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Results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) suggest that dark energy, a mysterious force in the universe, is changing over time. This would completely re-write our understanding of the cosmos - but now other physicists are challenging this view

The idea of a multiverse of universes is derived from a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, but now a new twist on a classic experiment says it is time to put the idea to bed

President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary's MAHA report has landed. It's a mix of the good (a little), but mostly the bad and the ugly (a lot).

The post The MAHA Report: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (mostly the bad and ugly) first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

It’s time for another duck report, though I’ve been very tardy. The ducklings have grown a lot since the photos I show here, but the penultimate photo tells you what they looked like yesterday.

First, here’s lazy Mordecai, who is loath to fly. When he encounters stairs (this is before the ducklings hatched), he hops up them rather than flies:

The brood in the pond. They were still small when these pictures were taken, at about a week old (they’re now 19 days old).

Here’s Esther and her brood when they were two days old. Note that there are seven ducklings. We lost one to unknown causes :-(, but the rest are alive and healthy.

Mom and brood sunning on a stone:

Nap time!

One week old:

The babies love to climb on stones, and fortunately the pond is furnished with lots of them. They do this to dry off and also to warm up. Esther, always attentive, is right beside them. She’s turned out to be a great mother despite her hamhanded building of a nest on the ground.

Mordecai, whom I haven’t seen in 3.5 days, would stand guard while Esther was with the brood. They were small enough at a week old that she could sit on them all, but now they’re too big (see below):

A goose-stepping one-week-old duckling:

They like to swim in the discarded plastic pots previously (and unsuccessfully) used to grow plants. The pots have been left in the pond.

The Lab School teachers (a K-12 University of Chicago-affiliated school) know that the ducklings are here, and I’ve been asked to show them the ducks and answer their questions twice. I did it first with the kindergarten students, and below I’m talking to the 3rd through 5th graders while feeding the ducks. It’s a great joy to do this and field diverse questions of the students. (A frequent one: “Do the ducklings have names?”  Answer: “No, because we can’t tell them apart.”)

Another adorable week-old duckling:

. . . and here’s a photo I took yesterday. Look how they’ve grown! These are 19-day-old ducklings, so this represents about two weeks of growth from the photos above. Don’t worry; I have more photos and videos documenting their growth. These have full crops as they’ve just been fed.

And Mordecai, ever watchful (and plump). He seems to have disappeared, and I hope he returns. But his job as father is largely done. He did try to drive away invading drakes, but now Esther will have to do that herself. (I was told that last night she drove away three drakes!)

I’ve posted her often about the follies of “de-extincting” animals like the dire wolf, dodo, and woolly mammoth, culminating in a Boston Globe op-ed on May 1.  I’ve been quite critical of de-extinction claims, particularly those of Colossal Biosciences, which claims to have de-extincted the dire wolf, is on track to de-extinct woolly mammoths by 2028, and says it’s working on bringing back the dodo and the thylacine. My Globe op-ed explains four major problems with Colossal’s program. The first was this:

First, and most important, “de-extinction” is not de-extinction. The company says its claim to have de-extincted the dire wolf is legitimate because its edited pups meet some of the criteria for species “proxies” established in 2016 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But that claim is bogus. What Colossal has made is simply a gray wolf with a handful of genetic tweaks changing its size and color.

In the case of the mammoth, what we (may eventually) have is an Asian elephant with a handful of mammoth traits. And a handful of mammoth traits does not a mammoth make. I can paint my Ford Taurus bright red and even attach the Ferrari insignia to its hood, but it’s still a Ford Taurus, albeit with a handful of Ferrari traits. The Ferrari-ness of a Ferrari permeates every feature of a Ferrari’s engineering, just as the mammoth-ness of a mammoth permeates every feature of its biology. We know from ancient DNA studies that mammoths differ from Asian elephants at 1.4 million sites along its DNA, yet Colossal plans to mammoth-ize only a tiny fraction of these. Victoria Herridge, a mammoth expert, has described Colossal’s “mammoth” as nothing more than “an elephant in a fur coat.”

I am of course not the first scientist to point this out. Several, including Tori Herridge and Adam Rutherford, have written severely critical takes on Colossal’s claims.  But the mainstream media, by and large, ate up those claims.  Science journals and popular-science magazines like Science and New Scientist, however, did publish trenchant criticisms.

I believe Colossal was stung by these criticisms, which I’m sure they didn’t anticipate—though they should have. The company pushed back, but eventually, in an article in New Scientist (see below and my post), quoted Colossal’s chief scientific officer, evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro, as finally admitting that they really didn’t produce dire wolves, but grey wolves with a handful of edited genes that supposedly made the tweaked canids look more like ancient dire wolves.

Click below to see  Colossal’s partial retraction, which is also archived here:

Here’s how Beth Shapiro walked back the dire wolf de-extinction claim:

Well, yes, they had said they were dire wolves.  As the NYT reported on May 11:

The resulting animals [the gene-edited solves] were larger and fluffier and lighter in color than other gray wolves. The company’s chief science officer, Beth Shapiro, says this is enough to make them dire wolves, if you subscribe to the “morphological species concept,” which defines a species by its appearance. “Species concepts are human classification systems,” she told New Scientist, “and everybody can disagree and everyone can be right.”

Here’s Shapiro saying the same thing in a Bluesky post:

A statement from our Chief Science Officer, Dr. Beth Shapiro, on the dire wolf project pic.twitter.com/upl3WPSeUw

— Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) April 10, 2025

Oy!  Everybody can disagree and everyone can be right!  All must have prizes!  She says that Colossal chose to call them dire wolves because they look like dire wolves. That’s a highly watered-down version of the morphological species concept, one of the alternative species concepts that Allen Orr and I criticized in our book Speciation (see chapter 1 and Appendix). But the most trenchant and humorous criticism of using this concept to rescue Colossal’s claim also came from the NYT piece:

A lot of people disagreed. Calling the pups dire wolves, wrote the evolutionary biologist Rich Grenyer, is “like claiming to have brought Napoleon back from the dead by asking a short Frenchman to wear his hat.”

LOL.

In fact, we have no idea whether the three animals produced by Colossal even look a lot like the extinct dire wolf. For one thing, Colossal used mutations known in wolves and dogs (not taken from the dire wolf genome) to make the three living individuals white.  We don’t know if dire wolves were white, and some think they were reddish-brown, which seems more appropriate given that they didn’t live in the Arctic. (They lived in woodlands in the tropics and temperate zone.) And, as I’ve emphasized at great length, they can’t give the de-extincted animals the brains of the original species, for we don’t know which genes control the brain differences, much less what the brain differences were. Absent that ability, no de-extincted animal can behave like its model—something crucial if you want, as Colossal claims, to restore these animals to their “original” habitat.

But where we were as of yesterday was that Colossal, via Beth Shapiro, had finally admitted that they had not produced dire wolves but genetically tweaked gray wolves (of the 20 tweaks, five came from mutations in dogs and gray wolves, not from the dire wolf genome).

Now, however, they’ve walked it back again!  The tweet below shows a statement sent to New Scientist by a spokesperson at Colossal. Jacob Aron is the magazine’s news editor and he, like all of us, is now deeply confused. Colossal says that yes, they DID make dire wolves:

Colossal has sent us a statement, which we've added to the story. I don't feel the situation is any clearer…

— Jacob Aron (@jjaron.bsky.social) 2025-05-24T11:14:21.057Z

The New Scientist article now has this “correction:

Yep, let me put that in big letters: “WITH THOSE EDITS, WE HAVE BROUGHT BACK THE DIRE WOLF”.  And even using the concept of “functional de-extinction” is bogus, for they know nothing about the function (behavior, etc.) of the dire wolf.  All we know is that we have three white-colored gray wolves that may have bigger heads than did gray wolves when the trio grows up.  But 20 genetic tweaks is a teeny, tiny fraction of the thousands of differences between the extinct and the de-extincted creature, including the missing differences in brain structure.

The impression I get is that Colossal is now in PR chaos, stung by criticisms made by scientists and quoted in the press. They are desperate to say that they really have de-exincted animals despite the fact that all they have are three white canids, each with 15 DNA letters changed from gray wolf code to code taken from the dire wolf. Really, by any stretch of the imagination these are not members of a resurrected species. And the more Colossal opens its yap, now contradicting itself twice, the less respect I have for it.

After Shapiro admitted that Colossal hadn’t resurrected dire wolves, one of my colleagues posted this on Facebook:

I’m OK with this…I like it when scientists admit that they were wrong, or over-stated something. Although the initial press release was misleading at best, I’m glad that they clarify that these were not really Dire Wolves.

Sadly, they now say that they really are dire wolves. I’ve informed said colleague about the update, and we’ll see what he/she says.

h/t: Matthew

Hey, folks, this is the penultimate batch of photos I have. Please send me more!

As it’s Sunday, we have photos from John Avise, continuing his series on dragonflies and damselflies of North America. John’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Dragonflies in North America, Part 6

This week I continue my series of posts on Dragonflies that I’ve photographed in North America.  I’ve gone down my list of species in alphabetical order by common name, and also show the state where I took each photo.  Next week, PCC(E) willing,  we’ll probably start a short series on Dragonflies’ close cousins, the Damselflies (also in the taxonomic Order Odonata).

Wandering Glider, Pantala flavescens, male (California):

White-faced Meadowhawk, Sympetrum obtrusum. male (Wisconsin):

White-faced Meadowhawk, another male (Michigan):

White-faced Meadowhawk, female (Wisconsin):

Widow Skimmer, Libellula luctuosa, male (Wisconsin):

Widow Skimmer, female (Wisconsin):

Yellow-legged Meadowhawk, Sympetrum vicinum, male  (Michigan):

Yellow-legged Meadowhawk, female (Michigan):

Yellow-legged Meadowhawk, mating pair, (Michigan):

Astronomers with the Event Horizon Telescope have developed a new way to observe the radio sky at multiple frequencies, and it means we will soon be able to capture color images of supermassive black holes.

Live from NotACon with Guest Rogue Adam Russell; News Items: New Cambrian Fossil, Best Archaeopteryx Specimen, Chimps Using First Aid, Treatment for Baldness, New Color - Olo, The Next Theranos, Bespoke Genetic Therapy; Science or Fiction

Researchers have discovered a new 2D material, confirming decade-old prediction.

In biology, enzymes have evolved over millions of years to drive chemical reactions. Scientists have now derived universal rules to enable the de novo design of optimal enzymes. As an example, they considered the enzymatic reaction of breaking a dimer into two monomer molecules. Considering the geometry of such an enzyme-substrate-complex, they identified three golden rules that should be considered to build a functional enzyme.

An international team of researchers has announced the preliminary findings of Webb's observations of the Alpha Centauri system. According to their analysis, Alpha Cen A may have a Jupiter-sized planet and a very bright zodiacal dust disk orbiting it.

US President Trump has proposed a Golden Dome defence system that includes missile interceptors in space. But the idea would cost hundreds of billions of dollars – and could accelerate the weaponisation of space

Twenty years ago, the US Congress instructed NASA to find 90% of near-Earth asteroids threatening Earth. They've made progress finding these asteroids that orbit the Sun and come to within 1.3 astronomical units of Earth. However, they may have to expand their search since astronomers are now finding asteroids co-orbiting Venus that could pose a threat.

Scientists create a floss pick that samples cortisol within saliva as a marker of stress and quantifies it with a built-in electrode. The system uses a polymer casting technology that can be adapted to capture a wide a range of markers, such as estrogen for tracking fertility, or glucose for tracking diabetes. Ease of use allows monitoring to be incorporated into many areas of treatment.

Scientists may have solved the mystery of why the moon shows ancient signs of magnetism although it has no magnetic field today. An impact, such as from a large asteroid, could have generated a cloud of ionized particles that briefly enveloped the moon and amplified its weak magnetic field.

Sometimes, space enthusiasts blind themselves with techno-optimism about all the potential cool technological things we can do and the benefits they can offer humanity. We conveniently ignore that there are trade-offs: if one group gets to utilize the water available on the lunar surface, that means another group doesn't get to. Recognizing and attempting to come up with a plan to deal with those sorts of trade-offs is the intent of a new paper by Marissa Herron and Therese Jones of NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, as well as Amanda Hernandez of BryceTech, a contractor based out of Virginia.

As you know, Colossal Biosciences, a company heavily funded by donors who include Paris Hilton and Tiger Woods, claims that it “de-extincted” the defunct dire wolf, and says it will have woolly mammoths on the ground within three years.  This claims are grossly misleading, as I pointed out in a recent Boston Globe op-ed. 

The press and much of the public, of course, reacted with joy at the notion that we could bring back charismatic extinct species, although here and there scientists like me would show why these claims are overblown, largely because the “de-extincted” species would represent only modern species that had had just a tiny handful of genetic edits making them resemble the extinct one.  Important adaptations in the extinct species, most notably those involving physiology and behavior (the latter would require edits to genes in the brain that we don’t know), would not appear in the de-extincted species.  As I wrote in my piece:

. . . . . most important, “de-extinction” is not de-extinction. The company says its claim to have de-extincted the dire wolf is legitimate because its edited pups meet some of the criteria for species “proxies” established in 2016 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But that claim is bogus. What Colossal has made is simply a gray wolf with a handful of genetic tweaks changing its size and color.

In the case of the mammoth, what we (may eventually) have is an Asian elephant with a handful of mammoth traits. And a handful of mammoth traits does not a mammoth make. I can paint my Ford Taurus bright red and even attach the Ferrari insignia to its hood, but it’s still a Ford Taurus, albeit with a handful of Ferrari traits. The Ferrari-ness of a Ferrari permeates every feature of a Ferrari’s engineering, just as the mammoth-ness of a mammoth permeates every feature of its biology. We know from ancient DNA studies that mammoths differ from Asian elephants at 1.4 million sites along its DNA, yet Colossal plans to mammoth-ize only a tiny fraction of these. Victoria Herridge, a mammoth expert, has described Colossal’s “mammoth” as nothing more than “an elephant in a fur coat.”

Now, according to a New Scientist article below (click headline to read archived version, or find it here), the chief scientific officer of Colossal has finally admitted, after claiming otherwise, that they really haven’t produced dire wolves. As we critics maintained, they’ve produced grey wolves with a few traits that might have been present in dire wolves. But even their admission of having distorted what they did is disingenuous, as they claim they never said what they in fact did say.

I’ve put an excerpt (indented) below:

Excerpt:

The dire wolf is “the world’s first successfully de-extincted animal”, Colossal Biosciences claimed on 7 April. And many people seemed to believe it. New Scientist was one of the few media outlets to reject the claim, pointing out that the animals created by Colossal are just grey wolves with a few gene edits.

Now, in a subsequent interview, Colossal’s chief scientist Beth Shapiro appears to agree. “It’s not possible to bring something back that is identical to a species that used to be alive. Our animals are grey wolves with 20 edits that are cloned,” she tells New Scientist. “And we’ve said that from the very beginning. Colloquially, they’re calling them dire wolves and that makes people angry.”

I haven’t seen the interview, but. . . .

Richard Grenyer at the University of Oxford says this is a major departure from what Colossal has said previously. “I read that as a clear statement of her view of what they did and didn’t do – and that what they didn’t do was bring back a dire wolf from extinction.”

“I think there is a serious inconsistency between the contents of the statement and the actions and publicity material – including the standard content of the website, not just [the] press briefing around the dire wolf – of the company,” he says.

For instance, the Colossal press release announcing the birth of the gene-edited wolves refers to them as “dire wolves” throughout. Shapiro defended this claim in an interview with New Scientist on 7 April.

“We are using the morphological species concept and saying, if they look like this animal, then they are the animal,” she said at the time.

I know of no biologist who adheres to the morphological species concept, and even if they do, they wouldn’t say “if they look like species X (with “like” being totally ambiguous), then they are members of species X. A superficial resemblance is not enough, and even then we don’t know what the real, extinct dire wolf looked like.

See my analogy with the Ferrari above, or, in a funny analogy in a NYT critique of Colossal, there’s this:

Calling the pups dire wolves, wrote the evolutionary biologist Rich Grenyer, is “like claiming to have brought Napoleon back from the dead by asking a short Frenchman to wear his hat.”

If you’ve followed Colossal’s statements, or gone to the de-extinction part of its website, the company is still claiming that it’s more or less bringing back species, though as I recall from earlier versions, they’ve walked back some of their claims. Now, for instance, they single out just six physical or physiological traits in the woolly mammoth that they’re trying to tweak, and they are still claiming that their efforts will make serious inroads on the problem of species extinction.

Here’s a kicker. Colossal engineered white coats into the three faux “dire wolves,” apparently because the animals (made famous by the t.v. series “Game of Thrones) were white on television. But. . .

It is actually unclear whether the gene-edited wolves look like dire wolves. For instance, there is some evidence dire wolves had reddish rather than white coats, according to Claudio Sillero at the University of Oxford.

And here’s one more claim that isn’t all what it seems to be:

Yet even when Sillero and other experts put out a statement saying the gene-edited grey wolves aren’t dire wolves, the company stuck to its guns. “[W]e stand by our decision to refer to Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi colloquially as dire wolves,” Colossal said in a statement on X. [JAC: Don’t bother looking up the tweet, as it’s no longer about dire wolves.]

But in her more recent interview with New Scientist, Shapiro claims Colossal made it clear from the start that the animals are just gene-edited grey wolves.

“We didn’t ever hide that that’s what it was. People were mad because we were calling them dire wolves,” she says. “Then they say to us, but they’re just grey wolves with 20 edits. But the point is we said that from the beginning. They’re grey wolves with 20 edits.”

Well, this is partly true. There were indeed 20 edits in the gray wolf genome, made in 14 genes, but five of those edits weren’t taken from the ancient DNA of the dire wolf; they were taken from mutations in dogs and gray wolves that resembled what Colossal thought dire wolves looked like. (We’re still not sure.) And among those five dog/wolf mutants were the color alleles that turned the faux wolves white.

On Colossal’s website, you can still see them claiming that they de-extincted the dire wolf:

Note Colossal’s claim that they “successfully restored a once-eradicated species”.  Now that is simply wrong. They used 15 edits taken from the dire wolf genome to produce a gray wolf that has only a tiny, tiny portion of dire wolf genome. Were I in Colossal, I’d simply drop the word “de-extinction.” But of course you don’t attract donor or make money by saying that you’re “tweaking an existing species to look like an extinct one.”

A new experiment encodes quantum information in the motion of the atoms and creates a state known as hyper-entanglement, in which two or more traits are linked among a pair of atoms.

A new experiment encodes quantum information in the motion of the atoms and creates a state known as hyper-entanglement, in which two or more traits are linked among a pair of atoms.

Researchers united insights from cellular biology, quantum computing, old-fashioned semiconductors and high-definition TVs to both create a revolutionary new quantum biosensor. In doing so, they shed light on a longstanding mystery in quantum materials.