Science

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Evidence of “snowball Earth” found in ancient rocks

climate, geology, Science, snowball earth / /

On ice —

An outcrop in Scotland has material from when the Earth went into a deep freeze.

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Image of a white planet with small patches of blue against a black background.

Enlarge / Artist’s conception of the state of the Earth during its global glaciations.

Earth has gone through many geologic phases, but it did have one striking period of stasis: Our planet experienced a tropical environment where algae and single-celled organisms flourished for almost 2 billion years. Then things changed drastically as the planet was plunged into a deep freeze.

It was previously unclear when Earth became a gargantuan freezer. Now, University College London researchers have found evidence in an outcrop of rocks in Scotland, known as the Port Askaig Formation, that show evidence of the transition from a tropical Earth to a frozen one 717 million years ago. This marks the onset of the Sturtian glaciation and would be the first of two “snowball Earth” events during which much of the planet’s surface was covered in ice. It is thought that multicellular life began to emerge after Earth thawed.

Found in the Scottish islands known as the Garvellachs, this outcrop within the Port Askaig Formation is unique because it offers the first conclusive evidence of when a tropical Earth froze over—underlying layers that are a timeline from a warmer era to a frigid one. Other rocks that formed during the same time period in other parts of the world lack this transitional evidence because ancient glaciers most likely scraped it off.

“The Port Askaig preserves a relatively complete record of the global “Sturtian glaciation,” the researchers said in a study recently published in the Journal of the Geological Society.

In my snowball era

Underneath the rocks that formed during the Sturtian glaciation is a deep layer of carbonate rocks known as the Garb Eileach Formation. These were dated to the warm, tropical Tonian period, which started 1 billion years ago and lasted until 717 million years ago, when the cold took over. The youngest rocks in this formation are evidence of the transition to the first “snowball Earth.”

Why did Earth endure such a big chill to begin with? A sudden decrease in solar radiation probably led to an especially long winter that set off a (if you’ll pardon the pun) snowball effect. With less radiation, more ice forms, and more ice makes the planet more reflective, meaning it sends more sunlight back into space and causes the planet to continue cooling, allowing even more ice to form.

To find out when this global chill began, the research team collected 11 sandstone samples from the Garvellach Islands to analyze zircons in the sandstone. Zircons are especially useful in dating rock formations because they are often as old as the rock they are in, making some of them the oldest minerals on Earth. They also resist being chemically degraded. What is especially important about zircons is that they contain uranium, which decays into lead over long periods. The amount of uranium that has changed to lead can tell us the amount of time that has passed since the zircon’s formation.

Just a phase

Using both laser ablation (a type of laser imaging that reveals how elements and isotopes are distributed in a sample) and plasma mass spectrometry, the researchers determined the uranium-lead ratio. The time it had taken for the uranium to become lead was in line with their estimates, which were based on previous studies that had estimated, but not confirmed, the time of onset for the Sturtian glaciation.

Another thing that the outcrop’s zircons told the researchers is that the Sturtian glaciation lasted around 58 million years. It was closely followed by the Marinoan glaciation, thought to have lasted another 16 million years, and both these “snowball Earth” phases make up what is known as the Cryogenic period. The rocks containing these zircons were probably deposited by a moving glacier as the supercontinent Rodinia (which preceded the more famous Pangaea) was breaking apart.

The Port Askaig Formation is now, as the scientists say in the same study, “one of the thickest (up to 1.1 km) and most complete records of Cryogenic glaciation.”

Because glaciers did not scrape this formation away, a record of when Earth started to warm up again is also preserved. The zircon crystals that formed during the Sturtian glaciation gradually disappear in younger rocks until they are replaced by zircons formed after the ice began to melt. So not only is there evidence of the beginning of the deep freeze, but also evidence for the thaw that began around 635 million years ago.

As the ice melted, complex multicellular life began to burst onto the scene during the Ediacaran period. There could be several reasons for this. Hypotheses suggest that the temperature of the seawater rose, an influx of sunlight sparked photosynthesis, and there was a greater availability of nutrients than before.

The scientists involved in the Port Askaig study think that any life that survived the Cryogenian period faced an immense challenge once the ice began to melt. These organisms had been used to perpetual cold for millions of years, and now they faced the struggle of adapting as soon as possible—or perishing.

What about those that survived? They ended up being the ancestors of all animals that ever existed, and that includes us.

Journal of the Geological Society, 2024.  DOI: 10.1144/jgs2024-02

Evidence of “snowball Earth” found in ancient rocks Read More »

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Meet the winners of the 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes

Features, Ig Nobel Prizes, Science / /

Science that makes you laugh then think —

The award ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures.

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The Ig Nobel Prizes honor

Enlarge / The Ig Nobel Prizes honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.”

Aurich Lawson / Getty Images

Curiosity is the driving force behind all science, which may explain why so many scientists sometimes find themselves going in some decidedly eccentric research directions. Did you hear about the WWII plan to train pigeons as missile guidance systems? How about experiments on the swimming ability of a dead rainbow trout or that time biologists tried to startle cows by popping paper bags by their heads? These and other unusual research endeavors were honored tonight in a virtual ceremony to announce the 2024 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the serious and the silly converge—for science.

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words. Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of scientific merit.

Viewers can tune in for the usual 24/7 lectures, as well as the premiere of a “non-opera” featuring various songs about water, in keeping with the evening’s theme. In the weeks following the ceremony, the winners will also give free public talks, which will be posted on the Improbable Research website.

Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2023 Ig Nobel prizes.

Peace

Citation: B.F. Skinner, for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles.

This entertaining 1960 paper by American psychologist B.F. Skinner is kind of a personal memoir relating “the history of a crackpot idea, born on the wrong side of the tracks intellectually speaking but eventually vindicated in a sort of middle class respectability.” Project Pigeon was a World War II research program at the Naval Research Laboratory with the objective of training pigeons to serve as missile guidance systems. At the time, in the early 1940s, the machinery required to guide Pelican missiles was so bulky that there wasn’t much room left for actual explosives—hence the name, since it resembled a pelican “whose beak can hold more than its belly can.”

Skinner reasoned that pigeons could be a cheaper, more compact solution since the birds are especially good at responding to patterns. (He dismissed the ethical questions as a “peacetime luxury,” given the high global stakes of WWII.) His lab devised a novel harnessing system for the birds, positioned them vertically above a translucent plastic plate (screen), and trained them to “peck” at a projected image of a target somewhere along the New Jersey coast on the screen—a camera obscura effect. “The guiding signal was picked up from the point of contact of screen and beak,” Skinner wrote. Eventually, they created a version that used three pigeons to make the system more robust—just in case a pigeon got distracted at a key moment or something.

Nose cone of NIST glide bomb showing the three-pigeon guidance system.

Enlarge / Nose cone of NIST glide bomb showing the three-pigeon guidance system.

American Psychological Association/B.F. Skinner Foundation

There was understandably a great deal of skepticism about the viability of using pigeons for missile guidance; at one point, Skinner lamented, his team “realized that a pigeon was more easily controlled than a physical scientist serving on a committee.” But Skinner’s team persisted, and in 1944, they finally got the chance to demonstrate Project Pigeon for a committee of top scientists and show that the birds’ behavior could be controlled. The sample pigeon behaved perfectly. “But the spectacle of a living pigeon carrying out its assignment, no matter how beautifully, simply reminded the committee of how utterly fantastic our proposal was.” Apparently, there was much “restrained merriment.”

Even though this novel homing device was resistant to jamming, could react to a wide variety of target practice, needed no scarce materials, and was so simple to make that production could start in 30 days, the committee nixed the project. (By this point, as we now know, military focus had shifted to the Manhattan Project.) Skinner was left with “a loftful of curiously useless equipment and a few dozen pigeons with a strange interest in a feature of the New Jersey coast.” But vindication came in the early 1950s when the project was briefly revived as Project ORCON at the Naval Research Laboratory, which refined the general idea and led to the development of a Pick-off Display Converter for radar operators. Skinner himself never lost faith in this particular “crackpot idea.”

Meet the winners of the 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes Read More »

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Court clears researchers of defamation for identifying manipulated data

defamation, lawsuit, Policy, Science, Scientific Misconduct / /

Evidence-supported conclusions aren’t defamation —

Harvard, however, will still face trial over how it managed the investigation.

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A formal red brick building on a college campus.

Enlarge / Harvard Business School was targeted by a faculty member’s lawsuit.

Earlier this year, we got a look at something unusual: the results of an internal investigation conducted by Harvard Business School that concluded one of its star faculty members had committed research misconduct. Normally, these reports are kept confidential, leaving questions regarding the methods and extent of data manipulations.

But in this case, the report became public because the researcher had filed a lawsuit that alleged defamation on the part of the team of data detectives that had first identified potential cases of fabricated data, as well as Harvard Business School itself. Now, the court has ruled on motions to dismiss the case. While the suit against Harvard will go on, the court has ruled that evidence-backed conclusions regarding fabricated data cannot constitute defamation—which is probably a very good thing for science.

Data and defamation

The researchers who had been sued, Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joe Simmons, run a blog called Data Colada where, among other things, they note cases of suspicious-looking data in the behavioral sciences. As we detailed in our earlier coverage, they published a series of blog posts describing an apparent case of fabricated data in four different papers published by the high-profile researcher Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School.

The researchers also submitted the evidence to Harvard, which ran its own investigation that included interviewing the researchers involved and examining many of the original data files behind the paper. In the end, Harvard determined that research misconduct had been committed, placed Gino on administrative leave and considered revoking her tenure. Harvard contacted the journals where the papers were published to inform them that the underlying data was unreliable.

Gino then filed suit alleging that Harvard had breached their contract with her, defamed her, and interfered with her relationship with the publisher of her books. She also added defamation accusations against the Data Colada team. Both Harvard and the Data Colada collective filed a motion to have all the actions dismissed, which brings us to this new decision.

Harvard got a mixed outcome. This appears to largely be the result that the Harvard Business School adopted a new and temporary policy for addressing research misconduct when the accusations against Gino came in. This, according to the court, leaves questions regarding whether the university had breached its contract with her.

However, most of the rest of the suit was dismissed. The judge ruled that the university informing Gino’s colleagues that Gino had been placed on administrative leave does not constitute defamation. Nor do the notices requesting retractions sent to the journals where the papers were published. “I find the Retraction Notices amount ‘only to a statement of [Harvard Business School]’s evolving, subjective view or interpretation of its investigation into inaccuracies in certain [data] contained in the articles,’ rather than defamation,” the judge decided.

Colada in the clear

More critically, the researchers had every allegation against them thrown out. Here, the fact that the accusations involved evidence-based conclusions, and were presented with typical scientific caution, ended up protecting the researchers.

The court cites precedent to note that “[s]cientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation” and concludes that the material sent to Harvard “constitutes the Data Colada Defendants’ subjective interpretation of the facts available to them.” Since it had already been determined that Gino was a public figure due to her high-profile academic career, this does not rise to the standard of defamation.

And, while the Data Colada team was pretty definitive in determining that data manipulation had taken place, its members were cautious about acknowledging that the evidence they had did not clearly indicate Gino was the one who had performed the manipulation.

Finally, it was striking that the researchers had protected themselves by providing links to the data sources they’d used to draw their conclusions. The decision cites a precedent that indicates “by providing hyperlinks to the relevant information, the articles enable readers to review the underlying information for themselves and reach their own conclusions.”

So, overall, it appears that, by couching their accusations in the cautious language typical of scientific writing, the researchers ended up protecting themselves from accusations of defamation.

That’s an important message for scientists in general. One of the striking developments of the last few years has been the development of online communities where scientists identify and discuss instances of image and data manipulation, some of which have ultimately resulted in retractions and other career consequences. Every now and again, these activities have resulted in threats of lawsuits against these researchers or journalists who report on the issue. Occasionally, suits get filed.

Ultimately, it’s probably good for the scientific record that these suits are unlikely to succeed.

Court clears researchers of defamation for identifying manipulated data Read More »

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AI chatbots might be better at swaying conspiracy theorists than humans

AI, ai chatbots, conspiracy theories, large langauge models, psychology, Science / /

Out of the rabbit hole —

Co-author Gordon Pennycook: “The work overturns a lot of how we thought about conspiracies.”

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A woman wearing a sweatshirt for the QAnon conspiracy theory on October 11, 2020 in Ronkonkoma, New York.

Enlarge / A woman wearing a sweatshirt for the QAnon conspiracy theory on October 11, 2020 in Ronkonkoma, New York.

Stephanie Keith | Getty Images

Belief in conspiracy theories is rampant, particularly in the US, where some estimates suggest as much as 50 percent of the population believes in at least one outlandish claim. And those beliefs are notoriously difficult to debunk. Challenge a committed conspiracy theorist with facts and evidence, and they’ll usually just double down—a phenomenon psychologists usually attribute to motivated reasoning, i.e., a biased way of processing information.

A new paper published in the journal Science is challenging that conventional wisdom, however. Experiments in which an AI chatbot engaged in conversations with people who believed at least one conspiracy theory showed that the interaction significantly reduced the strength of those beliefs, even two months later. The secret to its success: the chatbot, with its access to vast amounts of information across an enormous range of topics, could precisely tailor its counterarguments to each individual.

“These are some of the most fascinating results I’ve ever seen,” co-author Gordon Pennycook, a psychologist at Cornell University, said during a media briefing. “The work overturns a lot of how we thought about conspiracies, that they’re the result of various psychological motives and needs. [Participants] were remarkably responsive to evidence. There’s been a lot of ink spilled about being in a post-truth world. It’s really validating to know that evidence does matter. We can act in a more adaptive way using this new technology to get good evidence in front of people that is specifically relevant to what they think, so it’s a much more powerful approach.”

When confronted with facts that challenge a deeply entrenched belief, people will often seek to preserve it rather than update their priors (in Bayesian-speak) in light of the new evidence. So there has been a good deal of pessimism lately about ever reaching those who have plunged deep down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, which are notoriously persistent and “pose a serious threat to democratic societies,” per the authors. Pennycook and his fellow co-authors devised an alternative explanation for that stubborn persistence of belief.

Bespoke counter-arguments

The issue is that “conspiracy theories just vary a lot from person to person,” said co-author Thomas Costello, a psychologist at American University who is also affiliated with MIT. “They’re quite heterogeneous. People believe a wide range of them and the specific evidence that people use to support even a single conspiracy may differ from one person to another. So debunking attempts where you try to argue broadly against a conspiracy theory are not going to be effective because people have different versions of that conspiracy in their heads.”

By contrast, an AI chatbot would be able to tailor debunking efforts to those different versions of a conspiracy. So in theory a chatbot might prove more effective in swaying someone from their pet conspiracy theory.

To test their hypothesis, the team conducted a series of experiments with 2,190 participants who believed in one or more conspiracy theories. The participants engaged in several personal “conversations” with a large language model (GT-4 Turbo) in which they shared their pet conspiracy theory and the evidence they felt supported that belief. The LLM would respond by offering factual and evidence-based counter-arguments tailored to the individual participant. GPT-4 Turbo’s responses were professionally fact-checked, which showed that 99.2 percent of the claims it made were true, with just 0.8 percent being labeled misleading, and zero as false. (You can try your hand at interacting with the debunking chatbot here.)

Screenshot of the chatbot opening page asking questions to prepare for a conversation

Enlarge / Screenshot of the chatbot opening page asking questions to prepare for a conversation

Thomas H. Costello

Participants first answered a series of open-ended questions about the conspiracy theories they strongly believed and the evidence they relied upon to support those beliefs. The AI then produced a single-sentence summary of each belief, for example, “9/11 was an inside job because X, Y, and Z.” Participants would rate the accuracy of that statement in terms of their own beliefs and then filled out a questionnaire about other conspiracies, their attitude toward trusted experts, AI, other people in society, and so forth.

Then it was time for the one-on-one dialogues with the chatbot, which the team programmed to be as persuasive as possible. The chatbot had also been fed the open-ended responses of the participants, which made it better to tailor its counter-arguments individually. For example, if someone thought 9/11 was an inside job and cited as evidence the fact that jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel, the chatbot might counter with, say, the NIST report showing that steel loses its strength at much lower temperatures, sufficient to weaken the towers’ structures so that it collapsed. Someone who thought 9/11 was an inside job and cited demolitions as evidence would get a different response tailored to that.

Participants then answered the same set of questions after their dialogues with the chatbot, which lasted about eight minutes on average. Costello et al. found that these targeted dialogues resulted in a 20 percent decrease in the participants’ misinformed beliefs—a reduction that persisted even two months later when participants were evaluated again.

As Bence Bago (Tilburg University) and Jean-Francois Bonnefon (CNRS, Toulouse, France) noted in an accompanying perspective, this is a substantial effect compared to the 1 to 6 percent drop in beliefs achieved by other interventions. They also deemed the persistence of the effect noteworthy, while cautioning that two months is “insufficient to completely eliminate misinformed conspiracy beliefs.”

AI chatbots might be better at swaying conspiracy theorists than humans Read More »

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In abortion ban states, sterilization spiked after Dobbs and kept climbing

Abortion, contraception, health, JAMA, maternity, reproductive health, Science, sterlization, women's health / /

Can’t blame ’em —

Sterilizations spike with abortion bans and declining access to care and contraception.

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A woman holds a placard saying

Enlarge / A woman holds a placard saying “No Forced Births” as abortion rights activists gather at the Monroe County Courthouse for a protest vigil a few hours before Indianas near total abortion ban goes into effect on September 15, 2022.

The more abortion access is jeopardized, the more women turn to sterilization, according to a new report in JAMA that drew on health insurance claims of nearly 4.8 million women in the US.

In states that enacted total or near-total abortion bans following the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022, the rate of sterilizations among reproductive-age women that July spiked 19 percent. A similar initial spike was seen across the nation, with states that either limited or protected access to abortions seeing a 17 percent increase.

But, after that, states with bans saw a divergent trend. The states that limited or protected abortion access saw sterilization procedures largely level off after July 2022. In contrast, states with bans continued to see increases. From July 2022 to December 2022, use of sterilization procedures increased by 3 percent each month.

The study adds to previous data finding that overturning Roe v. Wade and limiting legal access to abortion spurred reproductive-age people to seek permanent contraception. A study published in JAMA Health Forum in April, for instance, found an abrupt increase in tubal ligation and vasectomies in people aged 18 to 30 shortly after the Dobbs decision. The current study furthers the finding by assessing trends of sterilization procedures in the context of state abortion laws and policies.

The surge in sterilization is just one of the many ways reproductive healthcare in the US has been rocked or upended by the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision. In June, a study in JAMA Network Open found that states with the most restrictive abortion policies saw declines in prescriptions filled for birth control pills and emergency contraception. The finding suggests that the abortion bans and limitations have disrupted and created barriers to contraception access in restrictive states.

On Tuesday, meanwhile, the March of Dimes released a report painting a bleak picture for Americans who become pregnant. The analysis found that over half of US counties do not have a hospital that provides obstetric care. In the last two years, 1 in 25 obstetric units shut down. Further, 35 percent of counties in the US are considered maternity deserts, meaning that 1,104 counties in the US do not have a birthing facility or even a single obstetric clinician. Living in a maternity desert is associated with receiving less prenatal care and higher rates of preterm birth. Those 1,104 counties are home to 2.3 million women of reproductive age who gave birth to over 150,000 babies in 2022.

The US continues to have the highest rate of maternal deaths among any high-income country, with Black women seeing the highest death rates, according to the latest report from the Commonwealth Fund.

In abortion ban states, sterilization spiked after Dobbs and kept climbing Read More »

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Old Easter Island genomes show no sign of a population collapse

anthropology, Biology, easter island, evolution, human evolution, native americans, Polynesians, rapa nui, Science / /
A row of grey rock sculptures of human torsos and heads, arranged in a long line.

Rapa Nui, often referred to as Easter Island, is one of the most remote populated islands in the world. It’s so distant that Europeans didn’t stumble onto it until centuries after they had started exploring the Pacific. When they arrived, though, they found that the relatively small island supported a population of thousands, one that had built imposing monumental statues called moai. Arguments over how this population got there and what happened once it did have gone on ever since.

Some of these arguments, such as the idea that the island’s indigenous people had traveled there from South America, have since been put to rest. Genomes from people native to the island show that its original population was part of the Polynesian expansion across the Pacific. But others, such as the role of ecological collapse in limiting the island’s population and altering its culture, continue to be debated.

Researchers have now obtained genome sequence from the remains of 15 Rapa Nui natives who predate European contact. And they indicate that the population of the island appears to have grown slowly and steadily, without any sign of a bottleneck that could be associated with an ecological collapse. And roughly 10 percent of the genomes appear to have a Native American source that likely dates from roughly the same time that the island was settled.

Out of the museum

The remains that provided these genomes weren’t found on Rapa Nui, at least not recently. Instead, they reside at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in France, having been obtained at some uncertain point in the past. Their presence there is a point of contention for the indigenous people of Rapa Nui, but the researchers behind the new work had the cooperation of the islanders in this project, having worked with them extensively. The researchers’ description of these interactions could be viewed as a model for how this sort of work should be done:

Throughout the course of the study, we met with representatives of the Rapanui community on the island, the Comisión de Desarrollo Rapa Nui and the Comisión Asesora de Monumentos Nacionales, where we presented our research goals and ongoing results. Both commissions voted in favor of us continuing with the research… We presented the research project in public talks, a short video and radio interviews on the island, giving us the opportunity to inquire about the questions that are most relevant to the Rapanui community. These discussions have informed the research topics we investigated in this work.

Given the questionable record-keeping at various points in the past, one of the goals of this work was simply to determine whether these remains truly had originated on Rapa Nui. That was unambiguously true. All comparisons with genomes of modern populations show that all 15 of these genomes have a Polynesian origin and are most closely related to modern residents of Rapa Nui. “The confirmation of the origin of these individuals through genomic analyses will inform repatriation efforts led by the Rapa Nui Repatriation Program (Ka Haka Hoki Mai Te Mana Tupuna),” the authors suggest.

A second question was whether the remains predate European contact. The researchers attempted to perform carbon dating, but it produced dates that made no sense. Some of the remains had dates that were potentially after they had been collected, according to museum records. And all of them were from the 1800s, well after European contact and introduced diseases had shrunk the native population and mixed in DNA from non-Polynesians. Yet none of the genomes showed more than one percent European ancestry, a fraction low enough to be ascribed to a spurious statistical fluke.

So the precise date these individuals lived is uncertain. But the genetic data clearly indicates that they were born prior to the arrival of Europeans. They can therefore tell us about what the population was experiencing in the period between Rapa Nui’s settlement and the arrival of colonial powers.

Back from the Americas

While these genomes showed no sign of European ancestry, they were not fully Polynesian. Instead, roughly 10 percent of the genome appeared to be derived from a Native American population. This is the highest percentage seen in any Polynesian population, including some that show hints of Native American contact that dates to before Europeans arrived on the scene.

Isolating these DNA sequences and comparing them to populations from across the world showed that the group most closely related to the one who contributed to the Rapa Nui population presently resides in the central Andes region of South America. That’s in contrast to the earlier results, which suggested the contact was with populations further north in South America.

Old Easter Island genomes show no sign of a population collapse Read More »

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The future of Boeing’s crewed spaceflight program is muddy after Starliner’s return

Boeing, boeing starliner, Science, Space, starliner / /

10 years later … —

“The final chapter on Starliner has not been written yet.”

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Boeing's uncrewed Starliner spaceraft backs away from the International Space Station moments after undocking on September 6, 2024.

Enlarge / Boeing’s uncrewed Starliner spaceraft backs away from the International Space Station moments after undocking on September 6, 2024.

NASA

Nearly a decade ago to the day, I stood in the international terminal of Houston’s main airport checking my phone. As I waited to board a flight for Moscow, an announcement from NASA was imminent, with the agency due to make its selections for private companies that would transport astronauts to the International Space Station.

Then, just before boarding the direct flight to Moscow, a news release from NASA popped into my inbox about its Commercial Crew Program. The space agency, under a fixed price agreement, agreed to pay Boeing $4.2 billion to develop the Starliner spacecraft; SpaceX would receive $2.6 billion for the development of its Crew Dragon vehicle.

At the time, the Space Shuttle had been retired for three years, and NASA’s astronauts had to fly to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. “Today, we are one step closer to launching our astronauts from US soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia by 2017,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in the release.

I knew this only too well. As the space reporter for the Houston Chronicle, I was traveling with NASA officials to Russia to visit Star City, where astronauts train, and see Roscosmos’ mission control facilities. From there, we flew to Kazakhstan to tour the spaceport in Baikonur and observe the launch of the Expedition 41 crew to the space station. The mission included two Russian astronauts and NASA’s Butch Wilmore. I wrote about this as the fifth part of my Adrift series on the state of America’s space program.

A decade later, it all seems surreal. I cannot imagine, as I did a decade ago, standing near soldiers in Moscow watching a “Peace March” of thousands of protestors through the Russian capital city. There is no room for dissent in Russia today. The airport we used to fly from Moscow to Kazakhstan, Domodedovo, has been attacked by Ukrainian drones. I almost certainly can never go back to Russia, especially after being branded a “war criminal” by the country’s space boss.

But history turns in interesting ways. Ten years after his Soyuz flight from Kazakhstan, Wilmore launched from Florida on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Last weekend, this Boeing spacecraft came back to Earth without Wilmore and his copilot Suni Williams on board. Here we were once again: Wilmore flying in space and me thinking and writing about the future of NASA’s human spaceflight programs.

I couldn’t help but wonder: After all that happened in the last decade, has the Commercial Crew Program been a success?

Boeing becomes a no-show

Commercial Crew was a bold bet by NASA that won the space agency many critics. Could private companies really step up and provide a service that only nations had before?

NASA’s two selections, Boeing and SpaceX, did not make that 2017 target for their initial crewed flights. For a few years, Congress lagged in funding the program, and during the second half of the 2010s, each of the companies ran into significant technical problems. SpaceX overcame serious issues with its parachutes and an exploding spacecraft in 2019 to triumphantly reach orbit in the summer of 2020 with its Demo-2 mission, flying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to and from the space station.

Since then, SpaceX has completed seven operational missions to the station, carrying astronauts from the United States, Europe, Japan, Russia, the Middle East, and elsewhere into orbit. A crew from the eighth mission is on the station right now, and the ninth Crew Dragon mission will launch later this month to bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth. Crew Dragon has been nothing short of a smashing success for SpaceX and the United States, establishing a vital lifeline at a time when—amid deteriorating relations between America and Russia—NASA reliance on Soyuz likely would have been untenable.

Starliner has faced a more difficult road. Its first uncrewed test flight in late 2019 was cut short early after serious software problems. Afterward, NASA designated the flight as a “high visibility close call” and said Boeing would need to fly a second uncrewed test flight. This mission in 2022 was more successful, but lingering concerns and issues with flammable tape and parachutes delayed the first crew flight until June of this year. The fate of Starliner’s third flight this summer, and its intermittently failing thrusters that ultimately led to its crew needing an alternative ride back to Earth, has been well documented.

The future of Boeing’s crewed spaceflight program is muddy after Starliner’s return Read More »

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Woman drips with sweat from a bite of food due to rare nerve-wiring mix-up

frey's syndrome, gustatory hyperhidrosis, health, NEJM, nerve regeneration, nerves, salivary gland, Science, sweating / /

Fascinating —

After just 75 seconds of chewing, large drops of sweat ran down the woman’s face.

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Woman drips with sweat from a bite of food due to rare nerve-wiring mix-up

The human body is full of marvels, some even bordering on miraculous. That includes the limited ability for nerves to regenerate after injuries, allowing people to regain some function and feeling. But that wonder can turn, well, unnerving when those regenerated wires end up in a jumble.

Such is the case for a rare neurological condition called gustatory hyperhidrosis, also known as Frey’s syndrome. In this disorder, nerves regenerate after damage to either of the large saliva glands that sit on either side of the face, just in front of the ears, called the parotid glands. But that nerve regrowth goes awry due to a quirk of anatomy that allows the nerves that control saliva production for eating to get tangled with those that control sweating for temperature control.

In this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors in Taiwan report an unusual presentation of the disorder in a 76-year-old woman. She told doctors that, for two years, every time she ate, her face would begin profusely sweating. In the clinic, the doctors observed the phenomenon themselves. They watched as she took a bite of pork jerky and began chewing.

Panel A, 10 seconds after beginning chewing; Panel B, 30 seconds after; Panel C, 50 seconds after; and Panel D, 75 seconds after.

Enlarge / Panel A, 10 seconds after beginning chewing; Panel B, 30 seconds after; Panel C, 50 seconds after; and Panel D, 75 seconds after.

At the start, her face was dry and had a normal tone. But, within 30 seconds, her left cheek began to glisten with sweat and turn red from flushing. By 50 seconds, large beads of sweat coated her cheek. At 75 seconds, droplets ran down her cheek and onto her neck.

Anatomy quirk

Seven years before that doctor’s appointment, the woman had undergone surgery to remove the parotid gland on that side of her face due to the growth of a benign tumor. Gustatory hyperhidrosis is a common complication after such a removal, called a parotidectomy. Some published studies estimate that up to 96 percent of parotidectomy patients will go on to develop the disorder. But, if it does develop, it usually does so within about six to 18 months after the surgery—the time it can take for nerves to regrow. But, in the woman’s case, it appeared to develop after five years since she reported that it started only two years prior to her appointment. It’s unclear why there was such a delay.

Doctors hypothesize that gustatory hyperhidrosis develops after salivary gland injuries or surgeries because of the way nerve fibers are bundled in that part of the head. The nerves that control the salivary glands are part of the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS). This division of the nervous system is sometimes described as controlling the relatively calm “rest and digest” bodily functions, which are controlled unconsciously as part of the autonomic nervous system that controls things like heart rate.

The PSNS is in contrast to the other part of the autonomic nervous system, called the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). The SNS controls the unconscious “fight or flight” stress responses, which include sweat glands.

Tangled fibers

While PSNS fibers that control the saliva glands and SNS fibers that control sweat glands are from different divisions, they come together on the side of the face. Specifically, they meet up in a tributary nerve called the auriculotemporal nerve. And, they don’t just feed into the same physical conduit, they also overlap in their chemical regulation. Often SNS and PSNS fibers are activated by different signaling molecules (aka neurotransmitters). But it just so happens that the nerve fibers that control sweat glands are activated by the same neurotransmitter that activates the fibers in the PSNS, including those regulating saliva glands. They’re both regulated by a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine.

When PSNS and SNS nerve fibers are damaged near the parotid salivary gland from injury or surgery, the nerves can regenerate. But, given their physical and chemical overlaps, doctors think that in gustatory hyperhidrosis, PSNS nerve fibers end up growing back abnormally, along the paths of SNS fibers. This ends up connecting the PSNS fibers to sweat glands in the skin. So, upon signals of eating, the crossed nerve fibers lead not to salivation but heat responses, including sweat production and blood vessel dilation, which explains the facial flushing.

Living with it

Thankfully, there are various treatments for people with gustatory hyperhidrosis. They include surgical reconstruction or injections of Botox (botulinum neurotoxin), which can shut down the activity of the sweat glands. Similarly, there are topical anticholinergics, which block and inhibit the activity of acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter that activates the nerve fibers activating the sweat glands. There are also topical antiperspirants that can help.

After the doctors in Taiwan diagnosed their patient with gustatory hyperhidrosis, they discussed these options with her. But she reportedly “opted to live with the symptoms.”

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X-ray footage shows how Japanese eels escape from a predator’s stomach

animal behavior, Biology, Science, x-ray videography / /

escape artists —

It took escaping eels 56 seconds on average to free themselves from death.

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still image of An eel escaping via a fish’s gills

Enlarge / “The only species of fish confirmed to be able to escape from the digestive tract of the predatory fish after being captured.”

Hasegawa et al./Current Biology

Imagine you’re a Japanese eel, swimming around just minding your own business when—bam! A predatory fish swallows you whole and you only have a few minutes to make your escape before certain death. What’s an eel to do? According to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, Japanese eels opt to back their way out of the digestive tract, tail first, through the esophagus, emerging from the predatory fish’s gills.

Per the authors, this is the first such study to observe the behavioral patterns and escape processes of prey within the digestive tract of predators. “At this point, the Japanese eel is the only species of fish confirmed to be able to escape from the digestive tract of the predatory fish after being captured,” co-author Yuha Hasegawa at Nagasaki University in Japan told New Scientist.

There are various strategies in nature for escaping predators after being swallowed. For instance, a parasitic worm called Paragordius tricuspidatus can force its way out of a predator’s system when its host organism is eaten. There was also a fascinating study in 2020 by Japanese scientists on the unusual survival strategy of the aquatic beetle Regimbartia attenuata. They fed a bunch of the beetles to a pond frog (Pelophylax nigromaculatus) under laboratory conditions, expecting the frog to spit the beetle out. That’s what happened with prior experiments on bombardier beetles (Pheropsophus jessoensis), which spray toxic chemicals (described as an audible “chemical explosion”) when they find themselves inside a toad’s gut, inducing the toad to invert its own stomach and vomit them back out.

But R. attenuata basically walks through the digestive tract and escapes out of the frog’s anus after being swallowed alive. It proved to be a successful escape route. In the case of the bombardier beetles, between 35 and 57 percent of the toads threw up within 50 minutes on average, ensuring the survival of the regurgitated beetles. R. attenuata‘s survival rate was a whopping 93 percent. In fact, 19 out of 20 walked out of the frog, unharmed, within an hour, although one industrious beetle bolted out in just five minutes. Granted, the beetles often emerged covered in fecal pellets, which can’t have been pleasant. But that didn’t stop them from resuming their little beetle lives; all survived at least two weeks after being swallowed.

Hasegawa co-authored an earlier study in which they observed Japanese eels emerging from a predator’s gills after being swallowed, so they knew this unique strategy was possible. They just didn’t know the details of what was going on inside the digestive tract that enabled the eels to pull off this feat. So the team decided to use X-ray videography to peer inside predatory fish (Odontobutis obscura) after eels had been eaten. They injected barium sulfate into the abdominal cavity and tail of the Japanese eels as a contrast agent, then introduced each eel to a tank containing one O. obscura. The X-ray video system captured the interactions after an eel had been swallowed.

Out through the gills

The escaping behavior of a Japanese eel. Credit: Hasegawa et al./Current Biology

O. obscura swallow their prey whole along with surrounding water, and a swallowed eel quickly ends up in the digestive tract, a highly acidic and oxygen-deprived environment that kills the eels within 211.9 seconds (a little over three minutes). Thirty-two of the eels were eaten, and of those, 13 (or 40.6 percent) managed to poke at least their tails through the gills of their predator. Of those 13, nine (69.2 percent) escaped completely within 56 seconds on average, suggesting “that the period until the tails emerge from the predator’s gill is particularly crucial for successful escape,” the authors wrote. The final push for freedom involved coiling their bodies to extract their head from the gill.

It helps to be swallowed head-first. The researchers discovered that most captured eels tried to escape by swimming back up the digestive tract toward the esophagus and gills, tail-first in the cases where escape was successful. However, eleven eels ended up completely inside the stomach and resorted to swimming around in circles—most likely looking for a possible escape route. Five of those managed to insert their tails correctly toward the esophagus, while two perished because they oriented their tails in the wrong direction.

“The most surprising moment in this study was when we observed the first footage of eels escaping by going back up the digestive tract toward the gill of the predatory fish,” said co-author Yuuki Kawabata, also of Nagasaki University. “At the beginning of the experiment, we speculated that eels would escape directly from the predator’s mouth to the gill. However, contrary to our expectations, witnessing the eels’ desperate escape from the predator’s stomach to the gills was truly astonishing for us.”

Current Biology, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.07.023  (About DOIs).

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Microsoft performs operations with multiple error-corrected qubits

atom computing, Error correction, microsoft, quantinuum, quantum computing, qubits, Science / /
Image of a chip with a device on it that is shaped like two triangles connected by a bar.

Enlarge / Quantinuum’s H2 “racetrack” quantum processor.

Quantinuum

On Tuesday, Microsoft made a series of announcements related to its Azure Quantum Cloud service. Among them was a demonstration of logical operations using the largest number of error-corrected qubits yet.

“Since April, we’ve tripled the number of logical qubits here,” said Microsoft Technical Fellow Krysta Svore. “So we are accelerating toward that hundred-logical-qubit capability.” The company has also lined up a new partner in the form of Atom Computing, which uses neutral atoms to hold qubits and has already demonstrated hardware with over 1,000 hardware qubits.

Collectively, the announcements are the latest sign that quantum computing has emerged from its infancy and is rapidly progressing toward the development of systems that can reliably perform calculations that would be impractical or impossible to run on classical hardware. We talked with people at Microsoft and some of its hardware partners to get a sense of what’s coming next to bring us closer to useful quantum computing.

Making error correction simpler

Logical qubits are a route out of the general despair of realizing that we’re never going to keep hardware qubits from producing too many errors for reliable calculation. Error correction on classical computers involves measuring the state of bits and comparing their values to an aggregated value. Unfortunately, you can’t analogously measure the state of a qubit to determine if an error has occurred since measurement causes it to adopt a concrete value, destroying any of the superposition of values that make quantum computing useful.

Logical qubits get around this by spreading a single bit of quantum information across a collection of bits, which makes any error less catastrophic. Detecting when one occurs involves adding some additional bits to the logical qubit such that their value is dependent upon the ones holding the data. You can measure these ancillary qubits to identify if any problem has occurred and possibly gain information on how to correct it.

There are many potential error correction schemes, some of which can involve dedicating around a thousand qubits to each logical qubit. It’s possible to get away with far less than that—schemes with fewer than 10 qubits exist. But in general, the fewer hardware qubits you use, the greater your chance of experiencing errors that you can’t recover from. This trend can be offset in part through hardware qubits that are less error-prone.

The challenge is that this only works if error rates are low enough that you don’t run into errors during the correction process. In other words, the hardware qubits have to be good enough that they don’t produce so many errors that it’s impossible to know when an error has occurred and how to correct it. That threshold has been passed only relatively recently.

Microsoft’s earlier demonstration involved the use of hardware from Quantinuum, which uses qubits based on ions trapped in electrical fields. These have some of the best error rates yet reported, and Microsoft had shown that this allowed it to catch and correct errors over several rounds of error correction. In the new work, the collaboration went further, performing multiple logical operations with error correction on a collection of logical qubits.

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You can buy a diamond-making machine for $200,000 on Alibaba

alibaba, carbon, china, diamond, diamonds, eCommerce, Marilyn Monroe, Online Shopping, Science, synthetic diamonds, Tech / /

Adventures in compressed carbon —

Making diamonds is cheaper than ever, creating a weird problem: too many diamonds.

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CLOSE UP: Jeweler looking a diamonds on the work table - stock photo

In an age when you can get just about anything online, it’s probably no surprise that you can buy a diamond-making machine for $200,000 on Chinese eCommerce site Alibaba. If, like me, you haven’t been paying attention to the diamond industry, it turns out that the availability of these machines reflects an ongoing trend toward democratizing diamond production—a process that began decades ago and continues to evolve.

The history of lab-grown diamonds dates back at least half a century. According to Harvard graduate student Javid Lakha, writing in a comprehensive piece on lab-grown diamonds published in Works in Progress last month, the first successful synthesis of diamonds in a laboratory setting occurred in the 1950s. Lakha recounts how Howard Tracy Hall, a chemist at General Electric, created the first lab-grown diamonds using a high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) process that mimicked the conditions under which diamonds form in nature.

Since then, diamond-making technology has advanced significantly. Today, there are two primary methods for creating lab-grown diamonds: the HPHT process and chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Both types of machines are now listed on Alibaba, with prices starting at around $200,000, as pointed out in a Hacker News comment by engineer John Nagle (who goes by “Animats” on Hacker News). A CVD machine we found is more pricey, at around $450,000.

  • An image of a “HPHT Cubic Press Synthetic Diamond Making Machine” made by Henan Huanghe Whirlwind Co., Ltd. in China.

  • A photo of part of a “HPHT Cubic Press Synthetic Diamond Making Machine” made by Henan Huanghe Whirlwind Co., Ltd. in China.

  • A photo of a factory full of HPHT Cubic Press Synthetic Diamond Making Machines, made by Henan Huanghe Whirlwind Co., Ltd. in China.

Not a simple operation

While the idea of purchasing a diamond-making machine on Alibaba might be intriguing, it’s important to note that operating one isn’t as simple as plugging it in and watching diamonds form. According to Lakha’s article, these machines require significant expertise and additional resources to operate effectively.

For an HPHT press, you’d need a reliable source of high-quality graphite, metal catalysts like iron or cobalt, and precise temperature and pressure control systems. CVD machines require a steady supply of methane and hydrogen gases, as well as the ability to generate and control microwaves or hot filaments. Both methods need diamond seed crystals to start the growth process.

Moreover, you’d need specialized knowledge to manage the growth parameters, handle potentially hazardous materials and high-pressure equipment safely, and process the resulting raw diamonds into usable gems or industrial components. The machines also use considerable amounts of energy and require regular maintenance. Those factors may make the process subject to some regulations that are far beyond the scope of this piece.

In short, while these machines are more accessible than ever, turning one into a productive diamond-making operation would still require significant investment in equipment, materials, expertise, and safety measures. But hey, a guy can dream, right?

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Unlocked, loaded guns more common among parents who give kids firearm lessons

children, firearm death, firearm injury, firearms, guns, loaded, locked, Parents, safe storage, Science, Teens, unloaded, unlocked / /

parenting paradox —

It’s unknown if demonstrating responsible handling actually keeps kids safe.

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A man helps a boy look at a handgun during the National Rifle Association's Annual Meetings & Exhibits at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis on April 16, 2023.

Enlarge / A man helps a boy look at a handgun during the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meetings & Exhibits at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis on April 16, 2023.

Gun-owning parents who teach their kids how to responsibly handle and shoot a gun are less likely to store those deadly weapons safely, according to a survey-based study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

The study, conducted by gun violence researchers at Rutgers University, analyzed survey responses from 870 gun-owning parents. Of those, the parents who responded that they demonstrated proper handling to their child or teen, had their kid practice safe handling under supervision, and/or taught their kid how to shoot a firearm were more likely than other gun-owning parents to keep at least one gun unsecured—that is, unlocked and loaded. In fact, each of the three responses carried at least double the odds of the parent having an unlocked, loaded gun around, the study found.

The survey responses may seem like a paradox for parents who value safe and responsible gun handling. Previous studies have suggested that safe storage of firearms can reduce the risk of injuries and deaths among children and teens. A 2005 JAMA study, for instance, found lower risks of firearm injuries among children and teens when parents securely store their firearms—meaning they kept them locked, unloaded, and stored separately from locked ammunition. And as of 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death among children and teens in the US.

Still, earlier surveys of gun-owning parents have hinted that some parents believe responsible gun-handling lessons are enough to keep children safe.

Safe handling, unsecured storage

To add data to that potential sentiment, the Rutgers researchers collected survey responses from adults in nine states (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Colorado, and Washington) who participated in an Ipsos poll. The states span varying geography, firearm ownership, firearm policies, and gun violence rates. The responses were collected between June and July of 2023. The researchers then analyzed the data, adjusting their calculations to account for a variety of factors, including military status, education level, income, and political beliefs.

Among the 870 parents included in the study, 412 (47 percent) said they demonstrated proper firearm handling for their kids, 321 (37 percent) said they had their children practice proper handling with supervision, and 324 (37 percent) taught their kids how to shoot their firearm.

The researchers then split the group into those who did not keep an unlocked, loaded gun around and those who did. Of the 870 gun-owning parents, 720 (83 percent) stored firearms securely, while 150 (17 percent) reported that they kept at least one firearm unlocked and loaded. Compared with the 720 secure-storage parents, the 150 parents with an unlocked, loaded gun had adjusted odds of 2.03-fold higher for saying they demonstrated proper handling, 2.29-fold higher for practicing handling with their kids, and 2.27-fold higher for teaching their kids to shoot.

“Consistent with qualitative research results, these findings suggest that some parents may believe that modeling responsible firearm use negates the need for secure storage,” the authors concluded. “However, it is unknown whether parents’ modeling responsible behavior is associated with a decreased risk of firearm injury.”

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