Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
Fables #151 – Bill Willingham, Writer; Mark Buckingham, Artist; Steve Leialoha, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: After a 150-issue run and countless spin-offs (mostly by frequent Willingham collaborators Lilah Sturges and Chris Roberson), Fables came to an end with an expansive epilogue that seemed to be the end of the road—until now. A recent team-up of Bigby Wolf and Batman didn’t make many waves and was hard to place in continuity, but now the original series returns for a twelve-issue engagement with the original art team on board. Does it hold up? The original series had a brilliant first third, but many felt it became scattered and overly dark and cruel afterwards. This revival doesn’t have those problems, and does a good job of reacquainting us with its very complex world. It helps that there’s a good entry point—Fabletown has just been exposed to the world after the epic final battle, and King Cole has to welcome the Mundys within its destroyed walls and explain to them what they’ve been missing. And at the same time, a lot of new and old players head on to new adventures.
The introduction of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, some of the biggest characters missing from the original story, is intriguing. He seems to be cast as a lawful-neutral character coming to clean up Gepetto’s messes. Far more in-depth this issue is a plot centering around a character named Jack in the Green, based around an obscure English folk tale. A young girl named Gwen seeks out her destiny as the old Jack in the Green, at the same time the old retired version sits in his treehouse. Is there any connection to the more famous Jack that played a huge role in the original series? We’ll see. And then there’s Snow, Bigby, and their Cubs as they settle into a new world—seemingly occupied by Red Panda critters named Hesse—and some of Bigby’s bad old ways seem to be making a comeback as he claims it for his own. Then there’s an unexpected return in the last page. It’s as chaotic and dense as it ever was, and based on this issue at least, it’s good to have it back.
Review: Fables #151 [Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer: Bill Willingham Art: Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha Colors: Leigh Loughridge Letters: Todd Klein
Reviewed by: Matthew B. Lloyd
Summary
“In which things continue more or less where we left off.” Including, catching up with Snow and Bigby, meeting Jack in the Green for the first time and a couple of mysteries rear their heads.
Positives
It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly seven years since Fables #150. The creative team drops the reader into Fables #151 with only seconds appearing to have passed, at least to some of the fables. This feeling of familiarity and the appearance of Mayor Old King Cole reassures the reader that this is indeed the beloved comic he/she has been missing. The most amazing thing of all is that in this one issue, it’s all there- the art, the look, the voices, the tone.
Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha gave Fables a look. This is one of those penciler/inker teams that work incredibly well together and this look was integral to making Fables the success that it was. With this issue, the reader is reminded of old family and friends, it’s almost like looking at pictures of the house one grew up in. The brilliance of Buckingham’s layouts is there, including the wonderful images outside the panels that go to the edge of the page. For the uninitiated, it’s like scrollwork that reflects the theme of the story in the panels. It’s a truly unique approach that makes this comic look like nothing else.
Leialoha and Buckingham have been working on the titles for a long time and they own the look as much as Willingham owns the stories. Old King Cole, Bigby, and Snow White all look magnificent. The animal fables are a delight, in that Buckingham and Leialoha communicate the facial expressions on them with the same impact as the human fables. The art is perfect and perfectly aided by Lee Loughridge’s colors. He’s been doing Fables for a while as well, and it’s no secret that his choices for the different settings masterfully evoke these different milieu.
Positives Cont’d
It wouldn’t be right not to introduce a “new” fable to the series in this restart, and on page 6 we meet Jack-in-the-Green! Jethro Tull fans can rejoice at this second Tull connection to the series, the first being “The Mouse Police Never Sleep,” the title of issue #14. The aspect of Fables that is so intriguing is how Willingham incorporates the different fairy tales and folklore into the series. The introduction of Jack is an opportunity to see this all over again. Interestingly, Willingham gives us something extra, even if one is familiar with the folklore, there’s a story to go with it. This Jack is the new Jack, and she’s out to find the previous one to tell him she’s taking his place. There’s some meta-textual commentary ass she reveals to him that she carries a bow and arrow and that “It’s “all done with female archers now.” It’s easy to see Merida from Brave and Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games here, but also Helena Wayne’s Huntress who took over for her father, the Earth-Two Batman, and carried a crossbow. Gwen, the new Jack is immediately likable.
There are a couple of surprises along the way in Fables #151 as well. There’s some intrigue in the first few pages that raise questions, and the end of the issue has an additional surprise, but we won’t spoil that at all. It’s a classic “tune in next month for more” which is a staple of serialized fiction. This title is known for that, so it’s a joy to see it here.
Finally, it’s refreshing to have Fables restart with issue #151 instead of launching with a new #1. Comics don’t utilize their legacies nearly enough. It tells the reader that this is indeed part of a greater whole and not just a flavor-of-the-month or ploy. There’s something satisfying about reading a comic with a high issue number and knowing it is connected to something with a pedigree, that new #1 doesn’t make it a better comic, it actually just dilutes the significance of true #1 issue.
Negatives
There are no real negatives for Fables #151. However, some fans might have questions about how Everafter: From the Pages of Fables and Batman vs. Bigby!: A Wolf in Gotham fit in. I think Willingham will reference what he needs to as the story progresses. The Batman crossover could’ve taken place at almost anytime and doesn’t really affect the continuity. Connor Wolf, one of Snow and Bigby’s sons features heavily in Everafter, and as he shows up in Fables #151, one sort of wants to know how these two series fit together. It’s nothing to lose sleep over, however.
Verdict
Fables #151 is like coming home for existing fans. This first issue indicates it’s going to be just as excellent as it’s ever been. For new readers, Willingham has the right amount of new characters like Jack-in-the-Green to love and learn about as well as some existing mysteries. It’s going to be an adventure for old and new alike as Fabletown and the Mundy World learn to get along which new and existing readers should find intriguing immediately. And, all readers will enjoy the art.
The Rundown: Geppetto gets an unexpected visitor as a once dead Fable gets a new lease on life.
In the aftermath of the destruction of their home, one of the dead fables has been taken to the city morgue. Unfortunately, she’s not as dead as some people think and the charm that restores her requires the help of a mundy to be removed from her healing body. At the same time, the new Jack in the Green makes her presence known with her predecessor and the two come to a tenuous understanding.
While Bigby and family continue to try to make a life for themselves in a new world, Geppetto gets a visit from someone of immense power. Someone powerful enough to be the one pulling the puppeteer’s strings all these years. Someone who does not like failure and delivers quick punishment.
The Story: Willingham delivers an entertaining and intriguing story in this issue. The characters and conflicts are compelling and the mystery is unfolding in ways that keep me engaged as a reader. Each part of the story brilliantly transitions into the other creating a wonderful and rich world of character and conflict.
The Art: Buckingham delivers some beautifully detailed art on every page. There are some brilliantly evocative moments that are a feast for the eyes.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2207.31 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2585 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
Those who have seen Deadpool 2 know that the fate of Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa—Deadpool/Wade/Ryan Reynolds’ love interest—got mixed reviews from viewers.
It turns out that the initial response to Vanessa’s plotline in Deadpool 2 was tweaked last minute, at least in part due to the negative response received online.
Warning: Spoilers for Deadpool 2 reside below.
Vanessa gets killed off early in Deadpool 2 to give our main male character something to feel sad about and spur into action. This is a classic example of the “fridging” phenomenon, where the death of a woman catalyzes the male protagonist to Do Something.
It’s so common of a trope that Catherynne M. Valente wrote a book of monologues from these deceased women, and it’s one that the Deadpool 2 writers should have known about (I say should, because they made clear in an interview that they had no idea that killing women to give men motivation was a thing to think about).
Deadpool 2 does “fix” Vanessa’s fridging in a mid-credits scene, where Deadpool goes back in time to save her. In a recent interview with SYFY WIRE, however, Baccarin revealed that the this moment was added in part because of online blowblack.
“I feel like I got a call from [Deadpool 2 director] David Leitch one day,” Baccarin told SYFY WIRE, “and he was just like: ‘You know, your [scenes] with Ryan are testing so well in this movie, and people are getting so upset [online] that she’s dead, so we’re gonna have to leave the door open for her to possibly come back.'”
The last-minute inclusion of Deadpool saving Vanessa helps explain why the whole plotline doesn’t make much sense. The bright side of things is that the writers and director of Deadpool 2 listened enough to add the mid-credits moment, and that Vanessa is still alive and well. Hopefully she’ll be back for Deadpool 3 (although Baccarin said in the same interview that they haven’t called her yet), and if so, her character will be more than just set dressing.
Space.com reports:Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, the Soyuz commander, was asked about the colors during a hatch-opening ceremony webcast by Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos. He responded (in Russian) that there was a surplus of yellow fabric in the warehouse, according to space exploration enthusiast Katya Pavlushchenko, who posted a Twitter thread about the exchange.
Not everybody's buying this answer, however. Some folks with knowledge of spaceflight procedures seem to think it could be a show of support for Ukraine, which Russia invaded on February 24.... There are other possible explanations for the flight suits as well. For example, multiple people on Twitter have pointed out that the colors are close to those of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which Artemyev, Matveev and Korsakov all attended.
This is all just speculation; all we have to go on at the moment is Artemyev's cryptic response during the hatch-opening ceremony. Hopefully one of the cosmonauts will offer some more details in the not-too-distant future. None of the three newly arrived cosmonauts hails from Ukraine, by the way. Artemyev was born in present-day Latvia, Matveev is from St. Petersburg and Korsakov was born in what is now Kyrgyzstan. Next month a SpaceX Dragon is expected to carry three millionaires to the Space Station for a week-long visit.
How Donald Trump took a narrative of unfairness and twisted it to his advantage.
ARLIE RUSSELL HOCHSCHILD SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016 ISSUE
When I asked people what politics meant to them, they often answered by telling me what they believed (“I believe in freedom”) or who they’d vote for (“I was for Ted Cruz, but now I’m voting Trump”). But running beneath such beliefs like an underwater spring was what I’ve come to think of as a deep story. The deep story was a feels-as-if-it’s-true story, stripped of facts and judgments, that reflected the feelings underpinning opinions and votes. It was a story of unfairness and anxiety, stagnation and slippage—a story in which shame was the companion to need. Except Trump had opened a divide in how tea partiers felt this story should end.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) speaking at a press conference in Washington, DC, this month.Michael Brochstein/ZUMA
In 2016, Donald Trump became president by appealing to white people who resented both minorities and billionaires. Trump’s economic populism was always murky. Later in his presidency, he often broke with conservative economics, but that only came after self-dealing, trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and cutting taxes for the rich. Regardless of whether Trump actually governed as an economic populist, it was at least slightly comforting that he thought winning required pretending to care about helping working-class Americans.
Six years later, it seems Republicans are no longer trying.
The clearest evidence for that is the “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” that Florida Senator and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott released on Tuesday as his party tries to take back Congress in November’s midterm elections. Scott’s plan for saving the country contains no mention of reducing the cost of housing, health care, child care, and college. Trump’s talk about lowering prescription drug prices for seniors is gone.
Instead of economic populism, Scott is betting on a politics of pure grievance that involves blocking the government from ever asking about a person’s race, naming a border wall after Trump, and treating socialism as a “foreign combatant” (a designation usually associated with being tortured or killed by US forces). As Scott warns in his introduction, the “plan is not for the faint of heart.”
For a party theoretically obsessed with liberty, Americans of all ages will also be banned from doing, or forced to do, a remarkable number of things. Kids will have to recite the pledge of allegiance and stand for the national anthem. Transgender athletes will be barred from women’s sports. Generals who do anything deemed too woke will be relieved of their command. Immigrants will be required to love America. States will be blocked from allowing people to register to vote on election day.
When it comes to taxation, the IRS would see its budget cut in half. At the same time, the more than 50 percent of households that don’t make currently enough to pay federal income taxes will have to pay them. It’s a de facto policy of raising taxes on most Americans, even though Rick Scott is now trying to deny that his plan would lead to anyone paying more. This is not a party that’s trying to make good on the economic promises Trump abandoned. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) may play footsie with supporting the Amazon union in Bessemer, Alabama, but his party’s midterm agenda has nothing to say about rebuilding unions or the middle class. It is opting instead for the usual mix of harm to the poor and hatred of the other.
Scott’s plan is a messaging document, not a guide to what Republicans would actually do if they take back the House and Senate. There was nothing stopping him from making empty promises about cutting taxes or reducing health care costs, aside from the fact that it might sound a bit rich coming from the person who oversaw the largest Medicare fraud in US history. (The only reference to the program Scott’s company defrauded is about how Congress would be be forced to produce an annual report on what it plans to do when Medicare goes bankrupt; Medicare remaining solvent is, apparently, not one of the options.)
This is not to say Republicans are proposing no new spending. To prevent abortions, low-income single women, for example, would be paid to carry children to term and put them up for adoption. The adoptive parents would then get money to take care of those kids. Parents hoping for a child tax credit to take care of children they didn’t adopt from low-income single women would be out of luck.
GOPQ wades deeper into the stupid. Tulsi Gabbard, Michael Flynn: Why Is Joe Biden Invading Ukraine???!!! https://t.co/NbPZQOBmR5
But actually, anti-mask rhetoric is only part of what’s driving these memes. The broader goal is to sow distrust in the CDC’s developmental milestones as a whole to convince parents to skip the recommended schedule of well-child visits to the pediatrician, during which the majority of childhood vaccines are given.
As I wrote last year, the Trump era helped calcify the conservative movement’s shift away from governance and toward the performance of governance. The future of the party is content creation. Few have embraced that ethos as thirstily as Cruz, who in his opening statement on Monday vowed that “this will not be a political circus,” moments before becoming the first senator in history to plug his podcast during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
"The Washington Post reports that at the outset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian military communications, as well as that of customers across Europe, was accomplished by the compromise of tens of thousands of satellite modems provided by Viasat's KA-SAT service," writes longtime Slashdot reader An Ominous Cow Erred. "Viasat is now having to replace the insecure modems for all affected customers. This raises questions about the vulnerability of other broadband services with poorly-maintained firmware on their customer network infrastructure." From the report:Earlier this month, Zhora described the impact of the sabotage as "a really huge loss in communications in the very beginning of war." Dmitri Alperovitch, a cyber expert and chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank, said satellite communications "have been used extensively by Ukrainian military not just for command and control of forces but also for tactical missions such as use of drones against Russian armor." Said Alperovitch: "We can't know for sure, but this KA-SAT attack may have had a serious impact on degrading Ukrainian military capabilities at the outset of the war.''Elon Musk has responded to Slashdot on Twitter, stating that: "Starlink, at least so far, has resisted all hacking & jamming attempts."
Usually we'd imagine a story like this would be going a really strange direction, this being Newsmax. But instead host Eric Bolling asked Klitschko specifically about pro-Russia Americans like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, naming them specifically, who for God knows what reason can't seem to bring themselves to side with the good guys here. (We've documented both Carlson's and Owens'sextensivespreading of Kremlinpropaganda while Vladimir Putin bombs Ukrainian people to smithereens.)
A documentation of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens's extensive spreading of Kremlin propaganda!
And Eric Bolling, the Newsmax host, wanted to know from Wladimir Klitschko, the brother of the mayor of Kyiv, what he thinks of Americans like that. And what Klitschko thinks of folks like that is that "if you're passively observing, you're part of this invasion. Blood is on your hands too."
So that wasn't unclear.
ERIC BOLLING (HOST): Wladimir, you have about two-thirds of the support of the American people right now, but there is a small group — and I'm not one of them — but there's a small group that believe that what's happening in Ukraine is not the United States' problem.
There are some very popular television hosts, Tucker Carlson. I talked about a popular — Candace Owens as well. Conservatives who would typically — I don't know why they're not supporting you and Ukraine, but they're not. What do you say to those people?
WLADIMIR KLITSCHKO: If you passively observe what is going on, and we do share the same principles of freedom, and democratic principles like the United States, like the western world, so to speak — if you're passively observing, you're part of this invasion. Blood is on your hands too.
Very subtle!
Klitschko went on to say that "if you still have business and trade with Russia," then you are "bringing bullets and rockets into the Russian army's hands that kills today the innocent." So that's a message for American companies still operating in Russia right now. "Isolate, isolate," he said.
For what it's worth, let's see what Tucker Carlson's been saying the past few days. Oh here's a thing! He said that "it's not just possible, it's likely" that if "we eliminated" Vladimir Putin, then "Islamic extremists" will nuke bomb America! Aiyeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): So, let's say we eliminated the Russian head of state and of course that country's central government. What would happen to those weapons? Well, let's see. In Iraq, Saddam's weapons stockpiles, all conventional, wound up in the hands of militia that used them to kill Americans.
So Russia has a large and restive population of Islamic extremists. Do we think it's possible that with no one running the country — because of course we have no chosen successor to Putin — is it possible, if we did that, that one of those 6,000 nuclear weapons might wind up in the hands of some anti-American terror group and be used against our civilian population here? A nuclear weapon. Well, it's not just possible, it's likely.
Now, why would Tucker be talking about that? Well obviously because Joe Biden said out loud what everybody is thinking about how Putin shouldn't be in power, so it must be time for the Kremlin's chief propagandists and TV stars to spread bullshit about what will really happen if Putin is removed from power. All the Islamic extremists would go get the nuclear weapons and they'd put them in the nuclear weapons dispenser and they'd dispense them at America! "It's not just possible, it's likely," says noted war expert Tucker Carlson.
He also said last night we're going to need to do the 25th Amendment to Joe Biden. You know, because it'd be a disaster to remove the Russian leader but the American one? Fine.
We don't know what Candace Owens has said in the last few days because we haven't looked it up, but we're sure it's trash.
What was the Kyiv mayor's brother saying again? Yeah.
In the most important environmental case in more than a decade, the Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in a dispute that could restrict or even eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to control the pollution that is heating the planet. From a report:A decision by the high court, with its conservative supermajority, could shred President Biden's plans to halve the nation's greenhouse emissions by the end of the decade, which scientists have said is necessary to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. "They could handcuff the federal government's ability to affordably reduce greenhouse gases from power plants," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. But the outcome could also have repercussions that stretch well beyond air pollution, restricting the ability of federal agencies to regulate health care, workplace safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more.
[...] At issue is a federal regulation that broadly governs emissions from power plants. But in a curious twist, the regulation actually never took effect and does not currently exist. The legal wrangling began in 2015 when President Barack Obama announced the Clean Power Plan, his chief strategy to fight climate change. Citing its authority under the Clean Air Act, the Obama administration planned to require each state to lower carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector -- primarily by replacing coal-fired power plants with wind, solar and other clean sources. Electricity generation is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, behind transportation.
Posted by EditorDavid from the just-say-nyet dept.
Though the Russian government has tried geofencing access to crucial web sites, the Jerusalem Post reports that two Russian government web site still went offline Saturday — the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense. "Gosuslugi, Russia's web portal of state services, went offline on Saturday night as well, with the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media telling TASS that the site is facing cyberattacks on an 'unprecedented scale.'"
Meanwhile, the Washington Post interviews 22-year-old Alex Horlan, a Ukrainian cybersecurity expert in Spain "helping take down some of Russia's most powerful websites — including state media and even the official page of the Kremlin."The attacks he and others are helping to carry out on Russian websites are part of a wide information war in the background of the much larger conflict here, as Ukrainians target Russian websites to rewrite the narrative Moscow is presenting to Russians back home. "We are creating an IT army," Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted on Saturday. Horlan is a cybersecurity expert who recently launched an app called disBalancer that helps take down scam websites by overwhelming them with online traffic. He has redirected his team's efforts in recent days to instead target Russian websites he says are spreading dangerous disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine....
Thousands of people are joining Horlan and others' efforts to target the Russian sites, with around 2,000 logging into his app at any given time, he said. The main challenge is that many are losing WiFi when air raid sirens force them to retreat to underground bunkers....
Volunteers are gathering information on attacks and casualties to fact check and challenge Russia's version of events, posting messages on Telegram and other Russian social media platforms [according to Liuba Tsbulska, a Ukrainian analyst and activist who has tracked Russian disinformation for eight year]. Others work to educate international audiences or produce patriotic content. Some also target Russian military and intelligence officers, flooding their emails and other platforms with messages. Volunteers are reaching out to the mothers of Russian soldiers to convince them to call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring their boys back home.
In Kharkiv, after reports that Russian troops and armored vehicles entered Ukraine's second largest city early Sunday, one local Telegram channel with more than 400,000 subscribers urged people to continue to document the adversary's movements as a way to aid Ukraine's forces in the area. In one message, the Truha Kharkiv channel asked citizens to "carefully film and send information about the movement of Russian troops to our channel. This is vital to the defense of our city."
Another message instructed citizens on how to make molotov cocktails.
The states hope to use $8 billion in recently approved federal infrastructure funding to make hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe — "more available and useful as clean-burning fuel for cars, trucks and trains."Hydrogen can be derived from water using an electric current and when burned emits only water vapor as a byproduct. The fuel could theoretically reduce greenhouse emissions and air pollution, depending on how it's obtained. As with electric vehicles, however, hydrogen's potential has been limited by infrastructure. Lack of fueling stations limits the market for hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Few hydrogen-fueled vehicles limits investment in producing and moving hydrogen....
Critics point out that as it's now produced, hydrogen isn't green, carbon-free or unlimited. Currently nearly all hydrogen commercially produced in the U.S. comes not from water but natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. While advocates say using fossil fuels to produce hydrogen now can help to develop a clean industry later, environmentalists are skeptical. "It's essentially a push for expanded oil and gas development. More oil and gas development is completely at odds with the need to confront the climate crisis and drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels," Jeremy Nichols with the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based environmental group WildEarth Guardians said by email.
Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming rank seventh, eighth and ninth, respectively, for U.S. onshore gas production. Utah also is significant gas-producing state, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Posted by EditorDavid from the not-in-my-backyard dept.
NBC News reports that energy analysts "still expect most solar energy production in the near future to come from utility-scale projects, in part because of the savings that comes with massive installations."
Unfortunately, "It's those projects that are facing pushback."Local governments in states such as California, Indiana, Maine, New York and Virginia have imposed moratoriums on large-scale solar farms, as a national push for cleaner energy has collided with complaints about how the projects affect wildlife and scenic views. In one Nevada town west of Las Vegas, residents are trying to block a proposed 2,300-acre solar field. NBC News counted 57 cities, towns and counties across the country where residents have proposed solar moratoriums since the start of 2021, according to local news reports, and not every proposed ban gets local news coverage. At least 40 of those approved the measures. Other localities did so in earlier years.
That resistance is a threat to the big ambitions of the solar energy movement. The current workaround? Solar panel installations "in unexpected places..."[Walmart] told NBC News it has more than 550 renewable energy projects, including solar and wind, implemented or under development. Several have opened recently in California, including with parking lot canopies. The company has a goal of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, up from 36 percent by its estimate now....
Houston has chosen the 240-acre site of a former landfill to install what the city said will be the largest infill solar project in the nation. In a neighborhood named Sunnyside, the project will generate enough electricity for 5,000 homes, according to the city. Similar projects have been built on landfills throughout New Jersey. An energy firm is building a solar project on a former coal mine on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, while in New York state, researchers at Cornell University are testing putting solar panels in a field where sheep graze.
A city in Northern California says it has the largest floating solar farm in the U.S. at its wastewater treatment plant, and in January, a China-based energy company said it had built the world's largest floating solar array on a reservoir there. And last year, the Biden administration encouraged the development of solar projects on highway right-of-way, with a notice from the Federal Highway Administration telling field offices to work with states on ideas. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, including Webber, have said most states have more than 200 miles of interstate frontage suitable for solar development, especially near exits and rest stops.
Creative locations have a particular benefit: fewer potential neighbors who might complain.
Posted by EditorDavid from the courageous-coders dept.
Business Insider reports:Serhiy Storchaka, a Ukrainian developer, is the second-most prolific recent contributor to Python and tenth-most prolific of all time, according to Lukasz Langa, the Python Software Foundation's developer in residence, based in PoznaÅ, Poland... Storchaka faced an impossible choice as Russia invaded his country. Like many young male programmers in Ukraine, he decided to stay....
Storchaka lives outside of Konotop, a city in northeastern Ukraine which is occupied by Russian forces. He tweeted on February 26, "Russian tanks were on the road 2km from my house, and Russian armored vehicles were passing by my windows. Most likely, I will find myself in the occupied zone, where the law does not apply...."
Insider was unable to contact Storchaka, but spoke with Langa... [A]s the military crisis worsened on Friday and over the weekend, the Python developer community rallied to help Storchaka's younger family members. Communicating with Storchaka's family through Google Translate, Langa managed to secure temporary housing for Storchaka's niece and best friend, aged 11. They crossed the border to Poland via bus with their mother, and met Langa, who drove over 300km to Warsaw to pick up keys and secure basic necessities for the family. "Two little 11-year-old girls (my niece and her best friend) are now safe thanks to @llanga," Storchaka tweeted last Monday, adding "My sister and I are immensely grateful." (He'd been especially worried because their town was near one of Ukraine's nuclear power plants, "a strategic target".)
Business Insider points out Storchaka is just one of many Python core developers from Ukraine, and one of many Ukrainians working in its tech sector.Andrew Svetlov, another influential Python developer who specializes in asynchronous networking support, also remains in Ukraine.... Svetlov is in Kyiv, where Russian troops have surrounded the city....
"Neither of them wanted to leave their country, even in the face of the great risk this poses for them," Langa told Insider.
Posted by EditorDavid from the pair-programming dept.
"Every day, several petabytes of data are generated on the internet," says Kasra Tabatabaei, a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. "Only one gram of DNA would be sufficient to store that data."
So the Institute is now announcing the results of a project Tabatabaei worked on "to transform the double helix into a robust, sustainable data storage platform." CNET reports:Tabatabaei is the co-author of a new study, published in last month's edition of the journal Nano Letters... Essentially, the study team is the first to artificially extend the DNA alphabet, which could allow for massive storage capacities and accommodate a pretty extreme level of digital data.... DNA encodes genetic information with four molecules called nucleotides. There's adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, or A, G, C and T. In a sense, DNA has a four-letter alphabet, and different letter combinations represent different bits of data....
But what if we had a longer alphabet? Presumably, that'd give us a much deeper capacity. Following this line of thought, the team behind the new study artificially added seven new letters to the DNA repertoire.... "Instead of converting zeroes and ones to A, G, C and T, we can convert zeroes and ones to A, G, C, T and the seven new letters in the storage alphabet." One of the study's co-principal investigators said their work "provides an exciting proof-of-principle demonstration of extending macromolecular data storage to non-natural chemistries, which hold the potential to drastically increase storage density in non-traditional storage media."
Posted by BeauHD from the ready-or-not-here-they-come dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American:New research, published in the journal Physiological Entomology, suggests that the palm-sized Joro spider, which swarmed North Georgia by the millions last September, has a special resilience to the cold. This has led scientists to suggest that the 3-inch (7.6 centimeters) bright-yellow-striped spiders -- whose hatchlings disperse by fashioning web parachutes to fly as far as 100 miles (161 kilometers) -- could soon dominate the Eastern Seaboard. Since the spider hitchhiked its way to the northeast of Atlanta, Georgia, inside a shipping container in 2014, its numbers and range have expanded steadily across Georgia, culminating in an astonishing population boom last year that saw millions of the arachnids drape porches, power lines, mailboxes and vegetable patches across more than 25 state counties with webs as thick as 10 feet (3 meters) deep, Live Science previously reported.
Common to China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, the Joro spider is part of a group of spiders known as "orb weavers" because of their highly symmetrical, circular webs. The spider gets its name from Jorgumo, a Japanese spirit, or Ykai, that is said to disguise itself as a beautiful woman to prey upon gullible men. True to its mythical reputation, the Joro spider is stunning to look at, with a large, round, jet-black body cut across with bright yellow stripes, and flecked on its underside with intense red markings. But despite its threatening appearance and its fearsome standing in folklore, the Joro spider's bite is rarely strong enough to break through the skin, and its venom poses no threat to humans, dogs or cats unless they are allergic. That's perhaps good news, as the spiders are destined to spread far and wide across the continental U.S., researchers say.
The scientists came to this conclusion after comparing the Joro spider to a close cousin, the golden silk spider, which migrated from tropical climates 160 years ago to establish an eight-legged foothold in the southern United States. By tracking the spiders' locations in the wild and monitoring their vitals as they subjected caught specimens to freezing temperatures, the researchers found that the Joro spider has about double the metabolic rate of its cousin, along with a 77% higher heart rate and a much better survival rate in cold temperatures. Additionally, Joro spiders exist in most parts of their native Japan -- warm and cold -- which has a very similar climate to the U.S. and sits across roughly the same latitude. [...] While most invasive species tend to destabilize the ecosystems they colonize, entomologists are so far optimistic that the Joro spider could actually be beneficial, especially in Georgia where, instead of lovesick men, they kill off mosquitos, biting flies and another invasive species -- the brown marmorated stink bug, which damages crops and has no natural predators. In fact, the researchers say that the Joro is much more likely to be a nuisance than a danger, and that it should be left to its own devices.
Posted by BeauHD from the every-gene-matters dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science.org:An extinct rat that once lived on an island in the Indian Ocean may have put the kibosh on scientists' dreams of resurrecting more famous extinct animals like the woolly mammoth. The Christmas Island rat disappeared just over 100 years ago, but researchers now say even its detailed genome isn't complete enough to bring it back to life. The work "shows both how wonderfully close -- and yet -- how devastatingly far" scientists are from being able to bring back extinct species by genetically transforming a close relative in what's called "de-extinction," says Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved with the study. [...] To bring back an extinct species, scientists would first need to sequence its genome, then edit the DNA of a close living relative to match it. Next comes the challenge of making embryos with the revised genome and bringing them to term in a living surrogate mother. So far, scientists have sequenced the genomes of about 20 extinct species, including a cave bear, passenger pigeon, and several types of mammoths and moas. But no one has yet reported re-creating the extinct genome in a living relative.
In the new study, Tom Gilbert, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Copenhagen, thought it best to start small. "If we want to try something so crazy, why not start with a simple model," he reasoned. So, he, Jian-Qing Lin, a molecular biologist at Shantou University, and their colleagues, focused on the Christmas Island rat (Rattus macleari), which disappeared by 1908 from that island, located about 1200 kilometers west of Australia. This species "should be a dreamy candidate for de-extinction," McCauley says, given its close relationship with the Norway rat, a well-studied lab animal with a complete genome sequence that scientists already know how to modify.
Gilbert and Lin extracted DNA from the skins of two preserved Christmas Island rats and sequenced it many times over to get as much of the genome as possible. They achieved more than 60 times' coverage of it. Old DNA only survives in small fragments, so the team used the genome of the Norway rat as a reference to piece together as much as possible of the vanished rat's genome. Comparing the two genomes revealed almost 5% of the Christmas Island rat's genome was still missing, Lin, Gilbert, and their colleagues report today in Current Biology. The lost sequences included bits of about 2500 of the rat's estimated 34,000 genes. "I was surprised," Gilbert says. The recovered DNA included the genes for the Christmas Island rat's characteristic rounded ears, for example, but important immune system and olfaction genes were either missing or incomplete. The work "really highlights the difficulties, maybe even the ridiculousness, of [de-extinction] efforts," says Victoria Herridge, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum in London.Herridge says many of the missing genes make each species unique. It's also worth noting that the human genome differs by just 1% from those of chimps and bonobos.
Others researchers like Andrew Pask, a developmental biologist at the University of Melbourne, Parkville, says that the missing 5% of an extinct animal's genome likely won't affect how the transformed animal looks or behaves.
Over the course of its seven-year run, Buffy the Vampire Slayer cultivated a loyal fandom and featured a strong, complex female lead, at a time when such a character was a rarity. Evan Ross Katz explores the show’s cultural relevance through a book that is part oral history, part celebration, and part memoir of a personal fandom that has universal resonance still, decades later. Katz — with the help of the show’s cast, creators, and crew — reveals that although Buffy contributed to important conversations about gender, sexuality, and feminism, it was not free of internal strife, controversy, and shortcomings. Men — both on screen and off — would taint the show’s reputation as a feminist masterpiece, and changing networks, amongst other factors, would drastically alter the show’s tone. Katz addresses these issues and more, including interviews with stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Charisma Carpenter, Emma Caulfield, Amber Benson, James Marsters, Anthony Stewart Head, Seth Green, Marc Blucas, Nicholas Brendon, Danny Strong, Tom Lenk, Bianca Lawson, Julie Benz, Clare Kramer, K. Todd Freeman, Sharon Ferguson; and writers Douglas Petrie, Jane Espenson, and Drew Z. Greenberg; as well as conversations with Buffy fanatics and friends of the cast including Stacey Abrams, Cynthia Erivo, Lee Pace, Claire Saffitz, Tavi Gevinson, and Selma Blair. Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born (Hachette) engages with the very notion of fandom, and the ways a show like Buffy can influence not only how we see the world but how we exist within it. Katz will be joined in conversation by Lauren Garroni, writer, director, and co-creator of the viral Instagram sensation, Every Outfit on Sex and the City.
She’s not alone. When, in March 2020, a science story became the biggest news story in the world, scientists became household names overnight, even celebrities. But many also became the targets of new and extreme levels of harassment, intimidation, and threats. U.K. Chief Medical Advisor Chris Whitty was accosted by two men in a London park; disease ecologist Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance received a letter containing white powder that resembled anthrax; Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst and his family were moved to a safe house after he was threatened by a former soldier who was later found dead in a national park.
To better understand the level of intimidation, its effects, and the ways scientists cope with it, Science asked 9585 researchers who have published on COVID-19 to fill out an online survey about their experiences. Of 510 who responded, 38% reported at least one type of attack, ranging from insults to death threats, delivered on social media, by email or phone, or sometimes even in person. Those who were harassed described a range of effects on their lives, including workplace problems and mental health issues. (For more details on the survey, see sidebar, below.)
CDC Coding Error Led To Overcount of 72,000 COVID-19 Deaths Last week, after reporting from the Guardian on mortality rates among children, the CDC corrected a "coding logic error" that had inadvertently added more than 72,000 Covid deaths of all ages to the data tracker, one of the most publicly accessible sources...
Are Movies Dying? As viewership drops for Hollywood's annual Academy Awards ceremony, "Everyone has a theory about the decline..." argues an opinion piece in the New York Times.
"My favored theory is that the Oscars are declining because the movies they were made ...
The AV Club explains: Earlier this year, about a month after the...
Retro Computing Museum In Ukraine Destroyed By Russian Bomb A privately owned collection of more than 500 pieces of retro computer and technology history has been destroyed by a Russian bomb in the city of Mariupol. PC Gamer reports: The destruction was highlighted by Mark Howlett on Twitter, and confirmed by t...
Massive Ice Shelf Collapses in Antarctica "A massive ice shelf in eastern Antartica collapsed, scientists said on Friday, marking the first time an ice shelf has done so in the region," reports the Hill: The 460-square mile wide ice shelf, which was roughly the size of New York City and helped...
Dangerous Chemicals In Food Wrappers At Fast-Food Restaurants, Grocery Chains fahrbot-bot shares a report from CNN: Alarming levels of dangerous chemicals known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) were discovered in food packaging at a number of well-known fast-food and fast-casual restaurants and grocery store chains, ...
That Big Tech Exodus Out of California? It Didn't Happen "Wannabe innovation hubs from coast to coast have been slavering over the prospect that the work-from-home revolution triggered by the COVID pandemic would finally break the stranglehold that California and Silicon Valley have had on high-tech jobs," write...
Russia Considers Accepting Bitcoin For Oil and Gas An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Russia is considering accepting Bitcoin as payment for its oil and gas exports, according to a high-ranking lawmaker. Pavel Zavalny says "friendly" countries could be allowed to pay in the crypto-currenc...
Could Deepfakes Change the Course of War? CNN Business reports a deepfake video of Russian president Volodymyr Zelensky was fabricated to falsely depict him urging viewers to lay down their weapons and return to their families. But at the same time, "there was another widely circulated deepfak...
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs now spreading the conspiracy theory that Moderna created Covid. New York Times reporter Paul Mozur:Hard to believe they don't see the credibility they lose amplifying this stuff. Takeaway is still no sign the wolf warrior approach has been reconsidered. [...] It underscores how the CAC quashes rumors it doesn't like, but let's those of political expediency flourish within China.
Good morning. Many experts expect Covid caseloads to rise soon. Here are four steps to protect people.
Preparing boosters in Washington last month.Kenny Holston for The New York Times
Minimizing the toll
The BA.2 subvariant — an even more contagious version of Omicron — has already caused Covid-19 cases to rise across much of Europe. In the U.S., caseloads have held steady over the past week, ending two months of sharp declines, and many experts expect increases soon.
Today’s newsletter looks at four promising strategies for minimizing Covid’s toll in the coming months.
1. More boosters
Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist in Philadelphia, regularly sees patients who have been vaccinated against Covid but have not received a booster shot. Some are not aware they are eligible for a booster. Others have heard about boosters but are not interested. “I just feel like I don’t need it,” one patient — an older man — recently told Richterman.
That attitude is common. Almost one-quarter of U.S. adults have been vaccinated but have not received a booster shot, according to Kaiser Family Foundation surveys. (Any American who was vaccinated more than six months ago is eligible.)
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
These vaccinated-but-unboosted Americans are clearly open to receiving a Covid shot. And many would benefit significantly from getting boosted. Without a booster, immunity tends to wane. With a booster, people are even more protected than they were shortly after receiving a second shot, data shows.
Consider the numbers from California, which publishes detailed data by vaccination status. For every million boosted Californians, fewer than two have been hospitalized with Covid at any given time recently:
Source: California Department of Public Health
“I remain most worried about lack of booster uptake among the elderly and the immunocompromised,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist, told me.
Many Americans still have not gotten this message, though. What might help? A prominent public-service campaign, focused specifically on booster shots rather than vaccination, could. So could encouragement from politically conservative voices. Fewer than 30 percent of Republican adults have received a booster; many Republicans have not received even a first shot.
“The most powerful weapon we have, by far, is vaccination,” Richterman told me, “and that includes first doses, second doses and third doses.”
What about fourth doses (that is, second booster shots)? The Biden administration will soon begin offering them to anybody 50 or older. The evidence suggests that these shots may offer additional protection but that they are less important than first booster shots, as Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist, has explained in her newsletter.
2. The immunocompromised
For a small percentage of Americans, vaccination is impossible or ineffective. This group includes people who are receiving cancer treatments and those who have received certain organ transplants.
Fortunately, a drug now exists that may help many of them. It is an injection called Evusheld, developed by AstraZeneca with help from government funding. It appears to provide months of protection, and the Biden administration has ordered enough doses to treat 850,000 people.
But about 80 percent of the available doses are sitting unused, in warehouses, pharmacies and hospitals, my colleagues Amanda Morris and Sheryl Gay Stolberg have reported. Among the reasons: Many patients are unaware of Evusheld’s existence. Some doctors are uncertain about who qualifies. Some hospitals are refusing to dispense it to eligible patients, saving it for people who they think might benefit more from it.
“The biggest problem is that there is absolutely no guidance or prioritization or any rollout in place at all,” Dr. Dorry Segev of N.Y.U. Langone Health told The Times. “It’s been a mess.”
Biden administration officials have been working with state officials, hospitals, doctors and patient advocates to clear up the uncertainty. They have a long way to go.
3. Post-infection treatments
A knowledge gap is also hampering the distribution of Paxlovid — a post-infection treatment from Pfizer that seems to sharply reduce the chances a Covid illness will become severe. It is most effective when prescribed shortly after symptoms begin, but many Americans do not know it exists.
The good news is that Paxlovid has become more widely available in recent weeks. If you are in a high-risk group and get infected with Covid, you should immediately talk with a doctor. (Here’s an explainer.)
One thing to keep in mind: The government has so far authorized Paxlovid only for high-risk people, like those 65 and older or those with serious underlying medical conditions. I know that many Americans, especially liberal Democrats, are nervous about their own Covid risk and may be tempted to seek out Paxlovid.
But the risk of developing severe Covid for most people who are boosted remains very low, as the chart above shows. And the current supply of Paxlovid is not large enough to treat anywhere near everybody who gets infected, especially if cases rise. “Our supply is fragile,” Dr. Scott Dryden-Peterson of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston told Bloomberg News.
If many younger, otherwise healthy people rush to get a Paxlovid prescription, they may effectively be taking doses from vulnerable people.
A rock climbing gym in Los Angeles this month.Mark Abramson for The New York Times
4. Masks
Broad mask mandates have not done much to prevent Omicron’s spread. Too many people wear low-quality masks or take them off at times, and Omicron is so contagious that it takes advantage of these gaps.
But masks can still help reduce Covid’s spread:
They are especially helpful in hospitals and nursing homes, where high-quality masks can be required and where many people are vulnerable.
Masks also make sense for people who have returned to work or school five to 10 days after a Covid infection, Dr. Shira Doron of Tufts Medical Center says.
Anybody who is personally anxious about Covid, for any reason, can wear a mask, too, Dr. Tom Frieden, a former C.D.C. director, notes. A high-quality mask will protect the wearer even if others nearby are maskless.
The bottom line
All four of these steps have small costs and large benefits.
They avoid contributing to the pandemic’s continuing crisis of isolation and disruption, like closing classrooms and keeping children home from school for weeks on end. And they can save lives. Covid’s official death toll in the U.S. has already exceeded 975,000. But given the availability of vaccine shots and other treatments, the vast majority of deaths are now avoidable.
Posted by BeauHD from the Martian-seismology dept.
The seismometer placed on Mars by NASA's InSight lander has recorded its two largest seismic events to date: a magnitude 4.2 and a magnitude 4.1 marsquake. Phys.Org reports:The pair are the first recorded events to occur on the planet's far side from the lander and are five times stronger than the previous largest event recorded. Seismic wave data from the events could help researchers learn more about the interior layers of Mars, particularly its core-mantle boundary, researchers from InSight's Marsquake Service (MQS) report in The Seismic Record.
Anna Horleston of the University of Bristol and colleagues were able to identify reflected PP and SS waves from the magnitude 4.2 event, called S0976a, and locate its origin in the Valles Marineris, a massive canyon network that is one of Mars' most distinguishing geological features and one of the largest graben systems in the Solar System. Earlier orbital images of cross-cutting faults and landslides suggested the area would be seismically active, but the new event is the first confirmed seismic activity there.
S1000a, the magnitude 4.1 event recorded 24 days later, was characterized by reflected PP and SS waves as well as Pdiff waves, small amplitude waves that have traversed the core-mantle boundary. This is the first time Pdiff waves have been spotted by the InSight mission. The researchers could not definitively pinpoint S1000a's location, but like S0976a it originated on Mars' far side. The seismic energy from S1000a also holds the distinction of being the longest recorded on Mars, lasting 94 minutes.
Posted by EditorDavid from the magic-internet-money dept.
Investor Warren Buffett addressed the annual shareholder meeting today for his multinational holding company Berkshire Hathaway — and said he still wouldn't buy bitcoin. But this time he gave a detailed explanation why. CNBC reports:"Whether it goes up or down in the next year, or five or 10 years, I don't know. But the one thing I'm pretty sure of is that it doesn't produce anything," Buffett said.... "If you said... for a 1% interest in all the farmland in the United States, pay our group $25 billion, I'll write you a check this afternoon," Buffett said. "[For] $25 billion I now own 1% of the farmland... Now if you told me you own all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25 I wouldn't take it because what would I do with it? I'd have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn't going to do anything... The farms are going to produce food...."
"Assets, to have value, have to deliver something to somebody. And there's only one currency that's accepted. You can come up with all kinds of things — we can put up Berkshire coins... but in the end, this is money," he said, holding up a $20 bill. "And there's no reason in the world why the United States government... is going to let Berkshire money replace theirs." Later Saturday Berkshire Hathaway's vice chairman Charlie Munger had an even harsher appraisal of bitcoin. "In my life, I try and avoid things that are stupid and evil and make me look bad in comparison to somebody else — and bitcoin does all three," Munger said.
"In the first place, it's stupid because it's still likely to go to zero. It's evil because it undermines the Federal Reserve System... and third, it makes us look foolish compared to the Communist leader in China. He was smart enough to ban bitcoin in China."
Posted by BeauHD from the hungry-hungry-planets dept.
Jupiter's innards are full of the remains of baby planets that the gas giant gobbled up as it expanded to become the behemoth we see today, scientists have found. The findings come from the first clear view of the chemistry beneath the planet's cloudy outer atmosphere. Space.com reports:In the new study, researchers were finally able to peer past Jupiter's obscuring cloud cover using gravitational data collected by NASA's Juno space probe. This data enabled the team to map out the rocky material at the core of the giant planet, which revealed a surprisingly high abundance of heavy elements. The chemical make-up suggests Jupiter devoured baby planets, or planetesimals, to fuel its expansive growth. [...] [T]he researchers built computer models of Jupiter's innards by combining data, which was predominantly collected by Juno, as well as some data from its predecessor Galileo. The probes measured the planet's gravitational field at different points around its orbit. The data showed that rocky material accreted by Jupiter has a high concentration of heavy elements, which form dense solids and, therefore, have a stronger gravitational effect than the gaseous atmosphere. This data enabled the team to map out slight variations in the planet's gravity, which helped them to see where the rocky material is located within the planet. The researcher's models revealed that there is an equivalent of between 11 and 30 Earth masses of heavy elements within Jupiter (3% to 9% of Jupiter's mass), which is much more than expected.
The new models point to a planetesimal-gobbling origin for Jupiter because the pebble-accretion theory cannot explain such a high concentration of heavy elements. If Jupiter had initially formed from pebbles, the eventual onset of the gas accretion process, once the planet was large enough, would have immediately ended the rocky accretion stage. This is because the growing layer of gas would have created a pressure barrier that stopped additional pebbles from being pulled inside the planet. This curtailed rocky accretion phase would likely have given Jupiter a greatly reduced heavy metal abundance, or metallicity, than what the researchers calculated. However, planetesimals could have glommed onto Jupiter's core even after the gas accretion phase had begun; that's because the gravitational pull on the rocks would have been greater than the pressure exerted by the gas. This simultaneous accretion of rocky material and gas proposed by the planetesimal theory is the only explanation for the high levels of heavy elements within Jupiter, the researchers said.
The study also revealed another interesting finding: Jupiter's insides do not mix well into its upper atmosphere, which goes against what scientists had previously expected. The new model of Jupiter's insides shows that the heavy elements the planet has absorbed have remained largely close to its core and the lower atmosphere. Researchers had assumed that convection mixed up Jupiter's atmosphere, so that hotter gas near the planet's core would rise to the outer atmosphere before cooling and falling back down; if this were the case, the heavy elements would be more evenly mixed throughout the atmosphere. However, it is possible that certain regions of Jupiter may have a small convection effect, and more research is needed to determine exactly what is going on inside the gas giant's atmosphere. The researchers' findings could also change the origin stories for other planets in the solar system.The study was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Posted by BeauHD from the environmentally-friendly dept.
Aiming to produce environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic food wrap and containers, a Rutgers scientist has developed a biodegradable, plant-based coating that can be sprayed on foods, guarding against pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms and transportation damage. From a report:Their article, published in the science journal Nature Food, describes the new kind of packaging technology using the polysaccharide/biopolymer-based fibers. Like the webs cast by the Marvel comic book character Spider-Man, the stringy material can be spun from a heating device that resembles a hair dryer and "shrink-wrapped" over foods of various shapes and sizes, such as an avocado or a sirloin steak. The resulting material that encases food products is sturdy enough to protect bruising and contains antimicrobial agents to fight spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms such as E. coli and listeria.
The research paper includes a description of the technology called focused rotary jet spinning, a process by which the biopolymer is produced, and quantitative assessments showing the coating extended the shelf life of avocados by 50 percent. The coating can be rinsed off with water and degrades in soil within three days, according to the study. [...] The paper describes how the new fibers encapsulating the food are laced with naturally occurring antimicrobial ingredients -- thyme oil, citric acid and nisin. Researchers in the Demokritou research team can program such smart materials to act as sensors, activating and destroying bacterial strains to ensure food will arrive untainted. This will address growing concern over food-borne illnesses as well as lower the incidence of food spoilage [...].
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2207.30 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2584 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
