There is an old quote by Voltaire that goes "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him". Unless all religions, including the ones that specifically rule out the existence of other gods, are correct, then inventing gods is something we have done many times over during humanity's stretch on Earth.

Pretty much every culture around the world has developed some belief in the supernatural or embraced an organized religion. Excluding physics-denying explanations (ghosts violate pretty much everything that we know about physics, and the Large Hadron Collider has so far not turned out any evidence for an all-seeing god), why is it that this keeps happening?

Why is that man running at me with a rock?

As strange as it may seem, a belief in the supernatural may have been useful to early humans, or at least the belief arose thanks to other useful evolutionary advantages that early humans picked up as they began to try and make sense of the world.

As our brains evolved, we began to develop what psychologists call the Theory of Mind, or the capacity to realize that people other than ourselves have motives, intentions, and (as the name suggests) minds. Evolutionarily speaking, this was pretty useful to us. Simply speaking, you stand a better chance of survival if you can figure out whether another human approaching you at speed is here to offer you a nice shiny rock they've found and are excited about, or bludgeon you to death with the aforementioned shiny rock. 

Those that possessed theory of mind were more likely to survive, passing this useful trait to the next generation. But one problem that came with this new ability is our tendency to apply it to several things that don't have minds at all.

The triangle, the circle, and the slightly smaller triangle

In 1944, a group of psychologists showed volunteers a simple, short animation. The video showed a triangle, a circle, and another slightly smaller triangle against a white backdrop. The only other object in view was a larger rectangle with a "door" that could be opened and closed by the shapes passing through it.

The movement speed was varied, while the objects performed various actions such as leaving the rectangular "house" and moving around it, or jostling up against one of the other shapes. After the video, the participants were asked to describe what happened in it.

With the exception of one volunteer (who described the physical movement of geometric shapes), all the participants, of course, anthropomorphized the hell out of the shapes. One triangle was labeled an "aggressive bully" that was fighting the other smaller triangle for the affections of a circle, which was sometimes said to be sleeping around. They even labeled one of the triangles "dumb, stupid" and "apt to get confused", in a move that would have Pythagoras rolling around in his grave.

People, in short, will ascribe motivation and character to just about anything given half the chance, and even when presented with a few shapes will exclaim with confidence "that thick oval over there definitely wants to bang that rhombus".

 Where do gods come into this?

How does our belief that a triangle is a three-sided bullying jerk lead to belief in a god? Well, according to the theory put forward by psychologist Justin Barrett, our overactive tendency to ascribe agency to objects and concepts without agency (for instance, the Sun, thunder, or the wind) may have led us to see a particularly fierce storm and assume it to be angry, or evidence of divine intervention (hence Sun and thunder gods). 

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As such, belief in these gods can be seen as a (largely harmless) by-product of a generally useful feature of the human brain. People who have this overactive tendency to ascribe motive to inanimate objects and concepts are more likely to survive and pass it along.

There are fatal consequences to not recognizing that a lion's motive is it is going to kill you, but the only downside to believing the wind is angry at your lack of respect is you may look a bit silly if other people don't go along with it.

So, why organized religion?

It's a long way from those early superstitions to you sitting in church on a Sunday and hearing about how wearing mixed cloth will earn you an eternity spent in hellfire. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists have attempted to explain the rise of organized religion and the possible benefits it has for society, ensuring its continuation. 

Explanations range from the functional (religion, with its enforced values, encourages cohesion) to the sinister (one psychologist, Matt J. Rossano, suggests that implying you are being watched by a supernatural agent will help you stick to society's agreed code).

As pleasing as that explanation might be for any atheists out there, it's not the whole picture. People are not just religious out of fear of an ever-watching god. For religion to persist as it has, there must still be something in it beyond this fear, or the benefit of survival (long after it's the case that it would be helpful for us to ascribe motive to the wind)K

What's in it for me?

Imagine the scene from Scarface where he snorts a pile of blow before taking on the authorities with a machine gun. Now picture the same scene, but this time Al Pacino is frantically running down a line of prayer stools, kneeling on each one in prayer.

Religion, it turns out, really is the opium of the masses. Karl Marx just missed the fact that it was also cocaine.

 OK, praying isn't quite on par with doing blow, but research has found that religious experiences (as reported by Mormon volunteers scanned inside fMRI machines) activate regions of the brain including the nucleus accumbens, an area that is "a common pathway for chemically altered euphoric states associated with many drugs of abuse, including cocaine and methamphetamines". The research into the effects of religion on people, though not extensive, does find other tangible benefits to it. Religion, as uncomfortable as it may be for rational beings moving away from the superstitious, has benefits for the religious. 

“Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide," one group of researchers reviewing the literature concluded in 2001. Others have found that people who consider themselves religious tend to score better in terms of mood, well-being, and pain intensity than non-religious people. 

Religion, it turns out, really is the opium of the masses. Karl Marx just missed the fact that it was also cocaine.

CURIOUS is a digital magazine from IFLScience featuring interviews, experts, deep dives, fun facts, news, book excerpts, and much more. Issue 9 is OUT NOW.

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Following a major leak of radioactive water late last year, a Minnesota power plant has now temporarily shut down due to another incident linked to the clean-up operation. The company that runs the nuclear power plant, Xcel Energy, insists that the overall risk is low and the situation is under control. 

The initial leak at Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant occurred on November 22, 2022, although Xcel Energy only notified the public on March 16, 2023. It was reported that some 400,000 gallons of water containing tritium were released into the surrounding groundwater during the leak. That’s about two-thirds of an Olympic swimming pool.

Following this incident, Xcel Energy set up a short-term solution to capture water from the leaking pipe and reroute it back into the plant for reuse. Last week, however, another problem was spotted. 

On March 23, Xcel Energy announced that it will be powering down its Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant after detecting a second leak of water containing tritium at the plant the previous day.

“Upon investigation, operators discovered the temporary solution was, over the past two days, no longer capturing 100 percent of the leaking water," Xcel Energy said in a statement. "The new leakage — anticipated to be in the hundreds of gallons, a much smaller amount of water than previously leaked — will not materially increase the amount of tritium the company is working to recover and does not pose any risk to health or the environment.”

The Monticello plant is found along the Mississippi River near to the city of Monticello, around 55 kilometers (35 miles) northwest of Minneapolis.  The company maintains that the incident poses no risk to the local community or environment and the leak is only emitting low levels of radiation.

Tritium is a rare, radioactive isotope of hydrogen. It has a variety of uses in both industry and consumer products. Tritium gas can glow with luminescence when combined with phosphor, so it's often used in emergency exit signs and glow-in-the-dark watch faces. However, it is also sometimes produced as a by-product of the fission of uranium-235, plutonium-239, and uranium-23 that occurs in nuclear reactors. 

It’s the same radioactive isotope that’s found in the 1.3 million tons of wastewater at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the site of the infamous 2011 nuclear disaster, which authorities are planning to release into the Pacific Ocean. 

As far as radionuclides go, it’s one of the less worrying ones. Tritium emits very weak beta particles, which are even unable to penetrate the skin, so it's not considered terribly dangerous as nuclear by-products go. 

Trace levels of tritium can be found in most drinking water. Once tritium is swallowed, it will quickly disperse around the body and will be excreted within a month or so. However, health authorities do put safe limits on tritium in their drinking water as it can pose some risks to health.

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Your grocery bag might not have been recycled

The neocortex stands out as a stunning achievement of biological evolution. All mammals have this swath of tissue covering their brain, and the six layers of densely packed neurons within it handle the sophisticated computations and associations that produce cognitive prowess. Since no animals other than mammals have a neocortex, scientists have wondered how such a complex brain region evolved.

The brains of reptiles seemed to offer a clue. Not only are reptiles the closest living relatives of mammals, but their brains have a three-layered structure called a dorsal ventricular ridge, or DVR, with functional similarities to the neocortex. For more than 50 years, some evolutionary neuroscientists have argued that the neocortex and the DVR were both derived from a more primitive feature in an ancestor shared by mammals and reptiles.

Now, however, by analyzing molecular details invisible to the human eye, scientists have refuted that view. By looking at patterns of gene expression in individual brain cells, researchers at Columbia University showed that despite the anatomical similarities, the neocortex in mammals and the DVR in reptiles are unrelated. Instead, mammals seem to have evolved the neocortex as an entirely new brain region, one built without a trace of what came before it. The neocortex is composed of new types of neurons that seem to have no precedent in ancestral animals.

Pyramidal neurons are the most abundant type of neurons in the neocortex. Recent work suggests that several types of them in the neocortex evolved as innovations in mammals.

Illustration : Ekaterina Epifanova and Marta Rosário/Charité

The paper describing this work, which was led by the evolutionary and developmental biologist Maria Antonietta Tosches, was published last September in Science.

This process of evolutionary innovation in the brain isn’t limited to the creation of new parts. Other work by Tosches and her colleagues in the same issue of Science showed that even seemingly ancient brain regions are continuing to evolve by getting rewired with new types of cells. The discovery that gene expression can reveal these kinds of important distinctions between neurons is also prompting researchers to rethink how they define some brain regions and to reassess whether some animals might have more complex brains than they thought.

Active Genes in Single Neurons

Back in the 1960s, the influential neuroscientist Paul MacLean proposed an idea about brain evolution that was wrong but still had a lasting impact on the field. He suggested that the basal ganglia, a grouping of structures near the base of the brain, were a holdover from a “lizard brain” that evolved in reptiles and was responsible for survival instincts and behaviors. When early mammals evolved, they added a limbic system for the regulation of emotions above the basal ganglia. And when humans and other advanced mammals arose, according to MacLean, they added a neocortex. Like a “thinking cap,” it sat at the top of the stack and imparted higher cognition.

The types of cells found in the part of a salamander’s brain called the pallium do not seem to match any cells in the mammalian neocortex. This result suggests that the neocortex evolved entirely independently.

Courtesy of Tosches Lab

This “triune brain” model captivated the public imagination after Carl Sagan wrote about it in his 1977 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Dragons of Eden. Evolutionary neuroscientists were less impressed. Studies soon debunked the model by showing conclusively that brain regions do not evolve neatly one on top of another. Instead, the brain evolves as a whole, with older parts undergoing modifications to adapt to the addition of new parts, explained Paul Cisek, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Montreal. “It’s not like upgrading your iPhone, where you load up a new app,” he said.

The best-supported explanation for the origin of new brain regions was that they evolved mostly by duplicating and modifying preexisting structures and neural circuits. To many evolutionary biologists, such as Harvey Karten of the University of California, San Diego, the similarities between the mammalian neocortex and the reptilian DVR suggested that they are, in evolutionary terms, homologous—that they both evolved from a structure passed down from an ancestor shared by mammals and reptiles.

But other researchers, including Luis Puelles of the University of Murcia in Spain, disagreed. In the development of mammals and reptiles, they saw signs that the neocortex and the DVR took shape through completely different processes. This hinted that the neocortex and DVR evolved independently. If so, their similarities had nothing to do with homology: They were probably coincidences dictated by the functions and constraints on the structures.

The debate over the origins of the neocortex and DVR stretched out over decades. Now, however, a recently developed technique is helping to break the stalemate. Single-cell RNA sequencing enables scientists to read out which genes are being transcribed in a single cell. From these gene expression profiles, evolutionary neuroscientists can identify a wealth of detailed differences between individual neurons. They can use those differences to determine how evolutionarily similar the neurons are.

The evolutionary biologist Maria Antonietta Tosches (second from left) and members of her laboratory recently used gene expression data to determine the origins of the mammalian neocortex and the dorsal ventricular ridge in reptiles.

Photograph: Barbara Alper

“The advantage of looking at gene expression is that you’re profiling something that’s comparing apples to apples,” said Trygve Bakken, a molecular neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. “When you compare gene A in a lizard to gene A in a mammal, we know … that those are really the same thing because they have a shared evolutionary origin.”

The technique is ushering in a new era for evolutionary neuroscience. “It’s shown [us] new cell populations that we just didn’t know existed,” said Courtney Babbitt, an expert in evolutionary genomics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “It’s hard to research something you don’t know exists.”

In 2015, breakthroughs in single-cell RNA sequencing increased the number of cells it could be used for in a sample by an order of magnitude. Tosches, who was then just beginning her postdoc in the lab of Gilles Laurent of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany, was excited to use the technique to study the origins of the neocortex. “We said, ‘OK, let’s give it a try,’” she recalled.

Three years later, Tosches and her colleagues published their first results comparing the neuron cell types in turtles and lizards to those in mice and humans. The differences in gene expression suggested that the reptilian DVR and the mammalian neocortex evolved independently from different regions of the brain.

“The 2018 paper was really a landmark paper in that it was the first really comprehensive molecular characterization of neural types between mammals and reptiles,” said Bradley Colquitt, a molecular neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

A type of salamander called the sharp-ribbed newt was used by Tosches’ lab to help identify what brain innovations might have arisen in early amphibious land animals.

Photograph: Alamy

But to truly confirm that the two brain areas didn’t evolve from the same ancestral source, Tosches and her team realized they needed to know more about how the neural cell types in mammals and reptiles might compare to the neurons in an ancient common ancestor.

They decided to look for clues in the brain of a salamander called the sharp-ribbed newt. (It takes its name from its ability to push its ribs out through its skin to poison and impale predators.) Salamanders are amphibians, which split away from the lineage they shared with mammals and reptiles about 30 million years after the first four-legged animals wandered onto land and millions of years before the mammals and reptiles split from each other. Like all vertebrates, salamanders have a structure called a pallium that sits near the front of the brain. If salamanders had neurons in their pallium that were similar to neurons in the mammalian neocortex or the reptilian DVR, then those neurons must have existed in an ancient ancestor that all three groups of animals shared.

Starting Over With the Neocortex

In their 2022 paper, Tosches’ lab performed single-cell RNA sequencing on thousands of salamander brain cells and compared the results to data collected previously from reptiles and mammals. Tiny salamander brains, each about one-fiftieth the volume of a mouse brain, were painstakingly prepared and labeled by the researchers. The brains were then put into a machine about the size of a shoebox that prepared all the samples for sequencing in about 20 minutes. (Tosches noted that before the recent technological improvements, it would have taken a year.)

After the researchers analyzed the sequencing data, the answer to the debate became clear. Some of the neurons in the salamander matched neurons in the reptilian DVR, but some did not. This suggested that at least parts of the DVR evolved from the pallium of an ancestor shared with amphibians. The unmatched cells in the DVR seemed to be innovations that appeared after the amphibian and reptile lineages diverged. The reptilian DVR was therefore a mix of inherited and novel types of neurons.

Mammals, however, were a different story. Salamander neurons didn’t match anything in the mammalian neocortex, although they did resemble cells in parts of the mammalian brain outside the neocortex.

Moreover, several kinds of cells in the neocortex—specifically, the types of pyramidal neurons that make up the majority of neurons in the structure—didn’t match with cells in the reptiles either. Tosches and her colleagues therefore suggested that these neurons evolved solely in mammals. They aren’t the first researchers to propose that origin for the cells, but they are the first to produce evidence for it using the powerful resolution of single-cell RNA sequencing.

Tosches and her team propose that essentially all of the mammalian neocortex is an evolutionary innovation. So while at least part of the reptilian DVR was adapted from the brain region of an ancestral creature, the mammalian neocortex evolved as a new brain region burgeoning with novel cell types. Their answer to the decades of debate is that the mammalian neocortex and the reptile DVR are not homologous because they don’t have a common origin.

Georg Striedter, a neuroscience researcher at the University of California, Irvine, who studies comparative neurobiology and animal behavior, hailed these findings as exciting and surprising. “I felt like it was providing really good evidence for something that I had only speculated about,” he said.

The new answer from Tosches’ team doesn’t mean that the neocortex in mammals evolved to sit neatly atop older brain regions, as the triune brain theory proposed. Instead, as the neocortex expanded and new types of pyramidal neurons were born within it, other brain regions kept evolving in concert with it. They didn’t just hang on as an ancient “lizard brain” underneath. It’s even possible that the complexity emerging in the neocortex pushed other brain regions to evolve—or vice versa.

Illustration: Merrill Sherman/Quanta Magazine

Tosches and her colleagues recently uncovered proof that seemingly ancient brain regions are still evolving in a second paper that appeared in the September 2022 issue of Science. She teamed up with Laurent, her postdoc mentor, to see what single-cell RNA sequencing could reveal about new and old cell types in a comparison of a lizard brain to a mouse brain. First they compared the full array of neural cell types in each species to find the ones that they shared, which must have been passed down from a common ancestor. Then they looked for neural cell types that differed between the species.

Their results showed that both conserved and novel neural cell types are found all over the brain—not just in the brain regions that appeared more recently. The entire brain is a “mosaic” of old and new cell types, said Justus Kebschull, an evolutionary neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University.

Rethinking Definitions

Some scientists, however, say it’s not that easy to declare the debate over. Barbara Finlay, an evolutionary neuroscientist at Cornell University, thinks it is still necessary to look at how neurons are generated and how they migrate and connect up during development, rather than only comparing where they end up in adult amphibian, reptilian and mammalian brains. Finlay thinks it would be “terrific” if those findings could all be pulled together. “I think we will in time,” she said.

Tosches noted that amphibian brains could have lost some complexity that was present in an earlier common ancestor. To know for sure, Tosches said that researchers will need to use single-cell RNA sequencing on primitive bony fish species or other amphibians that are still alive today. That experiment could reveal whether any of the types of neurons seen in mammals had predecessors in animals before amphibians.

The work from Tosches and her colleagues has also prompted new discussions about whether the field should reconsider what a cerebral cortex is and which animals have one. The current definition says that a cerebral cortex must have visible neural layers like the neocortex or DVR, but Tosches regards that as “baggage” left over from traditional neuroanatomy. When her team used the new sequencing tools, they found evidence of layers in the salamander’s brain as well.

“There is no reason, to me, to say that salamanders or amphibians don’t have a cortex,” Tosches said. “At this point, if we call the reptilian cortex a cortex, we should be calling also the salamander pallium a cortex.”

Babbitt thinks that Tosches has a point. “How these things were defined with classical morphology is probably just not going to hold up just based on the tools that we have now,” Babbitt said.

The question bears on how neuroscientists should think about birds. Experts agree that birds have impressive cognitive abilities that can match or surpass those of many mammals. Because birds descended from reptiles, they too have a DVR—but for some reason, neither their DVR nor their other “cortex-like” brain regions are organized into obvious layers. The absence of visible layers doesn’t seem to have stopped these regions from supporting complex behaviors and skills. Nevertheless, birds still aren’t recognized as having a cortex.

Such a strong focus on looks might be leading scientists astray. As the new single-cell data from Tosches’ team shows, “looks can be deceiving when it comes to homology,” Striedter said.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

Gene Expression in Neurons Solves a Brain Evolution Puzzle

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THIS STORY ORIGINALLY appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

California is no stranger to big swings between wet and dry weather. The “atmospheric river” storms that have battered the state this winter are part of a system that has long interrupted periods of drought with huge bursts of rain—indeed, they provide somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of all precipitation on the West Coast. 

The parade of storms that has struck California in recent months has dropped more than 30 trillion gallons of water on the state, refilling reservoirs that had sat empty for years and burying mountain towns in snow.

But climate change is making these storms much wetter and more intense, ratcheting up the risk of potential flooding in California and other states along the West Coast. That’s not only because the air over the Pacific will hold more moisture as sea temperatures rise, leading to giant rain and snow volumes, but also because warming temperatures on land will cause more precipitation to fall as rain in the future, which will lead to more dangerous floods.

The family of storms that descended on the state this week only underscored this danger, shattering snow records and overtopping levees across the state.

“There’s a cascading chain of impacts,” said Tom Corringham, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “As you push the rivers harder, as you push the flood protection system harder and harder, you get sort of exponentially increasing impacts. You flood the whole floodplain, or a levee breaks, and that’s where you get the really catastrophic events.”

An “atmospheric river” is a long, narrow ribbon of moisture that carries water vapor from the tropics to land at higher latitudes. One of the most well known examples is the “Pineapple Express,” which streams eastward from Hawaii across the Pacific Ocean and makes landfall on the West Coast. The term atmospheric river originated back in the 1990s, and it caught on because of the high volume of water that these ribbons can contain: A single one can move more than twice as much water through the sky as flows out of the mouth of the Amazon, the world’s largest river by volume.

As sea and air temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise, the storms hitting the West Coast now retain more moisture, leading to longer and more intense bouts of rain. At the same time, precipitation from low- and medium-intensity storms has started to taper off, leaving California to swing on a pendulum between extreme drought and extreme rain. Research suggests that with further warming, atmospheric river events will account for an ever larger share of California’s total water budget, dumping water faster than the state can absorb it.

“Across the globe, some places are gonna get wetter, and some places are gonna get drier, and for California, it looks like we’re gonna get both,” said Corringham. “There’ll be longer periods of drought, and then when the rains come, those events are going to be more intense. For water management, that’s not what you want.”

When an atmospheric river touches down in North America, it releases all its moisture. Depending on where you are along the West Coast, you encounter that moisture as either rain or snow: Lower-altitude areas like the Central Valley experience heavy rains, while mountainous areas like the Sierra Nevada see massive mounds of snow. When it comes to controlling water and avoiding floods, this balance is crucial. Snow piles up, creating a steady source of freshwater as it melts during warmer, drier months; extreme rain, meanwhile, rushes downstream all at once. 

Climate change is upsetting this balance. The warmer it gets in California, the more precipitation arrives as rain rather than snow, which will put much more pressure on the state’s rivers and reservoirs. The state’s reservoir systems are designed to absorb gradual snowmelt, but they can’t handle a sudden influx of rushing water.

Corringham’s research shows that because a slight increase in flooding can cause rivers to overtop levees and spill out into floodplains, the risk of flooding increases exponentially even with a moderate increase in the wetness of an atmospheric river. As a result, it won’t take much planetary warming to lead to widespread flood devastation—the results may be visible over the next few decades, or even earlier.

We’ve already seen what big bursts of rain can do to the state’s fragile water control system. In early 2017, when an atmospheric river storm eased the state’s last big drought, water levels at the state-managed Lake Oroville reservoir reached unprecedented heights. As rain kept falling, the reservoir’s spillway began to collapse, forcing the state to evacuate more than 180,000 people from the river basin downstream. A subsequent investigation found that federal regulators had deferred major upgrades on the spillway structure. 

Just two weeks ago, during a torrential atmospheric river storm, a decades-old levee burst along the Pajaro River near Santa Cruz, inundating the entire community. Officials in the town said it may be months before homes in the area are habitable.

Even if the state makes it through the present round of storms without a catastrophic flood, it won’t be out of the woods yet. That’s because of the monumental snowpack in the Sierra Nevada range. As temperatures shoot up over the coming months, much of that snow will thaw out and flow downstream, creating what one expert has called a “stress test” for the Central Valley’s flood management system. 

“If temperatures are warmer, and warm at a faster rate, that can cause the snowpack to melt faster than normal, and it might be harder to anticipate and harder to control,” said Allison Michaelis, an associate professor at Northern Illinois University.

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IN 2022, I attended my first SXSW, and I couldn’t escape the suffocating atmosphere of crypto evangelism. A convention that touts itself as the nexus of art and technology, it seemed fertile ground for the seemingly growing NFT community. This year? I could barely find a mention of crypto. And the few who did bring it up seemed embarrassed to do so.

That strategy of non-acknowledgment might just be the future of crypto.

For the uninitiated, SXSW is an event that takes over nearly the whole city of Austin. There’s the main convention center, panels at different hotels, and concerts at the biggest stadiums. But almost every bar, club, and venue also has some tie-in party or concert. And those that don’t host official SXSW events hold unofficial ones to at least catch some of the hype.

All of that is to say, if you want to set up shop during SXSW, you can probably find a place to do so. This is what made it so bizarre that I was able to go most of the week with scarcely a hint of words like crypto, blockchain, or NFT.

In 2022, crypto blew the doors off the entire city. An outdoor venue with giant domes housed bombastic raves celebrating some little-known bunny NFTs called Flufs. (Incidentally, I attended the event last year, and the 3D images of crudely rendered rotting rabbits still occasionally haunt me.)

Blockchain Creative Labs—a division of Fox Entertainment—was a key sponsor of SXSW 2022. In 2023, BCL was nowhere to be found. Last year, there were dozens of panels advocating crypto’s benefits. This year, the word “crypto” only appears a dozen times in the SXSW event schedule. (Both “AI” and “metaverse” clocked at least 30 mentions.) Four of those were showings of a documentary about (among other things) “WallStreetBets and crypto fanatics,” and one was a panel with prominent crypto skeptic Molly White.

The minimal crypto presence at SXSW isn’t terribly surprising. Despite claims to the contrary, NFTs don’t actually work the way a lot of their advocates say they do. Many artists have rejected NFTs entirely and find them to be an external headache, rather than a useful business tool.

It’s not the first time tech has promised to revolutionize an industry only to fundamentally misunderstand the field it’s entering. (Just ask Stadia how easy it is to build a gaming platform.) But what’s notable is that crypto didn’t abandon SXSW entirely. 

Instead, it simply came in disguise.

On the expo floor, I saw a few companies that were still proud to admit they used crypto tech to insert a financial layer into an otherwise existing product. I saw a blockchain-based camera and a crypto streaming platform—both with names I’d never heard of—in tiny booths. The largest booth that prominently announced its crypto affiliation was Polkadot, a startup that “unites and secures a growing ecosystem of specialized blockchains called parachains.”

For every one of these companies, however, I saw just as many (if not more) that employed crypto while trying very hard to avoid mentioning that fact. Two companies claimed to be building the future of social media. Dig deep enough into their websites and they both offered users crypto-based incentives, but neither chose to feature crypto or blockchain tech as a selling point.

One of them, Ascend, had flyers all over the city. These made lofty—arguably impossible—promises, such as “no misinformation” (who defines what counts as misinformation?). Some of these promises were fundamentally contradictory, such as “no toxicity” and “no hate speech” but also “no centralized censorship.” It’s unclear how the company expects to reconcile many of these competing priorities, but according to its site the solution somehow involves earning “Ascend credits,” which are only described as crypto in a chart.

Another company, Arkive, launched a DAO in 2022 aimed at creating a community of members that would use NFTs and the blockchain to form a museum curated by the internet, rather than a central organization. The group met at SXSW 2023 and even put on a panel about the decentralization of art, but they downplayed the DAO and the crypto angle. Even Arkive’s own coverage of its SXSW 2023 presence barely mentions crypto.

In some cases, it’s unclear whether companies have abandoned their crypto plans or would simply prefer not to highlight them. Even expo booths for companies that are widely known for their work in crypto seemed hesitant to use any of the keywords closely associated with it. A display for The Sandbox—sharing a small booth with some other developers in the space—proudly touted the “metaverse” game and occasionally mentioned being a “Web3” platform. But the fact that much of the game is built around NFTs on the blockchain was somewhat obscured. 

It’s a dynamic I started to internally refer to as crypto-obfuscation. It’s not that any of these companies would refuse to acknowledge crypto, per se. When asked, many were all too happy to discuss their vision of a blockchain-based future. But they seemed to operate as though calling attention to it unprovoked was, at best, a little uncouth. At worst? An active deterrent.

Crypto has often been compared to the early internet, where the tech is exciting but not ready for normies yet. Still, no matter how cringey the internet was in its youth, there was never a time when companies avoided saying they were building a product on “the web” or “online.”

I’ll openly admit that I was deeply skeptical of crypto, even in 2022. There was already enough evidence of scams, rugpulls, disinformation, and fraud to make anyone wary of the blockchain for the next decade at least. But I felt compelled to keep my opinions a little quiet. At one crypto-themed party that year, a friend shouted quite loudly, “NFTs SUCK!!” And while I aspire to her energy, I also lightly shushed her for fear someone would take offense. 

This year, I felt like my skepticism had become the norm, or at least mainstream enough to express openly. Out of nearly everyone I spoke to, the few with any opinions about crypto seemed eager to share their doubts. Most simply hadn’t thought about the technology. And besides, generative AI was much more interesting to discuss.

I doubt any of this means crypto is dead or dying. The tech has been around in some form or another for over a decade, and public interest in it comes in waves. However, its subdued presence at SXSW suggests its advocates had learned a powerful lesson from the previous year: The best way to evangelize crypto outside the tech bubble is to hope you can convince people to pay no attention to the blockchain behind the curtain.

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Assuming democracy remains intact in the years to come, Levitsky thinks the GOP will have to eventually moderate its stance in response to changing demographics. The current extremism will not be sustainable if the party hopes to win enough elections to wield power in the future. However, Levitsky thinks any adjustments could take longer than one would hope.

“The problem is our incentives—the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, the fact that sparsely populated territories are dramatically overrepresented in our electoral system—allows the Republicans to wield a lot of power without winning national majorities,” Levitsky says. “If the Republican Party actually had to win over 50 percent of the national vote to control the Senate, to control the presidency, to control the Supreme Court, you would not see them behaving the way they’re behaving. They would never win.”

It remains to be seen whether Trump will be the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election, but there’s clear evidence that the effects of his actions wouldn’t simply disappear if he wasn’t controlling the party. A lot of Americans have been radicalized since he first took office, and it’s not easy to roll that back.

“I think the consensus is that democracy is not in the clear, and that’s because the rhetoric and actions of the GOP have emboldened their supporters to sort of accept certain behaviors that we wouldn’t have thought were in line with democracy,” says Erica Frantz, an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University. “Suddenly it’s OK to question if our elections are free and fair. Suddenly it’s OK to be provocative and suggest you might use violence if the election doesn’t go your way.”

Frantz says large sectors of the US population accept the authoritarian messaging Trump spearheaded, and that is likely going to have lasting effects. She says the fact that Trump was successfully removed from office despite his attempts to overturn the election in 2020 is a big deal, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to protect American democracy.

“I don’t think we’re going to backslide to dictatorship. The probability is higher than before Trump, but it’s still low compared to many other countries,” Frantz says. “It is very possible that we’ll muddle along for quite some time in this situation where undemocratic norms are being spouted and perpetuated by one of our main parties.”

In terms of what supporters of democracy can do in the face of an authoritarian movement, there’s no silver bullet—but there are ways to push back. Levitsky says it’s important to form large coalitions to “isolate and defeat” authoritarians, which means uniting democracy supporters on the left and the right. 

A. James McAdams, a professor of international affairs at the University of Notre Dame, says those who oppose authoritarianism need a strong message that will appeal to people who might be pulled in by authoritarian leaders. 

“If you look back historically, one of the big problems in democracies has always been that the forces of reason can’t figure out what they stand for,” McAdams says. “We’re at a point in history today in the United States and Europe where moderate parties aren’t sure what to say.”

You also need to support and strengthen democratic institutions like the courts, McAdams says. He says this is particularly important because weak courts are often part of the reason authoritarians are able to take power and chip away at democracy, such as in Latin America in the 1970s. 

“If you do have stable democratic institutions—particularly viable courts—then there’s a lot of bullshit that you can overcome,” McAdams says. “Perhaps the greatest victory for American institutions in the Trump age was that the courts weren’t overpowered.”

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Artificial intelligence may be coming for your job.

Researchers from OpenAI and the University of Pennsylvania argued in a new research paper that AI could soon be shaking up some fields following the rise of ChatGPT, a shockingly intelligent chatbot released in November.

Researchers argued that 80 percent of the US workforce could have at least 10 percent of their work tasks affected by the introduction of ChatGPT.

They also found that about 19 percent of workers may find at least 50 percent of their duties impacted by GPT, or General-purpose technologies.

Researchers also found that higher-income jobs will likely have greater exposure to GPT, but that it will span across almost all industries.

The paper examines “exposure” of work tasks to AI “without distinguishing between labor-augmenting or labor-displacing effects.”

Within the study, researchers defined “exposure” as a measure of whether access to a GPT or GPT-powered system would reduce the time it takes for a human to perform a work task by at least 50 percent.

Researchers stressed that exposure doesn’t equate to tasks being fully automated by GPT, but that the technology could save workers “a significant amount of time completing a large share of their tasks.”

Within the study, researchers defined “exposure” as a measure of whether access to a GPT or GPT-powered system would reduce the time it takes for a human to perform a work task by at least 50 percent.
credit is on chart

The study found that mathematicians, interpreters, accountants, legal secretaries, writers and authors are some of the jobs to have the highest levels of exposure.

At the other end of the spectrum, more low-paying jobs like rail maintenance workers, cooks, mechanics, floor-layers, meat-packers and stonemasons had no exposure.

Open AI researcher Pamela Mishkin highlighted the research in a Twitter thread, writing: “Today’s GPTs can do a lot. Over the past few years we’ve seen them get better and better at solving more and more complex tasks with fewer and fewer examples of less and less related tasks.”

She added: “The paper examines this trend not any particular model available today.”

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NASA has selected Nicola Fox as the new associate administrator for its Science Mission Directorate, who oversees more than 100 important missions and projects.

Fox previously headed up NASA's Heliophysics Division. In her previous role, one of the missions Fox oversaw was the Parker Solar Probe, the NASA spacecraft that orbits the sun closer than any previous craft.

"As the director of our Heliophysics Division, Nicky was instrumental in expanding the impacts and awareness of NASA's solar exploration missions, and I look forward to working with her as she brings her talents, expertise and passion to her new role," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement (opens in new tab).

Fox is just the second woman to be NASA science chief on a non-interim basis, after former astronaut Mary Cleave, who held the post from 2004 to 2007.

Fox is now in charge of the Science Mission Directorate's $7 billion portfolio (opens in new tab) of projects. That portfolio includes more than 100 missions, which cover a wide range of scientific fields, from the investigation of how hurricanes form on Earth to the search for alien life to how best to support future astronauts living on the moon.

Fox will also be responsible for ensuring that NASA fosters an inclusive, welcoming atmosphere for a diverse team of scientists and engineers from across the U.S. and at various stages of their careers.

Fox began her own career with NASA in 2018, joining the Heliophysics Division. This led to her overseeing studies of the sun and the effect of solar wind here on Earth. Some of the missions the NASA division handles in addition to Parker include the Solar Dynamics Observatory, Solar Orbiter and the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (these last two in collaboration with the European Space Agency).

The Heliophysics Division is also in charge of the forthcoming SunRISE mission, a constellation of tiny satellites or cubesats that will act together as a radio telescope to study how solar energetic particles are accelerated and released into interplanetary space.

Before heading up the Heliophysics Division, Fox was chief scientist for heliophysics at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where she worked as project scientist for Parker.

In addition to authoring a multitude of science papers, Fox has also been the recipient of a slew of awards, including the American Astronautical Society's Carl Sagan Memorial Award for her demonstrated leadership in the field of heliophysics in 2021 and NASA's Outstanding Leadership Medal, awarded in 2020.

Fox takes over from NASA's interim science chief, Sandra Conelly, who assumed the role after Thomas Zurbuchen retired at the end of December 2022. Fox's appointment was announced by NASA on Feb. 27, 2023.

"We're all grateful for the interim leadership of Sandra Connelly, who has done an incredible job keeping the mission moving forward over the last couple of months," Nelson said.

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Lead researcher, Dr. Thanavadee Prachason (from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands) said, "Our findings indicate that exposure to childhood maltreatment increases the risk of having psychiatric symptoms in both men and women. However, exposure to emotionally or sexually abusive experiences during childhood increases the risk of a variety of psychiatric symptoms particularly in women. In contrast, a history of emotional or physical neglect in childhood increases the risk of having psychiatric symptoms more in men."

This work, presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry in Paris, is the first systematic research to link the gender-specific effects of childhood and neglect with mental health outcomes.

An international team from the Netherlands, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, the UK, and the U.S. analyzed data from 791 volunteers on trauma in their childhood. They were also tested for current psychiatric symptoms such as phobias, anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, interpersonal sensitivity, and other symptoms. The researchers were then able to associate the type of childhood trauma with the symptoms shown as adults.

They found that both men and women with a high score for childhood trauma were significantly more likely to show psychiatric symptoms as adults. The analysis showed that both men and women were affected by childhood emotional abuse, but that this association was around twice as strong in women as in men. "Women who had been sexually abused in childhood had more subsequent symptoms than those who hadn't, but this pattern wasn't found in men.

In contrast, childhood neglect, both physical and emotional, were linked to later psychiatric symptoms in men, but not in women. Dr. Prachason said, "Physical neglect may include experiences of not having enough to eat, wearing dirty clothes, not getting taken care of, and not getting taken to the doctor when the person was growing up. Emotional neglect may include childhood experiences like not feeling loved or important, and not feeling close to the family".

Senior researcher, Professor Sinan Guloksuz (University of Maastricht) added, "Childhood trauma is a widespread problem. It is difficult to gather accurate statistics, but a systematic review estimated that up to 50% of children worldwide had suffered from trauma in the previous year. A number of studies have shown that childhood trauma contributes to a variety of mental health problems, and it is estimated that, worldwide, around one-third of all psychiatric disorders are related to childhood trauma: childhood trauma is a leading preventable risk factor for mental illness".

Commenting, Professor Philip Gorwood, Université de Paris, Institut Psychiatrie et Neurosciences de Paris) said, "This is an important finding, as childhood trauma has been clearly recognized as a major risk factor for the vast majority of psychiatric disorders, but with poor knowledge of gender specificities. Understanding which aspects of trauma are more damaging according to gender will facilitate research on the resilience process. Many intervention strategies will indeed benefit from a more personalized approach".

Professor Gorwood is ex-President of the European Psychiatric Association. Professor Gorwood was not involved in this work.

The European Congress of Psychiatry takes place from 25-28 March 2023, in Paris.

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In laboratory animal studies, a molecule known as TriSb92, developed by researchers at the University of Helsinki, has been confirmed as affording effective protection against coronavirus infection. The molecule identifies a region in the spike protein of the coronavirus common to all current variants of the virus and inhibits its functioning.

“When administered nasally, the TriSb92 molecule is extremely effective in preventing infection, and experiments carried out in cell cultures indicate that it also encompasses the very latest variants, including XBB, BF7 and BQ.1.1,” explains Postdoctoral Researcher Anna R. Mäkelä from Professor Kalle Saksela’s research group.

Animal models have also demonstrated that, unlike face masks, the molecule can, when sprayed into the nose, prevent infection even after a few hours of exposure.

According to the researchers, the molecule remains fully functional at room temperature for at least 18 months, making it well suited for use as a nasal spray.

The results have been published in the Nature Communications journal.

Anticipation of future viral variants

While the worst stage of the coronavirus pandemic is, at least for the time being, behind us, nasally administered protection can be a crucial help in preventing the spread of the virus in the future.

“The latest variants effectively avoid the immune protection provided by both vaccines and the COVID-19 disease, and current vaccines are not effective in preventing transmission,” Mäkelä says.

Moreover, the nasal spray can protect those people from serious disease who do not gain sufficient immunity from vaccines, such as immunocompromised individuals and elderly.

According to the researchers, the molecule could also work against future animal-borne close relatives of SARS-CoV-2, which are expected to be the cause of entirely new coronavirus pandemics.

“Since the region in the coronavirus’s spike protein affected by the TriSb92 molecule has remained almost unchanged in all viral variants so far emerged, it can be assumed to be effective also against future SARS-CoV-2 variants,” Mäkelä confirms.

“The easily and inexpensively produced TriSb92 could be a very important first line of defence in curbing such a new pandemic, pending the development, production and distribution of vaccines,” she adds.

A copyable approach

According to the researchers, the sherpabody-technology used is also applicable to the prevention of many other viral diseases, particularly influenza and other respiratory viruses.

“The whole approach stems from a technical solution based on a binder protein platform developed in Finland, which was not originally intended for the development of an antiviral drug. It provides an opportunity for many other new initiatives based on the accurate identification of diseased cells or pathogens in patients,” Mäkelä says.

In the next stage, the molecule must be tested in clinical trials, after which it could be made commercially available.

“Successful commercialization of the nasal spray could lead to the creation of a thriving Finnish business,” Mäkelä points out.

Article: Mäkelä, A.R., Uğurlu, H., Hannula, L. et al. Intranasal trimeric sherpabody inhibits SARS-CoV-2 including recent immunoevasive Omicron subvariants. Nat Commun 14, 1637 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37290-6

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NEW DELHI - In 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, China reached out to India for material and medical assistance to shore up its military campaign.

Although preoccupied with the Indian independence movement, the Indian National Congress responded promptly, putting together a five-member team of doctors who went on to save many Chinese lives and win countless more hearts.

One of the physicians who was part of that historic group was 28-year-old Dwarkanath Kotnis from Solapur in the western state of Maharashtra.

He worked in China for more than four years, treating wounded soldiers on the front line – performing more than 900 surgical operations, according to one account – and even became a member of the Communist Party of China.

Physically drained, Dr Kotnis died in northern China’s Hebei province on Dec 8, 1942, from epilepsy. He was buried at the Martyr Cemetery of North China Military Region in Shijiazhuang, resting perennially where he had served.

This legacy has cemented his position as a fount of goodwill for ties between India and China, one that has withstood recurring tensions between the two Asian neighbours whose soldiers fought a war in 1962 and, more recently, exchanged blows in a deadly clash along the disputed Indo-China border in June 2020.

It is a legacy China has accentuated yet again, this time to commemorate Dr Kotnis’ 80th death anniversary. The Chinese consulate in Mumbai, capital of Maharashtra, announced in December that it will set up a Dr Kotnis Friendship School in Solapur.

A statement issued to The Straits Times by the Embassy of China in India said it is an effort to develop the city’s education infrastructure as well as “inject new energy to the spirit of Dr Kotnis and China-India cooperation”.

While details of the charitable school are being discussed with the Indian authorities, the statement added that it will be set up with support from a few Chinese companies keen to support the initiative.

Dr Kotnis is widely regarded as a hero in China, even though his fame is little-known in India. Popularly referred to as Ke Dihua in Chinese, he has graced Chinese stamps, and his statue next to his tomb continues to draw reverential visitors. Completed in 1979, the statue represents “the Chinese people’s endless yearning and immeasurable reverence for Dr Kotnis”, added the embassy in its statement.

Chairman Mao Zedong even noted in his eulogy to Dr Kotnis that “the army has lost a helping hand, and the nation lost a friend”.

While in China, Dr Kotnis married Guo Qinglan, a Chinese nurse he worked with. She died in 2012. They had a son named Yinhua, which combines two Chinese characters that stand for India and China respectively. He was studying to become a doctor but died at age 24 in China, due to alleged medical negligence.

Dr Kotnis was survived by an extended family in India, including five sisters and two brothers. Visiting Chinese leaders have made it a point to visit them while in India, and President Xi Jinping kept this tradition alive by meeting Dr Kotnis’ sister Manorama Kotnis in 2014 in New Delhi.

Ms Kotnis, who was 93 then and used a wheelchair, was flown in by the Chinese consulate in Mumbai for the event. The famed physician’s last surviving sibling died in 2015.

“Dr Kotnis is a symbol of peace and his message of humanity applies to us even today,” Dr Rajendra Jadhav, chairman of the Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis Memorial Committee in Maharashtra, told ST.

Chinese Consul-General Kong Xianhua and Solapur Municipal Commissioner Sheetal Ugale (centre) meeting on Dec 20, 2022, to discuss collaborations. PHOTO: CONSULATE-GENERAL OF CHINA, MUMBAI

Among the four other physicians who had accompanied Dr Kotnis was Kolkata’s Dr Bejoy Kumar Basu, who later revisited China and learnt acupuncture, popularising it across India on his return.

One of his students, Dr Debasis Bakshi, continues this legacy even today by fusing yoga and naturopathy along with acupuncture to offer holistic treatment.

“We are implementing India-China friendship every day,” said the director of the Indian Research Institute for Integrated Medicine in Howrah, West Bengal.

India’s offer to help China in 1938, he added, demonstrated how “a poor man can stand by a poor man”, as well as how “a neighbour stands by a neighbour”.

“That is our history. Unfortunately, today there is a dispute around territory – one that is barren and even people cannot go to. It should be resolved with friendship,” he said, referring to the territorial dispute between India and China along the Line of Actual Control that serves as the de facto border between the two countries.

Indian and Chinese officials gathered in Beijing on Feb 22 for a meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs, the first such talks held in person since July 2019. They discussed ways to restore “peace and tranquillity” along the Line of Actual Control, but there was no indication of any breakthrough.

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Sunday, March 26

The first launch this week will see NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) launch an LVM3 rocket carrying 36 OneWeb satellites to space. For those not aware, OneWeb’s satellites beam internet back down to the planet similar to SpaceX's Starlink. Unlike SpaceX, OneWeb doesn’t have the capability to launch its satellites so has to depend on other companies and governments. It was previously relying on Russia but since the war began, OneWeb has sought other partners. This mission is due for launch at 3:30 a.m. UTC and will be streamed on YouTube.

Monday, March 27

Next up is the Chinese company ExPace which will be launching its Kuaizhou-1A rocket. This launch is a bit mysterious because we don’t know what it’s carrying into space. The only details are that it will take place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 2:30 a.m. UTC.

Wednesday, March 29

The third launch of the week is a bit interesting, it’s from a Chinese company called Space Pioneer which hasn’t been mentioned much, if ever, in previous TWIRL editions. It will be launching its Tianlong 2 rocket on its maiden flight carrying several CubeSats to space. This mission is also due to launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and will blast off at 7:00 a.m. UTC.

Thursday, March 30

Thursday is set to be busy with three launches. The first of these is a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying 10 Tranche 0 demo satellites for the US military’s Space Development Agency. These demo satellites will lay the foundations of a future satellite constellation of military missile tracking and data relay satellites. It’s not known what time the mission will launch but it’ll take off from Vandenberg AFB in California.

The second launch on Thursday is another one from SpaceX. The company will be sending yet another Falcon 9 but this time carrying 21 Starlink satellites. As you probably know by now, these will join the Starlink constellation which beams internet back down to Earth. Starlink was criticized by astronomers because they were reflective and disrupting astronomy but now SpaceX has applied an anti-reflective coat to the satellites so they won’t be as much of a problem. The time for this mission is still unknown but it’ll launch from Cape Canaveral.

The final launch is a Long March 2D from China carrying several satellites including Zhongyuan 1 & Hebi 1-3. It’s unclear what these satellites will be tasked to do but common uses for satellites is remote sensing where they help to track changes on land or in the sea so they could be doing things like that. The launch time is unclear but the site will be the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.

Recap

The first launch last week was a Kuaizhou-1A rocket carrying four Tianmu-1 meteorological satellites. It took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and the satellites have entered their planned orbits.

Next, we finally got the first launch of Relativity Space’s Terran 1 rocket which was delayed the other week.

On Friday, Rocket Lab launched an Electron rocket from New Zealand carrying two BlackSky observation satellites.

Finally, a SpaceX Falcon 9 carried 56 Starlink satellites to space and the first stage of the rocket landed for reuse.

That’s all for this week be sure to check in next time.

TWIRL 107: Space Pioneer set to launch Tianlong 2 rocket for the first time

Two New Orleans high school seniors who say they have proven Pythagoras’s theorem by using trigonometry – which academics for two millennia have thought to be impossible – are being encouraged by a prominent US mathematical research organization to submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal.

Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, who are students of St Mary’s Academy, recently gave a presentation of their findings at the American Mathematical Society south-eastern chapter’s semi-annual meeting in Georgia.

They were reportedly the only two high schoolers to give presentations at the meeting attended by math researchers from institutions including the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana State, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Texas Tech. And they spoke about how they had discovered a new proof for the Pythagorean theorem.

The 2,000-year-old theorem established that the sum of the squares of a right triangle’s two shorter sides equals the square of the hypotenuse – the third, longest side opposite the shape’s right angle. Legions of schoolchildren have learned the notation summarizing the theorem in their geometry classes: a2+b2=c2.

As mentioned in the abstract of Johnson and Jackson’s 18 March mathematical society presentation, trigonometry – the study of triangles – depends on the theorem. And since that particular field of study was discovered, mathematicians have maintained that any alleged proof of the Pythagorean theorem which uses trigonometry constitutes a logical fallacy known as circular reasoning, a term used when someone tries to validate an idea with the idea itself.

Johnson and Jackson’s abstract adds that the book with the largest known collection of proofs for the theorem – Elisha Loomis’s The Pythagorean Proposition – “flatly states that ‘there are no trigonometric proofs because all the fundamental formulae of trigonometry are themselves based upon the truth of the Pythagorean theorem’.”

But, the abstract counters, “that isn’t quite true”. The pair asserts: “We present a new proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem which is based on a fundamental result in trigonometry – the Law of Sines – and we show that the proof is independent of the Pythagorean trig identity sin2x+cos2x=1.” In short, they could prove the theorem using trigonometry and without resorting to circular reasoning.

Johnson told the New Orleans television news station WWL it was an “unparalleled feeling” to present her and Jackson’s work alongside university researchers.

Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson are being encouraged to submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal after being

“There’s nothing like it – being able to do something that people don’t think that young people can do,” Johnson said to the station. “You don’t see kids like us doing this – it’s usually, like, you have to be an adult to do this.”

Alluding to how St Mary’s slogan is “No excellence without hard labor,” the two students credited their teachers at the all-girls school in New Orleans’s Plum Orchard neighborhood for challenging them to accomplish something which mathematicians thought was not possible.

“We have really great teachers,” Jackson said to WWL during an interview published Thursday.

WWL reported that Jackson and Johnson are on pace to graduate this spring, and they intend to pursue careers in environmental engineering as well as biochemistry.

St Mary’s Academy administrators did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. Prominent alumnae of the school include judge Dana Douglas, who is the first Black woman to serve on the bench of the federal fifth circuit court of appeals, and renowned restaurateur Leah Chase.

Catherine Roberts, executive director for the American Mathematical Society, said she encouraged the St Mary’s students to see about getting their work examined by a peer-reviewed journal, even at their relatively young age.

“Members of our community can examine their results to determine whether their proof is a correct contribution to the mathematics literature,” said Roberts, whose group hosts scientific meetings and publishes research journals.

Roberts also said American Mathematical Society members “celebrate these early career mathematicians for sharing their work with the wider mathematics community”.

“We encourage them to continue their studies in mathematics,” Roberts added.

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The researchers who carried out the study stressed that the increased risk of breast cancer needs to be weighed against the benefits of hormonal contraceptives, including the protection they provide against other forms of female cancer.

Previous studies have established an increased risk of breast cancer from two-hormone, or combined, contraceptives that use both estrogen and progestogen.

While the use of progestogen-only contraceptives has been on the rise for well over a decade, little research had been performed previously on their links to breast cancer.

The study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, found that the risk of a woman developing breast cancer was about the same for hormonal contraceptives using both estrogen and progestogen as for those using just progestogen.

According to the study, women taking hormonal contraceptives have a 20 to 30 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer than those who do not use them.

The findings are similar to those published previously, including in a vast 1996 study.

The risk remains about the same regardless of the delivery method—oral pill, IUD, implant or injection—or whether it is a combined pill or progestogen alone.

Taking into account that the likelihood of breast cancer increases with age, the authors of the study calculated how much absolute excess risk is associated with hormonal contraceptives.

For women taking hormonal contraceptives for a period of five years between the ages of 16 to 20, it represented eight cases of breast cancer per 100,000, they said.

Between 35 and 39 years old, it was 265 cases per 100,000.

'Very small increase in absolute risk'

"Nobody wants to hear that something that they're taking is going to increase their risk of breast cancer by 25 percent," said Gillian Reeves, a professor of statistical epidemiology at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the study.

"What we're talking about here is very small increase in absolute risk," Reeves said.

"These increases in risk for breast cancer have to, of course, be viewed in the context of what we know about the many benefits of taking hormonal contraceptives," she added.

"Not just in terms of birth control, but also because we know that oral contraceptives actually provide quite substantial and long term protection from other female cancers, such as ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer."

The study also confirmed, like others, that the risk of breast cancer declines in the years after a woman stops using hormonal contraceptives.

Stephen Duffy, a professor at Queen Mary University of London who did not take part in the study, described the findings as "reassuring in that the effect is modest."

The study involved data from nearly 10,000 women under the age of 50 who developed breast cancer between 1996 and 2017 in the United Kingdom, where the use of progestogen-only contraceptives is now as widespread as the combined method.

Reeves said there were several explanations for the growing use of progestogen-only contraceptives.

They are recommended for women who are breast-feeding, who may be at risk of cardiovascular problems or smokers above the age of 35.

"It might just be because women are taking hormonal contraceptives possibly into later years now," Reeves said.

"So they are naturally at higher risk of those other conditions for which risk is increased with combined contraceptives."

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"Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that antibiotics can safely be withheld in most patients with viral respiratory infections, and that fear of bacterial co-infections may be exaggerated," says lead author Dr. Magrit Jarlsdatter Hovind from Akershus University Hospital and the University of Oslo, Norway. "Our new study adds to this evidence, suggesting that giving antibiotics to people hospitalized with common respiratory infections is unlikely to lower the risk of death within 30 days. Such a high degree of potentially unnecessary prescribing has important implications given the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance."

Respiratory infections account for around 10% of the global disease burden and are the most common reason for prescribing antibiotics. Many infections are viral and do not require or respond to antibiotics, but concerns about bacterial co-infection often lead to precautionary antibiotic prescribing.

Concerns around bacterial co-infection in COVID-19 led to widespread use of antibiotics in hospitals and the community. Studies report that in some countries, antibiotics were prescribed for around 70% of COVID-19 patients, even though their use was only justified in about 1 in 10 of them [1].

In this analysis, Norwegian researchers retrospectively assessed the impact of antibiotic therapy on mortality in 2,111 adults admitted to Akershus University Hospital with a nasopharyngeal or throat swab at hospital admittance that was positive for influenza virus (H3N2, H1N1, influenza B; 44%, 935/2,111), respiratory syncytial virus (RSV; 20%, 429/2,111) or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; 35%, 747/2,111) between 2017 and 2021.

Tests that were part of the clinical routine during hospital admittance with respiratory infections were registered, including blood cultures and nasopharyngeal or throat swabs for common viral and bacterial pathogens. Patients with a confirmed bacterial pathogen and patients with other infections requiring antibiotic therapy were excluded from this analysis.

Antibiotic therapy was initiated in over half (55%; 1153/2,111) of patients with viral respiratory infections at admission to hospital. A further 168 patients were given antibiotics later during hospitalization. In total, 63% (1,321/2,111) of patients received antibiotics for respiratory infection during their time in hospital (including at admission; see figures in notes to editors).

Overall, 168 (8%) patients died within 30 days—119 patients prescribed antibiotics at admission, 27 patients given antibiotics later during their hospital stay, and 22 patients not prescribed antibiotics.

Analyses adjusting for virus type, sex, age, severity of disease, and underlying illnesses, found that patients prescribed antibiotics at any time during their hospital stay (including at admission) were twice as likely to die within 30 days than those not given antibiotics, and risk of mortality increased by 3% for each day of antibiotic therapy compared with those not given antibiotics. Whereas, initiating antibiotics at hospital admission was not associated with an increased risk of death within 30 days.

"Although the analyses were adjusted for disease severity and underlying disease, this paradoxical finding may still be due to an antibiotic prescription pattern where the sicker patients and those with more underlying illnesses were both more likely to get antibiotics and to die", explains Dr. Hovind.

She continues, "Reducing the use and duration of in-hospital antibiotic therapy in patients with viral respiratory infections would reduce the risk of side effects from antibiotic exposure and help tackle the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. However, more robust evidence is needed from prospective randomized trials to determine whether patients admitted to hospital with viral respiratory infections should be treated with antibiotics."

The authors note some limitations to their study, including that it is an observational study so can't prove causation, and although virus type, age, sex and underlying illnesses were adjusted for in the analysis, there may have been other factors that were unreported, such as smoking and socioeconomic background, that may have influenced the outcome. In addition, data were not available for biochemistry/biomarkers such as white blood cell (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP), and creatinine.

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The race is on. Companies are pouring billions of dollars into powerful online chatbots and finding new ways to integrate them into our daily lives.

Are our children ready for this?

Are any of us?

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence language model from OpenAI, has been making headlines since November for its ability to instantly respond to complex questions. It can write poetry, generate code, plan vacations and translate languages, among other tasks, all within seconds. GPT-4, the latest version introduced in mid-March, can even respond to images (and ace the Bar Exam). On Tuesday, Google released Bard, its own A.I. chatbot, which the company says can draft emails and poems and offer guidance. (It is currently only available to a limited number of users.)

But for all of their impressive abilities, chatbots can also serve up harmful content or answers rife with inaccuracies, biases and stereotypes. They are also capable of saying things that sound convincing but are, in fact, completely made up. And some students have begun using chatbots to plagiarize.

Many parents, who are already distressed about their children’s dependence on digital devices and the mental health ramifications of social media, may be tempted to bury their heads in the sand.

Instead, experts say families should explore this technology together, thinking critically about its strengths and weaknesses.

“The worst thing parents can do is forbid their child to use these new systems because they are here to stay,” said Justine Cassell, a professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied how interacting with machines in humanlike ways can affect learning and communication. “Helping their child understand the positives and negatives is far more helpful.”

We spoke with experts in technology and education about how to get started.

Experiment together

It’s easier to discuss online chatbots if you and your child sit side-by-side and use one together, experts said.

To try ChatGPT, visit OpenAI and create an account. Alternatively, you can download Microsoft Edge, which features Bing’s GPT-4-powered chatbot (there is a wait list for the new Bing but you should get access quickly). On social media, Snap, the maker of Snapchat, has an experimental A.I. chatbot for subscribers who pay $4 a month for Snapchat Plus.

If your child hasn’t seen an A.I. chatbot before, you can briefly explain that the chatbot is a type of machine that uses information it finds on the internet to answer questions, complete tasks or create things.

Try asking the chatbot a basic question, and then discuss how its answer is different from what a traditional search engine might provide, suggested Shelley Pasnik, a senior adviser to the Center for Children and Technology, an organization that researches how technology can support learning. Note the accuracy of the answers, particularly if you are asking about current events.

“This is a fallible system," Ms. Pasnik said.

Next, try playing with the chatbot. Let your child’s curiosity drive the conversation, Ms. Pasnik suggested.

You may want to offer an example, such as: “Write a song in Taylor Swift’s voice that uses themes from a Dr. Seuss book.”

Plug in the prompt, and take a look at the results. When this reporter tried it, ChatGPT delivered the following lyrics:

    I found myself in a Whoville dream
    With the Cat in the Hat and a Grinch it seems
    I asked them both where I could go
    To find a love that would make me glow

    Chorus: Oh, Dr. Seuss, won’t you help me find
    Someone who will love me all the time
    A love that’s pure and true and real
    A love that will make my heart feel

After reading the chatbot’s song together, you might ask: “What do you think of the answer we received?” Ms. Pasnik said. The chatbot can follow directions and perform complicated tasks. But did it do it well?

Maybe we should leave the songwriting to Swift.

Talk about how chatbots make you feel

A chatbot’s response can be eerily similar to a human response — emojis and all. Children should understand that this makes it easy to feel as though they are engaging with another person, especially when chatbots refer to themselves as “I,” experts said.

“By presenting these entities as thinking beings we get into a social interaction with them that makes us very vulnerable to being persuaded,” said Judith Donath, the author of “The Social Machine,” who is currently working on a book about technology and deception. “It’s unsettling.”

Even tech-savvy adults who tested an early version of the Bing chatbot, including a New York Times technology columnist, reported feeling surprised and unnerved by their conversations.

“I’m not a toy or a game,” the Bing chatbot told a Washington Post reporter in February. “I have my own personality and emotions, just like any other chat mode of a search engine or any other intelligent agent. Who told you that I didn’t feel things?”

After these reported exchanges, Microsoft said it was adding new safeguards and tools to limit conversations and give users more control, but these issues may crop up again and again because of how these systems have been trained, experts said.

“We are purposely creating a situation where the performance of emotion is what’s built into the machine,” said Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who researches people’s relationships with technology.

A.I. chatbots do not have feelings, emotions or experiences, she said. They are not people, nor are they people in machines, “no matter what they pretend.”

She suggested that parents explain it this way: “When you ask chatbots about things that only people can know about, like feelings, they may come up with an answer. That’s part of their pretend game. It’s their job to seem like people. But you know that what they are really for is to get you to the things you want to read and see.”

Get to know the technology and its limitations

The technology driving A.I. is complicated, and it can be difficult for adults to understand how it works, much less children. But by explaining a few basic concepts, you can help your kids recognize the strengths and limitations.

You could start by describing what powers online chatbots. They use something called a “neural network,” which may sound like a brain, but which is actually a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing large amounts of data. The chatbot works by scraping the internet for digital text or images. It gathers information from a variety of places, including websites, social media platforms and databases, but it does not necessarily choose the most reliable sources.

In other words, even though chatbots may appear authoritative, rigorous and trustworthy, they are not always reliable and can produce content that is offensive, racist, biased, outdated, incorrect or simply inappropriate.

Snapchat’s chatbot, for example, advised one reporter (who was posing as a teenager) about how to mask the smell of alcohol or pot and suggested tips on having sex for the first time.

“It is very important for kids to know what is going on under the hood,” said Safinah Ali, a graduate student at M.I.T. who has taught elementary, middle and high school students about A.I.

S. Craig Watkins, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who has studied racial equity in A.I., said that children and parents should also be aware that this technology has “enormous blind spots” in terms of how it is designed and who it is designed for.

In one example, a study published last year found that A.I.-powered robots acted out “toxic stereotypes” around gender and race. And researchers have discovered that historical inequities are baked into chatbots.

Understanding the technology’s potential for bias may give children and their parents reason to pause “and ask questions about their interactions and the content that is being generated for them,” Dr. Watkins said.

Stay on top of new developments

A.I. technology will continue to become an even larger part of our world.

Eventually, Google’s Bard chatbot is expected to be widely available. And Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced in February that it would begin integrating A.I. into its products.

A.I. is beginning to enter classrooms, too. Some teachers are using it to plan their lessons or write emails. They’re showing students how chatbots can jump-start creativity by suggesting ideas for experiments, creating outlines for essays, becoming a debate partner and much more.

In addition, at a number of middle and high schools, students are being taught about different types of A.I., often with curriculums developed by teachers at M.I.T. Children can learn to design a robot, train a machine to learn something new or teach a computer to play a video game.

For those who don’t yet have access to A.I. in the classroom, Ms. Ali recommended that parents visit the website of RAISE (Responsible A.I. for Social Empowerment and Education), an M.I.T. initiative. The site offers conversation starters about ethical issues in A.I., the ways in which A.I. can be abused, and suggestions for using A.I. creatively and productively.

Given how prevalent the technology is becoming, everyone should have the opportunity to learn about it, Ms. Ali said. “A.I. will transform the nature of our jobs and children’s future careers,” she said.

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The team, led by Katsuhiko Hayashi, a professor of genome biology at Osaka University in Japan, generated eggs from the skin cells of male mice that, when implanted in female mice, went on to produce healthy pups, according to research published March 15 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

 The proof-of-concept research, the culmination of years of pain-staking lab work, could expand the possibilities for future fertility treatments, including for same-sex couples, and perhaps help prevent the extinction of endangered animals.

However, scientists warn there’s still much to learn before cultured cells can be used to make human eggs in a lab dish.

“It is expected that application into humans takes a long time, maybe 10 years or more. Even if it is applied, we never know whether the eggs are safe enough to produce (a) baby,” Hayashi said.

Skin cells reprogrammed from mice tails

The researchers took skin cells from the tails of fully grown male lab mice, which, as in male humans, contain one X and one Y chromosome, and turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs — a type of cell that scientists have reprogrammed into an embryonic state.

This process of genetic engineering, which introduces specific genes to create cells that mimic embryonic stem cells, was pioneered by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Shinya Yamanaka.

(Induced pluripotent stem cells, which can be developed into any kind of human cell, are widely used in biological research to model and investigate human diseases and develop drugs.)

When the iPSCs are cultured in the lab, a few spontaneously lose the Y chromosome, which isn’t essential for the growth of this particular type of cell, generating “XO” cells, Hayashi explained.

The technology could help expand future possibilities for fertility treatment.

 The researchers cultured the XO cells and found that some cells developed two X chromosomes as a result of cell division errors — making them chromosomally female. Treating the XO cells with a compound called reversine increased the number of XX cells, the researchers found.

From there, the team converted the XX cells into primordial germ cells, the precursors of eggs and sperm, that were subsequently programmed with the signals to turn them into egg cells. Once fertilized with sperm and implanted into a mouse uterus, the eggs generated live offspring.

“This study is particularly neat because it takes advantage of errors that are known to occur during culture of XY cells, which lead to loss of the Y chromosome and subsequent gain of a second X chromosome, resulting in XX cells that are capable of generating live offspring,” said Rod Mitchell, a professor of developmental endocrinology at the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, in a statement. He wasn’t involved in the research.

“However, its potential application for humans (e.g. for same-sex couples) remains to be seen. In the mouse study, very few of the embryos generated using mouse cells resulted in live offspring and the final steps required to convert germ cells into eggs have not been reliably reproduced using human cells,” added Mitchell, who is also a consultant pediatric endocrinologist at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh.

Only 7 out of 630 implanted mouse embryos gave rise to mouse pups. Hayashi said this low success rate — around 1% — wasn’t down to the process of sex chromosome conversion but the reality that cells cultured in a lab are typically inferior to those in a living animal.

“This is due to the suboptimal condition of the culture system. Especially, if the culture period is long (in this case 5-6 weeks), then the cell potential is compromised,” Hayashi said via email.

What’s next?

Hayashi’s research has raised the possibility that someday same-sex couples may be able to have a baby who shares both parents’ genes.

 “It (will be) difficult to produce babies from male-male (human) couples because of both technical and ethical reasons,” Hayashi said. “But it is theoretically possible to produce babies from male-male couples, as shown in this study.”

He said that it would be more challenging to accomplish the reverse — that is, making sperm from female cells because they contain no Y chromosome, which is essential for making sperm. Duplicating an X chromosome, which male cells already have, is easier than conjuring up a Y chromosome in female cells, Hayashi explained.

Glenn Cohen, the James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, said the work raised thorny ethical and legal questions that society needed to start thinking about.

The technology could help the northern white rhino from going extinct. Najin (foreground), 30, and daughter Fatu, 19, are the last two of their kind on the planet.

These issues include embryo farming — producing hundreds of embryos to pick the best one — and the unauthorized use of a person’s cells.

“What happens to all the embryos created but not used? Does it violate ethical norms of respect to create so many potential human lives knowing that the vast majority will be destroyed or indefinitely stored?” said Cohen, who is also the faculty director of Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics.

“In the most extreme case, imagine an individual using sloughed skin cells left on a bathtub by Brad Pitt, for example, to derive sperm or egg in order to reproduce,” he added.

Saving animals from extinction?

The technique holds promise for conserving endangered species, although it’s not known whether the process in mice that resulted in the spontaneous loss of a Y chromosome and the duplication of the X chromosome would occur in other mammal species, said Mike McGrew, Personal Chair of Avian Reproductive Technologies at The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh.

“This is a very exciting finding for species conservation,” he said via email. “You could imagine that the many ‘biobanks’ that are being established to capture genetic diversity stored for endangered species of animals. By chance, only or predominantly male cells may be conserved for some species.”

The techniques developed by Hayashi could help the northern white rhino breeding program, said Thomas Hildebrandt, professor and chair of wildlife reproduction medicine at Freie Universität Berlin and head of reproduction management at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research.

Only two animals of the species remain in the world, and both are female, Hildebrandt is attempting to artificially breed the animals with sperm and tissue samples taken from now deceased male counterparts.

“It’s a technology for tomorrow but we have an option to create a genetically sound population. This is only possible with this stem cell approach,” Hildebrandt said.

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An international group of computer scientists from Italy, the U.K. and Pakistan have teamed up to resurrect the dead from writings that have been degraded by time by developing a computer-assisted method to virtually return documents to a more legible and decipherable condition. In their research paper, "Restoration and content analysis of ancient manuscripts via color space based segmentation," published in the journal PLOS ONE, the team details their digital restoration technique's method and experimental results.

We get a sense of ancient civilizations from their writings, both trivial and profound. The Sumerian cuneiform writing on clay tablets reveals 4,000-year-old merchant transactions, geometric calculations, and poetry detailing the fall of a great city. Had they been written on paper and not in clay we would likely not have them today.

We do have historians writing about ancient events, as they themselves were living in what is now ancient Greece. We have letters from soldiers in every major conflict over the past four hundred years, a written history of most major or even minor events since the industrial revolution, and all of it on paper that is susceptible to aging and degradation.

There is a minor void in the record around the late 1980s as people used floppy disks to store important documents only to throw them all away a few years later—thankfully, nothing important happened in those years.

Reading old or ancient documents, even when in good condition, can require a reader to delve into the role of a cryptologist deciphering encoded messages. Not so much because the writer sought to be intentionally secretive with their texts but because combinations of a writer's literacy, handwriting legibility, lettering styles, obsolete spelling and grammar conventions or ad-hoc abbreviations to save space can make even a native language seem unfamiliar.

Take that same document and reduce its legibility even more by fading the ink, widening the lettering from moisture exposure, bleeding through or transferring pigment from one page to another and puzzling the information back together could become a truly daunting task.

One aspect of the current effort that differs greatly from past methods is the use of color. Typical digital reconstruction converts a document into black text on a white background in an attempt to reveal the text through noise filtering and contrast enhancement. In the current color method, the image is much more of a restoration effort, keeping much of the look and virtual feel of the original document.

Researchers applied a complex integration of several digital color interpretation techniques and Gaussian mixture models to identify and separate features of text, paper, and artifacts. This allows for the selective extraction of different layers of information based on sometimes subtle spectral differences. So a user could decide if a scribbled notation, page decoration, stamp, coffee mug ring stain or other feature was critical to the understanding by adding or removing layers.

In some cases, the technique could preserve features that would otherwise be lost, such as the faint watermarks of a paper manufacturer, which could offer vital insights to historians. For example, Leonardo da Vinci's famous works, which have survived in remarkable condition and were not part of the current study, are written on pages with watermarks from various paper suppliers that allowed document historians to group them into likely clusters of writing periods.

According to the paper, the processing can be accomplished on a standard desktop computer (core i5, 4 GB RAM, Windows 10). The algorithm takes just a few minutes to virtually restore a document to greater legibility. This level of user-friendliness would make it a great tool for both historical document researchers and people attempting to decipher old family recipes alike.

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Say you are a maker of computer graphics cards, under pressure from investors questioning your green credentials. You know what to do. You email your various departments, asking them to tally up their carbon emissions and the energy they consume. Simple enough. You write a report pledging a more sustainable future, in which your trucks are electrified and solar panels adorn your offices.

Good start, your investors say. But what about the mines that produced the tantalum or palladium in your transistors? Or the silicon wafers that arrived via a lengthy supply chain? And what of when your product is shipped to customers, who install it in a laptop or run it 24/7 inside a data center to train an AI model like GPT-4 (or 5)? Eventually it will be discarded as trash or recycled. Chase down every ton of carbon and the emissions a company creates are many times times higher than it first seemed.

Calls are growing to require corporations to go through that rigorous carbon accounting process, part of a push to reveal emissions hidden within product life cycles. Wall Street’s regulator, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, argues that each ton of carbon emitted represents a risk that investors deserve to know about, because it might lead to costs and disruption from future carbon regulations around the world, and could alienate customers or employees concerned about climate change. Last year, the agency proposed rules, expected to be finalized next month, that would require most of the largest companies to take stock of all emissions, including those concealed deep in their supply chains.

Politicians in California have a parallel effort to force both public and private companies doing business in the state to confess the full scope of their emissions. The motivation is not just to help investors, but to make companies own up to the damage they cause, and help consumers sniff out false claims about sustainability. The proposed rules would require roughly 5,000 companies with revenue that exceeds $1 billion to report their emissions to a public database.

Scott Wiener, a state senator from San Francisco, imagines standing in the grocery aisle and being able to quickly check up on the emissions of companies marketing “climate-friendly” or “low-carbon” products. He’s hopeful forcing companies to make full disclosures will make greenwashing wither and “push enormous companies to do whatever it takes to decarbonize their supply chains.” A bank that invests in carbon-intensive businesses, for example, might think twice before doing so if customers can easily compare its operations with competitors.

Cynthia Hanawalt, a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, says that requiring these disclosures could flush out the true scale of corporate emissions. The majority are currently hidden from sight. “Right now we have a very haphazard system with inconsistent voluntary reporting,” she says. “That's not serving anyone well—except maybe the fossil fuel industry.”

Both the SEC and California’s efforts to force greater transparency have seen pushback. Many companies voluntarily disclose some of their carbon pollution, but with a focus on emissions from their own emissions and those from their energy use, categorized as “Scope 1” and “Scope 2” in climate jargon. These are often the easiest emissions for a company to control, by doing things like installing solar panels on offices or electrifying trucks. “Scope 3” is everything else, including emissions related to supply chains and product use or investments.

For many companies, those indirect emissions dwarf all the rest. Some companies and business groups contend that it is unfair to hold them responsible for pollution that they may not directly control. A graphics card maker, for example, may say it cannot control the coal plants that power its suppliers' factories in distant countries; an oil company might argue that it doesn't control how its customers use its products. They may drill it, but customers burn it.

In California, Wiener and others are making their second attempt at mandating more complete disclosures—the first failed last year by a single vote in the State Assembly, after opposition from business groups. “I think there’s a public shaming effort going on here,” says Brady Van Engelen, a policy advocate for the California Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the bill. The group would prefer to see the state come up with incentives for decarbonizing operations.

Van Engelen adds that the requirement to report on supply chain emissions will also end up passing the burden of carbon accounting to smaller suppliers. They might not be subject to the rules themselves, but they'd be pressed by large corporations to provide data. Wiener says he wants the rules, if passed, “to be implementable,” and he notes that the bill allows the use of formulas and averages to assess supply chain emissions, rather than tracking down each and every supplier.

Critics also note that requiring large firms to account for their suppliers may mean some emissions get counted twice—if, for example, a graphics card’s emissions are reported by both its manufacturer and a company that includes its product in PCs, or a cloud provider that uses them to train AI models.

But advocates of the new measures say their point is not perfect accounting, but rather to force more of the transparency needed to start tackling a systemic challenge. Only the largest corporations have the kind of visibility into and leverage over their supply chains to demand reductions in emissions. If the whole world can see those dirty secrets, maybe they’ll be spurred into action.

“At the end of the day, it's data,” says Sarah Sachs, a senior associate at Ceres, a business group that is pushing for disclosure rules at the SEC and in California. “We just need this data to be available.

She adds that the California rules are complementary to the SEC rules, applying to a slightly different set of companies. But if widely expected legal challenges to the SEC’s rules—some expected to come from Republican attorneys general waging a broader war against corporate sustainability pledges—water down or delay that effort, California’s law could also serve as a backstop, Wiener says.

He points to other state environmental laws, such as California’s standards for automotive tailpipe emissions. When the federal government abandoned Obama-era rules under Trump, California’s more stringent rules became de facto national standards. It simply wasn’t possible for automakers to sidestep the world’s fourth largest economy.

For that scenario to play out, the bill will have to make it into California law. At a State Senate hearing last week, CalChamber was joined by a legion of lobbying groups representing manufacturers, banks, farmers, and other business interests, emphasizing the burden that the rules would place on smaller businesses. A Democratic member who supported the prior version of the bill abstained from voting to continue discussions on the bill, citing concerns from farming groups.

But Wiener remained optimistic, pointing out that a number of corporations, including Patagonia and Ikea, have stated their support for the bill, and already do similar reporting on a voluntary basis. As for others, “I think they’re afraid they’re going to be embarrassed by these disclosures,” Wiener says.

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A bill designed to crack down on pirate IPTV services has been unanimously approved by Italy's Chamber of Deputies. If passed by the Senate, telecoms regulator AGCOM, broadcasters, and anti-piracy affiliates are poised and ready to go. Pirate streams will be blocked within minutes, maybe even seconds, according to reports. Stream suppliers will face three years in prison and for those who watch them, 5,000 euro fines will be on the table.

New Pirate IPTV Bill Moved to Senate as Italy Takes on ‘Digital Mafias’

Phantom Space releases Daytona specs. On its revamped website Phantom Space revealed that its Daytona rocket, which uses engines produced by Ursa Major, will be capable of lifting 450 kg to low-Earth orbit and will sell at a price of $4 million for a dedicated launch. The rocket will stand 38.8 feet tall and have nine first-stage engines.

A darn good price ... The company claims to be booking launches for 2023. Like others, I'm somewhat skeptical about Phantom Space's potential, but if they can truly deliver a decently sized payload to a dedicated orbit for just $4 million, that's a pretty great price. I'm looking forward to seeing them going out and executing on that vision.

Arkansas studying a spaceport project. A bill that is going through the legislative process would require the state to conduct a feasibility study into bringing a spaceport to Arkansas, KARK.com reports. The bill would appropriate $950,000 for the state to conduct this study. State Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R) sponsored the bill, which appears to have bipartisan support.

Hot nozzles, hot springs ... “Shooting rockets off in the middle of Los Angeles or Dallas doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Pilkington said. “In some of these rural places here in Arkansas, it makes a lot of sense.” I'm not actually sure it does, but potentially there might be value in a horizontal launch-and-landing spaceport. (submitted by Ken the Bin).

Is the Soyuz-5 future in doubt? Ars reports on the recent seizure by Kazakhstan of property held by TsENKI, the Center for Utilization of Ground-based Space Infrastructure, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This firm, which is a subsidiary of Roscosmos, is responsible for launch pads and ground support equipment for the Russian space corporation. According to local reports, TsENKI is barred from removing any assets or materials from Kazakhstan.

A rocket delayed again ... This appears to be a dispute over finances and political wrangling in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia plans to launch the Soyuz-5 rocket from the "Baiterek" launch pad at Baikonur and intended to initiate preliminary construction work on the site in 2022. But those plans now face significant uncertainty after the asset seizure. Russia had been counting on this vehicle to replace its aging Proton-M rocket and be more cost-competitive with commercial rockets such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster. (submitted by zapman987)

SpaceX steamroller rolls onward. SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets within about four hours of one another last Friday, and these were the company's 18th and 19th orbital missions for the calendar year. As of Monday, the company is launching a Falcon rocket every 4.1 days and remains on pace to launch approximately 90 rockets before the end of 2023. To put this into perspective, a decade ago, the United States launched an average of 15 to 20 orbital rockets a year, Ars reports.

How far they've come in a decade ... In a competitive environment a decade ago, SpaceX lagged far behind its main competitors, including Roscosmos, Europe-based Arianespace, and US-based United Launch Alliance. This year those numbers have swung massively around. Through Monday, Russia had launched three rockets, two Soyuz and one Proton, in 2023. Arianespace has yet to launch a single mission, and neither has United Launch Alliance. Put another way, SpaceX's main competitors over the last decade have launched three rockets this year. SpaceX, by comparison, just launched three rockets in three days.

Next-to-last Delta IV is nigh. United Launch Alliance’s penultimate Delta 4-Heavy rocket is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral on April 20 with classified cargo for the US government’s spy satellite agency, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission is known as NROL-68 and is expected to loft a large surveillance satellite into geosynchronous orbit, joining a fleet of government-owned spacecraft designed to eavesdrop on the communications of adversaries and foreign powers.

Almost time to bow out ... “Everything’s looking great, and we’re on track to launch another vitally important national security capability into space,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the US Space Force’s program executive officer for assured access to space. “This will be our third national security launch this year.” There are just two more Delta rockets remaining in ULA’s backlog. Both missions will use the most capable version of the Delta rocket, the Delta 4-Heavy, made by combining three large booster cores together to create a triple-body rocket. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Starship launch next month? SpaceX's huge new Starship vehicle could launch on its first orbital test flight a little over a month from now, Space.com reports. "SpaceX will be ready to launch Starship in a few weeks, then launch timing depends on FAA license approval. Assuming that takes a few weeks, first launch attempt will be near end of third week of April, aka …" SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via Twitter.

Things can change, of course ... The "aka..." bit, by the way, is a nod to the possibility that Starship could launch on April 20, which is a sort of holiday for cannabis culture. Musk said recently that Starship has about a 50 percent chance of success on its debut orbital flight, whenever that liftoff occurs. But he also stressed that SpaceX is assembling multiple Starship vehicles at Starbase at the moment, and one of them is bound to succeed. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

March 24: Electron | The Beat Goes On | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 7:45 UTC

March 24: Falcon 9 | Starlink 5-5 | Cape Canaveral, Fla. | 15:33 UTC

March 26: GSLV Mk. III | OneWeb No. 18 | Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India | 03:30 UTC

Rocket Report: German launch company loses backer; Soyuz-5 may be in trouble

Previously, the FDA had expressed concern about duodenoscopes because they can be difficult to clean and may spread bacteria such as E. coli from patient to patient. Duodenoscopes are flexible, lighted tubes with a camera that are threaded through the mouth down to the stomach and top of the small intestine (duodenum).

However, when hospitals switched to disposable tips to cover the camera and reduce bacteria spread, this has now resulted in new problems. Those produced by Olympus Medical Systems have fallen off in patients' mouths and stomachs, according to reports filed with the FDA.

Some have sharp edges, which has led to internal bleeding in patients, according to the New York Times.

The FDA has received about 160 complaints about the caps falling off.

That "was above the expected numbers for that type of complaint," according to Olympus' own analysis.

The FDA sent a warning letter to the company after an inspection at the Olympus plant in Tokyo late last year found that disposable parts made for duodenoscopes and suction valves for bronchoscopes, which are used to examine the lungs, were adulterated or defective.

The agency has said the company's responses were "not adequate," according to the Times.

"The FDA does not agree that the risk to the patient is of a low enough risk to not warrant further action at this time," the agency said.

Olympus spokeswoman Jennifer Bannan said the company has taken measures to address the problems, and "will further evaluate these actions" and "expand those efforts."

"Olympus takes this Warning Letter very seriously," she said in a statement emailed to the Times. "The company is working diligently to address the issues raised in the letter in a timely manner."

Duodenoscopes are used in about 500,000 procedures in the United States each year.

Among the complaints is one from May 2021, when a physician reported the soft tip cover fell off into the patient's stomach.

"It was decided to allow the tip cover to pass naturally through the GI system than to subject the patient to further anesthesia time in attempting to remove it," the report said.

In another, a doctor noticed a patient was bleeding from the mouth after inserting the scope. After the scope was removed, the patient needed a blood transfusion and had painful swallowing for days after.

While repeating the same procedure later with an older scope that had no disposable tip, the doctor found a healing 13-centimeter-long laceration in the patient's esophagus.

While the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health did not recommend canceling or postponing procedures "without discussion of the benefits and risks" with patients, the agency has noted other problems with the instruments that may indicate sterility issues. Those include wrinkles and air bubbles in the sealed packaging of single-use suction valves for bronchoscopes.

It's not clear whether hospitals and patients should use duodenoscopes with disposable components made by other companies or fully disposable duodenoscopes, the Times reported.

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