we should expect newer Li-ion batteries with slightly better specs, which add up quickly over time. But still, range anxiety is a thing, and batteries with that range are heavy.

What would be nice is a shift to a new battery technology with a leap in performance. There are many battery technologies being developed that promise just that. We actually already have one, shifting from graphite anodes to silicon anodes in the Li-ion battery, with an increase in specific energy to 500 Wh/kg. Amprius is producing these batteries, currently for aviation but with plans to produce them for BEVs within a couple of years. Panasonic, who builds 10% of the world’s EV batteries and contracts with Tesla, is also working on a silocon anode battery and promises to have one in production soon. That is basically a doubling of battery capacity from the average in use today, and puts us on a path to further incremental advances. Silicon anode lithium-ion batteries should triple battery capacity over the next decade, while also making a more stable battery that uses less (or no – they are working on this too) rare earth elements and no cobalt. So even without any new battery breakthroughs, there is a very bright future for battery technology.

But of course, we want more. Battery technology is critical to our green energy future, so while we are tweaking Li-ion technology and getting the most out of that tech, companies are working to develop something to replace (or at least complement) Li-ion batteries. Here is a good overview of the best technologies being developed, which include sodium-ion, lithium-sulphur, lithium-metal, and solid state lithium-air batteries. As an aside, the reason lithium is a common element here is because it is the third-lightest element (after hydrogen and helium) and the first that can be used for this sort of battery chemistry. Sodium is right below lithium on the period table, so it is the next lightest element with similar chemistry.

But for the rest of this article I want to focus on one potential successor to Li-ion batteries – flow batteries. So-called flow batteries are called that because they use two liquid electrochemical substance to carry their charge and create electrical current. Flow batteries are stable, less prone to fires than lithium batteries, and have a potential critical advantage – they can be recharged by swapping out the electrolyte. They can also be recharged in the conventional way, by plugging them in. So theoretically a flow battery could provide the same BEV experience as a current Li-ion battery, but with an added option. For “fast charging” you could pull into a station, connect a hose to your car, and swap out spent electrolyte for fresh electrolyte, fully charging your vehicle in the same time it would take to fill up a tank. This is the best of both worlds – for those who own their own off-street parking space (82% of Americans) routine charging at home is super convenient. But for longer trips, the option to just “fill the tank” is great.

But there is a problem. As I have outlined previously, battery technology is one of those tricky technologies that requires a suite of characteristics in order to be functional, and any one falling short is a deal-killer. For flow batteries the problem is that their energy density is only about 10% that of Li-ion batteries. This makes them unsuitable for BEVs. This is also an inherent limitation of chemistry – you can only dissolve so much solute in a liquid. However, as you likely have guessed based upon my headline, there is also a solution to this limitation – nanofluids. Nanoparticles suspended in a fluid can potentially have much greater energy density.

Research into this approach actually goes back to 2009, at Argonne National Laboratory and the Illinois Institute of Technology, who did the initial proof of concept. Then in 2013 DARPA-energy gave a grant to the same team to build a working prototype, which they did. Those same researchers then spun off a private company, Influit Energy, to develop a commercial product, with further government contracts for such development. As an aside, we see here an example of how academic researchers, government funding, and private industry work together to bring new cutting edge technology to market. It can be a fruitful arrangement, as long as the private companies give back to the public the public support they built upon.

Where is this technology now? John Katsoudas, a founder and chief executive of Influit, claims that they are developing a battery with an specific energy of 550 to 850 Wh/kg, with the potential to go even higher. That’s roughly double to triple current EV batteries. They also claim these batteries (soup to nuts) will be cost competitive to Li-ion batteries. Of course, claims from company executives always need to be taken with a huge grain of salt, and I don’t get too excited until a product is actually in production, but this does all look very promising.

Part of the technology involved how much nanoparticles they can cram into their electrolyte fluid. They claim they are currently up to 50% by weight, but believe they can push that to 80%. At 80% nanoparticles, the fluid would have the viscosity of motor oil.

A big part of any new technology, often neglected in the hype, is infrastructure. We are facing this issue with BEVs. The technology is great, but we need an infrastructure of charging stations. They are being built, but currently are a limiting factor to public acceptance of the technology (lack of chargers contributes to range anxiety). The same issue would exist with nanoparticle flow batteries. However, they would have at least a good an infrastructure for normal recharging as current BEVs. Plus also they would benefit from pumping electrolyte fluid as a means of fast charging. Such fluid could be process and recharged on site, but also could be trucked or piped as with existing gasoline infrastructure. Still, this is not like flipping a switch. It could take a decade to build out an adequate infrastructure. But again, meanwhile at least such batteries can be charges as normal.

I don’t know if this battery technology will be the one to displace lithium-ion batteries. A lot will depend on which technologies make it to market first, and what infrastructure investments we make. It’s possible that the silicon anode Li-ion batteries may improve so quickly they will eclipse their competitors. Or the solid state batteries may make a big enough leap to crush the competition. Or companies may decide that pumping fluid is the path to public acceptance and go all-in on flow batteries. It’s a good problem to have, and will be fascinating to watch this technology race unfold.

The only prediction that seems certain is that battery technology is advancing quickly, and by the 2030s we should have batteries for electric vehicles with 2-3 times the energy density and specific energy of those in common use today. That will be a different world for BEVs.

 

The post Flow Batteries – Now With Nanofluids first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Scientists have found that we generally remember where an object was located, but possibly not its other details, a discovery that could change how we view eyewitness testimonies

Male Brachycephalus pulex frogs are so small that two of them can sit side by side on a pinky nail

Our Solar System is a collection of objects from planets and moons to comets and asteroids. It’s thought there are upwards of 1 million asteroids orbiting the Sun and it was thought that any water present on them should have evaporate long ago. A recent study using data from the SOFIA infrared telescope discovered water on the asteroids Iris and Massalia. 

Among the million or so asteroids, Iris is 199 km in diameter making it larger than about 99% of other asteroids. It orbits the Sun within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter at an average distance of 2.39 astronomical units taking 3.7 years to complete one orbit.  Massalia is of comparable in size to Iris coming in at 135 km across and shares an orbit similar to that of Iris. 

Asteroids across the Solar System vary a little in composition and structure. Nearer to the Sun the Silicate asteroids devoid of ice dominate yet further out, icy asteroids are more common. Exploring the distribution of the asteroids helps to understand the composition and transfer of elements in the solar nebula before the planets and asteroids formed. If we can also understand the distribution of water too in our own system then it will help us to understand its prevalence in exoplanetary systems and the liklihood of extraterrestrial life. 

Data captured by SOFIA – the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy which retired in 2022 – has revealed water on asteroids Iris and Massalia.  It’s not the first time SOFIA has made a discovery of this sort. Back in October 2020 SOFIA identify water on the Moon. Using its Faint Object InfraRed Camera (FORCAST) it detected the signature of water molecules on the surface equivalent to about 350 millilitres of water in a cubic meter of soil.

The lead author on the paper, Dr Anicia Arredondo from the Southwest Research Institute confirmed that, based on the strength of the spectral lines, the volumes and prevalence of water on the asteroids was consistent with that found on the Moon. Here too it was locked up, bound to minerals as well as absorbed by silicates.

Data was also analysed from two fainter asteroids, Parthenope and Melpomene, but there was too much noise to yield a conclusive result. It appears that the FORCAST instrument lacks the necessary sensitivity to identify the spectral feature of water on these asteroids, if indeed it was present. 

Further analysis is required to fully understand the distribution of water across the Solar System but following on from the study, the team will now utilise the James Webb Space Telescope which has higher quality optics and a much better signal to noise ratio to learn more. 

Source : SwRI Scientists Identify Water Molecules on Asteroids for the First Time

The post Water Found on the Surface of an Asteroid appeared first on Universe Today.

Were two waves of ax murders in the American south in the early 20th century truly associated with Louisiana Voodoo?

A phenomenon called the Fermi resonance, which affects how molecules vibrate, is responsible for a large part of carbon dioxide’s planet-warming effect

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss405_Sandro_Galea_2024_02_13.mp3 Download MP3

The Covid-19 response was a crucible of politics and public health—a volatile combination that produced predictably bad results. As scientific expertise became entangled with political motivations, the public-health establishment found itself mired in political encampment.

It was, as Sandro Galea argues, a crisis of liberalism: a retreat from the principles of free speech, open debate, and the pursuit of knowledge through reasoned inquiry that should inform the work of public health.

Across fifty essays, Within Reason chronicles how public health became enmeshed in the insidious social trends that accelerated under Covid-19. Galea challenges this intellectual drift towards intolerance and absolutism while showing how similar regressions from reason undermined social progress during earlier eras. Within Reason builds an incisive case for a return to critical, open inquiry as a guiding principle for the future public health we want—and a future we must work to protect.

Shermer and Galea discuss: his immigrant experience in the U.S. coming from Malta • why he left practicing medicine for public health • public health vs. private health • mask/vaccine recommendations vs. mandates • the case against moralism in public health • Medicare for all, UBI, generous social safety net, reparation for slavery, liberal immigration policies, commonsense gun safety reform • public health and: race, class, sex/gender • moralizing and public health.

Dr. Sandro Galea is a physician, epidemiologist, author and the Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published more than 1000 scientific journal articles, 75 chapters, and 24 books, and his research has been featured extensively in current periodicals and newspapers. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto and graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. Dr. Galea was named one of Time magazine’s epidemiology innovators and has been listed as one of the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.” He is past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Epidemiological Society. He is the author of The Contagion Next Time and Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health. His new book is Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time.

Shermer and Galea discuss:

• his immigrant experience in the U.S. coming from Malta
• why he left practicing medicine for public health
• What is public health?
• public health vs. private health
• mask recommendations vs. mandates
• vaccine recommendations vs. mandates
• the case against moralism in public health
• Galea’s progressive views: Medicare for all, UBI, generous social safety net, reparation for slavery, liberal immigration policies, commonsense gun safety reform
• public health/healthcare and: race, class, sex/gender
• moralizing and public health.

Show Notes

Stigma: smoking: “We can now plausibly say the choice to smoke or not smoke is, in a sense, a choice between right and wrong. The same was to some extent true of COVID-19. We did know that wearing masks and limiting our physical interaction would reduce the spread of the disease. Taking these steps was—there’s no getting around it—a matter of personal responsibility, a moral consideration, and it was right for us to acknowledge this.”

Working remotely adversely affected the poor over the rich, as did closing schools, restaurants, etc. “If we ignore the populations whose lives are shaped by conditions different from those that shape our own, we are acting contrary to the spirit of liberalism. COVID provided many examples of how such conditions create gaps in the lived experience of populations. We know, for example, that there is a clear link between income quartile and ability to physically distance by working remotely. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that 62 percent of earners in the top twenty-fifth quartile were able to work remotely, compared with just 9 percent of those in the bottom twenty-fifth. In stigmatizing those who do not adhere to physical distancing protocols, we risk targeting those with the least personal control over whether they do so.”

At a fundamental level, it would be characterized by social and economic justice. By economic justice, I mean a world where economic systems are geared toward fairness rather than the inequality that currently benefits the well-off few at the expense of the less well-off many. By social justice, I mean a world where no one is unfairly held back by characteristics of identity—whether race, sexual orientation, or gender.

John Hopkins University DEI Office, Diversity Word of the Month

“Privilege is a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group. Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups. In the United States, privilege is granted to people who have membership in one or more of these social identity groups: White people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle or own class people, middle-aged people, English-speaking people. Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it. People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them. In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent.”

Galea: “To answer every challenge with a call for complete upheaval of all that came before is to be neither serious nor effective as a movement. We may not want to use the language of overthrow when pragmatic reform is called for, just as we may not want to talk about incremental reform when our speech might support something bolder. If we continually cry “revolution” when we really need basic, commonsense reforms, we are liable to drive otherwise sympathetic partners out of our coalition. We also risk being taken less seriously when systemic change really is necessary, with our calls for bold action falling on ears that have long since ceased to listen.”

Great Barrington Declaration

It claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via the fringe notion of “focused protection”, by which those most at risk could purportedly be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infection.

5 Obstacles to a Full Restoration of Public Health Liberal Ideals

1. Science/public health have become politicized
2. We have forgotten our roots (free speech and thought, reasoned methodology, pursuit of truth)
3. We have become poor at weighing trade-offs
4. Media feedback loops have become the new peer review
5. We have prioritized the cultivation of influence over the pursuit of truth.

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Two wayfinding apps use motion sensors and AI to help people who are blind navigate a building, without needing to hold their phone out in front of them and risk theft