Human | Jotup

The Mars Sample Return mission has a shaky future, and NASA is calling on private companies for backup

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星期四, 四月 25, 2024

A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble.

Key Points:

A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble.
Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040.

The habitability of Mars

But studies conducted over the past decade suggest that the planet may have been much warmer and wetter several billion years ago.
Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, is still active; its twin, Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021, will play a crucial role in the sample return mission.

Why astronomers want Mars samples

This meteorite is a piece of Mars that landed in Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984.
They’re free samples that fell to Earth, so while it might seem intuitive to study them, scientists can’t tell where on Mars these meteorites originated.
There’s no substitute for bringing back samples from a region known to have been hospitable to life in the past.

A compelling and complex mission

Bringing Mars rocks back to Earth is the most challenging mission NASA has ever attempted, and the first stage has already started.
The rover inserts the samples in containers the size of test tubes.
The complex choreography of this mission, which involves a rover, a lander, a rocket, an orbiter and the coordination of two space agencies, is unprecedented.

Sample return breaks the bank

Mars Sample Return has blown a hole in NASA’s budget, which threatens other missions that need funding.
It’s likely that Mars Sample Return’s budget partly caused the layoffs, but they also came down to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory having an overfull plate of planetary missions and suffering budget cuts.
Within the past year, an independent review board report and a report from the NASA Office of Inspector General raised deep concerns about the viability of the sample return mission.

Thinking out of the box

Proposals are due by May 17, which is an extremely tight timeline for such a challenging design effort.
And it’ll be hard for private companies to improve on the plan that experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had over a decade to put together.
For the Artemis III mission, SpaceX will attempt to land humans on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

It’s not clear whether that rocket could return the samples that Perseverance has already gathered.
Sending astronauts also carries extra risk and cost, and a strategy of using people might end up more complicated than NASA’s current plan.
With all these pressures and constraints, NASA has chosen to see whether the private sector can come up with a winning solution.

Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Large retailers don’t have smokestacks, but they generate a lot of pollution − and states are starting to regulate it

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星期四, 四月 25, 2024

Carriers in the U.S. shipped 64 packages for every American in 2022, so it’s quite possible.

Key Points:

Carriers in the U.S. shipped 64 packages for every American in 2022, so it’s quite possible.
That commerce reflects the expansion of large-scale retail in recent decades, especially big-box chains like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Home Depot that sell goods both in stores and online.
While mail-order commerce is convenient, these centers also have harmful impacts, including traffic congestion and air and water pollution.

Indirect pollution sources

The company played a prominent role in the 1970s as Congress expanded federal power to regulate air pollution nationwide under the Clean Air Act of 1970.
To meet those standards, in the mid-1970s lawmakers and regulators considered adopting transportation controls that could address indirect pollution sources – entities that did not generate air pollution themselves but attracted large numbers of sources, such as cars and trucks, that did.
One of its executives, George Hite, was a leading spokesperson against regulating indirect pollution sources.
Hite asserted that because shopping centers were one-stop destinations for consumers, they actually reduced air pollution from consumers’ trips.

Big-box boom

These companies relied on a new type of warehouse: the distribution center, which used computer technology to make supply chains more efficient.
Compared with earlier warehouses, distribution centers were larger and focused on efficient movement of goods rather than storage.
In the 1990s, communities across the country began organizing to slow the expansion of big-box stores.
State and local officials refused to reconsider the deal they had reached with Target, which included grants and other tax subsidies.

Probing retail’s environmental costs

Target and other retailers are meeting new opposition, including pushback from environmental justice groups, which argue that these companies’ operations increase traffic and degrade air quality.
In Southern California, the powerful South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates regional air quality, has taken this step with Rule 2305.
This regulation is the first in the U.S. to address emissions generated by trucks traveling to and from large warehouse facilities.
Point targets are based on each facility’s size, number of truck trips and other factors.

Shopping carts vs. smokestacks

For example, Target touts investments to make its facilities more energy efficient and place solar panels on its stores and distribution centers.
Including emissions generated when suppliers shipped these goods to Target’s distribution network more than doubled this figure.
In my view, the retail sector’s impacts on air, water, waste generation and Earth’s climate call for national-level responses.
Big-box stores may not look like smoke-belching factories, but their companies’ operations affect the environment in ways that have become too big to ignore.

Johnathan Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Sugar gums have a reputation as risky branch-droppers but they’re important to bees, parrots and possums

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星期四, 四月 25, 2024

Eyre Peninsula, Bee, Farmer, Growth, Risk, Life, Human, University, Pollen, Breeding, Flinders Ranges, Safety, Retirement, Tree, Ballarat Road, Animal, Silviculture

Less than a year after my retirement, it shed a couple of major limbs and was removed.

Key Points:

Less than a year after my retirement, it shed a couple of major limbs and was removed.
I had been its custodian for over 20 years and took my responsibility seriously, extending its useful life.
It’s a shame, because there is much to appreciate and admire about the sugar gum.

Read more:
Hard to kill: here's why eucalypts are survival experts

A hardy and impressive tree

In its natural habitat in the Flinders Ranges, sugar gum can be an impressive single-trunked tree.
Like many eucalypts, sugar gum is a hardy tree with plenty of dormant buds (epicormic buds) under its smooth yellow, grey bark.
When the tree is damaged by fire or stressed, these buds may become active and produce lots of new shoots.

A tree that leaves a lasting impression

Coming from the western suburbs of Melbourne, I remember lots of them in rows at the intriguing Albion Explosive Factory.
These trees left a lasting impression.
More broadly, though, many in the wider Australian community still see sugar gums only as risky trees that drop dangerous branches.

Lopping and topping

These trees are capable of growth in heavy clay soils, drought tolerant and efficient water users.
They were a tree that more or less looked after themselves in tough conditions.
Some were regularly pruned at a lower height to encourage growth for the rapid production of firewood or fence posts.
But when you stopped lopping and topping, the shoots grew quickly.

A haven for native animals

Many sugar gums feature hollows and cavities, which become a haven for native fauna.
These provide a home for a possum or two, but it is perhaps parrots that benefit most.
At certain times of year, there is a deafening din around sugar gums as sulphur-crested cockatoos, corellas and lorikeets jostle for nesting sites.

Gregory Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Nearsightedness is at epidemic levels – and the problem begins in childhood

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星期四, 四月 25, 2024

Some even consider myopia, also known as nearsightedness, an epidemic.

Key Points:

Some even consider myopia, also known as nearsightedness, an epidemic.
In the United States alone, spending on corrective lenses, eye tests and related expenses may be as high as US$7.2 billion a year.
To answer that question, first let’s examine what causes myopia – and what reduces it.

How myopia develops

Optometrists have learned a great deal about the progression of myopia by studying visual development in infant chickens.
Just like in humans, if visual input is distorted, a chick’s eyes grow too large, resulting in myopia.
The more time we spend focusing on something within arm’s length of our faces, dubbed “near work,” the greater the odds of having myopia.

Outside light keeps myopia at bay

A 2022 study, for example, found that myopia rates were more than four times greater for children who didn’t spend much time outdoors – say, once or twice a week – compared with those who were outside daily.
In another paper, from 2012, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of seven studies that compared duration of time spent outdoors with myopia incidence.
The odds of developing myopia dropped by 2% for each hour spent outside per week.

What’s driving the epidemic

Globally, a big part of this is due to the rapid development and industrialization of countries in East Asia over the last 50 years.
Around that time, young people began spending more time in classrooms reading and focusing on other objects very close to their eyes and less time outdoors.
This is also what researchers observed in the North American Arctic after World War II, when schooling was mandated for Indigenous people.

Treating myopia

Fortunately, just a few minutes a day with glasses or contact lenses that correct for blur stops the progression of myopia, which is why early vision testing and vision correction are important to limit the development of myopia.
People with with high myopia, however, have increased risk of blindness and other severe eye problems, such as retinal detachment, in which the retina pulls away from the the back of the eye.
The chances of myopia-related macular degeneration increase by 40% for each diopter of myopia.

Andrew Herbert receives funding from NSF.

What is ‘techno-optimism’? 2 technology scholars explain the ideology that says technology is the answer to every problem

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星期四, 四月 25, 2024

Nor is it in a state of decline, as Andreessen and other techno-optimists such as Elon Musk would have you believe.

Key Points:

Nor is it in a state of decline, as Andreessen and other techno-optimists such as Elon Musk would have you believe.
As scholars who study technology and society, we have observed that techno-optimism easily attaches itself to the public’s desire for a better future.
The questions of how that future will be built, what that future will look like and who will benefit from those changes are harder to answer.
It suggests that technological progress can solve every problem known to humans – a belief also known as techno-solutionism.

The weather experiment that really flooded Dubai

Retrieved on:

星期四, 四月 25, 2024

That was the story last week when more than a year’s worth of rain fell in a day on the Arabian Peninsula, one of the world’s driest regions.

Key Points:

That was the story last week when more than a year’s worth of rain fell in a day on the Arabian Peninsula, one of the world’s driest regions.
Desert cities like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) suffered floods that submerged motorways and airport runways.

Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue.
Richard Washington, a professor of climate science at the University of Oxford, has seen the inside of a storm.
To confirm if cloud seeding really could breed record-breaking rain, he once boarded an aeroplane bound for a thundercloud over the South Africa-Mozambique border.

What caused the flood?

But by flying a lot of missions, half with cloud seeding and half without, and measuring rainfall between the two, meteorologists eventually showed that cloud seeding did modify rain rates in some storms.
That’s not what caused Dubai’s floods though.

Their approach is to fire hygroscopic (water-attracting) salt flares from aircraft into warm cumuliform clouds,” Washington says.
“So could seeding have built a huge storm system the size of France?
Let’s be clear, that would be like a breeze stopping an intercity train going at full tilt.

The experiment of our lives

Although last week’s deluge was unusual, the Arabian Peninsula does tend to receive more of its precipitation in heavy bursts than steady showers.
What is likely to kill more people as temperatures rise in this part of the world is not water, but heat.
At this threshold the air is so hot and humid that you cannot lower your temperature to a safe level by sweating.

Peter Irvine, a lecturer in earth sciences at UCL, proposes dimming the sun by pumping microscopic particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect some of its rays.
These layers of gases that surround our planet have nurtured life by keeping temperatures stable and harmful radiation out.
Read more:
Time is running out on climate change, but geoengineering has dangers of its own
As humanity contemplates another large-scale experiment in our atmosphere, there is another, even bigger one, waiting to be resolved.

What does new micro price evidence tell us about inflation dynamics and monetary policy transmission?

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星期四, 四月 25, 2024

To understand inflation dynamics, it is necessary to analyse how often and by how much individual prices change.

Key Points:

To understand inflation dynamics, it is necessary to analyse how often and by how much individual prices change.
This article discusses what micro price data gathered by the European System of Central Banks’ Price-setting Microdata Analysis Network (PRISMA) tell us about the way firms set their prices.

Press release - Opening: 22-25 April plenary session

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星期二, 四月 23, 2024

Freedom, Intelligence, Agriculture, Risk, Climate, Novel, CAP, Parliament, Commission, Council, Energy, Human

- Swedish nationals held in Iran

Key Points:

- Swedish nationals held in Iran
- Last plenary before the elections
President Metsola opened the 22-25 April plenary session in Strasbourg with the following announcements.
Parliament once again condemns their arrest by the Iranian regime in the strongest possible terms, and will continue to work to secure the release of all those held on trumped up-charges.
The vote on Simplification of certain CAP rules will take place during the second voting session on Wednesday afternoon.
Contacts:
Andreas KLEINEREditorial Coordinator / Press Officer (DE)
Estefanía NARRILLOSEditorial Coordinator / Press Officer (ES)
Natalie Kate KONTOULISPress Officer

Parrot fever cases amid a ‘mysterious’ pneumonia outbreak in Argentina – what you need to know about psittacosis

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星期二, 四月 23, 2024

This is how the yet-to-be-named disease COVID-19 was first described when a cluster of cases was identified in Wuhan, China.

Key Points:

This is how the yet-to-be-named disease COVID-19 was first described when a cluster of cases was identified in Wuhan, China.
This term is being used again to describe a cluster of “atypical” pneumonia cases in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Some cases of psittacosis, also known as “parrot fever”, have been confirmed within this cluster.
Psittacosis, or parrot fever, is caused by bacteria called Chlamydia psittaci, and is a common infection in birds.
A 2017 systematic review concluded that around 1% of pneumonia cases not acquired in a hospital may be the result of psittacosis.

There are often local respiratory infectious disease outbreaks, potentially causing severe pneumonia, and these do not spread more widely or internationally.
At the time of writing this article, there is very little information available about the Argentina outbreak.
There has been no statement from the public health authorities in Argentina, nor the WHO Pan America Health Organisation.
Among the key pieces of information we really would need to know is the likelihood of human-to-human transmission.

Michael Head has previously received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development, and currently receives funding from the UK Medical Research Foundation.

Georgia is sliding towards autocracy after government moves to force through bill on ‘foreign agents’

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星期二, 四月 23, 2024

Democracy, National Democratic Institute, Survival, Attack, Non-governmental organization, International development, LGBTQ, Kremlin, Family, Human

The law would have required civil society groups and the media to register as being “under foreign influence” if they receive funding from abroad.

Key Points:

The law would have required civil society groups and the media to register as being “under foreign influence” if they receive funding from abroad.
This type of funding is a lifeline for most non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on human rights as they often receive scant domestic support.
The Georgian government, which is led by the Russian-leaning Georgian Dream Party, was forced to withdraw its bill after mass protests broke out.

Foreign agents law

From November 2012, any NGO that received foreign funding and engaged in political activities would have to self-report as a “foreign agent”.
These laws became even tougher in 2014 when the justice ministry was given the power to register groups as foreign agents without their consent.
Under the leadership of Viktor Orban, Hungary passed its first foreign agent law in 2017 – a huge blow for its own democracy.
Hungary has more recently passed a new sovereignty protection law, creating an investigative body with sweeping powers to gather information on groups or individuals that receive foreign funding and may try to influence public debate.

Abandoning democracy

Georgia’s former president and current de facto leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has tried to play on people’s fears that western-style democracy brings challenges to the traditional family, arguing that the country must rid itself of values alien to Georgia.
This is in line with the Kremlin’s crackdown on LGBTQ people, particularly since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Georgians are also becoming increasingly dismayed that the ruling party is abandoning even a minimal commitment to democracy.
Though these laws are passed in defence of sovereignty, they represent a clear assault on democracy.

Natasha Lindstaedt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.