Temperatures dropped precipitously and wind speeds rose across the Northeast early on Saturday, but no area could compete with the frigid conditions atop Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

At 6,288 feet, it is the highest peak in the Northeast and known for having some of the world’s worst weather.

A new record for the coldest wind chill ever recorded, minus 108 degrees Fahrenheit, was set at the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the region’s highest peak, on Friday. The previous record was minus 103 degrees. The temperature atop the mountain reached as low as minus 47 degrees in the early hours of Saturday, which tied the previous record from 1934.

    ❄️💨❄️This is EXTREME WEATHER! Right now Mount Washington is living up to the reputation of having the worse weather in the world.
    INSANE conditions Temp -42° F, Wind Chill -101° F, Wind Gusts 127 mph! https://t.co/vr4pGu9p7G
    From the summit cam 230-240pm. #OHwx #PAwx pic.twitter.com/6N30euV9oL
    — NWS Cleveland (@NWSCLE) February 3, 2023

In comparison, the coldest it got there on Thursday was minus 5 degrees. The average wind speed was 55 m.p.h., and the peak wind gust was 95 m.p.h.

Those tuning into the Mount Washington Observatory’s tower camera could see blankets of snow, with structures at the peak whipped by wind.

Temperatures at the peak are expected to rise on Saturday morning, and will be around minus 15 degrees by sunset on Saturday. But winds will rise to above hurricane force and fog will return on Sunday, with isolated snow showers expected.

Venturing outside onto the mountain to track the system Friday, Francis Tarasiewicz, a staff meteorologist at the Mount Washington Observatory, encountered wind that sounded like a roaring freight train. “There were pieces of ice flying around, lots of ducking and dodging,” he said. “I had a tiny, millimeter-wide area of skin exposure, and it felt like a bee sting.”

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Scientific highs and lows of cannabinoids

Allow me to start off by saying that in America, roundabouts are not unheard of. They do exist, they're just a lot less common than they are in the UK.

However, this video makes them look like the most complicated thing in the world:

< Watch the video at the Source page. >

To be fair, roundabouts can be stressful, especially if you've got a lot of lanes to deal with. But rarely have I seen this much carnage on one small stretch of road.

The roundabout was installed over a junction in Rowan County, Kentucky, by authorities who probably didn't think it would end up going as badly as it did.

In the video, which was shot by Walker Construction, cars can be seen taking the wrong exits, or even sometimes heading completely the wrong way around the roundabout.

It's tough for a piece of machinery to look confused, but if you've watched the video, then you'll know what we mean.

To be fair, they probably had a point - especially if this how they planned to use the new junction.

This roundabout was the first to be installed in north-eastern Kentucky, after which a local called Jason Whisman told news outlet WYKT: "It's going to throw them for a loop. A complete 360. No doubt about it."

The roundabout threw drivers through a loop. Credit: Walker Construction

It's certainly good for that.

According to KYTC, the roundabout was installed because they are proven to be safer than the other types of junction, particularly in areas that are busy and see a lot of traffic pass through each day.

A transport official told local news: "We're looking at a way to reduce the severity of crashes that this intersection has a history of."

According to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, roundabouts cut down on crashes by 38 percent and fatal or incapacitating crashes by 90 percent, by significantly removing the chance of a head-on or T-bone collision.

A transport official told local news: "We're looking at a way to reduce the severity of crashes that this intersection has a history of."

According to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, roundabouts cut down on crashes by 38 percent and fatal or incapacitating crashes by 90 percent, by significantly removing the chance of a head-on or T-bone collision.

They are also greener, as cars don't have to stop or start as much when using them.

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It would be something of an understatement to suggest that Alejandro Colomar likes being naked.

The 29-year-old computer scientist likes being nude so much that he has been fighting against fines and legal action to protect his right to wander about with no clothes on.

In the end, he’s won his battle as well, arguing that he is not doing any of it for some sort of unusual sexual reason, just because he wants to and prefers nakedness.

He claims he has been attending nudist beaches in Spain since he was a child, but started wandering around a few streets near his house back in 2020.

Alejandro also likes a nude cycle, it seems. Credit: Al Rojo Vivo/Telemundo

Colomar claims that nobody has a problem with it, and he’s within his rights to do so.

To be fair to him, public nudity is not a crime in most of Spain under a ruling made in 1988.

It certainly is in Alejandro’s home town of Aldaia.

In the end, Alejandro’s case was upheld by the Spanish high court in Valencia, who ruled he had ‘limited himself to remaining or circulating naked at different times in two different streets of Aldaia,’ and that his actions did not imply an ‘alteration of citizen security, tranquility or public order’, according to reports from Reuters.

Even the court case was a bit controversial, with Colomar only turning up to one sitting with his shoes and socks on.

He was denied entry to the court, only later being admitted when he put some clothes on.

On those fines, he said: "The fine doesn't make any sense, "They accused me of obscene exhibitionism.

“According to the dictionary that implies sexual intent and (that) has nothing to do with what I was doing."

Alejandro’s attorney Pablo Mora said he was fined for violating some of the city laws of Valencia that cover extreme nudism, although he was not in contravention of those laws.

The high court in Valencia did acknowledge that there was a ‘legal vacuum’ in Spanish law surrounding public nudity.

Now, he can cycle where he pleases - within reason. Credit: Al Rojo Vivo/Telemundo

Alejandro certainly exposed that, amongst other things.

He said: “It is understood that obscene exhibitionism is to masturbate or do really obscene acts, the mere fact of going naked we understand that it is a manifestation of Alejandro’s ideological freedom.”

The high court in Valencia did acknowledge that there was a ‘legal vacuum’ in Spanish law surrounding public nudity.

Alejandro certainly exposed that, amongst other things.

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It's no secret that coffee brings joy to people all over the world. It warms the soul, provides a focus boost, and brings people together, not to mention that it smells and tastes heavenly.

Science has shown that just the smell of coffee can make us feel alert, and luckily for coffee fans, there are health benefits, too. Coffee is a source of inflammation-fighting antioxidants and drinking it before exercise has fat-burning benefits.

Now a new study suggests that adding a dash of milk that contains protein can boost the health benefits of your cup of coffee.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark examined how antioxidants called polyphenols interacted with amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and found that combining them has twice the effect on fighting cellular inflammation as polyphenols alone.

Polyphenols can be found in many foods, including coffee and tea, fruits and vegetables, red wine, and beer. Like other antioxidants, past studies suggest some polyphenols can prevent and slow the oxidation of healthy chemicals and protect our bodies from disease.

They are thought to do this in part by controlling inflammation, a complex immune response involving cells called macrophages that release several inflammatory mediators. Inflammation helps protect against infection, but if it isn't controlled properly, it can lead to diseases like type II diabetes, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's.

Caffeic acid (CA) and chlorogenic acid (CGA) are polyphenols that are well known to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, but the authors wanted to find out if reactions that these polyphenols have with other chemicals can further affect immune regulation.

Adducts are products that are made when two or more molecules come together. In this case, the amino acid cysteine (Cys) – found in milk products – was combined with the polyphenols CA and CGA – found in coffee – to make the adducts CA–Cys and CGA–Cys.

To support this research, the authors successfully showed in another new study that polyphenols bind to proteins in a coffee drink with milk.

"Our result demonstrates that the reaction between polyphenols and proteins also happens in some of the coffee drinks with milk that we studied. In fact, the reaction happens so quickly that it has been difficult to avoid in any of the foods that we've studied so far," says food scientist and co-author on both studies, Marianne Nissen Lund.

In this study, the researchers used RNA-sequencing to study the immune-regulating effects of CA–Cys and CGA–Cys in macrophage cells subjected to artificial inflammation.

They also tested the effects of CA and CGA alone and compared them to a control group of macrophages not exposed to the polyphenols or the Cys adducts.

As they expected, the polyphenols CA and CGA inhibited inflammatory responses, in particular the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), and the cytokines interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF).

But when polyphenols CA and CGA were combined with amino acid cysteines found in milk proteins, their anti-inflammatory effects received a boost.

Macrophage cells exposed to polyphenols on their own, for instance, showed more than 2.5 times as much TNF activity as they did in the face of a polyphenols-cysteine adduct.

The only exception was ROS, which inexplicably increased in the macrophage when the polyphenol-amino acid combo was present compared to when the polyphenol was on its own.

"It is interesting to have now observed the anti-inflammatory effect in cell experiments. And obviously, this has only made us more interested in understanding these health effects in greater detail. So, the next step will be to study the effects in animals," says immunologist and senior author Andrew Williams.

Further research is needed to figure out why and what these results mean practically for human health. This study only examined how a single type of immune mediator reacts to coffee-like chemicals in a laboratory setting.

"Our results can be used as an important reference in applications of adducts formed from phenolic compounds and amino acids in future functional food or medicinal products that aim to modulate metabolic, neurological, or immune-related diseases," the researchers conclude in their paper.

We'll raise a cup of java to that!

The research has been published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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A duo of Earth-observing missions has enabled researchers to detect and track carbon dioxide (CO2) emission changes from a single facility, using the world’s fifth-largest coal-fired power plant as a test case.

In the recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Remote Sensing, researchers used space-based measurements from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) 2 and 3 missions to quantify the carbon dioxide discharged hundreds of miles below at Belchatów Power Station in Poland, the largest single emitter in Europe. Analyzing the plant’s emission plumes from several satellite overpasses between 2017 and 2022, they detected changes in carbon dioxide levels that were consistent with hourly fluctuations in electricity generation. Temporary and permanent unit shutdowns (for maintenance or decommissioning) reduced the plant’s overall emissions, which the team was able to detect as well.

This illustration shows NASA’s OCO-2 satellite, launched in 2014. As it orbits Earth, the spacecraft maps natural and human-made carbon dioxide emissions on scales ranging from regions to continents. Light-analyzing spectrometers are tuned to detect the telltale signature of the gas. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

The findings demonstrate that space-based observations can be used to track carbon dioxide emission changes at a local scale, the scientists said.

Launched in 2014, NASA’s OCO-2 satellite maps natural and human-made (anthropogenic) carbon dioxide emissions on scales ranging from regions to continents. The instrument samples the gas indirectly by measuring the intensity of sunlight reflected off Earth’s surface and absorbed by carbon dioxide in the column of air from the ground to the satellite. OCO-2’s spectrometers are tuned to detect the specific signature of CO2 gas.

Spare components from that mission were used to create OCO-3, an instrument that has flown on the International Space Station since 2019. OCO-3 was designed with a mapping mode that can make multiple sweeping observations as the space station passes over an area, allowing researchers to create detailed mini-maps from a city-scale area of interest.

This illustration shows NASA’s OCO-3 mounted on the underside of the International Space Station. The instrument, launched in 2019, was not originally designed to detect carbon dioxide emissions from individual facilities but scientists said it will be used for more point-source studies in the future. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

Neither OCO instrument was originally designed specifically to detect emissions from individual facilities such as Belchatów, so the new findings are a “pleasant surprise,” said Abhishek Chatterjee, project scientist for the OCO-3 mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “As a community, we are refining the tools and techniques to be able to extract more information from the data than what we had originally planned,” he added. “We are learning that we can actually understand a lot more about anthropogenic emissions than what we had previously expected.”

Tracking Carbon Into the Future

Emissions from large facilities such as power plants and refineries account for about half of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Belchatów Power Station, in operation since 1988, is the largest lignite-fired power plant in the world, with a reported capacity of 5,102 megawatts. Lignite (brown coal) typically leads to higher emissions per megawatt generated than anthracite (hard coal). The Polish government has drafted plans to close the plant by the end of 2036.

Ray Nassar, a senior researcher at Environment and Climate Change Canada and the study’s lead author, noted that most carbon dioxide emissions reports are created from estimates or data collected at the land surface. Researchers account for the mass of fossil fuels purchased and used, then calculate the expected emissions; they generally do not make actual atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements.

“The finer details about exactly when and where emissions occur are often not available,” Nassar said. “Providing a more detailed picture of carbon dioxide emissions could help to track the effectiveness of policies to reduce emissions. Our approach with OCO-2 and OCO-3 can be applied to more power plants or modified for carbon dioxide emissions from cities or countries.”

Because of the mapping mode observations of OCO-3, NASA data could be used more extensively in quantifying CO2 point-source emissions in the future. NASA recently announced that mission operations will be extended for several more years aboard the space station, and the instrument will operate alongside another greenhouse gas observer aboard the space station, the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT).

“It is really exciting to think that we will get another five to six years of operations with OCO-3,” Chatterjee said. “We are seeing that making measurements at the right time and at the right scale is critical.”

He added that OCO-3 can serve as a “pathfinder” for next-generation satellite missions.

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The glacier caves can only be safely explored during the winter months. Image credit: Giacomo Feroldi/Shutterstock.com

When glacier ice compacts as a result of pressure it pushes all the air bubbles out, turning it from the white ice we more often see on land into a rich blue. However, not all glacier cave ceilings are the same color, as these turquoise sections of compressed ice can meet with grey, white, and black volcanic ash deposits, creating otherworldly tunnels that sit deep within the glacier. Some caves sit closer to the glacier’s surface than others, and when light shines through their blue “crystal” ceilings it can look as if the roof is glowing.

Beautiful as they are, being made of ice means there’s a window in which you can explore Iceland’s glacier caves safely. Traditionally, the season starts in November and ends in March as this is when the weather is cold enough to ensure the caves are stable.

Come summer, the hotter weather can make the caves dangerous as melting resumes, but some remain frozen year-round.

The transient nature of Iceland’s glacier caves means they are constantly changing in appearance and structure, making each visit unique. It also provides a bit of fun for guides who at the end of the summer season get to head back into the glacier in search of newly-formed caves and tunnels. 

How to get there

Vestmannaeyjar is the closest airport to Vatnajökull National Park. The glacier’s ice caves aren’t safe to explore alone, but there are plenty of guided tours available to book online.

CURIOUS is a digital magazine from IFLScience. Each month it features interviews, experts, deep dives, fun facts, news, book excerpts, and much more. Issue 7 is OUT NOW, or subscribe to get it delivered to your inbox.

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The Pilbara region of Western Australia is home to one of the most ancient surviving pieces of Earth’s crust, which has been geologically unchanged since its creation some 3.5 billion years ago.

Some of the oldest signs of life have been found here, in the North Pole area west of the town of Marble Bar, in black rocks composed of fine-grained quartz called chert.

Veins of black chert found in the Pilbara open a window onto Earth as it was 3.5 billion years ago. Birger Rasmussen

Some features in the so-called “Apex chert” have been identified as the fossilised remains of microbes much like the bacteria that still survive today. However, scientists have debated the true origin of these features ever since they were discovered 30 years ago.

In new research published in Science Advances, we show the carbon-rich compounds also found in the chert may have been produced by non-biological processes. This suggests the supposed “fossils” are not remnants of early lifeforms but rather artefacts of chemical and geological processes.

Controversial Pilbara fossils

In 1993, American palaeobiologist William Schopf spotted carbon-rich filaments in outcrops of the 3.45 billion-year-old Apex chert. He interpreted them as the charred remains of fossilised microbes similar to cyanobacteria, which were Earth’s first oxygen-producing organisms and are still abundant today.

The existence of fossilised cyanobacteria in such old rocks would imply that life was already pumping oxygen into the air more than a billion years before Earth’s atmosphere became rich in oxygen.

A key piece of evidence in favour of life was the association of organic compounds with the ancient fossils. This is because living cells are made up of large organic molecules, which comprise mainly carbon as well as hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and other elements.

In 2002, Schopf’s interpretation was challenged by English palaeobiologist Martin Brasier and his team. They showed the “fossils” displayed a variety of shapes and sizes uncharacteristic of cyanobacteria, and indeed, inconsistent with microbial life. What’s more, they also showed the fossil-bearing black cherts were not horizontal beds deposited on the seafloor, but angled veins cutting across the underlying layers of rock.

The fossil-bearing cherts appeared to have formed at high temperatures during volcanic activity. Brasier argued this environment was hostile to life and the “fossils” were, in fact, formed from graphite impurities in the rock. They also speculated that the carbon associated with the “fossils” may not even be biological in origin.

A lively debate ensued, and it has continued ever since.

Microbes or hot fluids?

To try to determine where the carbon-rich deposits in the black chert veins came from, we took a very close look at them with a high-magnification electron microscope.

We found it did not come from fossilised bacteria. The oil-like substance occurs as residues in fractures and as petrified droplets, which have previously been mistaken for ancient fossils.

The textures in the black chert veins indicate they were formed when hot fluids rich in silica and carbon moved through cracks in lava flows below vents in the seafloor similar to modern “black smoker” vents. Upon approaching the seafloor, the hot fluids infiltrated layers of volcanic sediment, replacing it with black chert.

Black chert veins may have formed when water came into contact with lava at seafloor vents. NOAA

If the carbon came from such a hot fluid, this supports findings that the carbon-rich filaments in the Apex chert are not fossils. However, it also raises a new question.

Typically, organic compounds such as oil and gas, which are referred to as “fossil fuels” because they form from the dead remains of algae, bacteria and plants, are generated when these remains are buried and heated to temperatures above 65℃. Chemical reactions release organic compounds, which may accumulate to form oil and gas fields.

However, the sediments from the North Pole area are very thin (less than 50m thick), poor in organic molecules, and sandwiched between kilometres of lava flows. So, how did the organic compounds form in such surroundings?

Seafloor vents on early Earth

A possible alternative pathway is suggested from experimental evidence and research on Martian meteorites. In the absence of traditional biological sources, some of the organic molecules in the chert veins could have formed by non-biological processes.

For instance, when hot water circulates through lava or other igneous rock, water and carbon dioxide can react with mineral surfaces to form organic compounds. Similar reactions have been proposed to explain the presence of organic molecules in Martian meteorites and in some igneous rocks on Earth.

The carbon in black cherts from the Pilbara outback may therefore represent relics of organic compounds that were produced by reactions between water and rock. Indeed, on the early Earth seafloor vents may have created more organic compounds than biological processes did, making it difficult to distinguish between authentic carbon-bearing fossils and oily artefacts.

While more work is underway, early results suggest life was only just surviving 3.5 billion years ago, struggling to gain a foothold in an inhospitable environment. The world then was wracked by regular volcanic eruptions that covered Earth’s surface in lava, and bathed in harsh solar radiation streaming through an atmosphere with no protective ozone layer.

Looking further back in time, the black cherts offer a glimpse of a lifeless planet. Reactions between water and rock at seafloor vents produced a cocktail of organic compounds, perhaps supplying the raw materials for the assembly of the first living cells.

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The Rosetta Stone, the ancient slab that finally allowed modern archaeologists to crack hieroglyphs, is more famous today for how its message is written than what the message actually says. But just like any historical document, it contains a wealth of information about life in Ptolemaic Egypt – the good and the bad.

One such record contained on the stone concerns the Great Revolt: a decades-long Egyptian rebellion against Greek-Macedonian rule that began in 207 BCE and continued until 184 BCE. It’s an event that Egyptologists have known about for hundreds of years, thanks to historical texts like that on the Rosetta Stone – but it’s only now, with a new excavation at a site known as Tell Timai, that we finally know exactly where it happened.

“Archaeological evidence from the [revolt] is quite rare,” Jay Silverstein, project co-director and an archaeologist and senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, told The Art Newspaper.

“There are of course a number of decrees and inscriptions, like the Rosetta Stone, some historical accounts, and a few papyri with indirect references,” he explained. “But when it comes to finding the locations where the sword meets the bone, as far as I can tell, this is the first that has been recognised.”

A- Deposit B ceramic assemblage; B- Deposit C ceramic assemblage; and, C- column krater from Deposit C (Hudson 2016a). Image credit: Silverstein and Littman, Journal of Field Archaeology, 2022 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The story of the discovery goes all the way back to 2007, when archaeologists at the University of Hawai'i launched the Tell Timai Project, but it wasn’t until two years later that excavations at the ancient site initially started. Located on the Nile Delta, about 102 kilometers (63 miles) north of Cairo, Tell Timai was once the important and industrious Greco-Roman city of Thmouis.

In other words, it was a site ripe with possibilities. Perhaps the team would find relics from the city’s prosperous perfume trade, or evidence of its role in early Christianity.

But what they found instead was even more surprising.

“At first I was seeing things that piqued my curiosity and began to realize that we were looking at the destruction layer,” Silverstein told Live Science. “And then we started finding bodies.”

A-1- Remains recovered from N7-6-F1461: A-1) remains from N7-6-F1461 in anatomical position and A-2- closeup of left forearm. B- Remains recovered from the kiln at O6-8: B-1- post-excavation of remains at Kiln O6-8 showing that remains are aligned with the kiln opening in the southeast. Image credit: Silverstein and Littman, Journal of Field Archaeology, 2022  (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) 

Clearly, Tell Timai had been the site of some major conflict. Over the course of several years, excavations revealed remains of burned buildings, weapons, and stones thrown by siege engines. Coins found beneath a home's floorboards, as well as fragments of pottery and imported Greek items, allowed the team to date the discoveries to the Early Ptolemaic era – precisely the time of the Great Revolt.

But it was the human bodies, found strewn among ruins or dumped in rubble and refuse, that really stood out. 

“In Egypt, people pay a lot of attention to burying people, so to have people unburied tells you a lot,” Silverstein told Live Science. “All these findings were sending a message that there was some event here in history and we had to figure out what it was.”

Among the dead was a young man, found inside a kiln with only his legs outside the oven. It’s not as gruesome as it sounds: the kiln was likely non-functioning, Silverstein said, and he had crawled inside to shelter from the attack. Another man, in his 50s, whose body displayed earlier healed wounds, appears to have died defending himself – he may have decomposed sitting upright, the researchers note.

A sample of coins from the coin hoard and from the fill-leveling layer. Image credit: Silverstein and Littman, Journal of Field Archaeology, 2022  (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) 

Tell Timai, or Thmouis, was far from the only Egyptian rebellion against their Greek overlords during the Ptolemaic dynasty, but it was the largest and longest-lasting. With the discovery of its physical location, the researchers hope that more evidence and insight into life in Ptolemaic Egypt will come to light – and perhaps make physical an ancient world that has so far existed only through text and imagination.

“We have opened a new door into our understanding of Hellenistic colonialism, indigenous resistance, and the mechanisms of control including the brutality of the Macedonian dynasty's rule of Egypt,” Silverstein told The Art Newspaper. “Many other cities suffered a similar fate to that of Thmouis and I hope that this discovery will help broaden the scope of our archaeological understanding of these events.”

The study is published in the Journal of Field Archaeology.

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The NSA began privately reaching out to Big Tech employees over LinkedIn last fall, as word spread that major American companies such as Meta and Amazon were bleeding tens of thousands of skilled workers.

NSA talent management senior strategist Christine Parker said the spy agency also saw predictions of more job cuts, and sprung into action.

“NSA started reaching out through LinkedIn, through some of our career boards, specifically sending messages to people that we thought might be linked to some companies that either were in the news saying they are going to lay-off or were predicted to be laid off,” Ms. Parker said in an interview. “Just kind of let them know that we’re here and that we have this robust, ongoing hiring program.”

Using the social platform LinkedIn in tandem with job boards such as Glassdoor and Indeed, plus tech message boards like Stack Overflow, the agency saw nearly 30,000 people clicked on the NSA’s overtures and about 2,000 people applied, Ms. Parker said.

The NSA is currently hiring 3,000 new employees to work across the country, from the D.C.-area to Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Texas and Utah, according to Molly Moore, NSA deputy director of workforce support activities.

The NSA declined to say how much taxpayer money is allotted for the hiring effort. Total spending on the intelligence community for fiscal 2022 was $89.8 billion.

Meta said in November it would shed 11,000 workers and freeze hiring. Amazon said last month it would eliminate more than 18,000 jobs, and Google’s parent company said in January it would cut about 12,000 positions. Other large tech companies have similarly announced layoffs for thousands of employees, and additional cuts are expected this year.

Ms. Moore, who has spent several decades at the NSA, said the agency’s pitch to Big Tech workers involves promoting job security and the opportunity to try different things. She said she started as a Farsi linguist before working in other parts of the agency, including the cybersecurity directorate.

“We certainly offer stability, and that’s what’s really kind of front of mind for a lot of people these days in the wake of these layoffs,” Ms. Moore said. “But we offer amazing missions, things that people can’t do in private sector companies for the most part. This is not just a job, it’s a mission.”

The NSA is also looking to change its image from having a buttoned-up culture known for the smirking moniker “No Such Agency” to a much more permissive environment.

NSA cybersecurity director Rob Joyce has deployed the slogan of “you do you” in Twitter posts encouraging people to apply for work. He noted that previous marijuana use is no longer prohibitive for employment, but ongoing drug use would be unacceptable.

When one Twitter user noted that Mr. Joyce was replying to an anonymous user with a pink teddy bear in January, Mr. Joyce took the chance to deploy his it-takes-all-kinds mantra.

“NSA is actually a place that embraces diversity,” Mr. Joyce said on Twitter. “I’m definitely down with pink teddy bears.”

A pink teddy bear yes, a Cozy Bear no. Cozy Bear is a hacking group connected to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service that the Biden administration said was responsible for the Solarwinds hack breaching federal agencies’ computer networks, discovered in 2020.

Russia’s hackers are in the market for tech workers too, despite economic sanctions. One sanctioned cybersecurity firm’s annual hacker conference in Russia grew from 500 attendees in 2011 to 8,700 attendees in 2022 after COVID pandemic restrictions were lifted, according to a Brookings Institution report in January. The Positive Hack Days event appears to be one of several gatherings facilitating recruitment for Russia’s intelligence services, according to Brookings.

Ms. Moore said the NSA’s attention to Big Tech workers was not intended to prevent them from finding employment elsewhere, including with foreign governments. She also noted that the NSA had a demand for Russian and Chinese language analysts.

More than half of the NSA’s 3,000 open positions are for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics work. The spy agency, which is focused on signals intelligence collection, is in the market for data and computer scientists, software engineers, cybersecurity experts, human-machine teaming experts, and mathematicians, according to NSA director of operations Natalie Lang.

The NSA’s hiring needs are similar to some tech companies. Bill Driscoll, senior district president of the Washington-area firm Robert Half, handles technology staffing in the northeast and midwest U.S. and said he sees companies hiring for cybersecurity professionals, front- and back-end developers, and user-experience and user-interface designers.

He has spotted government agencies looking to hire in his regions of expertise, and he thinks some of the Big Tech companies “got over their skis” in terms of headcount during the COVID pandemic.

“On the one hand it’s cyclical, but on the other hand the pandemic has changed things and the nature of conflict has changed in cyber,” Mr. Driscoll said of the churn of tech workers away from business and into government.

As the NSA competes for Big Tech talent, its major opponents may be midsize employers offering hybrid work, rather than hostile adversaries or foreign businesses.

While the biggest tech companies have shed workers, staffing firm Robert Half said an overwhelming majority, 70%, of managers at midsize technology companies it surveyed are looking to expand and add new positions in the first half of 2023, according to data the firm compiled in October and November 2022. The firm defines midsize companies as those with annual revenues between $50 million and $1 billion.

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The link between ancient volcanic eruptions and the most severe extinction event the world has ever seen just got even stronger. A new analysis of mercury isotopes has provided evidence that a quarter of a billion years ago, far-flung places in Earth's Southern Hemisphere were blanketed with debris from volcanic eruptions in Siberia.

The so-called Great Dying, also called the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, ensued, where most of life was wiped out under ash-filled skies.

While it's clear how things ended – with the loss of more than 90 percent of marine species and over 70 percent of land-dwelling vertebrates – our understanding of how Earth's biggest die-off event unfolded remains a bit cloudy, despite geologists' best efforts.

Through piecing together chemical traces trapped in rocks and ocean sediments, geoscientists are fairly confident that a series of volcanic eruptions unleashed a cascade of dramatic changes in Earth's atmosphere and oceans that eventually suffocated animals.

But an extinction event as big as the Great Dying also needs a pretty solid case before geoscientists can definitively say what caused it, and when it happened. They are squinting back in time some 252 million years, after all.

In past research, zinc and nickel have been used to link changes in ocean chemistry to massive volcanism and the loss of marine life. But these elements are recycled in Earth's surface, unlike isotopes of mercury which offer a far more stable signal of volcanic activity.

Also, many studies of this mass extinction event have focused on sites from the Northern Hemisphere, making it difficult to understand the impact of volcanism on the underside of Earth. This is significant because mounting evidence suggests the Great Dying was not a single deathly event, but multiple extinction episodes that occurred in waves over a hundred thousand years.

So, paleoclimatologist Jun Shen of China University of Geosciences and colleagues set about detecting mercury isotopes in rock deposits in two Southern Hemisphere locations: the Karoo Basin in south-central Africa and Sydney Basin on Australia's east coast.

At the time of the Great Dying, the basins were united in one supercontinent called Pangaea, but are now separated by roughly 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) and the Indian ocean. In them, the researchers found near-identical patterns: mercury isotopes peaked around the end of the Permian.

This evidence – from what are to date the most distant terrestrial sites from the Siberian Traps, the gigantic lava flows formed by the epoch-ending volcanoes in question – suggests mercury was blasted out of volcanoes in the Northern Hemisphere and swept around the globe, the researchers say.

"It turns out that volcanic emissions of mercury have a very specific isotopic composition of the mercury that accumulated at the extinction horizon," explains study author and University of Connecticut geologist Tracy Frank.

"Knowing the age of these deposits, we can more definitively tie the timing of the extinction to this massive eruption in Siberia."

Their work aligns with signals from sulfur isotopes coinciding with the Great Dying, and also builds on past research which suggests mass extinctions started occurring on land up to 600,000 years before marine life sucked in its last few breaths.

"That suggests that the event itself wasn't just one big whammy that happened instantaneously," explains Christopher Fielding, another geologist at the University of Connecticut.

"It wasn't just one very bad day on Earth, so to speak, it took some time to build and this feeds in well into the new results because it suggests the volcanism was the root cause."

The researchers acknowledge that nailing down the direct cause of the Great Dying is not easily done. Plumes of ash from volcanic eruptions in southern China have also been implicated in the carnage, in addition to the Siberian Traps.

So, try as we might reconstruct the sequence of events that lead to Earth's biggest extinction event, perhaps a more salient message to absorb is the fragility of life on a violent planet that today is under pressure from many of the same climatic changes: rising temperatures and greenhouse gases.

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

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As mental health and internal migration continue to be understudied components of public health research compared to physical health outcomes and international immigration, the findings of the study can help policymakers tailor resources toward underprivileged migrants after they move, as well as toward those who get left behind and are still seeking upward mobility.

"Eighty percent of South Africans are Black, yet they have a very small share of the country's overall wealth as the legacy of Apartheid continues to be felt," said Tyler Myroniuk, an assistant professor in the MU School of Health Professions and lead author on the study. "South Africa offers a prime example of inequality and the potential struggles that migrants undergo trying to move to overcome such inequalities, so we wanted to better understand how migrants fare after they move."

The collapse of Apartheid in 1994 opened the floodgates of migrants throughout South Africa, mainly from rural areas to urban cities in search of economic opportunities.

"We have seen throughout history, not just in South Africa but here in the United States and all over, most migrants don't move just for fun, they move because they have to as they seek upward mobility and economic opportunities that they often lack wherever they are from," Myroniuk said. "Refugees who are forced to relocate tend to have far worse mental health outcomes after they move, but we know far less about the emotional well-being of those who move voluntarily."

Myroniuk traveled to the University of Cape Town in South Africa in 2017 and 2018 to analyze internal migration data from the National Income Dynamic Study from 2008 to 2015. Nearly 2,300 Black South African migrants were studied, and on average, the further away from home the migrants moved, the higher levels of emotional well-being they self-reported after the move compared to before the move.

By using longitudinal data—where researchers repeatedly examine the same individuals to detect changes that might occur over a long period of time—in this study, Myroniuk and his team were able to determine the self-reported improvements in life satisfaction came after the migration.

"Given how stressful moving can be, I was a bit surprised by the findings," Myroniuk said. "This research can help us gain insight into why people move, and it also shows that when people move, they typically know what is best for them. They move to make things better for not just themselves but for their family as well. So, we also need to start thinking more about those who were possibly left behind and how to best help them as well."

In 2010, Myroniuk traveled to rural Malawi in southeast Africa to research family health. It was while talking with migrants about their experiences moving long distances from other parts of the country that sparked his interest in researching this understudied population.

"As they described their motives for moving, all the hurdles they faced along the way and all the risk and uncertainty involved, I admired their resilience in the midst of such highly unequal circumstances," Myroniuk said. "In the context of public health research, physical health outcomes and international immigrants tend to be studied quite often, but the emotional well-being of voluntary, internal migrants is an understudied topic as they move within their home country. Yet it happens all the time, far more often than international immigration, and I think people worldwide can relate to the stress and uncertainty that comes with moving."

While conducting research in 2012, Myroniuk remembers seeing migrants on the move away from an isolated township outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. The isolated township offered few services and was not on the electric grid. The migrants' personal belongings were stacked 12 feet high in the back of a pickup truck as they travelled to their next destination.

"While those who moved may have found work and were able to send some money back home to support their families, this study also indirectly highlights those who were potentially left behind, those who may have wanted to move but could not for financial or other reasons," Myroniuk said. "As migrants and their families tend to be a vulnerable, insecure population, this research can hopefully lead to policymakers identifying vulnerable individuals in local primary care settings and tailoring support and resources to help those in need who are searching for upward mobility."

As a public health researcher, Myroniuk has previously studied barriers and facilitators to accessing HIV treatment for older adults in South Africa, where HIV is more prevalent than other parts of the world.

"Whether it's HIV or COVID-19, the pandemic has definitely put a spotlight on the spread of infectious diseases and the physical health impacts of these diseases," Myroniuk said. "However, as medicine improves and people are living longer, it is also important to think about the mental health and emotional well-being of vulnerable populations, so this research is a small step in the right direction to spark further conversations."

"Post-migration emotional well-being among Black South Africans" was recently published in Social Science and Medicine—Mental Health. Co-authors on the study include Michael White at Brown University and Sangeetha Madhavan at the University of Maryland.

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When we think of Antarctic exploration, the narrative is overwhelmingly white. The first confirmed sighting of mainland Antarctica was attributed to a Russian expedition in 1820, while the first landing on the mainland is attributed to an American explorer in 1821.

But investigations by New Zealander researchers suggest the indigenous people of mainland New Zealand – Māori – have a significantly longer history with Earth's southernmost continent.

The research team, led by conservation biologist Priscilla Wehi from Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, looked at oral histories as well as 'grey literature' – meaning research, reports, technical documents, and other material published by organizations outside common academic or commercial publishing channels.

"We found connection to Antarctica and its waters have been occurring since the earliest traditional voyaging, and later through participation in European-led voyaging and exploration, contemporary scientific research, fishing, and more for centuries," said Wehi back in 2021.

The researchers first highlight an early 7th century southern voyage by a Polynesian chief Hui Te Rangiora and his crew. This would have likely made them the first humans to see Antarctic waters, over a thousand years before the Russian expedition and even long before Polynesian settlers' planned migration to New Zealand.

"In some narratives, Hui Te Rangiora and his crew continued south. A long way south. In so doing, they were likely the first humans to set eyes on Antarctic waters and perhaps the continent," the team wrote in their 2021 paper.

"Hui Te Rangiora's voyage and return are part of the history of the Ngāti Rārua people, and these stories appear in a number of carvings."

This finding might not be much of a surprise to our Māori readers who have been telling these stories for generations, but as the researchers explain, academic literature still has a long way to go to catch up to this wealth of knowledge.

"The narratives of under-represented groups and their connection to Antarctica remain poorly documented and acknowledged in the research literature," the team wrote. "This paper begins to fill this gap."

But Hui Te Rangiora's voyage definitely wasn't the last time Māori and their ancestors traveled to Antarctica.

Te Atu – a Ngāpuhi man - has been called the first Māori and first New Zealander to view the coast of Antarctica in 1840 as part of the United States Exploring Expedition.

Māori were also part of the 'Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration' in the late 19th and early 20th century, helping European explorers with medicine, construction, scientific expertise, and more on journeys to Antarctica.

"Māori participation in Antarctic voyaging and expedition has continued to the present day but is rarely acknowledged or highlighted," the researchers write.

"For Māori on these voyages, seafaring skills were the critical currency."

More recently, a number of Māori have or are currently participating in New Zealand's Antarctic science programs, doing research on everything from the effects of climate change to penguin population ecology, and the team behind this latest paper hopes these numbers will grow.

"Taking account of responsibilities to under-represented groups, and particularly Māori as Treaty partners, is important for both contemporary and future programs of Antarctic research, as well as for future exploration of New Zealand's obligations within the Antarctic Treaty System," said Wehi.

"Growing more Māori Antarctic scientists and incorporating Māori perspectives will add depth to New Zealand's research programs and ultimately the protection and management of Antarctica."

The research was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

A version of this article was first published in June 2021.

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Right now, the temperature of the Earth is pretty much perfect for humans, at around 13.9 degrees Celsius, or 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, that is much lower than "room temperature," which is around 20 degrees C (or 68 F)—but remember, this is for the whole planet. That average temperature includes the surface of all the oceans as well as regions near the poles. So maybe 13.9 C isn't that cold?

Of course, the bad news is that this temperature has been slowly increasing as humans add more and more greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, causing climate change. The greenhouse effect is the increase in the surface temperature due to those changes in the atmosphere.

But if you really want to understand Earth's climate, you need to start with the most basic model to calculate the temperature of the surface. That means figuring out what things would be like if there were not only no greenhouse gases—but no atmosphere at all.

Let’s see what happens.

The Power of the Sun (and Intensity)

The sun is a giant sphere of gas that basically takes small atoms and smashes them together to make bigger atoms. In the process, enormous amounts of energy are produced; we call this nuclear fusion. It's so much energy that it gets as hot as … well, the surface of the sun. (It’s 5,500 Celsius, if you want to get specific.)

This surface radiates energy in the form of electromagnetic waves, a portion of which falls in the visible spectrum and is the light that allows us to see stuff. The sun has enough fuel to keep this up for at least 5 billion years. But instead of thinking about the total amount of energy the sun produces, it's better to look at its power.

Here is a quick tutorial on the difference between power and energy: If you pick up a textbook off the floor and place it on a table, that takes about 10 joules of energy. That should give you a feel for joules as a unit of energy.

Power is the rate at which you use energy. You can calculate it as the energy divided by the time over which this energy was used. If it takes 1 second to pick up the book, you can compute the power as 10 joules/1 second—which is 10 joules per second, or 10 watts. But let's say you take your sweet time and move that book to the table in 10 seconds. Although this would still require 10 joules of energy, the power would be just 1 watt. For comparison, that LED light bulb in your room is probably 15 to 20 watts.

What about the power of the sun? The sun has an output of 3.8 x 1026 watts. (I would write that without scientific notation, but nobody wants to count that many zeros.) Let's just agree that it's some serious power.

But that's the sun’s total power output. If you're on a planet at some distance from the sun, it receives only a fraction of that power. Here's where the idea of intensity (I) is useful. Imagine a sphere that surrounds the sun and captures all the power it produces. What would happen if the radius of this enclosing sphere was doubled? The power output would be the same, but it would be spread over a larger area, which means it would have a lower intensity.

We can calculate this intensity as the total power output divided by the area that it is spread over.

Illustration: Rhett Allain

This is the intensity of the sunlight in units of watts per square meter—or W/m2. Why is there a 4π? That's because the surface area of a sphere is 4πr2, where r is the radius.

Let's do some quick number crunching. The distance from the sun to the Earth is 149.6 billion meters. (We call this distance 1 astronomical unit.) Using the total solar power of 3.8 x 1026 watts, this gives an intensity of 1,396 watts per square meter if you are located on Earth.

What about the solar intensity if you are located on Mars? Mars has an orbit of around 1.5 AU. This gives an intensity of just 600 watt/m2.

On Mercury, which is much closer to the sun, the intensity of sunlight would be 8,445 watts/m2.

Absorbing and Emitting Radiation

Some of the light (and other radiation) from the sun hits the surface of the Earth. This radiation causes the Earth to increase in temperature, which takes energy. We don't really care about the total energy (you'll see why in a minute) but instead just the power, or energy per second, that the Earth absorbs. This of course depends on the Earth's size, since the larger an object is, the more solar radiation it will absorb.

Although the Earth is a sphere, the part that faces the sun looks like a circle. Let's call this power that the Earth gets Pin. It would look like this:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

In this expression, I is the solar intensity and R is the radius of the Earth.

But wait! This is wrong. This assumes that all of the light that hits the Earth is absorbed as part of this "power input." That's actually not the case. Part of the incoming solar light is absorbed, but some of it is reflected. You already know this if you’ve ever compared what it’s like to wear a black T-shirt on a sunny day versus a white one. You’ll feel much warmer in the black T-shirt.

We define the "reflectiveness" of a planet as the albedo, which is represented by the greek letter α. This is a unitless number between 0 and 1, where 0 would be a completely black object with no reflected light and 1 would perfectly reflect everything from the sun. (Using our T-shirt analogy, 0 would be like wearing a Vantablack shirt, and 1 would be like wearing a shirt made out of mirrors.)

For the surface of the Earth, the albedo is about 0.3. (Let’s call that a light gray shirt.) With this, we can modify our "power input" expression as:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

Remember that we want the power that is not reflected—that's why this expression has 1 – α.

Because the Earth is absorbing the sun’s power, it increases in temperature. But if the energy was only going one way, the temperature would just keep increasing forever until the surface melted into molten lava. (That would be bad.) Of course, it doesn't keep heating up, because the Earth is also a radiator. When things are hot, they produce radiation. The light from the sun heats up the Earth, and the Earth emits some of that heat back.

(In fact, even not-so-hot things emit electromagnetic radiation. It may not be in the visible range—but you could see it with an infrared camera.)

As the Earth warms up from the sunlight, it will radiate more energy. (We can call this the total power output.) Eventually, it will reach a temperature at which the power received from the sun is equal to the power radiated due to its own temperature.

Illustration: Rhett Allain

Here’s a demonstration of two important things we should know about objects producing light. I'm going to take an incandescent light bulb and increase the temperature of the filament with a variable power supply, which is the same thing that could happen with a dimmer switch. The bulb on the left is colder than the bulb on the right.

Illustration: Rhett Allain

Two things change as the temperature increases. First, the hotter bulb is brighter and produces more light because its total power output is higher. Second, the colour of the light changes such that a hotter bulb produces light with shorter wavelengths—like violet and blue—while the colder bulb mostly creates longer wavelengths of light, such as red and orange.

We already have an expression for the power going into the Earth from the sun. Now we just need something that tells us the power emitted. That's where the Stefan-Boltzman law comes in. This gives a relationship between the intensity of light produced and the temperature of an object. It looks like this:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

Here, T is the temperature of the object in units of Kelvin so that we don't have to deal with negative temperatures, and σ is called the Stefan-Boltzman constant with a value of 5.67 x 10-8 watts per square meter per Kelvin4. (Yes, the units look wonky.)

Finally, there is that last symbol—ε this is called the emissivity. It's a unitless value between 0 and 1. An object that's a perfect thermal emitter has an emissivity of 1, and one that doesn't produce any thermal radiation has a value of 0. For the Earth, let's go with an emissivity of 0.9, because different parts of the Earth have different types of surfaces.

That relationship gives the intensity of the emitted radiation, but we need the power. Recall that the intensity (I) is the power (P) per area (A). That means that the power output from the warming Earth will just be the intensity (from the Stefan-Boltzman law) multiplied by the surface area of the Earth. Since it's a sphere, its area is 4πR2.

Let me point out something important: The Earth gets warmed by the sun on just one side, with the area of a circle, but it radiates in all directions using the surface area of a sphere. With that, our power equation becomes the following:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

Yes, I know that looks messy, but it's really not too bad. It's just the power input from the sun (on the left) equal to the power output (on the right). Notice that both sides of the equation have an R2 term, so that cancels and so does the π. Now we just need to solve this for the temperature (T). With just a little bit of algebra, we get:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

With this expression, we can put in all our values and calculate the temperature of the Earth if there wasn't an atmosphere. Go ahead and get out your calculator or use Python and plug in all the values. You should get a surface temperature of 260.9 Kelvin or –13.2 Celsius. With a quick unit conversion, that's 8.2 Fahrenheit.

OK, a couple of quick points. This is just the surface temperature of the Earth. Since the light from the sun just hits the surface and the Earth radiates from the surface, this ignores any interactions with the very hot molten core.

Also, notice that this is quite a bit colder than the actual average temperature of the Earth (13.9 C)—a 27.1-degree C difference. That's because the Earth isn't actually a bare rock. Instead, we have an awesome atmosphere that protects us from what life would be like if the world was actually that cold.

What would Earth be like at that temperature? Well, there are already places on Earth that are much colder, many of them in Antarctica, where it can get below –90 C. And while only a few scientists live on bases in Antarctica, there are other places in the Yukon, Alaska, and Siberia that are permanently settled, and where the temperatures can reach below –60 C. So we shouldn’t assume that a colder Earth would be uninhabitable for people or other forms of life based on temperature alone, but most of them would probably cluster toward the warmer parts of the globe. (Remember that –13.2 Celsius is an average, so just like on Earth today, the poles would be colder than the equator. Antarctica and the Arctic would both be much much colder than they are now.)

And because an average of –13.2 C means that more of the planet would be below the freezing point (0 C), much more of the water would be ice. Still, places slightly above the average could have liquid water, depending on atmospheric pressure.

Surprisingly, you would still need a refrigerator for your food and drinks. However, this fridge wouldn’t keep things cold—instead it would insulate them from the outside temperature to prevent stuff from freezing.

Earth would still be warmer than Mars, which has an average of around –63 C. But Mars has some other issues that make it not so nice for humans. The atmosphere is super thin and contains very little oxygen. And without an atmosphere, Earth would have this problem too. Life-forms here would need to have evolved without the need for oxygen—and human-like visitors would need some type of space suit for protection and respiration.

Fortunately for us Earthlings, we do in fact have an atmosphere. It is mostly nitrogen but also has plenty of oxygen, and it’s 0.04 percent carbon dioxide (by volume). The carbon dioxide, along with water vapor, absorbs the infrared radiation emitted from the surface of the Earth and keeps things at a temperature that we can handle—for now.

But carbon dioxide is a growing problem. Too much means the atmosphere will reach even higher temperatures, leading to all the potential problems of climate change, including catastrophic glacier melt, sea level rise, and extreme weather. This is why the Paris climate agreement is an international goal to hold the line at 1.5 degrees C of warming above pre-industrial levels—and the bad news is that the last nine years have been the hottest on record. If temperatures keep climbing, Earth will no longer be perfect for humans—or for many of the other creatures on it.

What Would Earth’s Temperature Be Like Without an Atmosphere?

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A decade ago I lost 100 pounds. I did it in my web-nerd way—by building a custom content management system using the Django framework in the Python programming language. Every day I would enter calories ingested, calories expended through exercise, my weight, and whatever thoughts occurred to me. It became a job. I produced charts and compared the results of different kinds of exercise. I put it all online at OHLIH.com, which stood for One Huge Lesson in Humility.

It worked very well. For the first time in my life my doctor seemed glad to see me. People noticed. They said: Are you going to open-source this? Sure I was! Of course, I knew that scientists had found, in study after study, that basically everyone who loses weight gains it back, and then some. But there was no chance I would eat my way back to misery. I had a system! And a PostgreSQL database! And I could buy pants in a normal department store! Guess what happened.

Obviously genetics were a factor. (I remember when my uncle died, someone whispered, “My God, how much does this funeral weigh?”) What health professionals call my morbid obesity—that “morbid” is a helpful reminder—is what you see. But it’s a side effect of what I am, which is insatiable. Literally: I never seem to feel full. In practice this means that at certain times of day, I watch in horror as my body reaches for the cheapest, easiest calories nearby—out of the pantry, out of a vending machine, at a party. I scream, “Stop!” But the hand keeps reaching.

You might say: Come off it! What happened to good old-fashioned willpower? There’s a sin for this—it’s called gluttony! Or you might say something less judgy-sounding that means the same thing. All I can say is I tried: I downloaded calorie-tracking apps. I taught my phone to buzz every 15 minutes to remind me that I should not eat. I paid therapists to train me on better behaviors, researched gastric bypass, rode my bicycle, talked with experts, experimented with radical self-acceptance. Nothing stuck. While culture kept making smaller airplane seats, science backed me up: Humans are servants of their satiety. Even gastric bypass falters for lots of people.

While it is possible—more possible than many think—to be fat and healthy, and sometimes I managed that, I could feel my health slipping, prescriptions adding up in the cabinet. So I accepted that, well, I knew how I would die, and that we might need an extra pallbearer. (I can make that joke.) A pretty good life, save for that one thing. I put money away for my kids, and every day I tried and failed to solve a lonely puzzle of self.

Then one day my endocrinologist was reviewing my A1C blood sugar levels as we Zoomed. He had me on Ozempic, a weekly shot that stimulates the body’s insulin production, which makes it a great alternative to insulin injections for type 2 diabetics. The drug’s side effects include slower digestion and increased satiety. You may have heard of it because it’s increasingly prescribed for weight loss (and is linked to many Hollywood diets). I’d been on it for a while and lost a few pounds, and I appreciated it, but the shrieking satiety siren had never ceased.

“Well,” my doctor said, “if you’re not losing weight with Ozempic, try Mounjaro.” This one was FDA-approved last May, with an atrocious name. So off I went, from one shot to the other, from Novo Nordisk to Eli Lilly. Whatever.

“Something’s happened,” I told my wife. She is a veteran of watching me try to fix my body. I told her: Where before my brain had been screaming, screaming, at air-raid volume—there was sudden silence. It was confusing. Would it last?

I went alone that night to a Chinese restaurant, the old-school kind with tables, and ordered General Tso’s. I ate the broccoli, a few pieces of chicken, and thought: too gloopy. I left it unfinished, went home in confusion, a different kind of sleepwalker. I passed bodegas and shrugged. At an office I observed the stack of candies and treats with no particular interest.

Decades of struggle—poof. Apparently the Mounjaro molecule targets the same hormone as Ozempic, plus a second one, so it doesn’t just stimulate insulin production but also boosts energy output.

“I urgently need,” I thought, “an analog synthesizer.” Something to fill the silence where food used to be. Every night for weeks I spent four, five hours twisting Moog knobs. Not making music. Just droning, looping, and beep-booping. I needed something to obsess over, to watch YouTube videos about. I needed something to fail at every night to feel normal. And I was also manic, dysregulated, and wide-eyed, sleeping five hours a night, run-walking, with pressured speech; my friends, happy for me but confused, called me “cocaine Paul.” I bought more synthesizers off a guy from Craigslist, meeting him in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with a grand in cash. A body is not designed to lose 25 pounds in eight weeks, starting during the holidays. Beep. Boop.

With the relief come new anxieties. What if it stops working and I slide back into the vale of infinite noise? Compounding that, these drugs are hard to get, both because of supply chain problems and because they are being prescribed off-label for weight loss instead of diabetes. I can’t get a steady prescription from the pharmacy. I’m developing a rationing plan, stretching from an injection every seven days to one every eight or nine to build up a stockpile.

I can see my anxiety mirrored in the wave of reactions starting to appear—op-eds, TV segments, people explaining why it’s good, actually, that the vast majority of those using this drug lose a quarter of their body weight. On social media, fat activists are pointing out that our lives were worthy even without this drug. The wave of opinion will not crest for years.

And that’s fair because this is new—not just the drug, but the idea of the drug. There’s no API or software to download, but this is nonetheless a technology that will reorder society. I have been the living embodiment of the deadly sin of gluttony, judged as greedy and weak since I was 10 years old—and now the sin is washed away. Baptism by injection. But I have no more virtue than I did a few months ago. I just prefer broccoli to gloopy chicken. Is this who I am?

How long is it before there’s an injection for your appetites, your vices? Maybe they’re not as visible as mine. Would you self-administer a weekly anti-avarice shot? Can Big Pharma cure your sloth, lust, wrath, envy, pride? Is this how humanity fixes climate change—by injecting harmony, instead of hoping for it at Davos? Certainly my carbon footprint is much smaller these days. Are we going to get our smartest scientists together, examine the hormonal pathways, and finally produce a cure for billionaires?

When I let the domain name for my diet blog expire, I accepted that there was no technology that could change my biological responses to my own satiety. Now there is, and the part of me that tracked every meal, searched for solutions in apps and programs, wrote code, and took notes is obsolete. Was that time wasted? God, yes. But I did learn a ton—about nutrition, about exercise, about myself. All of those lessons are a joy to apply now, without the panic of self-destructive hunger.

Lately I’m finally less manic. Still losing weight, but much more slowly. Exercising more. At night I play with my synthesizers and watch online classes in music theory. Headphones on, processing all those years of futile effort. As I fiddle with knobs I am sometimes angry, sometimes ashamed, and often grateful. I don’t know how long this post-appetite era will last, or how it will end. Just that, once again in our lives, everything has changed. 

A New Drug Switched Off My Appetite. What’s Left?

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Rome’s Pantheon stands defiant 2,000 years after it was built, its marble floors sheltered under the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. For decades, researchers have probed samples from Roman concrete structures—tombs, breakwaters, aqueducts, and wharves—to find out why these ancient buildings endure when modern concrete may crumble after only a few decades.

In a recent study, scientists have got closer to the answer—and their findings could reverberate long into the future. Not only is Roman concrete exponentially more durable than modern concrete, but it can also repair itself. Creating a modern equivalent that lasts longer than existing materials could reduce climate emissions and become a key component of resilient infrastructure, like seawalls. Currently, concrete is second only to water as the world’s most consumed material, and making it accounts for about 7 percent of global emissions. 

“We are dealing with extremely complex material,” says Admir Masic, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who led this new research on Roman concrete. “To kind of reverse engineer or understand the original way these civilizations made this material is just a nightmare.” 

Until now, efforts to explain the longevity of Roman concrete have pointed to its use of volcanic tephra—the fragments of rock emitted in an eruption—mined in the Naples area and shipped to construction sites throughout the sprawling Roman empire. But Masic and his MIT colleagues, along with researchers from Harvard and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, suggest another reason: heat. Using a number of different scanning techniques, they examined a sample from a city wall in Privernum, a 2,000-year-old archaeological site near Rome, focusing on millimeter-scale white chunks running through the sample, called lime clasts. These are not found in modern concrete.

“Every wall made out of Roman concrete will have these inclusions,” Masic says, who in the past has looked at structures across Israel, North Africa, Italy, France, and Spain. Previously they were thought to be a product of not mixing the concrete properly, Masic explains. But the team’s scanning revealed that the clasts were formed at extremely high temperatures and are made from various forms of calcium carbonate. They contain a kind of calcium that Masic’s team theorized could heal cracks by reacting with water, creating a solution that recrystallizes in fissures to fill them in. That calcium, he says, could be the “missing link” explaining the material’s durability. 

The question, then, was where the necessary heat came from to make those clasts. It had been thought that Roman concrete was created by combining water with a calcium compound called slaked lime. But what if the Romans used lime in a more reactive form, called quicklime, Masic wondered. When mixed with water, quicklime reacts and produces heat.

To test the theory, his team created concrete both with and without quicklime. They then cracked the blocks they had created and ran water through the fissures. Only the cracks in the concrete made with quicklime closed up—they had found the recipe for the self-repairing material.

Patents have now been secured by MIT. Masic says a company will begin producing what he calls Roman-inspired concrete by year’s end. “Translating this knowledge of the ancient world into modern applications, I think that’s the next step,” he says. “These cracks are healed in two to three weeks using ingredients that are readily available and, most importantly, cheap.”

Masic’s paper is the latest in a string of investigations into Roman concrete. Last year, he published research with Marie Jackson, a researcher at the University of Utah, that examined the 70-foot-tall tomb of first-century Roman noblewoman Caecilia Metella on the Appian Way, an ancient Roman road that runs across Italy. Their investigation revealed that the particular formation of Roman concrete used in the tomb interacts with rainwater and groundwater, becoming more resilient over time.

And in earlier work, Jackson and her colleagues produced an exact replica of a similar concrete, used 1,900 years ago to build the Markets of Trajan in Rome, and developed an innovative fracture test to better measure its resilience, showing that it is far less brittle than modern concrete. Jackson also studied cores drilled from concrete in Roman harbors, determining that seawater moving through the concrete reacts with it to create new minerals that make the concrete more cohesive and resilient over time.

Jackson has some concerns about Masic’s new paper, however. The sample it analyzed is undated, and it contains sand instead of the volcanic tephra typically used—the sample therefore isn’t representative of Roman concrete, she says. In response, Masic says his team plans to analyze other sites “to confirm our hypothesis” that the Romans used quicklime in their concrete recipe—known as hot mixing. Masic’s team also wants to look in more detail at the influence hot mixing had on how the Romans built their structures.

So has Masic actually solved the mystery of how Roman concrete was made? “Who knows?” he says. “What I do know is we were able to translate some of these concepts into the real world. That’s what really excites me the most.” There’s the potential now to build better concrete, regardless of whether it is strictly “Roman” or not.

This recipe and process were lost over a millennium ago. No similar concrete existed until Joseph Aspdin of Great Britain took out a patent in 1824 for a material produced from a mixture of limestone and clay. He called it Portland cement because it resembled Portland stone, a limestone used for building in England.

Modern concrete is made from fragments of rock combined with Portland cement—a mixture of limestone, clay or shale, and other ingredients ground and burned at 1,450 degrees Celsius (2,642 degrees Fahrenheit). That process creates an enormous amount of greenhouse gas and leaves you with concrete that’s not durable, degrading sometimes in as little as 50 years, especially in marine environments. Roman concrete, in comparison, is strong, requiring no steel reinforcing it, unlike its modern counterpart. And it’s relatively cheap.  

King notes that concrete infrastructure today, such as roads, cost six to 10 times their initial price when factoring in repairs over their lifespan. So extending the life of concrete made today, even by just a few times its life expectancy, would dramatically reduce demand and lower greenhouse emissions. “When you lay a new freeway, a pothole shows up every three years,” King says. “If you now only have to fill your potholes every 10 years or 20 years, it’s a better material.” Having concrete that survives for 2,000 years isn’t necessary to make a big difference.

On this front, Masic’s and Jackson’s labs are working with entrepreneurs interested in bringing their versions of Roman concrete to market. Jackson’s team, for instance, has collaborated with an industry partner to create a synthetic version of the volcanic tephra the Romans mined, because of the tremendous volume that will be needed.

After years and years of pursuing an answer, Jackson is happy the quest is generating interest. “What’s really important and valuable is that the topic of Roman concrete is now in the media,” she says. “This is an incredibly sophisticated and complex material. The people who made it were so brilliant, and so precise in what they did, that it has taken us 15 years of work to decipher much of this. And we are humbled by how much more we have to learn.”

The Secret to Making Concrete That Lasts 1,000 Years

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Rocket Report: Tearing down Ariane’s SUSIE concept; is ChatGPT a rocket scientist?

Carbon capture is here—it just isn’t evenly distributed

For those unfamiliar with Bhutan, it’s a small Himalayan kingdom, famed for basing all its national policy decisions on happiness.

Quite the destination, quite the journey.

And I would learn more about happiness than I did as an academic. That’s not to dismiss knowledge acquired through books and letters. Yet there’s a lot to be said for actually getting direct experience in life.

Below are some of the important things I learned on a journey for happiness.

For sustained happiness, go deep

When people talk about happiness some dismiss it as a viable societal goal because happiness policy can be misconstrued as being about people smiling and laughing all the time.

Yet pleasant as smiling and laughing are, doing them all the time is neither realistic nor desirable. Difficult emotions are a natural part of life. These days I love a cry – it’s an important release. And anxiety, which I’m prone to, is something I’ll be open and curious about rather than hide from.

The kind of happiness I value is deeper – grounded in connection, purpose and hope, yet has room for sadness and anxiety too. Indeed, it’s this kind of happiness that a country like Bhutan aspires to, and I think more countries (and people) should, too.

Happiness can be found in the everyday. Pexels/Gabriela Cheloni

Have goals but prepare to let them go

Goals can be helpful. They give direction in our day-to-day lives. But it’s easy to get wrapped up in attaining an outcome, believing our happiness depends on it.

Rather than being in what psychologists call flow – an immersive, in-the-moment state of being – we might doggedly push on towards a goal. Even though achieving our goals won’t always bring us happiness.

When I was cycling to Bhutan, I let go of the idea of ever reaching Bhutan many times, and through doing so I ensured my journey remained purposeful and enjoyable. And, when I did arrive, beautiful as Bhutan was, exhaustion and homesickness dominated. If we’re not happy along the way, then we ought to question whether it’s worth going at all.

Don’t be misled by stories

There are many stories about what a happy life entails, but they’re not always backed up by reliable evidence. An example would be the “when I achieve this, I will be happy” story described above. Another popular story is that money buys happiness. I spent much of my research career examining this (and travelling humbly for 18 months).

What is clear is that having more money (beyond the point of meeting basic needs) is inconsequential when compared with having good quality relationships, looking after our mental and physical health, and living meaningfully in line with our beliefs and values. Yet, sadly, these things often get sacrificed in pursuit of more.

These stories persist because they support an economic system that is designed to increase GDP rather than improve the wellbeing of people and the planet.

Allow others to give

Warm and loving relationships are essential for living a happy life. Yet that doesn’t mean these are easy to come by.

As an academic, I saw how important relationships were for happiness in the data. But like many, I had a difficult time realising them in my own life. We’re not taught that way and often think people will only love us when we meet certain criteria, rather than unconditionally for who we are.

Enjoy your time with others and let them be there for you. Pexels/Rodnae Productions

What shocked me most on my cycle journey was people’s kindness and generosity. People would invite me into their lives, offering me food or a place to stay, even when they owned little. When I set off, I was either suspicious of this generosity or racing too quickly onwards to consider stopping. But with time, I learned to let people in, and this led to deeper connections and more happiness.

You can get through a crisis

I wouldn’t have been able to reach Bhutan on a bicycle without facing a crisis or two. We will all face a crisis at some point. We might lick our wounds and get back in the saddle, but to find our way through a crisis psychologically, we need support from others. We also need to give ourselves time to make sense of what has happened and to ensure we move forward purposefully. These are all essential for resilience, and what helped me on my journey.

You can’t beat the million-star hotel

Nothing beats lying under the stars after a full day’s cycle through the mountains. Humans are of nature, yet we spend so much of our time indoors in built-up, often contrived, social spaces that do not meet fundamental needs. Nature is essential for our wellbeing – not just to feel calm and peaceful in the moment, but to sustain human life for generations to come.

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THE TECH STARTUP Enigma Labs wants to turn UFO sightings into data science. 

Previously, people who had seen strange lights darting around the sky could do no more than tell their friends—or call intelligence agencies. Soon, anyone with a smartphone will be able to use an app to report an unexplainable event as it happens.

Enigma Labs’ mobile app was released today, initially on an invitation-only basis as they work out the bugs, although they plan to make it available to the wider public. For now, it’ll be free to download and use, although the company could later charge for additional features. The company will not just be amassing new data—it has already gobbled up data on around 300,000 global sightings over the past century and included them in their system—and while their dataset will be available to the public, their algorithms for assessing it will not.

“At our core, we’re a data science company. We’re building the first data and community platform exclusively dedicated to the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena,” says Mark Douglas, chief operating officer of the New York–based company.

COURTESY OF ENIGMA LABS

 

Part of their goal is to reduce the stigma of reporting something unexplainable—even if the viewer doesn’t actually think it’s visiting aliens. (For the record, some government agencies and companies like Enigma Labs now use the term UAPs instead of UFOs: unidentified anomalous phenomena, rather than unidentified flying objects. The change is meant to encompass a broad range of objects that might not have an extraterrestrial origin, and to make the terminology sound less pejorative.)

Identifying an unknown and distant object or explaining a phenomenon one has never seen before poses a unique challenge. Nevertheless, the app asks users structured questions, like when and where in the sky the user saw something, and approximately what shape the object had. It also gives them space to tell their sighting story and provide more details, and they can upload a photo or video. It’s a bit like citizen science projects in which volunteers help classify telescope images of galaxies, but in this case the images are submitted by volunteers and most of the classification is done by an algorithm.

The company wants to do more than just ingest lots of data though: They want to apply their proprietary models to rule out things that are not UAPs, such as by determining whether there’s lightning or unclassified aircraft nearby. And they want to filter the credibility of the data sources as well, distinguishing between “highly credible military pilots, trained observers with corroboration from multiple sensors, and then at the opposite end of spectrum … a single witness who maybe had a few drinks too many and saw a point of light in a sky,” Douglas says.

“The core issue to studying this has been a data problem: ‘What is credible, what is not, who is credible, who is not?’” he argues. “What we’re trying to do is bring a level of standardization and rigor to that.”

Of course, the challenge will be applying scientific standardization to something that might not be scientific at all. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and people interpret what they see based on factors like current events and their scientific, political, and cultural backgrounds. “The data you’re getting is socially constructed,” says University of Pennsylvania historian Kate Dorsch, who specializes in scientific knowledge production.

COURTESY OF ENIGMA LABS

 

UFO sightings began as an American obsession following World War II and the Roswell incident in 1947, when people in New Mexico found mysterious debris that may (or may not) have come from a crashed military balloon. Sightings quickly spread across most of the world, Dorsch says, and interest in Roswell, as well as the US’s and USSR’s nascent space programs, may have encouraged people to think of lights in the sky as alien technology. But, she continues, there were fewer UFO sightings after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957—when people saw something weird in the sky, they chalked it up as a human-made spacecraft. And the geopolitics of where you live matters, too. Today, she says, when Germans witness strange phenomena, they often attribute them to Russian and American-made craft. “When you’re looking for something in particular, that is what you’ll see,” she says.

Government agencies have always been interested in reports of UFOs for national security reasons, since sightings of flying saucers might actually be sightings of a rival’s secret aircraft. (Or, if the craft was actually the nation’s own classified project, descriptions of the sighting might reveal how it appears to others.) 

Agencies within the US government have expressed renewed interest in UAPs over the past several years. The Pentagon released a report in June 2021 assessing 144 incidents witnessed by military pilots dating back to 2004, only one of which investigators could thoroughly explain. Last May, the House of Representatives held a hearing on UAPs, at which government and defense officials spoke about the report and the national security and flight safety issues it raises. Last year, the Defense Department also formed a new organization, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, to coordinate efforts to “detect, identify and attribute objects of interest” near military areas. They’re already getting UFO reports.

Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, who spoke at the House hearing, says that the frequently reported presence of unauthorized or unidentified aircraft is a safety and security concern. "Airspace is increasingly cluttered with balloons, drones, quadcopters, UAVs, and the list goes on. So, especially when you consider the improvements in sensors, it’s no surprise that we have an increase in UAP reports," wrote Bray in an email to WIRED. "This makes the de-stigmatization, reporting standardization, and data management work done by the UAP Task Force all the more critical because these are the keys to being able to distinguish between an errant balloon and a foreign intelligence or other type of threat to national security."

And in October, NASA announced a nine-month independent study to figure out how data from government and commercial groups could be used to shed light on UAPs and what the agency could do in the future to analyze data from sightings. (A NASA spokesperson declined an interview, but said the agency will have an update on the study this spring.)

Enigma Labs also isn’t the only private UFO-related effort. The company To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, cofounded by Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge, employs scientists and former government employees to bring UFO research—sometimes called ufology—into the mainstream.

Dorsch says that no matter who is collecting the data, she hopes these groups will engage with users transparently and in good faith by not exploiting their data for financial gain or making people feel disrespected. “I believe that the overwhelming number of people who have seen a UFO have had an experience that they cannot explain,” she says. “The UFO community deserves to be taken seriously.”

Updated 1/31/2023 6:50 pm ET: This story was updated to include a comment from the deputy director of naval intelligence.

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ELON MUSK’S TWITTERneeds every penny. With millions of dollars in allegedly unpaid rent and bills, plus $13 billion owed to lenders who financed his takeover, there is “still much work to do” if the company is to avoid bankruptcy, Musk said last month.

Twitter recently auctioned off an estimated $1.5 million of furniture and equipment from its San Francisco headquarters, down to trifles such as keyboards and USB dongles. But the company has left tens, or potentially hundreds, of thousands of dollars’ worth of shimmering assets to gather dust in former employees’ homes.

Some people laid off or fired by Musk are puzzling over why Twitter hasn’t bothered to collect their corporate laptops, the latest head scratcher in a takeover characterized by botched product launches, abrupt policy changes, and delayed paychecks.

Eric Frohnhoefer, a California software engineer fired in November after confronting Musk via tweet, says he has not heard a peep about returning his company-issued Apple MacBook Pro M1 Pro laptop from 2021 (8/10 WIRED Recommends). “It’s still sitting in a closet,” he says. Like the laptops of thousands of remote Twitter employees that Musk has terminated or let resign since early November, his was digitally locked, rendering it useless.

Refurbished versions of his model can still fetch around $1,000, and new ones retail for twice that. Frohnhoefer does not feel indebted to Musk and is in no rush to return the machine. “I’m happy letting it sit there and be a brick,” he says.

Two other ex-Tweeps say they are less relaxed about their custody of Musk’s expensive paperweights because they are among the workers still owed severance, and they fear it could lead to further delays to their compensation, or even legal problems down the line. On ex-employee chat groups, braver souls have discussed attempting to crack their laptop’s lock code or wipe and reset the device, one of those sources says.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

Businesses typically want their devices back quickly from departing staff to protect proprietary data and save money, by cutting leases for the equipment or through reuse and resale. But there are exceptions. Snap and Airbnb confirmed that they allowed workers laid off during the pandemic to keep their corporate laptops.

Some former Twitter workers have told colleagues they sent gear back after reaching out to the company for prepaid shipping boxes. Others within the past few days received generic emails asking them to fill out a “Twitter Device Collection Survey,” multiple people say. But four out of five who spoke with WIRED had not received the email themselves and are still babysitting Musk’s property.

“I think at this point Twitter figured it would cost too much to try to take all these laptops back with nowhere to store them—they haven’t been paying rent in a while you know,” says Frank Meng, a machine-learning engineer in Canada laid off by Twitter in November. He found out only last week from one of the private group chats that returns might at last be happening.

The survey seen by WIRED describes badges, authentication tokens, corporate credit cards, company-issued cell phones, and laptop chargers as items that can be returned. However, monitors, keyboards, mice, display cables, and stands do not need to be collected, according to the form. What ex-workers should do with laptops is not made clear. 

The survey asks for an address where a shipping box for returnable items can be sent, but it also provides options to drop equipment at some Twitter offices. 

When WIRED wrote to a Twitter email address for equipment returns that was shared by an ex-worker, an unsigned response came back after about three hours linking to the form and saying that further instructions and a box would arrive within 30 days of submission. One laid-off worker says they’re not rushing to fill it out. “Elon can wait.”

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PHOTOGRAPH: MARLI MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

THIS STORY ORIGINALLY appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last summer, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed dust blowing 85 miles from its source, Lake Abert and Summer Lake, two dried-up saline lakes in southern Oregon. This has happened before: Saline lakebeds are some of the West’s most significant sources of dust. California's Owens Lake is the nation's largest source of PM10, the tiny pollutants found in dust and smoke, while plumes blowing off the 800 square miles of the Great Salt Lake’s exposed bed have caused toxin-filled dust storms in Salt Lake City.

Saline lakes are rapidly losing water to climate change and agricultural and urban uses, becoming some of the West’s most threatened ecosystems. Now, new legislation is offering some support. On December 27, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Saline Lake Ecosystems in the Great Basin States Program Act, which allocates $25 million in funding for research and monitoring at saline lakes across the Great Basin. While this funding is an important step, it cannot give the lakes what they really need: more water.

The Interior West is full of salt lakes, created when snowmelt pools in the valley bottoms of the Basin and Range region. The valleys have no outflow, so the water remains until it evaporates, leaving behind the particles that were suspended in it. These accumulate over time, giving the lakes a high salinity.

“It creates a unique system that supports brine shrimp and alkali flies that can feed incredible populations of migratory birds,” said Ryan Houston, executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, which seeks to conserve Oregon’s high desert, including Summer Lake and Lake Abert.

Yet this balance of runoff, salts, and evaporation also makes saline lakes highly sensitive to climate change. Decreasing snowpack and increasing evaporation due to higher temperatures means that there is less water in the lakes and a higher concentration of salt. That stresses shrimp and flies, which have adapted over time to specific salinities, and it also exposes dry lakebeds, creating dangerous dust storms.

Decades of diversions for agricultural and municipal use have also taken the lakes’ water. California’s Owens Lake, for instance, has been almost completely dry for nearly a century since its water was diverted to Los Angeles. A report released this month by Utah scientists and conservation organizations warned that the combination of water diversions and climate change has put the Great Salt Lake on track to disappear within five years. 

Many see poor air quality as the main reason to save the lakes. But the dust is a sign that the entire ecosystem is withering. Saline lakes are key stops on the Pacific Flyway, the bird migration route that extends from Alaska to Patagonia, Chile. “That we’re worried about dust says to me that we’ve already gone past the point of Lake Abert being lost as part of the Pacific Flyway, its most important ecological value,” said Houston. Over 80 species of birds either inhabit or migrate through Lake Abert, and 338 species depend on the Great Salt Lake.

The new legislation will create a research and monitoring program aimed at conserving salt lakes, including Lake Abert, Summer Lake, the Great Salt Lake, California’s Owens and Mono lakes, and Nevada’s Ruby and Walker lakes. According to David Herbst, a biologist who began conducting research at Mono Lake in the 1970s, because only a “small core of scientists” conducts research on saline lakes, there’s a strong need for more monitoring by federal and state agencies.

Geoffrey McQuilkin, executive director of the Mono Lake Committee, said via email that the act is important “because it funds scientific research that will inform how to successfully manage valuable habitats to preserve their many benefits in the era of climate change.” Clayton Dumont, tribal chairman of the Klamath Tribes, whose traditional territory borders Lake Abert, said, “We’re glad to see anything that will help restore that unique ecosystem.”

This isn’t the first federal program dedicated to the lakes. The 2002 Desert Terminal Lakes Program provided over $200 million to support the conservation of Nevada's saline lakes through scientific research and purchase water rights. The $858 billion defense spending act passed just two weeks ago included $10 million for saline-lakes-related projects to be undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers. And at the state level, Utah’s 2022 Great Salt Lake Watershed Enhancement Act created a $40 million trust directed at conservation of the lake.

But some advocates say that monitoring and research isn’t enough. “This is great! But it doesn't get water to Great Salt Lake,” the organization Save Our Great Salt Lake posted to its Instagram account after the bill passed the Senate.

The question of refilling the lakes is trickier. Water rights are governed by states, making it harder for the federal government to step in. “For lakes where basic measurement, basic monitoring, and some of the basic science is lacking—that's where the federal government and other scientists can come in and provide a tremendous amount of support and information that advocates can use,” said Houston.

Still, most are optimistic now that more attention is being paid to the lakes. “Unfortunately, it’s an exciting time because there’s a crisis,” said Houston. “But it’s an exciting time in terms of a lot of people talking about it.”

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The world’s largest gold nugget was found on February 5, 1869, in Victoria, Australia. Two Cornish miners called John Deason and Richard Oats discovered the nugget while prospecting. The nugget was dubbed the "Welcome Stranger", weighed 72 kilograms (158.7 lbs), and was 61 centimeters (24 inches) long.

The two men took the nugget to the town of Dunolly to be weighed at the London Chartered Bank. Unfortunately, the nugget was so large it did not fit on the scale, instead, it was broken up before it could be photographed. Replicas were made from drawings done at the time. The two men received just under £10,000, while the nugget was broken down and melted into gold bullion. BBC News suggests a similar nugget if found today would be worth around £2 million.

In other giant nugget news the Pepita Canaa takes the top spot for being the largest golden nugget still in existence, this chunky survivor weighs in at 60 kilograms (134 pounds). It was discovered by Julio de Deus Filho in Brazil in 1983. The nugget is currently on display in the “Gold Room '' of the Museu de Valores do Banco Central in Brasília. 

The rise of different technology has a role to play in some big ol’ gold discoveries and never more so than with the “Hand of Faith”. Found in 1980 by Kevin Hillier this whopper of a nugget takes the title of being the largest chunk of gold ever found using a metal detector. Despite also being found Down Under, this extraordinary nugget is now on display at a casino in Las Vegas after being sold for over $1 million. It is said to contain 875 troy ounces of gold. 

Hand of Faith on display at the Golden Nugget Casino. Image Credit: Ken Lund, Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

Troy ounces were used in gold weighing before the introduction of the metric system and are still used today to weigh precious metals and gems by those in the business. One troy ounce is equal to 31.1 grams. This is different from the more usual avoirdupois system where 1 ounce usually equals 28.5 grams. Prices for gold sold today may be given in prices per ounce but they are usually referring to troy ounces. 

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Authorities in Western Australia say that they have found the radioactive capsule which had been lost last week somewhere near Perth.

Finding the capsule was described by Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Darren Klemm as finding the "needle in the haystack". 

"When you consider the challenge of finding an object smaller than a 10-cent coin along a 1,400-kilometre [870-mile] stretch of Great Northern Highway," Klemm said in a statement, "it is a tremendous result."

The 8-millimeter by 6-millimeter (0.31-inch by 0.24-inch) silver capsule – about the size of a small pea – was found when radiation emitting from it was detected by a search vehicle using specialized radiation equipment. The device is now being transported to a Western Australia health facility in Perth.

An investigation is being launched into how the radioactive device was lost.

“I have responsibility as the chair of the radiological council to actually investigate and if required, prosecute offences under the act,” Western Australia chief health officer, Andrew Robertson said in a statement seen by The Guardian.

“We have a number of authorised officers who are doing that. Our radiation health branch, within the Department of Health, is conducting that investigation and they will be looking at all aspects of this event.”

According to Robertson, the device appears to have fallen off the truck transporting it for use as a gauge in a mining operation.

Though hanging around radioactive material is what's medically known as "not great", the main concern authorities had was that the capsule could have become trapped in a car wheel and expose the occupant to radiation over a long period of time.

"As I have mentioned previously, to be at risk of radiation exposure you need to be close to the source for a period of time," Robertson said in the official statement.

"If you were one metre [3.3 feet] away from the source for one hour, that would be the equivalent of receiving the radiation dose of 10 X-rays.

Given that the capsule lay at the side of the road while it was missing, it appears unlikely that anyone has been contaminated during the incident.

"This is a great result for the community of Western Australia," he added.

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The sight of blood and gore can provoke a vastly different response from person to person – while some can binge-watch splatter films with glee, some people can’t bear the thought of the crimson life juice without fainting. Why, if we all (hopefully) have blood coursing through our bodies as we speak, is it such a polarizing substance?

Why am I squeamish around blood?

Negative feelings upon seeing blood make sense when it comes to taking care of yourself and others, as your blood should generally be on your inside rather than your outside – “Seeing blood obviously reflects something bad happening around you,” Dr Joseph LeDoux, professor of neuroscience at New York University, told the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The term “squeamish” is associated with feelings of disgust and nausea. This also makes sense from a health perspective – exposure to blood can potentially expose you to blood-borne pathogens such as hepatitis and HIV.

“According to pathogen-avoidance perspectives on disgust, injuries, gore, mutilation, or body-envelope violations [e.g. stabbing] elicit disgust because they have infectious potential,” one 2018 paper reads. However, the author suggests an alternative reason: “People empathically simulate an observed injury, leading to unpleasant vicarious feelings.”

However, why do some people faint around blood when it can be a sign of imminent danger? Blame blood pressure. Called vasovagal syncope, stimuli such as the sight of blood can cause overactivation of the vagus nerve, thus a sudden drop in blood pressure and heart rate. This restricts blood flow to the brain, making you faint.

A phobia of blood

Sometimes, someone’s fear of blood can get so intense that it interferes with their life. This can reach the point of becoming a specific phobia, sometimes referred to as hemophobia – or officially, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia.

This phobia is estimated to affect 3 to 4 percent of the general population. A survey conducted in the Aligarh region of Utter Pradesh, India, indicated an average age of onset of 9.3 years for males and 7.5 for females, in line with the DSM-5’s estimate for the median age of onset for specific phobias in general, which is between 7 and 11 years old.

A fear of blood can be caused by traumatic events: “This might have been a visit to a doctor or an accident, and, as a child, the person experienced intense fear. At that time, blood became associated with danger, and this association has persisted,” Dr Eric Bui, acting director of the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital, told AAMC. However, some people with phobias can’t think of a specific reason for them developing.

BII phobia can lead to people avoiding medical care due to fear and anxiety, which can be immediately dangerous as well as detrimental to their health in the long run. The DSM-5 also notes: “Individuals with blood-injection-injury phobia show a unique propensity to vasovagal syncope (fainting) in the presence of the phobic stimulus.” 

Why do we like blood in movies?

On the other hand, if so many people find the sight of blood disgusting or frightening, why are many beloved pieces of media absolute bloodbaths (sometimes literally)?

It has been suggested that people partial to a bit of blood and guts are more “sensation-seeking”. Also, as psychologist Dr Lee Chambers told Salon: "We get to consume something we see little of in real life, in a controlled and safe environment, where we can test the limits of our emotive response in comfort."

A 2014 study titled Captivated and Grossed Out: An Examination of Processing Core and Sociomoral Disgusts in Entertainment Media explored why we find icky stuff so compelling. The study explored different types of disgust: sociomoral disgust, and “core” disgusts toward body envelope violation, and body products like feces.

“Disgust, it is argued here, makes us feel bad – but it has functionally evolved over time to compel our attention, thus making it a quality of entertainment messages that may keep audiences engrossed and engaged,” the study authors write. “This study suggests that the blood and gore associated with body envelope disgusts elicits a negative – but not defensive response – which is ideal for recognition memory.”

Researchers recruited 120 college students, asking them to indicate emotional responses to TV and film clips and complete a recognition memory task, where they had to determine whether a screenshot had appeared in the clip they were shown.

“All types of disgust in this study elicited heart rate deceleration and strong attentional responses and improved memory for the disgusting content and for information that followed its onset. Core disgusts had extremely poor memory (near chance) for information that preceded the onset of disgust. This may mean that responses to core disgusts act as a cognitive interrupt, immediately focusing the cognitive and motivational system on this important survival related stimulus and resulting in retroactive inhibition of memory,” the paper reads.

“From an evolutionary perspective, an attentional bias toward disgust – no matter how aversive – would better equip humans to avoid harmful substances. Disgust-related contaminants are often tied to survival opportunities like food and sex, providing even more motivation for one to correctly identify potential threats.”

So, it seems that feelings around blood tend to center around survival – whether your instinct is to pay close attention or run far away.

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