Putin HAS to invade Ukraine, or look very WEAK

Putin has amassed a very large army on Ukraine's border.

They have demanded some very big things.

-no more NATO expansion eastward.

-no Ukraine membership in NATO.

-NATO brings its forces back to 1998 locations.


This is some serious stuff. And NATO's response? "**** YOU".


Now, if Putin doesn't get even 25% of what he wants, and pulls back his army, he will look VERY WEAK.

Russians will wonder what this was all for.

If Putin invades Ukraine, he gets a big slice of Ukraine.

Putin, may choose the chaos of war, over all the **** that may come with him looking weak, and NATO having a victory over him.

Thoughts?

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George Floyd trial #2 - Kueng, Lane, Thao

The three cops who were with Derek Chauvin are currently on trail.

Their fates are much less cut and dry. Lane in particular probably has a real chance at getting off.

1:It was his first day in the field.
2: Chauvin was Lane's Field Training Officer (FTO)
3: Lane asked twice if they should shift position and
4: Expressed concern that Floyd might have trouble breathing
5: Checked for pulse
6: Lane called for the ambulance
7: Lane requested that the ambulance shift its response from standard to urgent
8: Lane did CPR on Floyd on the ambulance


#2 is the big one for me. I have worked with Law Enforcement. New cops have to work under the wing of an FTO for at least a few weeks. The culture is that the FTO treats the noob like crap for the first week or two, and the noob had better not contradict the FTO on anything. The FTO gets to play drill Sergeant and they love it. The FTO is typically on a HUUUGE power trip and the noob is expected to meekly go along with it.

Had Floyd survived, Chauvin would certainly have ripped Lane a new one for making even the slightest suggestion contrary to what Chauvin was doing - and the force likely would have supported that. This, especially because Lane made these comments in front of a hostile crowd. Lane would have been blackballed on the force from day 1.

Lane's first day on the job and his boss outright murders a man right in front of him. He broke culture in challenging that, even if his protests were weak and wishy washy.

Attorneys for 3 cops in Floyd killing question training

I don't have any sympathy for the other two, but it looks like the Department is throwing Lane under the bus by refusing to acknowledge the dynamics of the FTO/Trainee relationship.

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Swiss Man Legally Changes Gender to Retire Earlier

Swiss Man Legally Changes Gender to Retire Earlier

Quote:

"With her new identity in hand, the sooner-to-be retiree will be eligible for a civil pension of between 13,990 to 27,981 Swiss Francs to be paid out in a lump sum on a yearly basis in 2024."

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Miss-directed Email

A curious tale in the Toronto Star today,

Meet Jason Young. The man who can’t stop getting your email

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/202...our-email.html

Behind a paywall (I subscribe)

Quote:

It’s been happening for over a decade. He’s been sent COVID-19 test results, plane tickets, and even become a steadfast member of a family chat — with a family he’s never met. At first, he’d take screenshots of the funny ones and share them with friends. Then, he’d respond to each one, letting the senders know they had the “wrong person.” But in 2008, when a DJ from upstate New York emailed out of the blue asking to “borrow Ms. Pinky tomorrow night” for a “gig” at his “house,” Jason Young just couldn’t resist. “Sure,” he wrote back. “Come by around 9. I’ll have Ms. Pinky ready.

”

and further,

Quote:

Since 2007, Young says, shortly after he signed up for his very first — and only — Gmail account, he’s received more than 1,800 emails sent correctly to his address, but intended for someone else. Over the last 14 years, he says he’s received about one every three days on average and they usually come in random bursts. Instead of being for Jason, the emails are sent to Joanne. Or John. Or another Jason. But, make no mistake, he says, this isn’t spam. It’s all personal.

How common is this? I've been using email since before the dawn of time and I don't remember ever receiving an email sent to my address because it was mistaken for someone else's (the only exception bring a couple on an internal mail system where the wrong name was selected from the internal directory).

My name is absolutely unique on this planet so i can see that the chances of it happening to me are somewhat slim but what about the "John Smith"s of the world?

The Star did contact Google but it was completely useless -- beyond "See our FAQ".

What are other people's experiences?

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Candace Owens says Apollo was a hoax

Candace Owens tweeted
@RealCandaceO
Jan 28
Now for some light-hearted fun. What’s the one “conspiracy theory” that no matter what anyone says you believe is true. Mine is that the moon landing in 1969 was completely faked.
Just nothing about it makes sense. Especially NASA “accidentally erasing” the original footage.

The biggest thing for me is the fuel tank size, plus the live broadcast with audio from the moon. In 1969.
I just cannot.

Def believe this one too!
And heard it from an extremely reliable source…

Quote Tweet
Lauren Chen
@TheLaurenChen
Jan 28
Government knows there's aliens

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Afghanistan Refugees pepper Sprayed.

And People wonder why I don't feel safe in Kentucky!
These people, deserve our thanks and our Respect!
http://www.14news.com/2022/01/29/ref...tel-owensboro/

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dividing by zero

Science is stuck. We haven't advanced our understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe for decades. We've been stuck on the same problems. Dark energy, dark matter, unified field theory, and spooky action at a distance of entangled particles.

Historically, advances in fundamental physics have relied on advances in mathematics. Newton couldn't describe gravity and motion without inventing calculus. Quantum mechanics would be impossible to imagine without imaginary numbers (square root of negative numbers).

Infinities and imaginary numbers are numbers that don't exist on the number line, that people didn't used to think existed at all. But they are essential to understanding the fundamental nature of the universe.

Everyone says that you can't divide by zero. Maybe we should rethink that.

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Minority Rights often means a Minority Rules

One of the most fascinating political beliefs for the past several thousand years has been the notion of using the idea of protecting "Minority Rights" has an excuse, justification for Minority Rule and exploitation.

The bedrock idea is that since the "Majority" just might deny the rights of the "Minority", the "Minority" must rule over the "Majority". And what are the "rights" of the "Minority"?

1), The right of unfettered use and acquisition of property. This involves the "right" to control and use the state to get rich.

2), The "right" to use the state to get power and position.

3), The state is the plaything of the "Minority", and impediments on being able to use the state or their wealth and power is a violation of their "rights".

Since the "Majority" just might not accept the "rights" of the "Minority", the "Minority" must control the state and keep the "Majority" in line and of course the "Minority" has every "right" to exploit the "Majority" for the "Minorities" benefit. To deny that is an unforgivable insult to the "Minority".

Thus we get the Roman idea of Libertas in the late Republic where it was considered an unforgivable violation of "Liberty" if wealthy aristocrats couldn't get rich from their political appointments. (Bribes, kickbacks etc.)

In the USA perhaps the height of turning "Minority" rights into "Minority" rule and a justification for tyranny was the writings of John C. Calhoun who died in 1850 and was a fanatical advocate of the South.

Calhoun's writings are a mess of contradictions, absurdities and missing the point. However the beginning and his notion was that the South being a minority in the USA needed protection and he proposed various solutions, like co-current majorities, two Presidents etc. However all this was merely a cloak.

Calhoun's real goal was the protection of slavery and that was the sole purpose of his defence of minority rights. Calhoun had no problem with suppressing freedom of the press, the crushing of Abolitionists, a minority, and of course Calhoun had absolutely no problem with the suppression, exploitation etc., of the minority of slaves. If anyone needed the protection of minority rights it was the slaves, but the thought never entered Calhoun's head.

Also part of Calhoun's defence of minority rights was the notion that the state laws of slavery went into the Federal territories, unlike the property laws of Free states, and of course the majority had to allow this regardless.

In the end Calhoun's idea of minority rights amounted to minority rule in that Calhoun literally held that the majority could not do anything that the minority objected to. Meanwhile Calhoun had no problem at all with the subjugation via tyranny of certain minorities. All of this to preserve slavery and tyrannize over a minority.

Has I said above all too frequently the concern over guarding the rights of minorities turns into minority rule and tyranny.

I also see how this sort of blends into in the USA urban areas being taxed to support rural areas, which are weirdly anti-government. (But don't let those subsidies stop.)

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ISS spotting

A constant, bright 'star' travelling pretty quickly from west to east was visible as I was walking last night at about 18:00hrs. Pretty sure it was the ISS, but could it have been anything else?

I didn't know there was a handy website that lets you know when it's travelling overhead depending on where you are.

https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/home.cfm

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9/11: What was the point?

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true, and that the attacks were somehow orchestrated by elements of the US government in order to achieve their nefarious goals.
We are now 20 years past the event, and none of these conspirators has been uncovered or brought to justice. To all intents and purposes, they got clean away with it.
OK? As I say, just for the sake of argument.
Now, if they got away with it, then presumably, they also achieved whatever goals they had in mind when they set this thing up.
This is my question: What were those goals?
This was clearly a complex plot, which must have involved a great deal of time, effort and money to plan and execute. What was its purpose?
The general idea, from what I've seen, is that it allowed America to invade Iraq and Afghanistan with a semblance of legitimacy. Fine. They did that. And then? What did they get from that?
Oil? Can't be. US imports of oil from Iraq fell after the invasion, and American companies do not own or run any significant part of Iraq's oil industry.
A continuance of American power and influence, a la PNAC? Well, that didn't work either. Iraq was a disaster for America: a ruinously expensive quagmire, from which it has only recently extricated itself. US power and influence has diminished, rather than increased. Vast swathes of the world were alienated by the (perceived or actual) anti-Muslim focus of US actions. Russia, Iran and China were able to profit from this debacle and increase their own power and influence. The damage to the reputation of America from such incidents as Abu Ghraib was also massive. The fallout from America's ignominious departure from Afghanistan, after a decade of fruitless occupation, continues to rumble on.
The alleged perpetrators? Rumsfeld, Cheney etc? Gone, and their philosophy discredited.
What, then, was the point? What were the intended goals? What did the orchestrators of this plot actually gain from their endeavours?

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MAGA and butterflies and..., jeez, it's wierd

Butterfly sanctuary closes as QAnon believers, thinking it’s home to sex trafficking ring, plot caravan there

Quote:

according to an email blast put out by the Center, it was forced to close for three days “due to credible threats we have received from a former state official.” Center director Marianna Wright “was advised by [a] former state official (whose daughter is the Hidalgo County GOP chairperson) that she should be armed at all times or out of town this weekend,” due to a caravan of attendees at a MAGA-themed border security conference taking place in McAllen, Texas, eight miles away, that same weekend. The “We Stand America” event is scheduled to feature speeches from a host of luminaries in the stolen election/QAnon/anti-vaccine/MAGA universe/build-the-wall universe, including disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, “Stop the Steal” advocate Rep. Mark Finchem (R-Ariz.), stolen election figurehead Patrick Byrne, and QAnon promoter Mel K.

Quote:

Kolfage, who has called the Center’s employees “butterfly freaks” running a “sham” sanctuary devoted to profiting off human misery, has pushed the theories hard, including sharing doctored photos of rafts at a dock outside the Butterfly Center. He’s also spammed Wright with violent threats over Twitter, eventually resulting in his account being suspended. Kolfage himself is not speaking at the event, presumably because he’s currently under indictment for wire fraud and tax evasion due to allegedly stealing from the We Build The Wall nonprofit he founded. Despite there being no evidence of trafficking or smuggling being run through the Center, the MAGA faithful have already started to make it a target. The email blast described an incident that went from troubling to potentially deadly when on Friday, Jan. 21, an unnamed “congressional candidate from Virginia” showed up with someone claiming to be a Secret Service agent, and “demanded access to the river so they could ‘see the rafts with the illegal crossing’ our property.”

People impersonating Secret Service agents and stealing phones from the center's employees and then nearly running down people who tried to stop them. Local Law enforcement taking their own sweet time responding. It's bizarre.


Perhaps someone was giving too much thought to Nabokov's butterflies.

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Is there a go-to for dealing with Malone's claims?

Robert Malone has most of hawaii's people and political system paralyzed as he is seen as THE authority on vaccines. He, here is probably the single largest force driving the anti vaccine stance here among the locals as well, and he is constantly cited in little video blips.

I searched long and hard but, though youtube loves to ban scientists or science communicators like myself and thunderf00t for showing science, they let these quackspiracy videos stay up

Where can I find a site or something digestible, that deals with malone's claims?

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DIY experiment proving graviton is a particle

Here is a DIY experiment that should convince the mainstream gravity is a particle once and for all. Using the exact same parameters, you measure the sum of the gravitational attraction of the Moon and the Sun not aligned and aligned. There should be a slight offset if gravitons lose energy by traveling through the Moon, making them officially a particle.

That would put the nail in the spacetime curvature coffin once and for all. Next.

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Cosmoquest = Social Engineering

It took me some time to confirm this but Cosmoquest is doing exactly that: social engineering propaganda by constantly permanently infracting, insulting and humiliating ATMers and on the long run ban them to use them as examples to scare off newcomers daring challenging the mainstream.

I asked simple question on gravitomagnetism being dipole or monopole and gravitons losing energy which is all mainstream material and I was suspended.

I'm pretty much done with them unless they change their little attitude and remove a few infractions.

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Minnie Mouse Poutrage

A French Artist designed a pant suite for Minnie Mouse for Disneyland Paris' 30th Anniversary. I linked to the Fox News article in case someone wants to read the comments, they're outstanding; however, conservative commentators are getting pretty sensitive about it. The dumbass that is Candance Owens said that this pantsuit is a plot to "destroy the fabrics of society!"

That's right, a ******* mouse in a pantsuit is destroying the fabric of society. Between Tucker Carlson being upset that he doesn't find M&Ms **** able anymore, and the new poutrage over Minnie. I daresay if we listened to them our entire society is falling apart!

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Neil Young vs Spotify & Joe Rogan

0-1

https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...misinformation

I'm disappointed Spotify chose Rogan.

Do you think others will follow Neil Young's lead?

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Facebook- the internet's teddy bear

I don't need hugs, I want information.

I joined a support group looking for knowledge for one of my medical conditions. Crowd sourcing some prognosis among the members with the disease. But it seems anything besides "You Go Girl!!" type platitudes is seen as "misinformation".

I think I hear the impending Swoosh! of the ban hammer coming up to speed.

Small minded, micromanaging Admin.

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Governor Trumpkin of Virginia.

A lot of people shocked that Governor Youngkin is going full Trump n his first week in office, including setting up a phone tip line for people to report on teachers who are teaching "Offensive" material.
Younking ran as a moderate and pulled off a huge con Now Virginia will suffer for it.
Moral: I am not , for the foreseeable future, going to vote for ANY Republican since there is a good chance his is a Trumper in Moderate clothing.

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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire

https://news.yahoo.com/breyer-to-ret...171756901.html

Quote:

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will retire, multiple news outlets reported Wednesday. The exact timing of his retirement was not immediately clear. Both NBC and CNN reported that Breyer will step down at the end of this term. The 83-year-old is the oldest member of the high court, and a leading liberal justice.

Too bad there's an election just 286 days away. Biden can't possibly nominate someone in that time frame. /s

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Tucker Carlson vs the GOP....

Tucker is launching a series of attacks on GOP congresspeople who dare to cirticise Putin.
This could be fun.
That is one thing I think a lot of people don't get, the GOP is very fractured, only thing holding them together is a lust to win elections. When is power, they might well fall apart into feuding clans.

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I am torn about the Filibuster!!!

So I know the filibuster and super-majority control of the Senate is of course NOT in the Constitution. But clearly the filibuster and the 60-vote rule for cloture has become a very useful tool.

The Dems have used it to stop some very irresponsible and dangerous laws, like Concealed-Carry Reciprocity. But the rule has also stopped some very GOOD laws, like a Public Option for Obamacare, immigration reform, etc.

Equally important, if it was soooo important to require a super-majority to pass big changes in the USA, and allow the minority to stop terrible things, then why do we allow big bills to be passed through 51-vote Reconciliation?

I just don't know anymore. But clearly there is something very UNdemocratic, about the filibuster. If the American people choose a Republican President, and a Republican House, and a Republican Senate, maybe we should let them pass their bills if they are unified.

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Dr. Paul Marik's Story

Dr. Paul Marik's story starts at 4:19:00. He was targeted, fired and put in a database of "bad physicians" because he provided treatment for COVID patients instead of doing nothing as he was ordered to do by the hospital.

Dr. Marik has the distinction of being the most published intensivist in the history of medicine, and he is in the top five most published American medical authors in history, on top of being the editor of two medical journals. Dr. Marik has contributed 782 publications to the medical literature, with over 48,000 citations to his work as listed by Google Scholar.

Dr. Marik has never been accused of recklessly practicing medicine for any condition, other than COVID, over the course of his 40 year medical career. At the time of his discharge by the hospital, his COVID treatment record had 50% less mortality than his peers.

https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a...d-opinion.html

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World War III

Well, "World War III" is trending on Twitter. OK, so those trends change from second to second. This time it's a little different.

OK, so we didn't start the fire. It was always burnin' since the world's been turnin'. I am a bit surprised that there wasn't already a thread with this title, but I'm a fan of a worst-case scenario.

Russia-Ukraine-US. North Korea firing more missiles. China invasively flying over Taiwan. NATO sending ships and jets to Europe. (More than normal.) Perhaps it's because I just watched Fail-Safe that makes me dwell on it more. One little mistake or computer glitch can set off a domino effect.

I used to see this series "Seconds from Disaster" on cable. It was amazing that so many small elements could coincide to lead inevitably to the disaster being discussed.

It's bad enough that the slow-end-of-the-world may be happening (Covid, climate change). I see much more potential for a flashpoint here.

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Educate me: How enforceable is the filibuster?

There's LOTS of continuous talk online and elsewhere about the US Senate filibuster and how current desired legislation is being snagged on it by Mitch and rogue Dems, etc.

I know what the filibuster is, but it does seem that, as a Senate rule, it is more a convention than a law. I understand that, prior to its implementation sometime after the Civil War, it was a simple majority in the Senate that carried measures. And that is what was implemented by "Founding Fathers". No other bicameral parliamentary system I know of has such a thing - simple majority rules.

So what is the actual legal enforceability for the filibuster in the US Senate? Can the Senate speaker simply ignore it and proclaim measures passed or failed on the simple majority of the votes? Can a dissenting group of Senators (you know who I mean ;)) "take it to court"?

Legal eagles! Educate me on this.

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[Split From] The Jan 6 Investigation

Quote:

Originally Posted by Craig4 (Post 13710563) "Common Law", I know I've been out of the "biz" for a while but what the **** are you talking about? The practical application of the law is not the silly little esoteric excise you imagine it to be. 18 USC spells out the elements of the crime. As the officer (that was at a time me and yes I did charge conspiracy) determines if there is probable cause to believe that the suspect did the specific acts listed in the elements of the crime. This isn't some thought experiment.

Everything is only a thought experiment.

Additional restrictions on a number of laws don't exist in the US code. For example, "defraud" in the statute is defined by a series.of court cases and not the statute itself.

It would be cool if someone can find an example of a successful prosecution for it where the defendant believed they were engaged in innocent behavior.

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Motives for the Trump Coup,

Now that the other Thread has pretty much confirmed it was a Coup,

What do you think the Motive was for the Coup?

I think Trump knows he committed obstruction in the Mueller investigation, and was worried he would be indicted for that Obstruction once William Barr was removed from being Attorney General.
That other Crimes and Conspiracy theories about the Elections prompted his trying to Seaze power though the Electoral Count act.

What are your thoughts please?

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At Will Employment? Not in Wisconsin...

This is mental

Somewhere in Wisconsin, some health care workers resigned because they got better offers. Apparently 'at will' employment only works one way.

How can this be even remotely reasonable?



"ThedaCare requested Thursday that an Outagamie County judge temporarily block seven of its employees who had applied for and accepted jobs at Ascension from beginning work there on Monday until the health system could find replacements for them."


"Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis granted ThedaCare's request and held an initial hearing Friday morning. The case will get a longer hearing at 10 a.m. Monday."

https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/ne...es/6607417001/

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Tax the rich, pay down the debt, reduce inflation

The fundamental driver of long term inflation is GOP deficit spending. A return to the taxing levels of the 1960s and 70s would reduce the federal deficit, removing money from the economy and reducing inflation.

How's that for a platform?

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[friendly challenge] HOW CAN EVERYTHING BE MADE BY ANYONE?

Hi all,

this is a friendly challenge for all who think they have to reply.

HOW CAN EVERYTHING BE MADE BY ANYONE?

One step before you really make everything, you haven’t really made everything yet, or then you made everything one step before that, and if you carry on this path, to make a long story short we arrive to the time before you really existed, and you still think you made everything, but then it seems to me that you forgot to make that story of yours make any sense to us, so we simply ignore you...

...and still something else than anything you can imagine seems to be happening, one step before you really make everything...and you have to also remember that...

…one step after you REALLY make everything, the experience of one step before has to be included in whatever you made as it was before for anything living until one step before you REALLY made everything, or …you didn’t really make everything, as it was REALLY made before you interfered...did you really?

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China aggressively recruited foreign scientists. Now, it avoids talking about...

A talent program just sounds weird
-

Quote:

FROM: https://www.science.org/content/arti...ng-about-those China aggressively recruited foreign scientists. Now, it avoids talking about those programs BY DENNIS NORMILE (2022-01-20 2:35 PM) Information on “talent programs” that drew U.S. scrutiny has disappeared The criminal charges against Harvard University chemist Charles Lieber—and dozens of others ensnared in the U.S. Department of Justice’s China Initiative—have put a spotlight on the Thousand Talents Program (TTP), a Chinese government effort that brought Lieber and other scientists from overseas to China’s universities and research institutes. U.S. authorities have portrayed the program as an effort to pilfer know-how and innovation, a claim many scientists dispute. But as the scrutiny of the TTP grew, the program slipped out of sight. Official mentions of the TTP have disappeared, and lists of TTP awardees once posted on government and university websites are no longer available. But experts say the TTP has simply been folded into other programs, and recruitment is continuing. More than ever, the effort focuses on scientists of Chinese origin, and part-time appointments of the type that Lieber had have become rare. China launched the TTP in 2008, aiming to boost the country’s research output and quality. At the time, more than 90% of Chinese who earned Ph.D.s in the United States remained there for at least 5 years after completing their studies, according to a May 2020 report by David Zweig and Siqin Kang of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The TTP offered returnees—and foreign researchers willing to relocate—competitive salaries and funding to establish labs. Although some half-time appointments were allowed, the program aimed for full-time researchers. There were few takers. So in 2010 the part-time option was expanded, allowing recruits to maintain their jobs overseas if they spent at least part of the year in China. In 2011, close to 75% of 500 TTP scholars Zweig and Kang identified were on part-time agreements. (A 2019 U.S. Senate report claims the TTP had attracted more than 7000 “high-end professionals” by 2017 but didn’t specify how many were part time.) The program has paid off for China. A 2020 study by Cong Cao, a China science policy specialist at the University of Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China, showed scholars in China with overseas experience published more papers, and with higher impact, than stay-at-home peers. Universities also benefited from the association with star scientists. Lieber’s presence, for example, may have helped the little-known Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) attract prospective students, says Futao Huang, a higher education scholar at Hiroshima University... (SNIP) A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 375, Issue 6578.

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Does this make China look bad and why?

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A functional cellular framework for sex and estrous cycle-dependent gene...

A functional cellular framework for sex and estrous cycle-dependent gene expression and behavior
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Quote:

FROM: https://phys.org/news/2022-01-sex-ty...male-mice.html Sex-typical behavior of male, female mice guided by differences in brain's gene activity by Stanford University Medical Center (2022-01-21) Male and female mouse brains differ in important ways, according to a new study led by Stanford Medicine investigators. These differences are likely reflected in the brains of men and women, the researchers say. The scientists probed four tiny structures within mouse brains that are known to program "rating, dating, mating and hating" behaviors. These behaviors—for example, males' quick determination of a stranger's sex, females' receptivity to mating, and maternal protectiveness—help the animals reproduce and their offspring survive. Analyzing tissue that was extracted from these brain structures and enriched for cells responsive to sex hormones, the scientists found more than 1,000 genes that are substantially more active in the brains of one sex versus the other. Genes are the blueprints for proteins, which do virtually all of a cell's work. Gene-activation levels—the rate at which the information genes contain is copied and converted into proteins—determine a cell's functions... (SNIP)

-

Original Paper:

-

Quote:

FROM: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S...674(21)01494-X A functional cellular framework for sex and estrous cycle-dependent gene expression and behavior Joseph R. Knoedler, Sayaka Inoue, Daniel W. Bayless, Taehong Yang, Adarsh Tantry, Chung-ha Davis, Nicole Y. Leung, Srinivas Parthasarathy, Grace Wang, Maricruz Alvarado, Abbas H. Rizvi, Lief E. Fenno, Charu Ramakrishnan, Karl Deisseroth & Nirao M. Shah (2022-01-21) Highlights 1,415 genes are dimorphic by sex or estrous state in four Esr1+ neuronal populations All 137 Esr1+ cell types within these four populations express subsets of these genes Only 1 male BNSTpr Esr1+ cell type is needed to recognize sexes, mate, and fight Only 1 female VMHvl Esr1+ cell type has dynamic projections and is needed to mate Summary Sex hormones exert a profound influence on gendered behaviors. How individual sex hormone-responsive neuronal populations regulate diverse sex-typical behaviors is unclear. We performed orthogonal, genetically targeted sequencing of four estrogen receptor 1-expressing (Esr1+) populations and identified 1,415 genes expressed differentially between sexes or estrous states. Unique subsets of these genes were distributed across all 137 transcriptomically defined Esr1+ cell types, including estrous stage-specific ones, that comprise the four populations. We used differentially expressed genes labeling single Esr1+ cell types as entry points to functionally characterize two such cell types, BNSTprTac1/Esr1 and VMHvlCckar/Esr1. We observed that these two cell types, but not the other Esr1+ cell types in these populations, are essential for sex recognition in males and mating in females, respectively. Furthermore, VMHvlCckar/Esr1 cell type projections are distinct from those of other VMHvlEsr1 cell types. Together, projection and functional specialization of dimorphic cell types enables sex hormone-responsive populations to regulate diverse social behaviors. (SNIP)

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Is sexual orientation genetic?

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Mysteriously magnetic rocks collected on Apollo mission finally get an explanation

Are moon rocks cool or what?
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FROM: https://www.livescience.com/moon-apo...tery-explained Mysteriously magnetic rocks collected on Apollo mission finally get an explanation By Ben Turner published (2022-01-18) The rocks retrieved by the Apollo missions have puzzled scientists for 50 years. Scientists may have finally come up with an explanation for one of the Apollo program's most enduring mysteries: why some of the rocks brought back from the lunar surface appear to have been formed inside a magnetic field as strong as that on Earth. Magnetic fields are produced inside planetary bodies by the churning movement of material in planets’ electrically conductive molten cores. But today the interior of the non-magnetic moon is quite different from Earth's magnetized innards — it's dense and mostly frozen, containing only a small outer core region that is fluid and molten. Scientists believe that the moon's insides cooled fairly quickly and evenly after it formed around 4.5 billion years ago, meaning it doesn't have a strong magnetic field — and many scientists believe it never did. How then, could some of the 3 billion-year-old rocks retrieved during NASA's 1968-to-1972 Apollo missions look like they were made inside a geomagnetic field powerful enough to rival Earth's, while others had barely any magnetic signatures at all? "Everything that we've thought about how magnetic fields are generated by planetary cores tells us that a body of the moon's size should not be able to generate a field that's as strong as Earth's," Alexander Evans, a planetary scientist at Brown University, said in a statement... (SNIP)

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Control of mammalian locomotion by ventral spinocerebellar tract neurons

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FROM: https://phys.org/news/2022-01-mice-n...ocomotion.html Research in mice identifies neurons that control locomotion by Cell Press (2022-01-20) For more than a century, scientists have known that while the commands that initiate movement come from the brain, the neurons that control locomotion once movement is underway reside within the spinal cord. In a study published January 20 in the journal Cell, researchers report that, in mice, they have identified one particular type of neuron that is both necessary and sufficient for regulating this type of movement. These neurons are called ventral spinocerebellar tract neurons (VSCTs). "We hope that our findings will open up new avenues toward understanding how complex behaviors like locomotion come about and give us new insight into the mechanisms and biological principles that control this essential behavior," says the paper's senior author George Mentis, associate professor of pathology and cell biology in the Department of Neurology at Columbia University. "It's also possible that our findings will lead to new ideas for therapeutic avenues, whether they involve treatments for spinal cord injury or neurodegenerative diseases that affect movement and motor control." VSCTs were discovered in the 1940s, but researchers have long believed that their main function was to relay messages about neuronal activity from the spinal cord to the cerebellum. The new study reports that instead they control locomotor behavior both during development and in adulthood. "These findings were a huge surprise," Mentis says. "One of the key discoveries in our study was that apart from their connection to the cerebellum, these neurons make connections with other spinal neurons that are also involved in locomotor behavior via their axon collaterals." The research involved several novel experimental approaches. One part of the research used optogenetics, employing LED light to regulate certain proteins that were expressed selectively in VSCTs to either activate or suppress the neuronal activity. Another set of experiments used chemogenetics, a process by which a chemical compound is used to activate or suppress synthetic ligands expressed artificially in these neurons, controlling their activity... (SNIP)

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Original Paper:

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FROM: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S...674(21)01452-5 Control of mammalian locomotion by ventral spinocerebellar tract neurons Joshua I. Chalif, María de Lourdes Martínez-Silva, John G. Pagiazitis, Andrew J. Murray, George Z. Mentis VOLUME 185, ISSUE 2, P328-344.E26 (2022-01-20) Summary Locomotion is a complex behavior required for animal survival. Vertebrate locomotion depends on spinal interneurons termed the central pattern generator (CPG), which generates activity responsible for the alternation of flexor and extensor muscles and the left and right side of the body. It is unknown whether multiple or a single neuronal type is responsible for the control of mammalian locomotion. Here, we show that ventral spinocerebellar tract neurons (VSCTs) drive generation and maintenance of locomotor behavior in neonatal and adult mice. Using mouse genetics, physiological, anatomical, and behavioral assays, we demonstrate that VSCTs exhibit rhythmogenic properties and neuronal circuit connectivity consistent with their essential role in the locomotor CPG. Importantly, optogenetic activation and chemogenetic silencing reveals that VSCTs are necessary and sufficient for locomotion. These findings identify VSCTs as critical components for mammalian locomotion and provide a paradigm shift in our understanding of neural control of complex behaviors. Introduction Locomotion is an essential animal behavior that is critical for survival. Overground locomotion is defined as the alternating, rhythmic motor activity between opposing limbs, as well as between antagonistic muscles of the same limb. Although sensory feedback and supraspinal commands are important for modulating locomotion, a network of spinal interneurons—known as the central pattern generator (CPG)—is thought to be responsible for the genesis of locomotor activity (Guertin, 2012; Kiehn, 2016) without relying on sensory or descending inputs (Graham Brown, 1911). These neurons are thought to activate spinal motor neurons (MNs) in a patterned manner. Subsequently, MNs convey their motor commands to peripheral muscles, resulting in limb movement. Recent studies have begun to unravel the organization of the spinal neuronal circuits underlying left-right and flexor-extensor alternation (Crone et al., 2008; Gosgnach et al., 2006; Talpalar et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2014), demonstrating the modularity and speed-dependency of these circuits. However, it is unknown whether a single neuronal population is necessary and sufficient for the generation and maintenance of locomotor activity. Here, using mice as an experimental model, we identify ventral spinocerebellar tract neurons (VSCTs) as an essential population of spinal neurons for mammalian locomotion. In rodents, locomotor behavior is evident at early postnatal periods, since intact ex vivo spinal cord preparations can produce locomotor-like behavior following sensory fiber stimulation or application of a cocktail of drugs (Mentis et al., 2005; Talpalar et al., 2013; Whelan et al., 2000). This behavior is characterized by alternating rhythmic oscillations of MN activity between the left and right sides of the spinal cord and between rostral (L1/L2) and caudal (L4/L5) lumbar segments (Bonnot et al., 2002). Traditionally, CPG networks are thought to reside upstream of MNs (Goulding and Pfaff, 2005; Kiehn and Butt, 2003), whereas MNs act as the spinal output to convey motor commands to muscles. However, we have previously shown that stimulation of MN axons results in locomotor activity (Mentis et al., 2005). Additionally, manipulation of MN activity can alter ongoing locomotor behavior (Falgairolle et al., 2017) and zebrafish MNs can influence premotor excitatory CPG elements (Song et al., 2016). These observations implicate MNs in the regulation of locomotor rhythmogenesis via a local spinal neuron that is activated by MN axon collaterals. Although previous studies have provided evidence that the neural circuits encompassing CPG elements reside in the ventral spinal cord (Grillner and Wallén, 1985; Kiehn, 2016), the only spinal neurons that are contacted by MN axon collaterals known to date are Renshaw cells (Alvarez and Fyffe, 2007; Eccles et al., 1954; Mentis et al., 2005; Renshaw, 1946) and Sim1+ interneurons (Chopek et al., 2018). However, Renshaw cells do not affect the locomotor CPG (Enjin et al., 2017; Noga et al., 1987), and Sim1+ neurons regulate the speed of vertebrate locomotion and contribute to vigor and coordination but are not involved in locomotor rhythmogenesis (Zhang et al., 2008). Thus, MNs may contact another yet-to-be-defined neuron that resides within the ventral spinal cord and mediates locomotor rhythmogenesis... (SNIP)

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Heparan Sulfate Proteoglycans (HSPGs) Serve as the Mediator Between Monomeric Tau...

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Heparan Sulfate Proteoglycans (HSPGs) Serve as the Mediator Between Monomeric Tau and Its Subsequent Intracellular ERK1/2 Pathway Activation

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FROM: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-...er-longer.html A cure for Alzheimer's is taking longer than expected; here's why by Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Chemical Engineering (2022-01-21) In her latest research paper, published in the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience, Anne Robinson, Head of Carnegie Mellon's Department of Chemical Engineering, explains why understanding the progression of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease, and its eventual treatment, is much more complex than researchers have previously thought. One in ten Americans over the age of 65 suffer from Alzheimer's, rising to one in three in those over 80. It is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, and more than five million people currently live with the disease. Worldwide, that number jumps to nearly 50 million. Age is the most significant factor in whether a person shows symptoms of Alzheimer's, and although diagnostic information to confirm the disease is improving, there are still no cures or treatments to slow down or stop the progression of the disease. In all neurodegenerative diseases, degeneration begins in one part of the brain and is transmitted to other areas, causing widespread damage and loss of brain tissue. In Alzheimer's, several things, such as the presence of A-beta peptide or an injury, can cause tau—a protein in neurons responsible for stabilizing those neurons—to begin shaping itself in dysfunctional ways; the first in a cascade of events. Scientists, however, are still unsure of how this pathogenic tau is transferred from cell to cell, thus spreading across the brain and wreaking havoc. Understanding how to contain the disease to a small area of the brain could help slow its progression and halt the cognitive degeneration associated with Alzheimer's. "There have been a number of Alzheimer's models that try to explain how malformed tau gets transmitted from one part of the brain to the other," says Robinson. "Many of these models approach the problem from an all-or-nothing standpoint—normal tau protein only goes this way; malformed tau protein only goes that way, or malformed tau enters the cell this way; normal tau another way. However, operating under these models has historically produced seemingly conflicting data; data that researchers who study Alzheimer's have been hard-pressed to reconcile." (SNIP)

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Original Paper:

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FROM: https://link.springer.com/article/10...31-021-01943-2 Heparan Sulfate Proteoglycans (HSPGs) Serve as the Mediator Between Monomeric Tau and Its Subsequent Intracellular ERK1/2 Pathway Activation Liqing Song, Daniel E. Oseid, Evan A. Wells, Troy Coaston & Anne S. Robinson Journal of Molecular Neuroscience (2022-01-18) Abstract The conversion of soluble tau protein to insoluble, hyperphosphorylated neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) is a major hallmark leading to neuronal death observed in neurodegenerative tauopathies. Unlike NFTs, the involvement of monomeric tau in the progression of tau pathology has been less investigated. Using live-cell confocal microscopy and flow cytometry, we demonstrate that soluble 0N4R monomers were rapidly endocytosed by SH-SY5Y and C6 glioma cells via actin-dependent macropinocytosis. Further, cellular endocytosis of monomeric tau has been demonstrated to be HSPG-dependent, as shown in C6 glial cells with genetic knockouts of xylosyltransferase-1—a key enzyme in HSPG synthesis—with a reduced level of tau uptake. Tau internalization subsequently triggers ERK1/2 activation and therefore, the upregulation of IL-6 and IL-1β. The role of ERK1/2 in regulating the levels of pro-inflammatory gene transcripts was confirmed by inhibiting the MEK-ERK1/2 signaling pathway, which led to the attenuated IL-6 and IL-1β expressions but not that of TNF-α. Moreover, as a key regulator of tau internalization, LRP1 (low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1) levels were downregulated in response to monomeric tau added to C6 cells, while it was upregulated in HSPG-deficient cells, suggesting that the involvement of LRP1 in tau uptake depends on the presence of HSPGs on the cell surface. The subsequent LRP1 knockdown experiment we performed shows that LRP1 deficiency leads to an attenuated propensity for tau uptake and further elevated IL-6 gene expression. Collectively, our data suggest that tau has multiple extracellular binding partners that mediate its internalization through distinct mechanisms. Additionally, this study demonstrates the important role of both HSPGs and LRP1 in regulating cellular immune responses to tau protein monomers, providing a novel target for alleviating the neuroinflammatory environment before the formation of neurofibrillary tangles. (SNIP)

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What It's Like to Become a NASA Astronaut: 10 Surprising Facts

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This is an old article, but I still found it interesting, especially about the part where you are now required to learn Russian, but that actually makes sense...

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FROM: https://www.space.com/37110-becoming...ing-facts.html What It's Like to Become a NASA Astronaut: 10 Surprising Facts By Elizabeth Howell (2017-06-07) Surprising Facts Being an astronaut is a tremendous commitment. Astronaut candidates — who tend to be selected in their 30s and 40s — usually leave prestigious careers for a chance at being an astronaut, starting again at the bottom of the rung. Training means long days at work and lots of travel. There's also no guarantee they'll make it into space. Yet, more than 18,000 Americans competed in this round of NASA's astronaut selection. The new candidates will be announced Wednesday (June 7), and will report for basic training in August. Here's what it takes to be a NASA astronaut and what happens after the selection. Astronaut requirements NASA has strict requirements for being an astronaut. The job not only needs you in top physical shape, but it also demands the technical skills to take on difficult jobs in a spacecraft or on a space station far from home. The agency's basic requirements are a bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science or mathematics, followed by three years of professional experience (or 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft). Candidates also must pass NASA's astronaut physical examination. However, there are many other skills that can be an asset to selection, such as scuba diving, wilderness experience, leadership experience and facility with other languages (especially Russian, which all astronauts are required to learn today.)... What an astronaut "class" looks like (SNIP)

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TET deficiency perturbs mature B cell homeostasis and promotes oncogenesis associated

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TET deficiency perturbs mature B cell homeostasis and promotes oncogenesis associated with accumulation of G-quadruplex and R-loop structures

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FROM: https://www.livescience.com/cancer-l...d-knots-in-dna Bizarre knotted DNA structures linked to cancer in mice By Nicoletta Lanese (2022-01-20) Missing enzymes may cause troublesome knots to appear in DNA. Oddly tangled and looped DNA structures could be linked to cancer, according to a new study in mice. DNA typically looks like a twisted ladder. But the loss of key enzymes in the body causes the genetic molecule to become tangled up in bizarre loops and knots, and at least in mice, these odd DNA structures may drive the development of cancer, The Scientist reported. Specifically, a family of enzymes known as ten-eleven translocation (TET) enzymes seems critical to preventing DNA from forming these troublesome knots, according to the study, published Dec. 22 in the journal Nature Immunology. TET enzymes jump-start a process that removes methyl groups — "chemical caps" consisting of three hydrogen atoms and one carbon atom — from the surface of DNA molecules. Methyl groups prevent specific genes within the DNA from being switched on, so by helping to remove these methyl groups, TET enzymes play key roles in regulating gene activity and development. However, studies suggest that when cells don't carry enough TET enzymes, this deficiency may contribute to the development of cancer. In white blood cells, in particular, research has revealed a strong correlation between a lack of TET enzymes and the onset of cancer, The Scientist reported... (SNIP)

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Original Paper:

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FROM: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01087-w.epdf TET deficiency perturbs mature B cell homeostasis and promotes oncogenesis associated with accumulation of G-quadruplex and R-loop structures Vipul Shukla Daniela Samaniego-Castruita Zhen Dong1, Edahí González-Avalos1, Qingqing Yan Kavitha Sarma and Anjana Rao (2021-12-20) Enzymes of the TET family are methylcytosine dioxygenases that undergo frequent mutational or functional inactivation in human cancers. Recurrent loss-of-function mutations in TET proteins are frequent in human diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Here, we investigate the role of TET proteins in B cell homeostasis and development of B cell lymphomas with features of DLBCL. We show that deletion of Tet2 and Tet3 genes in mature B cells in mice perturbs B cell homeostasis and results in spontaneous development of germinal center (GC)-derived B cell lymphomas with increased G-quadruplexes and R-loops. At a genome-wide level, G-quadruplexes and R-loops were associated with increased DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) at immunoglobulin switch regions. Deletion of the DNA methyltransferase DNMT1 in TET-deficient B cells prevented expansion of GC B cells, diminished the accumulation of G-quadruplexes and R-loops and delayed B lymphoma development, consistent with the opposing functions of DNMT and TET enzymes in DNA methylation and demethylation. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-mediated depletion of nucleases and helicases that regulate G-quadruplexes and R-loops decreased the viability of TET-deficient B cells. Our studies suggest a molecular mechanism by which TET loss of function might predispose to the development of B cell malignancies. The three mammalian TET enzymes (TET1, TET2 and TET3) are Fe(II)-, oxygen- and α-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases that sequentially oxidize 5-methylcytosine (5mC) to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), 5-formylcytosine (5fC) and 5-carboxylcytosine (5caC)1–3. TET enzymes regulate enhancer activity and DNA methylation dynamics during development (including B cell development)4–8, cell differentiation and cell lineage specification (reviewed in refs. 9–12). TET2 gene mutations and/or decreased TET activity have been observed in many hematological malignancies and solid cancers, often through impaired regulation of metabolic enzymes that affect TET activity (reviewed in refs. 9,13–16). For instance, TET2 is recurrently mutated in ~10% of DLBCL17–19, a heterogeneous malignancy originating in mature B cells undergoing activation and differentiation in GCs. TET2 mutations represent an early driver event in DLBCL6; in mouse models, deletion of Tet2 in hematopoietic lineages disrupted GC B cell homeostasis and promoted development of more aggressive lymphomas when the transcription factor BCL6 was constitutively overexpressed6. 5hmC deposition has been observed at sites of DNA DSBs in HeLa cells20, and TET2 is associated with degradation of stalled replication forks in BRCA2-deficient mouse cells21, suggesting that TET proteins regulate genomic integrity. (SNIP)

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Both consumptive and non-consumptive effects of predators impact mosquito populations

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Both consumptive and non-consumptive effects of predators impact mosquito populations and have implications for disease transmission

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FROM: https://www.space.com/17688-voyager-1.html Disease predictions can be improved by factoring in mosquito predators by Hayley Dunning, Imperial College London (2022-01-20) The way mosquitoes react to predators should be included in disease models, say researchers behind a new study. They say the information can improve predictions of when and where there might be high numbers of human infections of mosquito-borne diseases. The research is led by Imperial College London and Pennsylvania State University scientists and published today in eLife. The study shows how the presence of different predators can cause significant changes for mosquitoes' bodies and behaviors, which alter the likelihood of them passing on diseases to humans, including malaria, West Nile virus and dengue. For example, exposure to predators can cause a reduction in the average mosquito body size, leading to shorter lifespans and fewer offspring per mosquito, ultimately reducing the spread of disease. (SNIP)

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Original Paper:

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FROM: https://elifesciences.org/articles/71503 Both consumptive and non-consumptive effects of predators impact mosquito populations and have implications for disease transmission Marie C Russell Is a corresponding author, Catherine M Herzog, Zachary Gajewski, Chloe Ramsay, Fadoua El Moustaid, Michelle V Evans, Trishna Desai, Nicole L Gottdenker, Sara L Hermann, Alison G Power, Andrew C McCall (2022-01-19) Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, United Kingdom; Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University, United States; Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, United States; Odum School of Ecology & Center for Ecology of Infectious Diseases, University of Georgia, United States; MIVEGEC, IRD, CNRS, Université Montpellier, France; Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, United Kingdom; Department of Veterinary Pathology, University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, United States; Department of Entomology, Pennsylvania State University, United States; Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, United States; Biology Department, Denison University, United States Cite as: eLife 2022;11:e71503 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.71503 Predator-prey interactions influence prey traits through both consumptive and non-consumptive effects, and variation in these traits can shape vector-borne disease dynamics. Meta-analysis methods were employed to generate predation effect sizes by different categories of predators and mosquito prey. This analysis showed that multiple families of aquatic predators are effective in consumptively reducing mosquito survival, and that the survival of Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex mosquitoes is negatively impacted by consumptive effects of predators. Mosquito larval size was found to play a more important role in explaining the heterogeneity of consumptive effects from predators than mosquito genus. Mosquito survival and body size were reduced by non-consumptive effects of predators, but development time was not significantly impacted. In addition, Culex vectors demonstrated predator avoidance behavior during oviposition. The results of this meta-analysis suggest that predators limit disease transmission by reducing both vector survival and vector size, and that associations between drought and human West Nile virus cases could be driven by the vector behavior of predator avoidance during oviposition. These findings are likely to be useful to infectious disease modelers who rely on vector traits as predictors of transmission... (SNIP)

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Thirty-six entangled officers of Euler: Quantum solution to a classically impossible

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Thirty-six entangled officers of Euler: Quantum solution to a classically impossible problem

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FROM: https://www.livescience.com/math-puz...antum-solution Centuries-old 'impossible' math problem cracked using the strange physics of Schrödinger's cat By Stephanie Pappas (2022-01-20) A math problem developed 243 years ago can be solved only by using quantum entanglement, new research finds. The mathematics problem is a bit like Sudoku on steroids. It's called Euler's officer problem, after Leonhard Euler, the mathematician who first proposed it in 1779. Here's the puzzle: You're commanding an army with six regiments. Each regiment contains six different officers of six different ranks. Can you arrange them in a 6-by-6 square without repeating a rank or regiment in any given row or column? Euler couldn't find such an arrangement, and later computations proved that there was no solution. In fact, a paper published in 1960 in the Canadian Journal of Mathematics used the newfound power of computers to show that 6 was the one number over 2 where no such arrangement existed. Now, though, researchers have found a new solution to Euler's problem. As Quanta Magazine's Daniel Garisto reported, a new study posted to the preprint database arXiv finds that you can arrange six regiments of six officers of six different ranks in a grid without repeating any rank or regiment more than once in any row or column... if the officers are in a state of quantum entanglement. The paper, which has been submitted for peer review at the journal Physical Review Letters, takes advantage of the fact that quantum objects can be in multiple possible states until they are measured. (Quantum entanglement was famously demonstrated by the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, in which a cat is trapped in a box with radioactive poison; the cat is both dead and alive until you open the box.) (SNIP)

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Original Paper:

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FROM: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.05122 Thirty-six entangled officers of Euler: Quantum solution to a classically impossible problem Suhail Ahmad Rather, Adam Burchardt, Wojciech Bruzda, Grzegorz Rajchel-Mieldzioć, Arul Lakshminarayan, Karol Życzkowski - Submitted on 11 Apr 2021 (v1), last revised 6 Aug 2021 (this version, v2) The negative solution to the famous problem of 36 officers of Euler implies that there are no two orthogonal Latin squares of order six. We show that the problem has a solution, provided the officers are entangled, and construct orthogonal quantum Latin squares of this size. As a consequence, we find an example of the long-elusive Absolutely Maximally Entangled state AME(4,6) of four subsystems with six levels each, equivalently a 2-unitary matrix of size 36, which maximizes the entangling power among all bipartite unitary gates of this dimension, or a perfect tensor with four indices, each running from one to six. This special state deserves the appellation golden AME state as the golden ratio appears prominently in its elements. This result allows us to construct a pure nonadditive quhex quantum error detection code ((3,6,2))6, which saturates the Singleton bound and allows one to encode a 6-level state into a triplet of such states... (SNIP)

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Copaganda and the media

With cops freaking out about progressive prosecutors and fearing a backlash from protests about police abuse and excess, we're seeing a rash of copaganda being produced by the cops and credulously boosted by the media. Numerous threads on here have brushed against this issue, but it seems there should be a dedicated one to explore the issue directly.

A recent example of how respectable media uncritically lends their credibility to these tales of copaganda:

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Originally Posted by Alec Karakatsanis A new scandal is brewing at the New York Times. I try my best below to document the paper's corporate and police union copaganda, and to share actual evidence and research that the NYT ignores. The stakes are huge. Last year, I wrote about a NYT writer who didn't disclose he had worked for CIA, Palantir, and police or that he currently ran a consulting company that relies on "law enforcement" contracts. It was a shocking, unethical episode. Well, today, NYT had different reporter write basically same story and send it to entire NYT email list. Who was his main data source? **The same CIA/Palantir/Police analyst.** Again, the NYT calls that guy a "crime analyst" without reporting any of his conflicts of interest. Today's piece is, in many ways, worse. It is unethical faux-science suggesting that more police will make us safer. This is contrary to the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, but you wouldn't know that from NYT. But it gets even more insidious.

It's a long thread, which is easier to read using threadreader.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...374972931.html

The author details how the NYTimes uncritically lends its platform to "experts" who pass off what is, at best, heavily contested social science as established fact, or at worst is just total pseudoscientific bunk.

For example:

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Fourth, there are two main experts offered to give vague support for the article's main theses: that changes in policing caused murder and that the solutions are more punishment. The first source is a guy who pro-police journalists always seem to quote for the James Comey "Ferguson Effect" idea, in articles that don't offer any evidence, just his "opinion." NPR used same guy for same reason. His opinion here is impossibly vague. The "Ferguson effect" suggesting that reaction by police and public to civil rights protests somehow increases crime is like climate science denial. It was laughed at when Comey suggested it, and now it's offered as fancy pseudo-science in the New York Times.

it's worth a read. The conclusion:

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Setting aside the evidence in my thread above that police cause more crime than they prevent and instead use their budgets to brutally enforce inequality, every other comparable country in the world manages to have lower violence with less punishment. All that missing in NYT. This is, unfortunately, part of a long pattern of similar unethical, dangerous reporting in the NYT. Below are a few of the many threads I've done recently collecting some of these examples. At a time of rising authoritarian movements, we cannot let this keep happening.

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NASA wants your ideas to reuse trash and waste on a Mars mission

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FROM: https://www.space.com/nasa-resuse-tr...e-mars-mission NASA wants your ideas to reuse trash and waste on a Mars mission By Elizabeth Howell (2022-01-19) NASA just opened a challenge seeking ways to go to Mars and back with a minimum of wasted materials. The agency's tournament lab, along with crowdsourcing platform HeroX, have launched a "Waste to Base" challenge looking for ideas to recycle trash, waste, carbon dioxide and foam packaging materials during a two- to three-year crewed Red Planet mission. Competitors have until March 15 to enter the challenge, and several prizes of up to $1,000 each will be awarded for novel ideas, out of a total purse of $24,000. The winner should be announced by April 22, according to the challenge website. "This challenge is all about finding ways to convert waste into base materials and other useful things, like propellant or feedstock for 3D printing," the website stated. "The challenge is looking for your ideas for how to convert different waste streams into propellant, and into useful materials, that can then be made into needed things and cycled through multiple times. While a perfectly efficient cycle is unlikely, ideal solutions will result in little to no waste." Full eligibility requirements are available on the contest website; generally speaking, anyone in the world 18 years of age or older may participate individually or as a team, as long as their jurisdiction is not under United States federal sanctions, HeroX said... (SNIP)

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Eric Trump Invokes 5th

Eric Trump Invoked Fifth Amendment About 500 Times, N.Y. AG Says
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...es-n-y-ag-says

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Eric Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times when the Trump Organization executive vice president was deposed as part of a civil probe into the company’s asset valuations, New York’s top law enforcement officer told a judge.

I wonder if Eric Trump got advice from his father before he invoked his 5th Amendment rights?

Ranb

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Voyager 1: Earth's farthest spacecraft

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FROM: https://www.space.com/17688-voyager-1.html Voyager 1: Earth's farthest spacecraft By Elizabeth Howell (2022-01-19) Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012. Voyager 1 is the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space. It originally launched (along with its twin, Voyager 2) in 1977 to explore the outer planets in our solar system. However, it has remained operational long past expectations and continues to send information about its journeys back to Earth. The spacecraft entered interstellar space in August 2012, almost 35 years after its voyage began. The discovery wasn't made official until 2013, however, when scientists had time to review the data sent back from Voyager 1. Voyager 1 was actually the second of the twin spacecraft to launch, but it was the first to race by Jupiter and Saturn. The images Voyager 1 sent back have been used in schoolbooks and by many media outlets for a generation. The spacecraft also carries a special record that's designed to take voices and music from Earth out into the cosmos. - - Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched about two weeks later, on Sept. 5. Since then, the two spacecraft have been traveling along different flight paths and at different speeds. The Voyager missions took advantage of a special alignment of the outer planets that happens just once every 176 years. This alignment allows spacecraft to gravitationally "slingshot" from one planet to the next, making the most efficient use of their limited fuel. Voyager 1's next big encounter will take place in 40,000 years, when the probe comes within 1.7 light-years of the star AC +79 3888. (The star is roughly 17.5 light-years from Earth.) However, Voyager 1's falling power supply means it will probably stop collecting scientific data around 2025... (SNIP)

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Also: Voyager at 40: 40 Photos from NASA's Epic 'Grand Tour' Mission

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What governmental policies should we adopt for the unvaccinated?

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Democratic Voters Support Harsh Measures Against Unvaccinated While many voters have become skeptical toward the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of Democrats embrace restrictive policies, including punitive measures against those who haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine. ... President Biden’s strongest supporters are most likely to endorse the harshest punishments against those who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine. Among voters who have a Very Favorable impression of Biden, 51% are in favor of government putting the unvaccinated in “designated facilities,” and 54% favor imposing fines or prison sentences on vaccine critics. By contrast, among voters who have a Very Unfavorable view of Biden, 95% are against “designated facilities” for the unvaccinated and 93% are against criminal punishment for vaccine critics.

Interesting little poll. I'll think we should go with a moderate position on this issue.

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Why Joe Biden’s bid to restore scientific integrity matters

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It was a tough call as to whether to put this in the USA Politics forum or in the Science one, so I made a command decision and decided to put it in the former, and I'll let the mods figure it out (Sorry Mods :boxedin:).

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FROM: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00105-7 Why Joe Biden’s bid to restore scientific integrity matters Virginia Gewin (2022-01-17) Federal whistle-blowers share stories about political interference in science, and explain why the long-awaited measures announced last week are needed. In September 2019, then-president Donald Trump falsely stated that Alabama was under threat from Hurricane Dorian as it approached the US mainland. Three days later, despite assurances from local weather bureau officials that the claim was false, Trump showed reporters a map in which the storm’s projected path seemed to have been altered with a Sharpie permanent marker. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency, endorsed Trump’s assertion. In June 2020, a NOAA review panel found that Neil Jacobs, an atmospheric scientist and the agency’s acting administrator, and Julie Roberts, its deputy chief of staff and communications director, had “engaged in misconduct intentionally, knowingly or in reckless disregard” for the agency’s scientific-integrity policy by backing Trump’s incorrect assertion. The incident, dubbed Sharpiegate, features in ‘Protecting the Integrity of Government Science’, a long-awaited report that the Biden administration’s Task Force on Scientific Integrity released last week (see http://go.nature.com/3ztsjv6; see also Nature 601, 310–311; 2022). Ordered by the current US president seven days after his inauguration in January last year, the task force’s review of scientific-integrity policies at federal agencies sets out how trust in government can be restored through scientific integrity and evidence-based policymaking. The report calls for an overarching body that works across federal government agencies to ensure and promote best practices, and to tackle scientific-integrity violations by senior officials that cannot be handled at the agency level. These include political interference and suppression or distortion of data... (SNIP)

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RELATED ARTICLE:

This is an old article, but I thought it was worth bringing up in the same thread:

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FROM: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02797-1 Why Nature needs to cover politics now more than ever EDITORIAL: (2020-10-06) Science and politics are inseparable -- and Nature will be publishing more politics news, comment and primary research in the coming weeks and months. Since Nature’s earliest issues, we have been publishing news, commentary and primary research on science and politics. But why does a journal of science need to cover politics? It’s an important question that readers often ask. This week, Nature reporters outline what the impact on science might be if Joe Biden wins the US presidential election on 3 November, and chronicle President Donald Trump’s troubled legacy for science. We plan to increase politics coverage from around the world, and to publish more primary research in political science and related fields. Science and politics have always depended on each other. The decisions and actions of politicians affect research funding and research-policy priorities. At the same time, science and research inform and shape a spectrum of public policies, from environmental protection to data ethics. The actions of politicians affect the higher-education environment, too. They can ensure that academic freedom is upheld, and commit institutions to work harder to protect equality, diversity and inclusion, and to give more space to voices from previously marginalized communities. However, politicians also have the power to pass laws that do the opposite. The coronavirus pandemic, which has taken more than one million lives so far, has propelled the science–politics relationship into the public arena as never before, and highlighted some serious problems. COVID-related research is being produced at a rate unprecedented for an infectious disease, and there is, rightly, intense worldwide interest in how political leaders are using science to guide their decisions -- and how some are misunderstanding, misusing or suppressing it. And there is much interest in the fluctuating relationship between politicians and the scientists who governments consult or employ... (SNIP)

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ALSO (Another good read):

How Trump damaged science -- and why it could take decades to recover

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What happened to Law & Order Democrats?

This sort of thing is a really bad look. Just terrible optics for America and the Democratic Party in particular:

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One of the comments says that the LA District Attorney won't press charges even when the looters are caught. How can they just allow this situation?

And yes, maybe Democrats are to blame if this is what they voted for. There used to be moderate Democrats. Those who would stand up for law and order. Back in the 90s Bill Clinton ran on law and order and putting "100,000 cops on the streets". What happened to that Democratic party? Maybe they went too far, but now it seems they've gone too far in the other direction, and criminals are only too happy to take advantage of the situation. If prosecutors won't prosecute, where is the deterrent to crime?

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Scientists may have discovered what causes a mysterious space phenomenon

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(Original Article) FROM: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01637-7 Hemolysis contributes to anemia during long-duration space flight Guy Trudel, Nibras Shahin, Timothy Ramsay, Odette Laneuville & Hakim Louati (2022-01-14) Abstract Anemia in astronauts has been noted since the first space missions, but the mechanisms contributing to anemia in space flight have remained unclear. Here, we show that space flight is associated with persistently increased levels of products of hemoglobin degradation, carbon monoxide in alveolar air and iron in serum, in 14 astronauts throughout their 6-month missions onboard the International Space Station. One year after landing, erythrocytic effects persisted, including increased levels of hemolysis, reticulocytosis and hemoglobin. These findings suggest that the destruction of red blood cells, termed hemolysis, is a primary effect of microgravity in space flight and support the hypothesis that the anemia associated with space flight is a hemolytic condition that should be considered in the screening and monitoring of both astronauts and space tourists. Main As humankind plans extraterrestrial travel, understanding the health implications of living in space will be critical to planning safe journeys. Space anemia was previously documented and characterized by a 10–12% decrease in red blood cell (RBC) mass happening in the first 10 days in space1. Current understanding of space anemia is that the decrease in RBCs constitutes an acute adaptation to major hemodynamic events of cephalad fluid shifts, hemoconcentration and low erythropoietin (EPO) levels upon entering microgravity1,2. Thereafter, beyond 10 days in space, when the hemoglobin concentration returns to near-earthly values, erythrocytic regulation would proceed normally, but this has not been measured precisely2. Recently, astronauts were found to remain mildly hemoconcentrated throughout long-duration mission3, and epidemiological data showed that the severity, time to recovery and longitudinal effects of postflight anemia were proportional to the time spent in space4. These reports challenged the current understanding of space anemia. Longer missions to the moon and Mars, as well as space tourism and commercialization, require a better understanding of space-induced anemia. Because astronaut orthostatism, exercise tolerance and fatigue are key functions affected by anemia, RBC management will be vital for human missions landing on extraterrestrial worlds without medical supervision. While a variety of hypothetical causes (e.g., RBC dysfunction, decreased production, sequestration or increased destruction) have been proposed for space anemia, the physiologic mechanisms are not fully established5, and studying these mechanisms in space is challenging. Hemolysis releases hemoglobin, and heme rings are broken down by heme oxygenases6. Each heme molecule produces one ferrous iron, one carbon monoxide (CO) and one biliverdin molecule. In basal conditions, approximately 85% of endogenously produced CO arises from hemoglobin6. The quantification of CO molecules eliminated is therefore a direct measure of hemolysis. Recently developed methods to precisely quantify endogenous CO now permit the measurement of hemolysis in space7. Using these methods, 20 participants showed increased hemolysis (by an average of 23%) throughout 60 days of the antiorthostatic bed-rest microgravity analogue8. These findings suggested that increased hemolysis may be an important primary effect of the microgravity analogue, a hypothesis never tested in space. We therefore measured hemolysis markers in breath and blood samples from astronauts preflight, four times inflight and up to 1 year after their 6-month missions to the International Space Station (ISS)... (SNIP)

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