Science

only-elites-used-hallucinogens-in-ancient-andes-society

Only elites used hallucinogens in ancient Andes society

anthropology, Archeology, ethnobotany, forensic archaeology, hallucinogens, psychedelics, Science / /

“The Wari examples are about 1,000 years later, as are the Tiwanaku ones, so maybe it’s not surprising that there should be some variation in how people were using vilca,” Contreras told Ars. “We don’t know that this is the only context in which vilca was used at Chavín—just that it’s clear it was being used in this particular restricted-access context. That’s not to say that it or other substances—including such simple things as food and chicha—weren’t also being used in more open contexts to build social bonds. Work parties for harvest or canal cleaning, for example, are still very much part of life in the rural Central Andes, and for that matter anywhere else (including the U.S.).”

“If I had to guess, I’d say those were very much part of Chavín as well,” he added. “But that at the same time some kinds of rituals were very particular and likely exclusive with respect to location, content, and maybe substances involvement—both procuring plants and knowing how to prepare them may have required pretty specialized knowledge.”

The discovery has broader implications because Chavín straddled a major social transition. Between 500 and 1,000 years after Chavín, “there were already sedentary villages practicing agriculture and engaged in communal building projects recognizably similar to Chavín—platform mounds arrayed around plazas,” said Contreras. “However, there’s little evidence of the existence of substantial and durable inequality, and much less evidence of craft specialization, production, and long-distance trade/exchange than there is at Chavín.”

But in the 1,000 years after  Chavín, “settlements got significantly bigger and more urban, and several Andean societies can be found (Moche, for instance) that were very clearly strongly hierarchical; social, political, and economic inequality had become the norm,” Contreras said. “Chavín is obviously not the only archaeological site found between those two extremes, but it’s a really interesting place to examine that transition.”

PNAS, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2425125122  (About DOIs).

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Cyborg cicadas play Pachelbel’s Canon

biobots, Biology, cicadas, cyborg cicadas, entomology, insects, Science / /

The distinctive chirps of singing cicadas are a highlight of summer in regions where they proliferate; those chirps even featured prominently on Lorde’s 2021 album Solar Power. Now, Japanese scientists at the University of Tsukuba have figured out how to transform cicadas into cyborg insects capable of “playing” Pachelbel’s Canon. They described their work in a preprint published on the physics arXiv. You can listen to the sounds here.

Scientists have been intrigued by the potential of cyborg insects since the 1990s, when researchers began implanting tiny electrodes into cockroach antennae and shocking them to direct their movements. The idea was to use them as hybrid robots for search-and-rescue applications.

For instance, in 2015, Texas A&M scientists found that implanting electrodes into a cockroach’s ganglion (the neuron cluster that controls its front legs) was remarkably effective at successfully steering the roaches 60 percent of the time. They outfitted the roaches with tiny backpacks synced with a remote controller and administered shocks to disrupt the insect’s balance, forcing it to move in the desired direction

And in 2021, scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore turned Madagascar hissing cockroaches into cyborgs, implanting electrodes in sensory organs known as cerci that were then connected to tiny computers. Applying electrical current enabled them to steer the cockroaches successfully 94 percent of the time in simulated disaster scenes in the lab.

The authors of this latest paper were inspired by that 2021 project and decided to apply the basic concept to singing cicadas, with the idea that cyborg cicadas might one day be used to transmit warning messages during emergencies. It’s usually the males who do the singing, and each species has a unique song. In most species, the production of sound occurs via a pair of membrane structures called tymbals, which are just below each side of the insect’s anterior abdominal region. The tymbal muscles contract and cause the plates to vibrate while the abdomen acts as a kind of resonating chamber to amplify the song.

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Some flies go insomniac to ward off parasites

Biology, circadian rhythm, Drosophila, evolution, fruit flies, parasites, Science / /

Those genes associated with metabolism were upregulated, meaning they showed an increase in activity. An observed loss of body fat and protein reserves was evidently a trade-off for resistance to mites. This suggests there was increased lipolysis, or the breakdown of fats, and proteolysis, the breakdown of proteins, in resistant lines of flies.

Parasite paranoia

The depletion of nutrients could make fruit flies less likely to survive even without mites feeding off them, but their tenaciousness when it comes to staying up through the night suggests that being parasitized by mites is still the greater risk. Because mite-resistant flies did not sleep, their oxygen consumption and activity also increased during the night to levels no different from those of control group flies during the day.

Keeping mites away involves moving around so the fly can buzz off if mites crawl too close. Knowing this, Benoit wanted to see what would happen if the resistant flies’ movement was restricted. It was doom. When the flies were restrained, the mite-resistant flies were as susceptible to mites as the controls. Activity alone was important for resisting mites.

Since mites are ectoparasites, or external parasites (as opposed to internal parasites like tapeworms), potential hosts like flies can benefit from hypervigilance. Sleep is typically beneficial to a host invaded by an internal parasite because it increases the immune response. Unfortunately for the flies, sleeping would only make them an easy meal for mites. Keeping both stereoscopic eyes out for an external parasite means there is no time left for sleep.

“The pattern of reduced sleep likely allows the flies to be more responsive during encounters with mites during the night,” the researchers said in their study, which was recently published in Biological Timing and Sleep. “There could be differences in sleep occurring during the day, but these differences may be less important as D. melanogaster sleeps much less during the day.”

Fruit flies aren’t the only creatures with sleep patterns that parasites disrupt. Evidence of shifts in sleep and rest in birds and bats has been shown to happen when there is a risk of parasitism after dark. For the flies, exhaustion has the upside of better fertility if they manage to avoid bites, so a mate must be worth all those sleepless nights.

Biological Timing and Sleep, 2025.  DOI: 10.1038/s44323-025-00031-7

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In his first 100 days, Trump launched an “all-out assault” on the environment

Science, syndication / /

“It does feel like we’re Wile E. Coyote”

The threat posed by Trump’s administration is on a “new level,” environmental groups and legal experts say.

Donald Trump listens as coal miner Jeff Crowe speaks during an executive order signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House on April 8, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

One hundred days into the second Trump administration, many environmentalists’ worst fears about the new presidency have been realized—and surpassed.

Facing a spate of orders, pronouncements, and actions that target America’s most cherished natural resources and most vulnerable communities, advocates fear the Trump agenda, unchecked, will set the country back decades.

“It is not an overstatement to say that the Trump administration has launched the worst White House assault in history on the environment and public health. Day by day and hour by hour, the administration is destroying one of the signature achievements of our time,” said Manish Bapna, the president and CEO of the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “If this assault succeeds, it could take a generation or more to repair the damage.”

US Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement to Inside Climate News that the president’s “corrupt assault on clean air, clean water, and affordable clean energy has helped make him the least popular president ever 100 days into the job.” Polling shows President Donald Trump’s approval rate—39 percent, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll—is lower than any president’s at the 100-day mark since such polling began.

“Trump’s fossil-fuel-funded gangster government prioritizes lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution, not lowering household energy costs, or incentivizing economic growth, or reducing pollution,” Whitehouse said. “The American people know this has made them worse off, and it will get worse still.”

A press release issued by the White House on Earth Day last week presented a very different picture. Titled “On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science,” the memo outlined key actions taken by Trump on the environment so far. These included “promoting energy innovation for a healthier future,” such as carbon capture and nuclear energy; “cutting wasteful regulations” like emissions rules for coal plants; “protecting wildlife” by ordering a pause on offshore wind; and “protecting public lands” by opening more of them to oil, gas and mineral extraction “while ensuring responsible management.”

When reached for comment, the White House did not respond directly to the criticisms leveled at the administration for its environmental record so far, but instead affirmed a commitment to protection—repeating words Trump used during his campaign and since his election.

“As the President has said, the American people deserve clean air and clean water,” said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers. “In less than 100 days, EPA Administrator [Lee] Zeldin is taking steps to quickly remove toxins from our water and environment, provide clean land for Americans, and use commonsense policies to Power the Great American Comeback.”

To environmental experts, the Earth Day press release was indicative of a pattern in the administration’s communications with the public. “This is really a master class in doublespeak,” said Hannah Perls, a senior staff attorney at the Harvard University Environmental and Energy Law Program.

Rather than supporting “a healthier future,” in its first 100 days, the administration slashed government agencies and rescinded rules that lower pollution levels and improve public health outcomes. Instead of “energy innovation,” the president championed coal while killing renewable energy projects. Instead of protecting public lands, Trump fired thousands of parks and forest service employees, threatened to gut the Endangered Species Act, and encouraged logging and drilling on federal lands. And instead of “following science,” the president cut critical research funding across disciplines and ignored expert consensus on climate change and conservation.

The administration, which has doubled down on climate denial, is also withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement—the treaty designed to help the world avoid the most dangerous consequences of the climate crisis—and cut loose the scientists working on the nation’s key climate assessment.

While it’s typical for a new administration to alter existing policies, the actions of the second Trump administration on climate and the environment are unprecedented—even compared with Trump’s first term.

“We always anticipate policy reversals with every administration, whether it’s Democrat or Republican,” Perls said. Those reversals used a “scalpel approach,” where policies were considered and changed on a case-by-case basis.

“This time around, they’re using dynamite,” she said.

A green light for pollution

“People under 50 don’t have any real life experience with just how dirty the air was before the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970,” said David Hawkins, senior attorney in climate and energy at NRDC. “Well, I do.”

He described living in New York City in the 1960s: his window sill “black with soot in the morning”; plumes of smoke pouring from scores of apartment buildings, building furnaces and incinerators; the “tunnel of haze” obscuring Manhattan’s long avenues, the lead in the air “spewed from all of these automobiles, trucks and buses.”

Over his lifetime, Hawkins said in a call with the press in April, he watched as government regulations helped to curb this pollution. Regulations lowered toxic emissions. They reduced rates of respiratory illnesses, heart disease, and premature deaths. And they brought huge economic and environmental benefits to the US.

“Here’s the scary news: These gains can be lost,” he said. “Keeping the air clean is not automatic.”

Hawkins said the administration’s attempts to sunset or repeal swaths of environmental regulations could undo the progress of the last 55 years.

“We don’t know exactly how broadly this executive order will be applied, but it could mean the end of protections that are keeping our air clean,” he said. “If the rules are sunset, there’s no legal obligation for these polluters to keep their equipment operating.”

Environmental attorneys have called the sunsetting provision “simply unlawful” and questioned whether it would ever hold up in court.

But the order is just one effort of dozens by the administration to roll back regulations and drastically shrink the workforce that writes, interprets, and enforces those rules. The White House plan for the Environmental Protection Agency would cut the budget by 65 percent, forcing the agency to operate with less money than it has ever had since its founding in 1970, adjusted for inflation.

Perls worries about the loss of career expertise at the EPA, which can’t easily be replaced—and she is concerned about the signal the orders send to industry, even if they are ultimately struck down in court.

“I think it is reasonable to anticipate that many industries are going to see this as a green light to pollute with abandon,” she said.

“The administration has made very clear in this first 100 days who they are for and who they are against,” said Geoff Gisler, program director for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “And as we expected, they are looking to empower heavy polluting industries, and they are putting the burden on communities to deal with the pollution that results from this.”

The SELC is a nonprofit law firm that represents environmental groups across the Southeast on a wide range of cases. The group is currently suing the Trump administration, arguing that the administration’s freezing of grant funds is an “unlawful interference by the executive branch” and violates the First Amendment.

“What we’re seeing is complete disregard for any sort of legally required process,” Gisler said. “We saw some of that in the first [Trump] administration. This time they’re taking it to a new level.”

Perls and Hawkins both emphasized that the administration’s policies, if enacted as proposed, will have a real-world impact on many Americans’ lives.

“There are very real public health harms that come from having our primary public health enforcement agency abandon its obligation to protect and safeguard human health,” Perls said of cuts at EPA and a March memo saying the agency would no longer consider race or socioeconomic status in its enforcement. Communities with more people of color and lower-income residents often face worse pollution, the result of both historic and current discrimination.

“People will die as a result of these exposures. It might not be tomorrow, it might not be in six months, but people will die,” she said. The Harvard environmental and energy law program is tracking the administration’s environmental justice actions in an online database.

Environmental justice organizations nationwide are reeling from federal funding freezes. EPA suspended millions of dollars in grants for projects like planting trees, air monitoring and preventing child lead poisoning. The agency is also dismantling its environmental justice offices and deleted its environmental justice mapping tool, EJ Screen, that helps people understand how exposures differ across the nation.

“Causing chaos was the goal,” said Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy for the Sierra Club. “Small community groups that are counting on that money for environmental justice, or community solar projects—they can’t wait out long court battles, even if they ultimately prevail. Same thing with federal workers who were illegally fired. People can’t just sit around and wait eight months for a court case to play out and find out whether they’re actually able to keep their job.”

The administration’s efforts to erase and halt federal work on climate and the environment have not been limited to EPA. At the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the end of “all climate change activities and the use of climate change terminology.” The Federal Emergency Management Agency ended the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which allocates grants for projects like flood control, wildfire management and infrastructure maintenance that reduce disaster risk.

Sweeping cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services have impacted programs like the Low-Income Housing Energy Assistance Program, which has seen funding cut off because all of the federal staff administering the program were fired. The program helps American families with heating and cooling bills, weatherizing their homes, and keeping their electricity and gas turned on. HHS also fired 200 staff members in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, who worked on health issues related to the environment and climate change, like asthma and air pollution.

In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the Department of Justice to terminate “all environmental justice programs, offices, and jobs.”

“The attack on environmental justice is an attack on the millions of Americans relying on clean air and clean water across our country,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in a press release in response to Bondi’s move. “Trump and his oil-loving cronies are not just making the climate crisis worse. They are also harming the most vulnerable communities in America.”

In Trump’s first administration, his team at EPA framed their approach as “back to basics”: a turning away from action on climate change and back to the air and water quality concerns that were the original impetus for federal environmental law.

When asked by Inside Climate News about the environmental record of the second Trump administration’s first 100 days, a White House official noted some examples: the ramping up of efforts to end decades of raw sewage flowing into southern California from Tijuana, Mexico, and Zeldin’s work on a set of proposals to tackle exposure to dangerous “forever chemicals,” known as PFAS.

But many environmental accomplishments the White House has pointed to raise their own concerns.

For example, Zeldin has been notably silent on whether the administration will oppose the chemical industry’s effort to overturn the Biden administration’s PFAS regulations, which were accompanied by $1 billion for state-level water testing and treatment.

The White House has touted its speed-up in approval of state plans to implement the Clean Air Act, many of which were backlogged under the Biden administration. Some clean air groups fear the state plans are being rubber-stamped.

A White House official also noted that the EPA completed the largest wildfire response in agency history, clearing 13,000 Los Angeles properties of hazardous materials in just 28 days at the start of the administration. But local groups protested the EPA’s use of a coastal wetland as a staging site for the toxic debris from the Palisades and Eaton fires.

The administration’s cuts have largely been carried out in the name of “eliminating waste,” and led by Trump donor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But experts say it’s clear from the aggressive scale and speed of the administration’s conduct that this is not really the goal.

“If you’re trying to cure cancer, you excise the tumor. You don’t kill the patient,” Perls said. “They’re not trying to excise a tumor. They’re trying to kill the administrative state.”

Mass layoffs, minimized monuments, and Musk

Since retaking office, Trump has dramatically reconfigured federal agencies that manage Western public land, to the potential detriment of those landscapes and the wildlife and communities that rely on them.

In February, the National Park Service fired 1,000 employees only for two US District Court judges to order them reinstated, destabilizing parks across the country as they prepare for the busiest season of the year. Trump has also cut the US Forest Service’s workforce by 10 percent, and thousands of others reportedly accepted resignation offers. Funding freezes have stalled vital conservation work.

Now, employees at DOGE, overseen by billionaire Musk, have been given the reins at the Department of the Interior, where Secretary Doug Burgum has touted the idea of selling off public lands to address the nation’s housing crisis. The Trump administration has also issued executive orders to streamline mining and fast-track highly controversial projects.

“Federal public lands are owned by all Americans,” said Mike Quigley, the Arizona state director for the Wilderness Society. “They’re managed by the federal government on our behalf, and so if you’re looking to do a mine on public land, the comment period and the NEPA process that the agency undergoes was designed to allow the owners of the land a say. That’s you, me, the person down the street, your next-door neighbor, whoever. And when I hear ‘streamlining,’ I worry that that’s a euphemism for rubber stamps.”

Fast-tracking mining and oil and gas drilling could threaten some of America’s most iconic species and landscapes. “We have some of the last best wildlife habitat in the lower 48,” said Alec Underwood, program director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council, an environmental nonprofit based in Lander. “It’s irreplaceable.”

Staffing and regulatory whiplash has already had tangible impacts. Layoffs have affected “real folks who live in our communities and work on public lands,” said Underwood. “A lot of them are now out of jobs.”

The oil and gas industry has cheered Trump’s actions over the past 100 days. The Western Energy Alliance, a Colorado-based trade association for oil and gas companies, praised the president’s “decisive action to promote oil and natural gas development.”

“We’ve seen a dramatic shift from an administration that imposed restrictive policies, limited permitting, and threatened energy projects, to one that is actively supporting development,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the alliance, in a press release. Sgamma, who withdrew from consideration to lead the Bureau of Land Management after her loyalty to Trump came under scrutiny, also lauded the EPA’s “aggressive deregulatory actions.”

Elsewhere in the West, communities and environmentalists are bracing for the reduction or elimination of national monuments. In March, the Trump administration announced it would eliminate California’s Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands national monuments before removing language from a White House fact sheet announcing the decision. Last week, The Washington Post reported the administration was considering shrinking Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears, and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments—all despite monuments and their protections enjoying nearly universal popularity with voters.

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, said the administration’s haphazard approach to governing puts the country in peril.

“It does feel like we’re Wile E. Coyote,” he said. “We’ve run off the proverbial cliff edge and we are hanging in open space with nothing underneath us, and that feels deeply perilous.”

He added, “Gravity will take hold at some juncture, and so I think a lot of organizations like ours are thinking about, ‘How do we mitigate the impacts of that fall to things we care about, like public lands and wildlife in the West, free-flowing rivers?’”

The administration has also taken aim at conservation and climate-focused programs run by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), stranding tens of thousands of farmers who were counting on funding and technical help from the agency.

Under Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order, billions of dollars in conservation and climate funding for farmers were immediately frozen. The order targeted the Biden administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed $19.5 billion to farmers for implementing climate practices or energy efficiency measures on their farms. Some of that funding has since been unfrozen by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, but it remains unclear when it will be distributed.

Lawsuits filed by legal advocacy groups on behalf of farmers are seeking the restoration of some of that funding. An analysis by former USDA employees says the agency owes nearly $2 billion to more than 22,000 farmers for conservation and energy efficiency programs.

Earlier this month the agency canceled a $3 billion Biden-era program, the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities, rebranding it as the Advancing Markets for Producers program. The agency said it would only continue funding projects under the program according to new criteria.

Similarly, the agency said it would only fund projects under the Rural Energy for America Program if recipients revise their grant applications to “remove harmful DEIA and far-left climate features.” DEIA stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, a term that includes equal-opportunity efforts in the workplace and other settings.

The agency, which also oversees the Forest Service, issued an “emergency situation determination” to open up 110 million acres to industrial timber interests—a move that environmental groups say will hasten the destruction of old-growth forests and make forests more vulnerable to drought and wildfire. The memo came shortly after Trump issued an executive order to expand timber production in the country by 25 percent.

“President Trump has demonstrated his indifference to the needs of farmers most visibly with his erratic and devastating tariff policy, but his administration is also leaving farmers in the lurch when it comes to climate change,” said Karen Perry Stillerman, who oversees food and farm programs for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Stillerman noted that the administration scrubbed climate data from websites, forced out climate scientists at USDA and sacked the entire team that supports the US Global Change Research Program, worsening fears that the sixth National Climate Assessment, the comprehensible, congressionally mandated scientific report, will be cancelled.

“By systematically taking away vital tools that farmers need to thrive in a hotter and more dangerous future,” Stillerman said, “they are endangering all of us.”

A “massive setback” for climate progress 

The first 100 days of the administration featured a steady stream of executive orders and directives that critics say would undermine American science domestically and abroad, end climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives and increase the use of fossil fuels.

One of the first acts of Trump’s second term was to begin withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, the international climate pact, for the second time. At home, Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” pushed for more oil and gas drilling, logging and coal mining and froze the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, meant to fund clean energy development.

The private sector has responded to Trump’s climate policy shifts and erratic tariff implementation by canceling $8 billion worth of planned clean energy projects in the US. In March, scientists across the country protested the administration’s “anti-science agenda” and far-reaching cuts to federal funding they need to carry out their work.

“At the very least, it’s a massive setback,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, of the first 100 days’ “all-out assault” on former President Joe Biden’s climate agenda and the federal bureaucracy that supports environmental, climate and health protections.

A larger danger looms beyond the administration’s immediate threats to the environment, he said. Any new fossil fuel infrastructure will long outlast Trump’s term, increasing emissions for years to come.

“The Trump administration is taking the rug out from under us,” said Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. During a webinar last week, she noted that the attacks on climate and clean energy policies are particularly disturbing, and threaten the “forward momentum that we need at the federal level,” she said.

The policies are also unfair to most of the rest of the world, she added.

“This is especially damaging in light of the fact that the US is the largest historic emitter of heat-trapping emissions and needs to play its part in safeguarding the health and safety of people and the planet,” she said.

American scientists will still make major contributions to the upcoming major climate reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change despite the administration’s efforts to withdraw the US government from international climate processes, and climate threats like extreme heat, rising sea levels and melting ice remain a focus for the rest of the global science community.

Some international researchers have expressed concern about a potential loss of access to important data. The US has had a lead role in the global Argo ocean monitoring network, and if funding is cut, it could hamper efforts to determine how human-caused warming is affecting tropical storms and hurricanes, as well as how key ocean currents are changing.

Schlenker-Goodrich, of the Western Environmental Law Center (WELC), is concerned about the administration’s efforts to isolate the United States from the rest of the world, and the “unraveling” of the country’s scientific research capacity.

“I do not see how this [isolationism] can serve American interests in any sphere, let alone in spheres of climate action and conservation action,” he said. “Those are global issues with immensely important domestic consequences, and the fact that we’re isolating ourselves from the rest of the world just seems a profound mistake.”

The administration’s climate and energy policies represent “a missed opportunity for the United States,” Burger said. “It’s a missed opportunity to take a leadership role in the development of the green economy. It’s a missed opportunity to continue to exert significant political leadership in the international community on climate.”

He added, “We have a short window in which to make dramatic greenhouse gas emissions reductions. We’re losing time.”

What will endure?

Burger said the “big question” about Trump’s second 100 days remains unanswered. “Is this first 100 days a success in any way, shape or form?” he asked. “Or is it a massive failure?” What will endure from these 100 days of governmental uncertainty and upheaval “will hinge on how the courts ultimately respond to the assault on the rule of law and administrative norms,” he said.

Gisler at the SELC echoed this assessment. The lasting legacy of this administration will be determined by how the nation responds to it, he said. He pointed out that after the previous “robber baron era,” the country saw a surge of support for progressive ideas that led to Social Security, food safety laws, civil service reform and other advances.

“There is going to be a lot of disruption and chaos over the next several years, but I do believe that at base, what this administration is doing does not have the support of the vast majority of people in this country, at least when it comes to the environment,” Gisler said.

“We’ve seen a large number of announcements from agencies and executive orders and press releases from the White House, and far less actual administrative action,” Burger said. If the legal process proceeds the way it’s supposed to, he said, many of the administration’s orders “should be undone.”

Organizations like the NRDC, the WELC, and the SELC are taking on that fight.

“My assumption is that their attempt is to try to flood the zone and overwhelm people rather than to comply with the law,” said Michael Wall, NRDC’s chief litigation officer. “We do not intend to be overwhelmed.”

Inside Climate News reporter Lisa Sorg contributed to this article.

Photo of Inside Climate News

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we-finally-know-a-little-more-about-amazon’s-super-secret-satellites

We finally know a little more about Amazon’s super-secret satellites

Amazon, atlas v, broadband, Internet, kuiper, launch, Science, Space, united launch alliance / /

“Elon thinks we can do the job with cheaper and simpler satellites, sooner,” a source told Reuters at the time of Badyal’s dismissal. Earlier in 2018, SpaceX launched a pair of prototype cube-shaped Internet satellites for demonstrations in orbit. Then, less than a year after firing Badyal, Musk’s company launched the first full stack of Starlink satellites, debuting the now-standard flat-panel design.

In a post Friday on LinkedIn, Badyal wrote the Kuiper satellites have had “an entirely nominal start” to their mission. “We’re just over 72 hours into our first full-scale Kuiper mission, and the adrenaline is still high.”

The Starlink and Kuiper constellations use laser inter-satellite links to relay Internet signals from node-to-node across their networks. Starlink broadcasts consumer broadband in Ku-band frequencies, while Kuiper will use Ka-band.

Ultimately, SpaceX’s simplified Starlink deployment architecture has fewer parts and eliminates the need for a carrier structure. This allows SpaceX to devote a higher share of the rocket’s mass and volume capacity to the Starlink satellites themselves, replacing dead weight with revenue-earning capability. The dispenser architecture used by Amazon is a more conventional design, and gives satellite engineers more flexibility in designing their spacecraft. It also allows satellites to spread out faster in orbit.

Others involved in the broadband megaconstellation rush have copied SpaceX’s architecture.

China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, satellites have a “standardized and modular” flat-panel design that “meets the needs of stacking multiple satellites with one rocket,” according to the company managing the constellation. While Chinese officials haven’t released any photos of the satellites, which could eventually number more than 14,000, this sounds a lot like the design of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.

Another piece of information released by United Launch Alliance helps us arrive at an estimate of the mass of each Kuiper satellite. The collection of 27 satellites that launched earlier this week added up to be the heaviest payload ever flown on ULA’s Atlas V rocket. ULA said the total payload the Atlas V delivered to orbit was about 34,000 pounds, equivalent to roughly 15.4 metric tons.

It wasn’t clear whether this number accounted for the satellite dispenser, which likely weighed somewhere in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds at launch. This would put the mass of each Kuiper satellite somewhere between 1,185 and 1,259 pounds (537 and 571 kilograms).

This is not far off the estimated mass of SpaceX’s most recent iteration of Starlink satellites, a version known as V2 Mini Optimized. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has launched up to 28 of these flat-packed satellites on a single launch.

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Editorial: Censoring the scientific enterprise, one grant at a time

funding, misinformation, Science, Trump / /

Recent grant terminations are a symptom of a widespread attack on science.

Over the last two weeks, in response to Executive Order 14035, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has discontinued funding for research on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), as well as support for researchers from marginalized backgrounds. Executive Order 14168 ordered the NSF (and other federal agencies) to discontinue any research that focused on women, women in STEM, gender variation, and transsexual or transgender populations—and, oddly, transgenic mice.

Then, another round of cancellations targeted research on misinformation and disinformation, a subject (among others) that Republican Senator Ted Cruz views as advancing neo-Marxist perspectives and class warfare.

During the previous three years, I served as a program officer at the NSF Science of Science (SOS) program. We reviewed, recommended, and awarded competitive research grants on science communication, including research on science communication to the public, communication of public priorities to scientists, and citizen engagement and participation in science. Projects my team reviewed and funded on misinformation are among the many others at NSF that have now been canceled (see the growing list here).

Misinformation research is vital to advancing our understanding of how citizens understand and process evidence and scientific information and put that understanding into action. It is an increasingly important area of research given our massive, ever-changing digital information environment.

A few examples of important research that was canceled because it threatens the current administration’s political agenda:

  • A project that uses computational social sciences, computer science, sociology, and statistics to understand the fundamentals of information spread through social media, because understanding how information flows and its impact on human behavior is important for determining how to protect society from the effects of misinformation, propaganda, and “fake news.”
  • A project investigating how people and groups incentivize others to spread misinformation on social media platforms.
  • A study identifying the role of social media influencers in addressing misconceptions and inaccurate information related to vaccines, which would help us develop guidance on how to ensure accurate information reaches different audiences.

Misinformation research matters

This work is critical on its own. Results of misinformation research inform how we handle education, public service announcements, weather warnings, emergency response broadcasts, health advisories, agricultural practices, product recalls, and more. It’s how we get people to integrate data into their work, whether their work involves things like farming, manufacturing, fishing, or something else.

Understanding how speech on technical topics is perceived, drives trust, and changes behavior can help us ensure that our speech is more effective. Beyond its economic impact, research on misinformation helps create an informed public—the foundation of any democracy. Contrary to the president’s executive order, it does not “infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens.”

Misinformation research is only a threat to the speech of people who seek to spread misinformation.

Politics and science

Political attacks on misinformation research is censorship, driven by a dislike for the results it produces. It is also part of a larger threat to the NSF and the economic and social benefits that come from publicly funded research.

The NSF is a “pass through agency”—most of its annual budget (around $9 billion) passes through the agency and is returned to American communities in the form of science grants (80 percent of the budget) and STEM education (13 percent). The NSF manages these programs via a staff that is packed full of expert scientists in physics, psychology, chemistry, geosciences, engineering, sociology, and other fields. These scientists and the administrative staff (1,700 employees, who account for around 5 percent of its budget) organize complex peer-review panels that assess and distribute funding to cutting-edge science.

In normal times, presidents may shift the NSF’s funding priorities—this is their prerogative. This process is political. It always has been. It always will be. Elected officials (both presidents and Congress) have agendas and interests and want to bring federal dollars to their constituents. Additionally, there are national priorities—pandemic response, supercomputing needs, nanotechnology breakthroughs, space exploration goals, demands for microchip technologies, and artificial intelligence advancements.

Presidential agendas are meant to “steer the ship” by working with Congress to develop annual budgets, set appropriations and earmarks, and focus on specific regions (e.g., EPSCoR), topics, or facilities (e.g., federal labs).

While shifting priorities is normal, cancellation of previously funded research projects is NOT normal. Unilaterally banning funding for specific types of research (climate science, misinformation, research on minoritized groups) is not normal.

It’s anti-scientific, allowing politics rather than expertise to determine which research is most competitive. Canceling research grants because they threaten the current regime’s political agenda is a violation of the NSF’s duty to honor contracts and ethically manage the funds appropriated by the US Congress. This is a threat not just to individual scientists and universities, but to the trust and norms that underpin our scientific enterprise. It’s an attempt to terrorize researchers with the fear that their funding may be next and to create backlash against science and expertise (another important area of NSF-funded research that has also been canceled).

Scientific values and our responsibilities

Political interference in federal funding of scientific research will not end here. A recent announcement notes the NSF is facing a 55 percent cut to its annual budget and mass layoffs. Other agencies have been told to prepare for similar cuts. The administration’s actions will leave little funding for R&D that advances the public good. And the places where the research happens—especially universities and colleges—are also under assault. While these immediate cuts are felt first by scientists and universities, they will ultimately affect people throughout the nation—students, consumers, private companies, and residents.

The American scientific enterprise has been a world leader, and federal funding of science is a key driver of this success. For the last 100 years, students, scientists, and entrepreneurs from around the world have flocked to the US to advance science and innovation. Public investments in science have produced economic health and prosperity for all Americans and advanced our national security through innovation and soft diplomacy.

These cuts, combined with other actions taken to limit research funding and peer review at scientific agencies, make it clear that the Trump administration’s goals are to:

  • Roll back education initiatives that produce an informed public
  • Reduce evidence-based policy making
  • Slash public investment in the advancement of science

All Americans who benefit from the outcomes of publicly funded science—GPS and touch screens on your phone, Google, the Internet, weather data on an app, MRI, kidney exchanges, CRISPR, 3D printing, tiny hearing aids, bluetooth, broadband, robotics at the high school, electric cars, suspension bridges, PCR tests, AlphaFold and other AI tools, Doppler radar, barcodes, reverse auctions, and far, far more—should be alarmed and taking action.

Here are some ideas of what you can do:

  1. Demand that Congress restore previous appropriations, 5Calls
  2. Advocate through any professional associations you’re a member of
  3. Join science action groups (Science for the People, Union of Concerned Scientists, American Association for the Advancement of Science)
  4. Talk to university funders, leadership, and alumni about the value of publicly funded science
  5. Educate the public (including friends, family, and neighbors) about the value of science and the role of federally funded research
  6. Write an op-ed or public outreach materials through your employer
  7. Support federal employees
  8. If you’re a scientist, say yes to media & public engagement requests
  9. Attend local meetings: city council, library board, town halls
  10. Attend a protest
  11. Get offline and get active, in-person

There is a lot going on in the political environment right now, making it easy to get caught up in the implications cuts have on individual research projects or to be reassured by things that haven’t been targeted yet. But the threat looms large, for all US science. The US, through agencies like the NSF, has built a world-class scientific enterprise founded on the belief that taxpayer investments in basic science can and do produce valuable economic and social outcomes for all of us. Censoring research and canceling misinformation grants is a small step in what is already a larger battle to defend our world-class scientific enterprise. It is up to all of us to act now.

Mary K. Feeney is the Frank and June Sackton chair and professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and served as the program director for the Science of Science: Discovery, Communication and Impact program at the National Science Foundation (2021–2024).

Editorial: Censoring the scientific enterprise, one grant at a time Read More »

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Trump’s 2026 budget proposal: Crippling cuts for science across the board

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Budget document derides research and science-based policy as “woke,” “scams.”

On Friday, the US Office of Management and Budget sent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, an outline of what to expect from the Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal. As expected, the budget includes widespread cuts, affecting nearly every branch of the federal government.

In keeping with the administration’s attacks on research agencies and the places research gets done, research funding will be taking an enormous hit, with the National Institutes of Health taking a 40 percent cut and the National Science Foundation losing 55 percent of its 2025 budget. But the budget goes well beyond those highlighted items, with nearly every place science gets done or funded targeted for cuts.

Perhaps even more shocking is the language used to justify the cuts, which reads more like a partisan rant than a serious budget document.

Health cuts

Having a secretary of Health and Human Services who doesn’t believe in germ theory is not likely to do good things for US health programs, and the proposed budget will only make matters worse. Kennedy’s planned MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) program would be launched with half a billion in funds, but nearly everything else would take a cut.

The CDC would lose about $3.6 billion from its current budget of $9.6 billion, primarily due to the shuttering of a number of divisions within it: the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion, the National Center for Environmental Health, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and the Global Health Center and its division of Public Health Preparedness and Response. The duties of those offices are, according to the budget document, “duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary.”

Another big hit to HHS comes from the termination of a $4 billion program that helps low-income families cover energy costs. The OMB suggests that these costs will get lower due to expanded energy production and, anyway, the states should be paying for it. Shifting financial burdens to states is a general theme of the document, an approach that will ultimately hit the poorest states hardest, even though these had very high percentages of Trump voters.

The document also says that “This Administration is committed to combatting the scourge of deadly drugs that have ravaged American communities,” while cutting a billion dollars from substance abuse programs within HHS.

But the headline cuts come from the National Institutes of Health, the single largest source of scientific funding in the world. NIH would see its current $48 billion budget chopped by $18 billion and its 27 individual institutes consolidated down to just five. This would result in vast cutbacks to US biomedical research, which is currently acknowledged to be world-leading. Combined with planned cuts to grant overheads, it will cause most research institutions to shrink, and some less well-funded universities may be forced to close facilities.

The justification for the cuts is little more than a partisan rant: “NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.” The text then implies that the broken trust is primarily the product of failing to promote the idea that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab, even though there’s no scientific evidence to indicate that it had.

Climate research hit

The National Science Foundation funds much of the US’s fundamental science research, like physics and astronomy. Earlier reporting that it would see a 56 percent cut to its budget was confirmed. “The Budget cuts funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science.” Funding would be maintained for AI and quantum computing. All funding for encouraging minority participation in the sciences will also be terminated. The budget was released on the same day that the NSF announced it was joining other science agencies in standardizing on paying 15 percent of its grants’ value for maintaining facilities and providing services to researchers, a cut that would further the financial damage to research institutions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would see $1.3 billion of its $6.6 billion budget cut, with the primary target being its climate change work. In fact, the budget for NOAA’s weather satellites will be cut to prevent them from including instruments that would make “unnecessary climate measurements.” Apparently, the Administration doesn’t want anyone to be exposed to data that might challenge its narrative that climate change is a scam.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology would lose $350 million for similar reasons. “NIST has long funded awards for the development of curricula that advance a radical climate agenda,” the document suggests, before going on to say that the Institute’s Circular Economy Program, which promotes the efficient reuse of industrial materials, “pushes environmental alarmism.”

The Department of Energy is seeing a $1.1 billion hit to its science budget, “eliminating funding for Green New Scam interests and climate change-related activities.” The DOE will also take hits to policy programs focused on climate change, including $15 billion in cuts to renewable energy and carbon capture spending. Separately, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy will also take a $2.6 billion hit. Over at the Department of the Interior, the US Geological Survey would see its renewable energy programs terminated, as well.

Some of the DOE’s other cuts, however, don’t even make sense given the administration’s priorities. The newly renamed Office of Fossil Energy—something that Trump favors—will still take a $270 million hit, and nuclear energy programs will see $400 million in cuts.

This sort of lack of self-awareness shows up several times in the document. In one striking case, an interior program funding water infrastructure improvements is taking a cut that “reduces funding for programs that have nothing to do with building and maintaining water infrastructure, such as habitat restoration.” Apparently, the OMB is unaware that functioning habitats can help provide ecosystem services that can reduce the need for water infrastructure.

Similarly, over at the EPA, they’re boosting programs for clean drinking water by $36 million, while at the same time cutting loans to states for clean water projects by $2.5 billion. “The States should be responsible for funding their own water infrastructure projects,” the OMB declares. Research at the EPA also takes a hit: “The Budget puts an end to unrestrained research grants, radical environmental justice work, woke climate research, and skewed, overly-precautionary modeling that influences regulations—none of which are authorized by law.”

An attack on scientific infrastructure

US science couldn’t flourish without an educational system that funnels talented individuals into graduate programs. So, naturally, funding for those is being targeted as well. This is partially a function of the administration’s intention to eliminate the Department of Education, but there also seems to be a specific focus on programs that target low-income individuals.

For example, the GEAR UP program describes itself as “designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education.” The OMB document describes it as “a relic of the past when financial incentives were needed to motivate Institutions of Higher Education to engage with low-income students and increase access.” It goes on to claim that this is “not the obstacle it was for students of limited means.”

Similarly, the SEOG program funding is “awarded to an undergraduate student who demonstrates exceptional financial need.” In the OMB’s view, colleges and universities “have used [it] to fund radical leftist ideology instead of investing in students and their success.” Another cut is claimed to eliminate “Equity Assistance Centers that have indoctrinated children.” And “The Budget proposes to end Federal taxpayer dollars being weaponized to indoctrinate new teachers.”

In addition, the federal work-study program, which subsidizes on-campus jobs for needy students, is also getting a billion-dollar cut. Again, the document says that the states can pay for it.

(The education portion also specifically cuts the funding of Howard University, which is both distinct as a federally supported Black university and also notable as being where Kamala Harris got her first degree.)

The end of US leadership

This budget is a recipe for ending the US’s leadership in science. It would do generational damage by forcing labs to shut down, with a corresponding loss of highly trained individuals and one-of-a-kind research materials. At the same time, it will throttle the educational pipeline that could eventually replace those losses. Given that the US is one of the major sources of research funding in the world, if approved, the budget will have global consequences.

To the people within the OMB who prepared the document, these are not losses. The document makes it very clear that they view many instances of scientific thought and evidence-based policy as little more than forms of ideological indoctrination, presumably because the evidence sometimes contradicts what they’d prefer to believe.

Photo of John Timmer

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

Trump’s 2026 budget proposal: Crippling cuts for science across the board Read More »

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New material may help us build Predator-style thermal vision specs

chemistry, infrared sensor, materials science, Night Vision, Science / /

One way to do that is called remote epitaxy, where an intermediate layer made out of graphene or other material is introduced between the substrate and the growing crystals. Once the epitaxy process is done, the substrate and everything on it are soaked in a chemical solution that dissolves this intermediate layer, leaving the crystalline film intact. This works but is expensive, difficult to scale, and takes a lot of time. To make the process cheaper and faster, the MIT team had to grow the crystals directly on the substrate, without any intermediate layers. What they were trying to achieve was a non-stick frying pan effect but at an atomically small scale.

Weakening the bonds

The material that prevented the crystalline films from sticking to substrates wasn’t Teflon but lead. When the team was experimenting with growing different films in their previous studies, they noticed that there was a material that easily came off the substrate, yet retained an atomically smooth surface: PMN-PT, or lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate.

The lead atoms in the PMN-PT weakened the covalent bonds between the film and the substrate, preventing the electrons from jumping through the interface between the two materials. “We just had to exert a bit of stress to induce a crack at the interface between the film and the substrate and we could realize the liftoff,” Zhang told Ars. “Very simple—we could remove these films within a second.”

But PMN-PT, besides its inherent non-stickiness, had more tricks up its sleeves; it had exceptional pyroelectric properties. Once the team realized they could manufacture and peel away PMN-PT films at will, they tried something a bit more complex: a cooling-free, far-infrared radiation detector. “We were trying to achieve performance comparable with cooled detectors,” Zhang says.

The detector they constructed was made from 100 pieces of 10-nanometer-thin PMN-PT films, each about 60 square microns, that the team transferred onto a silicon chip. This produced a 100-pixel infrared sensor. Tests with ever smaller changes in temperature indicated that it outperformed state-of-the art night vision systems and was sensitive to radiation across the entire infrared spectrum. (Mercury cadmium telluride detectors respond to a much narrower band of wavelengths.)

New material may help us build Predator-style thermal vision specs Read More »

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Sen. Susan Collins blasts Trump for cuts to scientific research

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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) kicked off a Wednesday hearing criticizing ​​the Trump administration for cutting science funding, firing federal scientists, and triggering policy uncertainties that she said threaten to undermine the foundation for America’s global leadership.

Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the administration’s abrupt cancellation of grants and laying off scientists has little or no justification. “These actions put our leadership in biomedical innovation at real risk and must be reversed,” she said.

Her warning came as American University’s Institute for Macroeconomic & Policy Analysis published a study Wednesday showing how major cuts to federal funding for scientific research could cause economic damage equivalent to a major recession.

In the first 100 days of Trump 2.0, the administration has fired 1,300 employees from the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, and canceled more than $2 billion in federal research grants.

Earlier this week, the administration dismissed all the scientists and other authors working on the next authoritative look at how climate change is affecting the US.

In one such cutback, the Trump administration stripped almost $4 million in federal funding from Princeton’s climate research department as it determined that Princeton’s work did not align with the objectives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The White House said Princeton’s research on topics including sea level rise, coastal flooding, and global warming promoted “exaggerated and implausible climate threats,” according to a US Department of Commerce press release earlier this month explaining the funding cuts.

The White House is expected to propose additional reductions in discretionary spending as part of the annual budget process. Federal agencies like the NIH and the National Science Foundation are among the few funding basic and applied scientific research.

The study, from a group of American University economists, is among the first to run preliminary macroeconomic estimates of the cost of the Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump administration’s cuts to public spending on science.

Sen. Susan Collins blasts Trump for cuts to scientific research Read More »

nasa’s-psyche-spacecraft-hits-a-speed-bump-on-the-way-to-a-metal-asteroid

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft hits a speed bump on the way to a metal asteroid

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An illustration depicts a NASA spacecraft approaching the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. Though there are no plans to mine Psyche, such asteroids are being eyed for their valuable resources. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Each electric thruster on Psyche generates just 250 milli-newtons of thrust, roughly equivalent to the weight of three quarters. But they can operate for months at a time, and over the course of a multi-year cruise, these thrusters provide a more efficient means of propulsion than conventional rockets.

The plasma thrusters are reshaping the Psyche spacecraft’s path toward its destination, a metal-rich asteroid also named Psyche. The spacecraft’s four electric engines, known as Hall effect thrusters, were supplied by a Russian company named Fakel. Most of the other components in Psyche’s propulsion system—controllers, xenon fuel tanks, propellant lines, and valves—come from other companies or the spacecraft’s primary manufacturer, Maxar Space Systems in California.

The Psyche mission is heading first for Mars, where the spacecraft will use the planet’s gravity next year to slingshot itself into the asteroid belt, setting up for arrival and orbit insertion around the asteroid Psyche in August 2029.

Psyche launched in October 2023 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on the opening leg of a six-year sojourn through the Solar System. The mission’s total cost adds up to more than $1.4 billion, including development of the spacecraft and its instruments, the launch, operations, and an experimental laser communications package hitching a ride to deep space with Psyche.

Psyche, the asteroid, is the size of Massachusetts and circles the Sun in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. No spacecraft has visited Psyche before. Of the approximately 1 million asteroids discovered so far, scientists say only nine have a metal-rich signature like Psyche. The team of scientists who put together the Psyche mission have little idea of what to expect when the spacecraft gets there in 2029.

Metallic asteroids like Psyche are a mystery. Most of Psyche’s properties are unknown other than estimates of its density and composition. Predictions about the the look of Psyche’s craters, cliffs, and color have inspired artists to create a cacophony of illustrations, often showing sharp spikes and grooves alien to rocky worlds.

In a little more than five years, assuming NASA gets past Psyche’s propulsion problem, scientists will supplant speculation with solid data.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft hits a speed bump on the way to a metal asteroid Read More »

dna-links-modern-pueblo-dwellers-to-chaco-canyon-people

DNA links modern pueblo dwellers to Chaco Canyon people

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A thousand years ago, the people living in Chaco Canyon were building massive structures of intricate masonry and trading with locations as far away as Mexico. Within a century, however, the area would be largely abandoned, with little indication that the same culture was re-established elsewhere. If the people of Chaco Canyon migrated to new homes, it’s unclear where they ended up.

Around the same time that construction expanded in Chaco Canyon, far smaller pueblos began appearing in the northern Rio Grande Valley hundreds of kilometers away. These have remained occupied to the present day in New Mexico; although their populations shrank dramatically after European contact, their relationship to the Chaco culture has remained ambiguous. Until now, that is. People from one of these communities, Picuris Pueblo, worked with ancient DNA specialists to show that they are the closest relatives of the Chaco people yet discovered, confirming aspects of the pueblo’s oral traditions.

A pueblo-driven study

The list of authors of the new paper describing this genetic connection includes members of the Pueblo government, including its present governor. That’s because the study was initiated by the members of the Pueblo, who worked with archeologists to get in contact with DNA specialists at the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen. In a press conference, members of the Pueblo said they’d been aware of the power of DNA studies via their use in criminal cases and ancestry services. The leaders of Picuris Pueblo felt that it could help them understand their origin and the nature of some of their oral history, which linked them to the wider Pueblo-building peoples.

After two years of discussions, the collaboration settled on a plan of research, and the ancient DNA specialists were given access to both ancient skeletons at Picuris Pueblo, as well as samples from present-day residents. These were used to generate complete genome sequences.

The first clear result is that there is a strong continuity in the population living at Picuris. The ancient skeletons range from 500 to 700 years old, and thus date back to roughly the time of European contact, with some predating it. They also share strong genetic connections to the people of Chaco Canyon, where DNA has also been obtained from remains. “No other sampled population, ancient or present-day, is more closely related to Ancestral Puebloans from Pueblo Bonito [in Chaco Canyon] than the Picuris individuals are,” the paper concludes.

DNA links modern pueblo dwellers to Chaco Canyon people Read More »

research-roundup:-tattooed-tardigrades-and-splash-free-urinals

Research roundup: Tattooed tardigrades and splash-free urinals

Archaeology, cephalopods, holograms, research roundup, Science, sharks, tardigrades, urinals / /

April is the cruelest month

Also: The first live footage of a colossal baby squid; digitally unfolding an early medieval manuscript.

Credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute

It’s a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. April’s list includes new research on tattooed tardigrades, the first live image of a colossal baby squid, the digital unfolding of a recently discovered Merlin manuscript, and an ancient Roman gladiator whose skeleton shows signs of being gnawed by a lion.

Gladiator vs. lion?

Puncture injuries by large felid scavenging

Puncture injuries by large felid scavenging. Credit: Thompson et al., 2025/PLOS One/CC-BY 4.0

Popular depictions of Roman gladiators in combat invariably include battling not just human adversaries but wild animals. We know from surviving texts, imagery, and artifacts that such battles likely took place. But hard physical evidence is much more limited. Archaeologists have now found the first direct osteological evidence: the skeleton of a Roman gladiator who encountered a wild animal in the arena, most likely a lion, based on bite marks evident on the pelvic bone, according to a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.

The skeleton in question was that of a young man, age 26 to 35, buried between 200–300 CE near what is now York, England, formerly the Roman city of Eboracum. It’s one of several such skeletons, mostly young men whose remains showed signs of trauma—hence the suggestion that it could be a gladiator burial site. “We used a method called structured light scanning [to study the skeleton],” co-author Tim Thompson of Maynooth University told Ars. “It’s a method of creating a 3D model using grids of light. It’s not like X-ray or CT, in that it only records the surface (not internal) features, but since it uses light and not X-rays etc, it is much safer, cheaper, and more portable. We have published a fair bit on this and shown its use in both archaeological and forensic contexts.”

The team compared the pelvic lesions found on the subject skeleton with bite marks from modern animal specimens and concluded that the young man had been bitten by a “large feline species,” most likely a lion scavenging on the body around the time of death. The young man was decapitated after death for unknown reasons, although this was a ritualistic practice for some people during the Roman period. While the evidence is technically circumstantial, “we are confident with our conclusions,” said Thompson. “We’ve adopted a multidisciplinary approach to address this issue and have drawn on methods from different subjects, too. Our use of contemporary comparison zoological material is really what gives us the confidence.”

PLoS ONE, 2025. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0319847  (About DOIs).

Tattooed tardigrades

False-colored SEM image of the tardigrade after rehydration and fixation, with a magnified inset of the blue-boxed area.

False-colored SEM image of the tardigrade after rehydration and fixation. Credit: American Chemical Society

Tardigrades (aka “water bears”) are micro-animals that can survive in the harshest conditions: extreme pressure, extreme temperature, radiation, dehydration, starvation—even exposure to the vacuum of outer space. Scientists have exploited the robustness of these creatures to demonstrate a new ice lithography technique that can be used to essentially tattoo patterns at the nanoscale on living creatures. They described their method in a paper published in the journal Nano Letters.

Creating precision patterns on living organisms is challenging because the latter require very specific conditions in order to thrive, while fabrication techniques typically require harsh environments—the use of corrosive chemicals, for instance, vacuum conditions, or high radiation. So researchers at Westlake University tested their ice lithography on tardigrades in their dehydrated state (cryptobiosis). Once cooled, the tardigrades were coated with vaporized anisole, creating an ice layer. The team used an electron beam to etch patterns in that layer. Once the creatures were warmed back up, the parts of the ice layer that had not been exposed to the beam sublimated away, and the pattern was preserved on the tardigrade’s surface, even after the creatures were rehydrated.

Granted, only about 40 percent of the tardigrade test subjects survived the full procedure, but further improvements could improve that rate significantly. Once the technique is fully developed, it could enable the fabrication of nanoscale patterns for marking living organisms, such as tracking single cells as they develop or for the creation of sophisticated biosensors.

Nano Letters, 2025. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c00378  (About DOIs).

Holograms that can be grabbed

A 3D car is grabbed and rotated by a user.

A 3D car is grabbed and rotated by a user. Credit: Iñigo Ezcurdia

A volumetric display consists of scattering surfaces distributed throughout the same 3D space occupied by the resulting 3D image. Volumetric images can be viewed from any angle, as they seem to float in the air, but no existing commercial prototypes let the user directly interact with the holograms—until now. There is a new kind of volumetric display called FlexiVol that allows people to interact directly with 3D graphics displayed in mid-air. Elodie Bouzbib of the Public University of Navarra presented the research at the CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Japan this month.

The key lies in a fast oscillating sheet known as a diffuser, onto which synchronous images are projected at high speed (2,880 images per second) and at different heights; human persistence of vision ensures that these images are perceived as true 3D objects. But the diffusers are usually made of rigid materials and hence pose a safety hazard should a user try to reach through and interact directly with the hologram; safety domes are usually employed because of this.

FlexiVol replaces the rigid diffuser with elastic bands that will not permanently deform or twist, distorting the 3D display, and has a different resonant frequency from the volumetric system. The team was inspired by the taxonomy of gestures used with 2D elastic displays and touch screens: swiping, for instance, or pinching in and out to make an image larger or smaller. They tested FlexiVol with a selection of users performing three sample tasks showcasing the ability to manipulate the 3D graphics, such as “grasping a cube between the thumb and index finger to rotate it, or simulating walking legs on a surface using the index and ring fingers,” said Bouzbib.

Look ma, no spashback!

A high-speed video depicting the tests used to measure the critical angle. Credit: Thurairajah et al., 2025

Men, are you tired of urine splashback when you use the loo? Scientists at the University of Waterloo have developed the optimal design for a splash-free urinal, dubbed the Nautilus (aka the “Nauti-loo”). We first covered this unusual research back in 2022, when the researchers presented preliminary results at a fluid dynamics conference. Their final findings have now formally appeared in a paper published in PNAS Nexus.

Per the authors, the key to optimal splash-free urinal design is the angle at which the pee stream strikes the porcelain surface; get a small enough angle, and there won’t be any splashback. Instead, you get a smooth flow across the surface, preventing droplets from flying out. (And yes, there is a critical threshold at which the urine stream switches from splashing to flowing smoothly, because phase transitions are everywhere—even in our public restrooms.) It turns out that dogs have already figured out the optimal angle as they lift their legs to pee, and when the team modeled this on a computer, they pegged the optimal angle for humans at 30 degrees.

The next step was to figure out a design that would offer that optimal urine stream angle for men across a wide range of heights. Instead of the usual shallow box shaped like a rectangle, they landed on the curved structure of the nautilus shell. They conducted simulated urine stream experiments with the prototypes, et voila! They didn’t observe a single droplet splashing back. By comparison, the other urinal designs produced as much as 50 times more splashback. The team did come up with a second design with the same optimal angle, dubbed the Cornucopia, but unlike the Nautilus, it does not fit a range of heights, limiting its usefulness.

PNAS Nexus, 2025. DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf087  (About DOIs).

Colossal baby squid

First confirmed live observation of the colossal squid in its natural habitat. Credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute

In 1925, scientists first described the colossal squid in a scientific paper, based on the discovery of arm fragments in the belly of a sperm whale. This species of squid is especially elusive because it prefers to stay in the deep ocean, although occasionally full-grown colossal squid have been found caught in trawl nets, for instance. One hundred years after its discovery, the colossal squid has now been filmed alive in its deep-ocean home environment for the first time by a team aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor (too) in waters off the South Sandwich Islands.

Colossal squid can grow up to 23 feet long and weigh as much as 1,100 pounds and have distinctive hooks on the middle of their eight arms. Juvenile squid have transparent bodies. It was a baby squid just 30 centimeters long that the team captured on video at a depth of 1,968 feet (600 meters) during a 35-day expedition searching for new marine life; a remote submersible dubbed SuBastian took the footage. The scientists hope to eventually be able to capture an adult colossal squid on camera. The team also filmed the first confirmed living footage of a similar cephalopod species, the glacial glass squid, spotted in the Bellingshausen Sea near Antarctica in January.

Digitally unfolding a Merlin manuscript

Virtual opening of CUL’s Vanneck Merlin fragment.

In 2019, conservationists at Cambridge University discovered a fragment of an Arthurian medieval manuscript that had been repurposed as the cover of a land register document. Written between 1275 and 1315 CE, it was far too fragile to manually unfold, but the university library’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory has succeeded in digitally unfolding the fragment so that the text can be read for the first time, while keeping the original artifact intact as a testament to archival practices in 16th-century England. Their method could be used to noninvasively study fragile manuscript fragments held in other collections.

The team used a combination of CT scanning, multispectral imaging, and 3D modeling, as well as an array of mirrors, prisms, magnets, and other tools to photograph each section of the fragment. In this way they were able to reconstruct and virtually unfold the manuscript, revealing the text. Scholars had originally thought it was a text relating to Sir Gawain in Arthurian lore, but it turned out to be part of a French language sequel to the King Arthur legend called the Suite Vulgate du Merlin. There are only 40 known surviving manuscripts of this work. One section concerns Gawain’s victory over Saxon kings at the Battle of Cambenic; the other is a story of Merlin appearing in Arthur’s court disguised as a harpist on the Feast of the Assumption.

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Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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