Science

Three passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius have died due to an outbreak of hantavirus, a rare illness transmitted by rodents

Three people have died on board the cruise ship MV Hondius due to an outbreak of hantavirus, a rare illness transmitted by rodents

Today’s photos come from reader Jan Malik, who took pictures of wildflowers in the Catskills. Jan’s photos and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on them.

During my recent hike in the Catskills, near Woodstock, NY, I found some spring flowers, ephemerals as they call them. They are hardy plants that use the narrow window between snow disappearance and tree leaves developing to get nearly all of their photosynthesis done for the year. They seem delicate but they need to withstand temperatures well below freezing – it was snowing on the second day of my hike and these plants weathered it just fine. To use this quick growth strategy, these plants have to be perennials, with underground roots, tubers or bulbs preserving the nutrients. All of these are native to the Northeast – there is no shortage of “undocumented” plants in the Catskills but I haven’t included them here.

Bluets (Houstonia caerulea), not so common in the Catskills. They are more widespread in acidic regions like the White Mountains of New Hampshire or generally in acidic soil:

Red trillium (Trillium erectum), with their flowers pointing down (I had to get low to take this picture) despite the second part of their binomial; that part of the name refers to an upright stalk. Their close cousin, the white-petaled Painted trillium is rare in the Catskills, preferring more acidic soils of the Adirondacks:

Spring beauties (Claytonia virginica), were everywhere, their flowers opening as soon as the temperature was high enough for the small insects to fly. They have a variable amount of pink in the petals, some plants produce them very pale and some very pink:

Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) have flower shape quite similar to the Bleeding hearts, and they are indeed in the same family Papaveraceae:

Downy yellow violet (Viola pubescens). I think the black stripes have the same function as landing strips on an airfield, guiding pollinators to nectar:

There were many blue violets, this one is probably a Selkirk’s Violet (Viola selkirkii):

Canada violet (Viola canadensis) has flowers growing from a tall stalk, unlike other violets. There were other violets too in that wood, each species with unique preference for moisture, sun exposure, acidity etc.:

A lovely plant, Catskills’ specialty – ramps (Allium tricoccum), or wild leeks as some call them. They don’t bloom until late May or June, when leaves will have withered. In early spring the leaves are juicy, fragrant and tender, can be stewed, fried or just eaten raw with a sandwich. I collect them by picking one leaf from a plant (there are two to three leaves per plant), which should not kill it. The underground bulb is also delicious, reportedly, but I could never bring myself to kill it. Ramps developed their chemical defences (thiosulfinates) against animal browsing, and while deer eat it only in an emergency, for great apes it is perversely a culinary attraction. Waking up to a chill morning and leaning out of the tent to collect a few leaves for breakfast is what makes early spring hiking in the Catskills so special:

Hobble-bush (Viburnum lantanoides) flowers grow from a woody shrub. The plant can spread vegetatively, by sending its twigs low on the ground and forming roots. Hobblebush thicket can be a real obstacle for an off-trail hiker, but the plant redeems itself by developing tasty berries (ripe when black) in fall. These berries are in short supply though as thrushes get to them first:

Wild oats (Uvularia sessilifolia), not much to do with cereals, just droopy leaves resembling ears of real oats:

Dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius) has edible underground tubers. These plants are too rare in the Catskills to dig one up and try cooking it, though:

Crinkle root (Cardamine diphylla). It is a member of the mustard family and its leaves are edible (as a salad or stewed) when young:

Blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) in its purple-petal variant. Later in summer, the plant will produce round dark-blue berries, somewhat similar to individual grapes. They look quite attractive but are said to be poisonous. Always eager to engage in culinary biology, I once tried to bite on a berry and can assure you there is no risk of being poisoned – the taste is so awful that swallowing it is out of the question:

Trout lily (Erythronium americanum) gets its name from spots on its leaves, which are not unlike those on the fish. There were plenty of those plants in the open Catskill forest, but only a small portion of them are in bloom. They need to grow for a couple years, collecting nutrients in their tubers before becoming mature:

Mars has lots of glaciers located along its mid-latitudes. We’ve known this for years thanks to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO’s) SHARAD sounder. But, despite all of the excellent data it’s managed to gather, SHARAD doesn’t have high enough resolution to accurately measure the boundary between the glacier itself and the rocky material that has been deposited on top of it over the course of billions of years. A new study, published in the journal JGR Planets, details a potential method of finding that boundary—by using a drone.

A biopsy of a woman's cancer seems to have triggered an immune response against the tumour, putting her into remission

One of the best-performing models in cosmology is also one with the least physical rationale behind it. Columnist Leah Crane says this leaves us with a puzzle that could make or break physics as we know it

A Closer Look at a Viral Claim

The post Can Ivermectin and Mebendazole Treat Cancer? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Doug Whitney has a genetic mutation that means he should have developed Alzheimer’s disease decades ago, but his long-term work in hot engine rooms may have protected him in a similar way to sauna therapy

Doug Whitney has a genetic mutation that means he should have developed Alzheimer’s disease decades ago, but his long-term work in hot engine rooms may have protected him in a similar way to sauna therapy

Two quantum computers and two supercomputers teamed up to break the record for the biggest molecule yet to be simulated using quantum hardware

A new quantum physics study reveals that simply changing a magnetic field over time can unlock entirely new forms of matter that don’t exist under normal conditions. By carefully “driving” materials with timed magnetic shifts, researchers created exotic quantum states that could be far more stable and resistant to errors—one of the biggest challenges in quantum computing. This breakthrough suggests that the future of quantum technology may depend not just on what materials are made of, but how they’re manipulated in time.

A new quantum physics study reveals that simply changing a magnetic field over time can unlock entirely new forms of matter that don’t exist under normal conditions. By carefully “driving” materials with timed magnetic shifts, researchers created exotic quantum states that could be far more stable and resistant to errors—one of the biggest challenges in quantum computing. This breakthrough suggests that the future of quantum technology may depend not just on what materials are made of, but how they’re manipulated in time.

Our Moon is still guarding its secrets decades after the last of the Apollo missions lifted off the lunar surface. Lunar scientists still puzzle over just when and how a giant Earth impactor formed our Moon, completely altering our early Earth in the process.

Bill Maher is tired of heaing about stuff like the Overton window, MKUltra, the “shadow docket” of the Supreme Court, looksmaxxing, “heuristic,” “cognitive offloading” and other examples of what he calls “pedantic bullshit.” (But he really hates the Overton Window. His curmudgeonly diatribe segues into a Dr. Seuss-like poem. He winds up arguing that his brain having been filled with useless knowledge—like the names of all the Kardashians and the characters in “Friends”—is “violence.” Indeed!

The guests you see are Financial Times editor Gillian Tett and NYT op-ed columnist Bret Stephens.

Io is a world of extremes. It is by far the most volcanically active world in our solar system. Being continually squeezed in the never-ending tug-of-war between Jupiter and its larger satellites will do that to a moon. As a result, Io has over 400 “paterae” - volcanic depressions that spew lava up onto its surface. And, according to a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv and utilizing data from Juno’s Jupiter InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) tool, we have been massively underestimating the power output of those paterae for decades.

It is appealing to think something as simple as honey could cure a cold or prevent hay fever, but is there evidence to back up honey’s health benefits? Columnist Alice Klein finds that it has legitimate medicinal uses, depending on the type of honey you’ve got

A long-overlooked writing system from 5000 years ago is still largely undeciphered, but could mark the moment humans first represented their speech with written words

A 500-kilometre-wide object in a similar orbit to Pluto challenges our assumptions about small bodies in the outer solar system

Scientists are using sunlight to turn plastic waste into clean fuels like hydrogen, offering a breakthrough solution to both pollution and energy challenges. While still in development, the approach could transform trash into a valuable resource for a low-carbon future.

I haven’t looked at Natasha Hausdorff‘s videos in a while, but you’ll remember her as a British lawyer, an expert in international law, and a “pro bono legal director of the advocacy group, UK Lawyers for Israel.” Here is her reaction to the latest anti-Jewish violence and anti-Israel protests in England, both of which have become regular events.  Here she goes up against Owen Jones,  left-wing “British newspaper columnist, commentator, journalist, author and political activist,” whose Wikipedia entry shows a photo of him wearing a Palestinian flag shirt. The channel is LBC, or Leading British Conversation.

The question is whether the pro-Palestinian marches in the UK should be banned because because they fall outside the boundaries of free speech.  Hausdorff says they are violations because they constitute “hate speech” that incites violence against Jews, while Jones says that they’re not only legal, but a necessary outlet for opinions that Israel is committing genocide against Gaza. (He claims that Israel has killed 100,000 Gazans, which is surely untrue.) Jones is a big proponent of the “genocide canard”, and while I am not sure whether the marches violate British speech law, I agree with her that Israel has not committed genocide against Gazans. Anybody who knows what genocide is and how the IDF operates knows that’s a lie.  But of course Jones has nothing bad to say against Hamas.

In response to Jones, Hausdorff can’t come up with anything that the Israeli government has done to justify the accusations of genocide (she doesn’t mention the West Bank, but may have done so somewhere in her talks or writing). But she correctly notes that the accusations of genocide aren’t being raised against the noncombatant deaths produced by the U.S. in WWII—and in that case, as in virtually all other wars, the ratio of noncombatant deaths to combatant deaths is much higher than seen in Gaza.

Jones cites several academics and “genocide scholars” who back the “g-word” as what Israel is doing in Gaza He adds that one can find identifiable Jews participating in the marches on the Palestinian side.  He places the blame for hunger and destruction on Gaza squarely on the doorstep of Israel, while Hausdorff says that in contrast, it’s the fault of Hamas, which has embedded itself among civilians. Hausdorff argues that accusations of things like “starvation” are untrue, and also claims that the protests are a product of the “Hamas propaganda machine, ” which I think is an unwise accusation even though it is to some degree true: some of the figures and accusations bandied about by the protestors and by Jones and his experts come from Hamas.

Jones seems to argue largely from authority, citing none other than the Lancet and The Economist for the casualty figures, which must have come from Hamas.  Hausdorff says that she’d be willing to debate the cited pro-Palestinian “genocide scholars” any time, but so far they’ve refused to do so.

Here are the notes added to the YouTube site by the UK Lawyers for Israel. I’m not whether if Hausdorff was interrupted in an unwarranted matter: you be the judge.

This recording includes comments on whether restrictions should now be placed on anti-Israel marches in London and other British cities, as well as strongly disputed allegations regarding casualty figures in Gaza, war crimes and genocide.

Unfortunately, Natasha Hausdorff was repeatedly interrupted by the interviewer when she tried to set out the inaccuracy of these allegations. It seems that many interviewers cannot stand to hear the expression of any view that supports Israel – as soon as a person interviewed starts to deploy facts contradicting the false propaganda the interviewer interrupts to prevent the truth being told.

For details of Gaza casualties according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry down to 10 November 2025, see this thread by Gabriel Epstein: https://x.com/GabrielEpsteinX/status/…. This shows that even according to this information (which may itself be distorted by Hamas propaganda):

1. A much higher % of males of fighting age died than of females of the same ages, indicating that Israeli military action targeted combatants and was not indiscriminate.

2. A much higher % of male teenagers died than of female teenagers, indicating that a significant number teenagers, who are classified as children, were killed because they were combatants.

3. The claim initiated by Hamas and disgracefully maintained by the BBC, that 70% of those killed were women and children, is false.

The claim stated by Owen Jones, that the IDF has admitted that 83% of those killed were civilians, is completely bogus, as Chief Magistrate Goldspring found in paragraph 81a of this recent ruling: https://www.uklfi.com/wp-content/uplo…

The details provided by the Gaza Health Ministry do not identify how they died. They probably include around 10,000 who died of natural causes: see Salo Aizenberg https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/2021…. Thousands more may well have been killed by Palestinian fire – rockets falling short, explosive devices, and crossfire. They certainly include 471 allegedly killed in the explosion outside Al Ahli hospital caused by a Palestinian rocket that fell short: see https://www.uklfi.com/false-al-ahli-c…. Well over a thousand other Palestinian rockets also fell short; each of them may have killed dozens of people.

Finally, here’s a related email I got yesterday from the editors of a small publication in the Pacific Northwest that has clearly fallen for some of the Big Lies. I am accused of being a histrionic Zionist, a proponent of settler colonialism—and pro-genocide (they call it “modern Holocaust denial”) as well. Their arguments are largely the same as those of Jones, even citing casualty figures taken from medical journals.  They also try to tell me how to write this website. Finally, they seem unaware of my criticisms of religious Judaism, made on this site as well as in Faith Versus Fact, so they haven’t done their homework. But they don’t really care if I’ve also criticized Jewish superstition: their point is that I am pro-Israel, which they see as immoral.

At any rate, they can take a hike. Their email will not change how I “write my blog”.  The email is indented:

Reading your blog, we were appreciative of the fact that you seemed to promote science and counter narratives from the religious establishments. However, your inability to separate your own Zionist histrionics from what should have been strictly an antitheistic, science-focused platform ruins the experience for anyone who isn’t A) a genocide apologist, B) deeply insecure about their ethnic identity to the point that they associate it with a 20th century settler-colonialist project, or C), both. Does your criticism of religion only extend to Christianity and Islam, or do you take on the Jewish religious establishment too? The most tangible and powerful form of that, of course, being the state of Israel, which reputed medical journals estimate has killed close to 100,000 civilians just since 10/23. Atheism today needs smart, conscientious voices to lead, not modern Holocaust deniers. We won’t change your views with this email, but maybe we can change the way you write your blog to not repel people (a hopefully increasing majority) who are appalled by the Zionist crimes of ethnic cleansing and mass displacement.