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The first flyby images of the Moon captured by NASA’s Artemis II astronauts during their historic test flight reveal some regions no human has seen, including a rare in-space solar eclipse. Released Tuesday, astronauts captured the images April 6 during the mission’s seven-hour flyby of the lunar far side, showing humanity’s return to the Moon’s […]

Observing the Taurus Molecular Cloud, a research team led by Kyushu University has found that during the early growth period of a baby star, the protostellar disk blows magnetic flux 1,000 au in size and creates a giant, relatively warm ring. Describing these phenomena as a baby star’s “sneezes,” these expulsions of energy and gas help the star to properly develop.

Researchers who observed a murderous conflict unfolding in a once-unified group of wild chimpanzees say there are parallels with civil wars in human societies

It was a rough morning on Botany Pond. Two undocumented drakes invaded this morning, and I must have spent 45 minutes chasing them around with my squirt gun. They would leave (along with Armon, who always returns), but then come back again. When they are around they will harass Vashti, even driving her off the nest, and that’s not good.

Finally Armon and Vashti were left alone, but I don’t want the undocumented ducks coming back.  Also, when chasing the errant drakes away, I accidentally spooked the wood duck pair, who have taken off.  I was sad because I love them so much, and I hope they return. (They’re clearly not yet nesting.) Armon goes after invaders, but not with great vigor: he’s a bit of a wuss.

But now all is quiet, and we had an epochal event a few minutes ago: four of the five red-eared slider turtles we put into the pond last fall (retrieved before Botany Pond was renovated) showed up, and all were competing for space and sun on a small rock.  There are other rocks they could use, but they like the one below.  I suspect the fifth turtle wandered away from the Pond at some point. This is the first time I’ve been able to see more than three turtles.

I’m exhausted: duck tending is no picnic!

As always, an Aussie who wishes to remain anonymous sent me this link, and noted that New Zealand isn’t the only country in the Antipodes that tries to make science (again “Western science”) coequal with indigenous knowledge.  Clicking on the screenshot below will take you to the strategy developed by the Aussie government: the “Australian Marine Science Strategy 2026-2036”

It begins on p. 2 with a land acknowledgement:

. . continues with a mission statement on page 4:

The National Marine Science Strategy 2026–36 sets out the research and development needed to realise the socioeconomic opportunities and benefits that come from enabling a thriving ocean economy while effectively minimising, mitigating and adapting to the critical challenges facing Australia’s ocean and coasts over the coming decade. It recognises that responding to challenges such as climate change and extreme events, biodiversity collapse and competing ocean uses will not only help ensure a healthy ocean, conservation and national resilience, but also unlock new opportunities for sustainable industries and innovation that deliver long-term environmental and economic prosperity for Australia.

. . . and then sets out seven “national ambitions” for improving our knowledge of marine science, all of which (save one) involve conservation, mitigating climate change, and fostering marine “industries.” The exception is the very first ambition:

Embed First Nations knowledge, innovation and leadership in marine science to ensure sustainable and equitable marine policy and management.

Finally, after going through the ambitions, continuously paying homage to the “knowledge systems” of the First Nations people (i.e., the Aboriginal Australians and Melanesian Torres Strait islanders), the report gives its recommendations. Here’s the very first recommendation (p. 33):

Now there’s nothing wrong with ensuring that the two groups that constitute the First Nations People get equal opportunity to do science and contribute to science. And insofar that the indigenous people have produced knowledge that can be verified by modern science, by all means give them credit and fold that knowledge into modern science. But, as usual, they do more than that. First the program argues, again with a dearth of examples, that “We also have much to learn from the integration and application of Indigenous knowledge systems and Western knowledge systems.” (p. 28). How do they know that? Where are the improvements in marine biology that have already come from “indigenous knowledge systems”?

This is not science or technology, but a drive for scientific equity: making indigenous knowledge coequal with modern science. And that is not even politics, but the sacralization of the oppressed. As we’ve seen so many times before from Canada and New Zealand, it is virtue signaling on a national scale.

A woman with three different autoimmune conditions had all of them treated simultaneously by genetically modifying her immune cells to kill off the rogue ones causing problems

Most readers here (and I) are keen on getting a Democrat elected as President in 2028, and it would be nice as well if the Democrats took over both houses of Congress this fall.  And, indeed, with Trump’s ratings in the dumpster, that may well happen.  But Ruy Texiera is worried that that is not enough: he thinks the Democrats feel that they don’t have to do more than sit back and let Trump self-destruct.  His thesis in this Substack article (the last one in the five years the site has been going), is that the Democrats are jaded and have failed to learn the lessons of the last few years—lessons about what the public wants. This obtuseness, he says, will eventually come back to haunt them, and may even affect Democratic chances for victory in the next few years.

I recommend that you read this article: the message may sound old, but Teixeira expresses it in detail and writes extremely clearly.  The sub-message for Democrats is this: “Don’t let the ‘progressives’ take over the party!”

If you don’t know Teixeira. here’s from his Wikipedia bio (he seems to be pretty much of a centrist):

Ruy Teixeira born December 15, 1951) is an American political scientist and commentator. He is a senior fellow at the centre-right think tank American Enterprise Institute and co-founder and politics editor of the Substack newsletter The Liberal Patriot, along with John Halpin.

He is known for his work on political demography, particularly for the book The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002), which he co-wrote with John Judis. In it, they argue that the US Democratic Party is demographically destined to become a majority party in the early 21st century, a thesis that he later disavowed, citing the rise of the progressive movement in the United States.

. . . Since 2020, Teixeira has written critically about a leftward shift within the Democratic Party.  He has argued that the progressive movement in the United States is over and finished after the 2024 United States elections, positing that Democrats still do not realise it as of 2025.

Click the screenshot to read for free (it’s the lack of money that has apparently killed the site, but it’s too late to subscribe):

Last year he wrote a related piece about Democratic obtuseness, “Is our Democrats learning?“, which gets its ungrammatical title from a G. W. Bush query, “Is our children learning?”.

On to the present piece; my comments are flush left; Teixeira’s quotes are indented.

The problem 

Posing this question again in early spring 2026, it is my sad duty to inform you that our Democrats continue not to learn. If anything, they are increasingly adamant that such learning is not even necessary. Their mantra now might be, paraphrasing that old joke about the British: “No learning please, we’re Democrats.”

The proximate reasons for this complacency are not hard to discern. Trump and many of his administration’s actions are very unpopular and voters’ views on the economy, their most important issue, are dire. Consistent with these sentiments, Democrats did well in the 2025 elections, continue to clean up in special elections, and appear poised to have a very good election this coming November.

These favorable political winds have made it a great deal easier for Democrats to ignore the need for change. Surely the American people have now woken up, are rejecting Trump and Trumpism once and for all and will never be seduced by right populism again.

. . . Currently, the desire for change seems to be hovering around zero, as more and more Democrats have convinced themselves that their problems have essentially been solved. Here at The Liberal Patriot, we know all about that. Funding for our modest enterprise, always precarious, has now completely dried up. Our view that the party has neither solved its problems nor is even very close to doing so has tanked our appeal among partisan Democratic donors, even reform-oriented ones, who now tend to regard us with suspicion. A little heterodoxy is fine but there’s a limit! Hence: no money.

Teixiera then singles out five areas in which, he argues—convincingly—that Democrats haven’t learned. Immigration and trans rights are the most thorough areas he analyzes (though economics will be more decisive), but of course I can’t quote the whole piece. A bit of each:

The culture problem. This is a big one. The yawning gap between the cultural views of the Democratic Party, dominated by liberal professionals, and those of the median working class voter is screamingly obvious. One approach to this problem would be to actually change some of the Democratic Party positions that are so alienating to those voters.

Nah! That would be way too simple plus would create fights within our coalition plus…we’re on the right side of history aren’t we so why the hell would we change our correct, righteous positions? Democrats have instead chosen a different path, aptly summed up by Lauren Egan:

It didn’t take long after the 2024 election—in which their party lost the White House and the Senate—for Democratic leaders to identify the problem: The party had drifted too far to the left on social and cultural issues.

It also didn’t take them long to come up with a solution: simply to shut up about it…

The working-class and rural voter problem. This brings us to the Democrats’ working-class and rural voter problem, also screamingly obvious from long-term trends and the results of the 2024 election. Of course, Democrats take comfort from the copious evidence that many of these voters are now having second thoughts about their support for Trump and the GOP. This can be seen both in low Trump approval and future Republican voting intentions relative to those voters’ 2024 levels of Trump support.

But there is little evidence that declining enthusiasm for Trump has been matched by increased enthusiasm for the Democrats among these voters. Indeed, a careful recent study by Jared Abbott and Joan C. Williams for the invaluable Center for Working-Class Politics finds that “waverers”—those Trump supporters who now say they are not planning to vote Republican in 2028—are overwhelmingly not supporting the Democrats but rather supporting neither party or generally disengaging from politics.

The trans “rights” problem. Every once in a while, some Democratic politician ventures a mild dissent from the trans activist agenda. Without exception, they are met with a brick wall of intense intra-party opposition which typically results in a hasty retreat by said politician. It is truly a litmus test issue.

This is remarkable. Perhaps nothing would surprise a Democratic time traveler from the 20th century as much as the incorporation of transgender “rights” into the Democrats’ 21st century project. Going far beyond basic civil rights in housing, employment, and marriage, Democrats have uncritically embraced the ideological agenda of trans activists who believe gender identity trumps biological sex, and that therefore, for example, transwomen—trans-identified males—are literally women and must be able to access all women’s spaces and opportunities: sports, changing rooms, bathrooms, jails, crisis centers, institutions, etc. . . .

. . . . In reality, sex is a binary; males cannot become females and females cannot become males. Transwomen are not women. They are males who choose to identify as women and may dress, act, and be medically treated so they resemble their biological sex less. But that does not make them women. It makes them males who choose a different lifestyle.

As noted, the remarkably radical approach of trans activists and gender ideologues has been met with little resistance in the Democratic Party. But as evidence mounts that the medicalization of children is not a benign and life-saving approach, but rather a life-changing treatment with many negative effects, and voters stubbornly refuse to endorse the idea that biological sex is just a technicality and more and more strongly oppose the trans activist agenda, Democrats’ identification with gender ideology has become a massive political liability.

Indeed, for many, many voters the Democrats’ embrace of radical transgender ideology and its associated policy agenda has become the most potent exemplar of Democrats’ lack of connection to the real world of ordinary Americans. For these voters, Democrats have definitely strayed into “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes” territory. And if they’re not realistic about something as fundamental as human biology, why should they be trusted about anything else?

Of course trans people deserve those “basic civil rights,” but the clash among the Left is about the “ideological agenda of trans activists.”  I am not aware of any Democratic politican being asked outright by the press, “Do you think that trans women are actually women, and should, for example, be able to compete in women’s sports or be confined in women’s jails?” The press is not doing its job here; after all, part of its duty is to make Americans aware of where their politicians stand. But the mainstream media, being pretty “progressive” itself, is loath to even pose these questions.

Here’s another example of where the press has failed to do its job:

The immigration problem. The immigration issue has been a total disaster for the Democrats. They encouraged mass immigration through lax border and interior enforcement and porous asylum systems that effectively legalized illegal immigration and made a mockery of controlled, legal immigration. Over time, the intense unpopularity of these policies has contributed hugely to tanking Democrats’ working-class support. But to this day where are the Democratic politicians who are willing to unapologetically proclaim the following fundamentals of a realistic immigration policy?

There follows a list of ten reasonable propositions about immigration that no Democrat will touch.  Teixeira rightly sees the Democrats as effectly espousing an “open border” policy, with the possible exception of immigrants who have committed crimes in their home country or have done so after illegal entry into America.

But so far what has happened? Clearly Democrats are much happier denouncing ICE (including calling for its abolition) and Trump than they are grappling with the immigration issue and making clear, unambiguous commitments to radical reform. Noah Smith rightly sums up the situation:

I have seen zero evidence that progressives have reckoned with their immigration failures of 2021-23. I have not seen any progressive or prominent Democrat articulate a firm set of principles on the issue of who should be allowed into the country and who should be kicked out.

This was not always the case. Bill Clinton had no problem differentiating between legal and illegal immigration in 1995, and declaring that America had a right to kick out people who come illegally.

I have seen no equivalent expression of principle [JAC: remember, he’s talking about the Democrats] during the second Trump presidency. Every Democrat and progressive thinker can articulate a principled opposition to the brutality and excesses of ICE and to the racism that animates Trump’s immigration policy. But when it comes to the question of whether illegal immigration itself should be punished with deportation, Democrats and progressives alike lapse into an uncomfortable silence.

Every Democratic policy proposal I’ve seen calls to refocus immigration enforcement on those who commit crimes other than crossing the border illegally. But what about those who commit no such crime? If someone who crosses illegally and then lives peacefully and otherwise lawfully in America should be protected from deportation, how is the right-wing charge of “open borders” a false one?

Why can’t a reporter ask Elizabeth Warren or AOC this question: “Do you favor unrestricted immigration into America, and, if not, who would you exempt?”

And a big problem that’s only going to get worse:

The economic program (or lack thereof) problem. Democrats seem to think that the well-documented discontent with the Trump administration’s economic management now makes the economy “their” issue. In a thermostatic, opposition party sense that may be true, but it remains the case that Democrats do not have an advantage over Republicans on handling the economy.

This makes sense since voters viewed the previous Democratic administration quite negatively on economic management. They may not like what Trump has done, but they have not forgotten what Democrats did.

And let’s face it: the current Democratic economic program is quite thin; voters can reasonably question whether Democratic plans for the economy would be much of an improvement over what the previous Democratic administration delivered. Take energy.

. . . Rounding out the hit parade of Democratic economic policy ideas is that old favorite, “tax the rich.” There are now several versions in circulation whose policy defects we will pass over in charitable silence. But if this is what now passes for an innovative Democratic economic policy idea, they are perhaps in more trouble than I thought.

Feel free to agree or disagree below, but I recommend reading the whole article. I’m not only worried about the Democratic prospects in the next two years, but also about whether if Democrats do get in, it will be “progressive” Democrats or disguised progressives like Kamala Harris.

Here are Teixeira’s last words ever on this website:

Looking over this list of problems, one thing that stands out to me is that Democrats have never come to terms with how profoundly mistaken many of their priorities have been. These haven’t just been minor errors in implementing an otherwise fine program. Much of the program was simply wrong and, arguably, not even progressive.

It’s time—past time—for Democrats to discard the conceit that they are on the right side of history and that therefore their positions are, and have been, noble and correct. Until they do so, I do not expect them to develop the dominant majority coalition they seek and vanquish right populism. Indeed, it could be the other way around. That’s a sobering thought.

I’m not as pessimistic as Teixeira, but it’s time for liberals to speak out against illiberalism in their party, and demand that their candidates listen to their constituents.

Earth’s nights are steadily getting brighter overall, but the changes vary dramatically by region. Rapid urban growth is lighting up countries like China and India, while parts of Europe are dimming due to energy-saving efforts and new lighting technologies. The most detailed satellite analysis yet shows these shifts happening faster and more unevenly than expected. Even global trends can mask sharp local contrasts, from war-related blackouts to deliberate reductions in light pollution.

Reading the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson brings the benefits and pitfalls of efforts to terraform the Red Planet into sharp relief. Since the 1970s, when Carl Sagan first suggested the possibility that we could make Mars more Earth-like, that process has been a staple of science fiction. But there’s always been a significant amount of humanity that thinks we shouldn’t. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago and his co-authors skirts around the ethical and moral questions of whether we should and tries to take a long hard look at whether we can.

Are we getting close to the time when parents would have the option of genetically engineering their children at the embryo stage? If so, is this a good thing, a bad thing, or both? In order for this to happen such engineering would need to be technically, legally, and commercially viable. Let’s take these in order, and then discuss the potential implications.

The main reason this is even a topic for discussion is because genetically engineering is technically feasible. Obviously we do it to plants and animals all the time. We also have increasingly powerful and affordable technology for doing so, such as CRISPR. This is already powerful and practical enough for small startups to perform CRISPR as a service, if it were legal. We already have FDA-approved CRISPR treatments, and have performed personalized CRISPR therapy. CRISPR is fast and affordable enough to have made its way into the clinic. But there is a crucial difference between these treatments and genetic modification – these treatments affect somatic cells, not germ-line cells. This means that whatever change is made will stay confined to that one individual, and cannot get into the human gene pool. What we are talking about now is genetically modifying an embryo at an early enough stage that it will affect all cells, including germ cells. This means that these changed can be passed down to the next generation, and effectively enter the human gene pool.

This difference is precisely why there is regulation dealing with such procedures in many countries, including the US. In the US the situation is a little complex. It is not explicitly illegal to perform germ line gene editing on humans. However, there is a ban on federal funding for any such research.  This does allow for private funding of such research, but any resulting treatment would still need FDA approval, which is highly unlikely in the current environment. Despite this, there is discussion among several startups to start exploring this idea. Why this is happening all at once is not clear, but it seems like we have crossed some threshold and startups have noticed. With current regulation, where does that leave us regarding our three criteria?

Technically a CRISPR-based germ-line treatment for humans is possible. We do have the technology. What needs to be worked out is specific changes and their results. This would require clinical trials, and that is the main stumbling block in the US and some other countries. It seems unlikely the FDA would approve such trials, and therefore there would be no way to even work towards FDA approval. A company could theoretically do privately funded studies that are not part of FDA approval, but they would still need ethical approval (IRB approval) for such studies, which may prove difficult (although not necessarily impossible). Such research could be carried out in countries with more lax regulations, however. Over 70 nations have such regulations, which means many do not. So technically we are theoretically close to having marketable treatments designed to change actual human genetic inheritance.

Legally, in most developed nations there does not appear to be any appetite for allowing human germ-line manipulation. However, such services could be offered in countries without hindering regulations, perhaps the same countries in which the translational research was done. We currently do not have any international bans or regulations. The WHO advises against germline engineering, but there are no legally-binding international regulations. This is a technology that definitely requires not only an international consensus but enforceable regulations, because what happens in one country can affect the entire human population.

In short, there is a pathway to skirt any current regulations and make such treatments available. However, if startups start developing germline-altering treatments, that might motivate governments to find ways to regulate and effectively ban such treatments. Would such treatments be commercially viable? If by this you mean – would there be a customer base willing to pay enough to make it a profitable service, the answer is clearly yes. If you mean – are there companies currently offering such services, the answer is no. But that may be changing soon.

What could be the implications of this technology? It depends on how it is regulated and used (like so many advanced technologies). I will speculate on what I think is the best-case and worst-case scenarios. Best case, such technology would be used to minimize the burden of genetic disease. We already have treatments to sort sperm to avoid sex-linked mutations and to select more genetically healthy sperm. But what if we could do this down to the individual gene, and make sure the IVF occurs only with sperm that does not contain an allele for a genetic disease? I can’t see any downside to this.

The next step, however, would be altering genes, not just selecting them. But again, this could be limited to altering genes that would result in a genetic disease to a healthy version. The resulting gene would be one that is already in the human population, and the only result would be the elimination of one version of that gene that is disease-causing. Again, hard to see a downside. Such treatments would almost certainly be more cost effective than managing the genetic disease itself. And if it were done to the germline, it would only have to be once for that genetic line. I suspect that when such treatments become technically available, and confidence is high enough in the technology itself, they will become legal and available.

But there are at least two other categories of genetic alteration that become increasingly problematic. The first category we can call disease treating. The second is risk modifying. What if we could also alter a gene from one version that conveys a high risk of ultimately developing Alzheimer’s disease, to another version that has a relatively low risk? This would not be treating a genetic disease, but simply altering the genetic risk of developing a disease. We could potentially do the same for high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure. Again, we would not be introducing any new genes into the human gene pool, just giving people alleles that convey lower risk of specific diseases.

However, there is a potential downside here. If such treatments became common, they would potentially reduce genetic diversity in the human population. Many genes that convey a high risk in one area have other benefits. They just have different tradeoffs. We may be reducing disease risk in one area, but also reducing resilience to other diseases. In other words, there is a potential for unforeseen consequences. Also, the number of people who could potentially benefit from such genetic alterations is much higher than for genetic diseases, so the implications for the human gene pool are greater. The risk-benefit ratio is therefore harder to calculate. I think such treatments might be viable one day, but would require a lot of research to minimize the possibility of unforeseen negative consequences.

The final category I will call gain-of-function alterations. This might include introducing genes from other species or novel genetic alleles that provide a phenotype that does not currently exist in the human population. This category has the greatest potential for change, and therefore for both best-case and worst-case scenarios. Some people might think there is no best-case in this category, and that is reasonable if you think that the risk will never be worth it, and such changes could alter what it even means to be human. If we still want to imagine a best-case, that might involve limiting such changes to ones for which there is a robust consensus that they would be good for humanity with little to no down side. This would also have to include some consideration of fair and just access to such changes. Perhaps this might include genes that help adapt people to living in space or on Mars, or eliminate addiction. It’s hard to think of a lot of examples outside of disease modification, however.

It is much easier to imagine worst-case scenarios. The common ones that are frequently raised include creating not just different classes of people, but different subspecies. Wealthy individual could potentially afford a suite of upgrades to their children, making them smarter, stronger, healthier, with a longer lifespan. It’s hard to imagine such a thing ending well. Another classic doomsday scenario is the creation of genetic supersoldiers, creating an arms race among competitive nations to engineer the most deadly soldiers. Again, hard to see this ending well. Yet another common sci-fi scenario is the introduction of genes that will significantly alter the human phenotype, blurring the lines between human and non-human. And of course the ultimate worst-case scenario, an accidental (or perhaps not so accidental) genetic apocalypse. There is a range of possibilities here as well, with the absolute worst imagined in a Rick and Morty episode where the entire planet was reduced to genetic monstrosities.

There are also some edge cases that have complex elements, including some truly horrific ones. What if, for example, genetic alteration could change someone’s apparent “race” or even their biological sex? What would be the social implications of an African family deciding they wanted a European looking child, or vice versa. How common would this become? Would apparent race become a fad, shifting from generation to generation? It is now common among some Asian youth to seek eyelid cosmetic surgery. What if this could be accomplished with gene therapy? How accepting would society be towards pre-pubescent children wanting gene therapy to alter their biological sex so that they go through puberty as the other sex? How would the furry community react to the possibility of genetic furriness? What if parents wanted for their children a standard of beauty that is generally considered to be extreme, even freakish? What if a culture decides that women should be genetically prevented from having certain bodily functions?

Genetic alteration is a powerful technology, especially when applied to the germline. There is the potential for extreme good, extreme harm, and extreme weirdness. Sounds like an area that would benefit from thoughtful regulation, and not left to the whims of startup culture.

 

The post Are Genetically Engineered Humans Coming first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Elizabeth Banks stars as an author shrunk by her scientist husband Matthew Macfadyen in this major new series – but it fails to live up to its promise, finds Josh Bell

A drug known only as compound X helped to remove the problematic proteins associated with Parkinson's disease from the brains of mice, and improved their balance and mobility

Many products have claims to to “support” your mitochondria. For healthy adults, these claims remain largely speculative and unproven.

The post Do our mitochondria need support? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has updated the Red List status for three of Antarctica’s most famous species after a dire assessment of their prospects under climate change

Two images of protoplanetary disks side-by-side. The left image shows a dark horizontal band covering the star, with broad, colorful, conical outflows above and below it, and a narrow jet pointing directly up and down from the star. The right image shows the star within a yellow dusty disk, with scattered dust creating purple lobes above and below the disk. Each is on a black background with several galaxies or stars around it.

A Mercury lander mission would create opportunities to sample unique geological features. However, extreme temperature fluctuations on Mercury’s surface pose challenges for exploration on the planetary surface. In a narrow region near the terminator, temperate conditions would allow a rover to run on solar power and collect data and surface samples without needing to withstand the extreme heat.

In the vastness of the Universe, any new object with interesting properties can spur the search for similar objects, potentially establishing a new class of stars. In a paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and an arXiv preprint, researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) describe two stellar remnants that share five properties, including X-ray emission, despite being isolated objects. According to the team, these two remnants are sufficient to define a new class of stars.

Measurements by buoys at four latitudes in the western Atlantic provide the strongest evidence yet that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

The maths problems that secure your online bank transactions and emails may soon be undermined by quantum technology. It’s imperative we act now, before it’s too late