Matching dinosaur footprints in Cameroon and Brazil record a time when Africa and South America were still connected & herds could wander between them.

I'm not saying the very same dinosaur was stomping around in both Cameroon and Brazil...but it's possible.

nytimes.com/2024/08/28/science…

#science #history #nature #dinosaurs

Taking a break from awful things:

Scientists taught rats to drive cars. The rats quickly learned to rev the engine and take longer routes just for fun.

Bonus: Watch the researcher do a little happy leap when the rat gets into the car.

theconversation.com/im-a-neuro… #science #tech

"Incorporating wood sawdust and chips into field soils stimulates fungal growth. In particular, incorporation of hardwood material resulted in rapid and long-term stimulation of fungal filamentous growth. The fungi that develop are not the wood rot basidiomycetes found in forests but ascomycetes (sac fungi) that have easy access to the cellulose polymers in shredded wood."

"Stimulating fungi through wood addition fits well with more sustainable agriculture. It suppresses plant pathogenic fungi and the excess nitrogen, which might otherwise wash out, is captured by the fungi. It also increases the overall diversity of soil life by providing fungal-eating soil creatures with a food source."

nioo.knaw.nl/en/news/the-hidde…

#Fungi #Microbes #Soil #Environment #Nature #Science #Biodiversity #FungiFriday

The hidden world of wood-decaying fungi

Of all the components of dead plants, wood is the hardest to break down. How come fungi know how to do this? What issues did they need to solve to achieve this? The Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) tries to find answers to these questions…

^nioo.knaw.nl

Mastodon #Science people, I come to you, hat in hand, searching for a paper.

It was about using Corsi-Rosenthal boxes in schools, but it was fairly short, because the teachers in the study school kept turning off the C-R boxes. I do not know if they used the phrase "Corsi-Rosenthal" or if they just called it a DIY air cleaner/purifier.

Does anyone know this paper?

👉 "The core issue is that open source contributors are not paid fairly. 60% of open-source maintainers are unpaid volunteers, and just 13% make a living as professional project maintainers, according to the 2023 State of the Open Source Maintainer Report."

Boosts appreciated 🚀

➡️ infoworld.com/article/3557846/…

#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS #SoftwareLibre #Business #KDE #Research #Science #NLnet #softwareDevelopment

How do we fund open source?

Experts with deep experience across open-source software communities share their opinions on how to sustain this critical ecosystem.

^{Bill Doerrfeld (InfoWorld)}

What is "Amoc" and why is it so important?
_________________________________________

The dangers of a collapse of the main Atlantic Ocean circulation, known as Amoc, have been “greatly underestimated” and would have devastating and irreversible impacts, according to an open letter released by 44 experts from 15 countries.

There are indications that Amoc has been slowing down for the last 60 or 70 years due to global heating. The most ominous sign is the cold blob over the northern Atlantic. The region is the only place in the world that has cooled in the past 20 years or so, while everywhere else on the planet has warmed – a sign of reduced heat transport into that region, exactly what climate computer models have predicted in response to Amoc slowing as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.

Another indicator is a reduction in the salt content of seawater. In the cold blob region, salinity is at its lowest level since measurements began 120 years ago. This is probably linked to Amoc slowing down and bringing less salty water and heat from the subtropics.

It is an amplifying feedback: as Amoc gets weaker, the oceans gets less salty, and as the oceans gets less salty, then Amoc gets weaker. At a certain point this becomes a vicious cycle which continues by itself until Amoc has died, even if we stop pushing the system with further emissions.

The big unknown here – the billion-dollar question – is how far away this tipping point is. It is very difficult to answer because the process is non-linear and would be triggered by subtle differences in salinity, which in turn depend on amounts of rainfall and cloud cover over the ocean as well as Greenland melting rates. These are hard to model accurately in computers so there is a big uncertainty relating to when the tipping point will be reached.
_________________________________________

FULL ARTICLE -- theguardian.com/environment/20…

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

A fireball streaked by while Yasutaka Saika was taking a photograph of Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, producing this beautiful, accidental celestial alignment.

Captured on Oct 24 from Tereske, Hungary.

facebook.com/yasutaka.saika/ #space #science #astronomy #photography

Space, the final frontier. Our solar system is in space, right? This BBC series gets into the nitty gritty of Earth, asteroids, moons and the other planets near us. Maybe it doesn't sound like edge of your seat stuff but Brian Cox does his best to keep your attention. Cox simplifies complicated concepts while he tries to figure out how life began here while postulating about where else life could be found. BBC 2 on iPlayer.

#tv #space #science #astronomy

bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0023884

BBC Two - Solar System, Series 1, Volcano Worlds

Professor Brian Cox explores planets and moons erupting with fire and ice.

^BBC

Made another handy #accessibility guide, this time for your science plots!

Our plots can have lots of messages in them, so try and tell the story of the main message. Here's a guideline/template and some tips on how you can describe your plots that works for me.

Hope folks find this useful!

(I am using one of our pulsar observations to demonstrate how I have used this template in the alt-text for this image)

#Science #Astrodon #ScienceCommunication #SciComm

Who Will Care for Americans Left Behind by #Climate Migration?
—

#HurricaneHelene was the latest in a generation of storms that are intensifying faster and dumping more rain as the climate warms. It's precisely the kind of event expected to drive more Americans to relocate as climate change gets worse — leaving behind those who are older, poorer and more vulnerable.

propub.li/3ZROw7h

#News #ClimateChange #Hurricane #ExtremeWeather #Migration #Science #Flood

You get excited about sending your robotic submarine to the very bottom of Mariana's Trench anxious at the rare wonders you'll encounter, perhaps for the first time, and this is what you see miles below the ocean surface.

#Science #Oceanogrophy #Microplastics

What a cool astrophotography winner in the "People and Space" category.

Oh look, that's the International Space Station in front of the Sun! (Credit: Tom Williams)

#astronomy #science #photography

The 2024 winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year are out...and they are spectacular.

Here's the overall winner: a time-sequence of a solar eclipse that shows deepening shadows from mountains on the Moon. (Credit: Ryan Imperio)

rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-p…. #science #space #photography #nature

Scientists Reveal Their Most Embarrassing Fieldwork Fails 1/5

Jim Jourdane

#Science #Fieldwork #fieldworkfail

Brand-new pics of planet Mercury, just in from the European Space Agency's BepiColombo spacecraft!

esa.int/Science_Exploration/Sp… #space #science #astronomy #ESA

I really love this description of a retracted study: not only does it explain what was retracted (turns out men don't generally divorce their sick wives), but also it covers what the error was (a coding problem treated people who left the study as divorced) how it all went down (someone tried to replicate, asked for data and didn't get the same analysis. Contacted the authors and they were horrified and immediately worked to retract).

It's a really nice story of why replication matters and how to be good at science. This is how I was taught science should work, but I rarely come across such good retrospectives.

retractionwatch.com/2015/07/21…

#science #PeerReview

“To our horror”: Widely reported study suggesting divorce is more likely when wives fall ill gets axed

A widely reported finding that the risk of divorce increases when wives fall ill — but not when men do — is invalid, thanks to a short string of mistaken coding that negates the origina…

^{Retraction Watch}

Roger Hallam is one of the founders of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, and a leader in the fight against global climate change. I would like you to read this statement he posted yesterday… 🧵1/4
_______________________

I've just been sentenced to 5 years in prison.

The longest ever for nonviolent action.

The 'crime'?

Giving a talk on civil disobedience as an effective, evidence-based method for stopping the elite from putting enough carbon in the atmosphere to send us to extinction.

I have given hundreds of similar speeches encouraging nonviolent action and have never been arrested for it. This time I was an advisor to the M25 motorway disruption, recommending the action to go ahead to wake up the British public to societal collapse.

I was not part of the planning or action itself.

In the trial, I swore before God to tell the truth. The truth is the science. The science is clear. We're heading for billions of deaths and ecological collapse. To prove this, I presented the jury with a 250-page dossier of leading scientists' research as evidence in my defence. This was denied by the judge as an invalid - climate science is now illegal in the British courtroom.

I then began to speak about the apocalyptic conditions humanity faces - floods, wildfires, mass heat deaths - and was silenced by the judge. He sent out the jury and threatened to arrest me if I didn't stop. Instead, I stayed in the dock and argued that until I was given the right to complete my defence – I would not move. Even the prosecution tried to argue in my defence and the judge let me continue.

When the jury had shuffled in again, I spoke about the legal concept of “equality of arms” – that as the prosecution had had a right to lay facts over a whole week, I also wanted an equal opportunity. I spoke of various cases where juries had acquitted defendants when they had heard the facts, such as the Extinction Rebellion cracking of Shell's windows in 2018 as a reasonable action against criminal destruction. The Dutch Supreme Court has even said that all governments have a legal obligation to prevent the emission of greenhouse gases. Whilst the prosecution accepted that emissions pose an existential threat, for the first time in British history no less, they still tried to convict us for public nuisance rather than praise us for trying to stop those emissions. Given the objectivity of existential threat, there were overwhelming grounds to be involved in a plan to cause some disruption to the M25.

In the British law on public nuisance, there is a ‘reasonable excuse’ clause. Science says there is an overwhelming threat to my life, my children, you and your children. To argue there is not a reasonable excuse directly defies the wish of this legislation. Things are happening that cause harm – people are engaged in physical acts to stop that harm – it doesn’t matter whether it’s a protest or not.

As I began to offer up some case law, the judge kept intervening telling me I was “wasting my time” and ordering the jury to disregard me. To illustrate that I was not talking about my motivations but speaking about real necessity, I referred to a famous case over a decision to operate on conjoined twins with the likelihood that one would die. In this dilemma, I quoted the 19th Century principle that the action was necessary if the threat faced was inevitable and irrevocable, that no more should be done than essential, and that it must be proportionate. I argued that there was a “duress of circumstances” including the objective danger I’ve experienced as a farmer unable to grow food, and the global significance of “food insecurity” – a euphemism for famine and starvation.

There has never been a moment in history where ‘necessity’ has been more supported by objective facts – more than 10,000 scientific and peer-reviewed papers, indicating an outcome of mass starvation and death from man-made climate collapse.

In response, Judge Hehir called for an early lunch and dismissed the jury. He turned to me and warned that I wasn't a lawyer and that “this is not the Roger Hallam show”.

He then gave me just 15 more minutes to put forward my “beliefs” - a totally fucking incoherent statement. This isn’t belief - it’s the objective threat of destruction of property and livelihoods of billions of people and the secondary effects of famine i.e. war, rape, and torture.
_______________________

That's Part 1 of 4. Read the next below...

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #ClimateJustice

I come from a business / digital background, so digital accessibility has always been big on my radar. When I started in science a few years back, I was very surprised to see that arXiv - a service that allows scientists to put their pre-prints (papers before peer review) was not accessible.

This meant that all science papers that were open access (away from journal subscriptions) were only available as PDFs - which means people with digital accessibility needs could not access them.

Access to science should be open to everyone (the pandemic showed us how important this is), and whilst there is a need for papers to undergo the formal peer-review process, that does not mean we can't adhere to global digital accessibility standards.

So, I am extremely glad to see that arXiv is now moving toward digital accessibility, with its second accessibility forum in Sept. 2024. They've also been moving to make papers in HTML format (instead of PDFs only) which adheres to these standards.

If you are interested in accessibility and science, you might consider attending this forum. It's free to all and only requires remote participation.

accessibility2024.arxiv.org/in…

#science #accessibility #digital #astrodon #arxiv

Stunning images of Jupiter captured by the Juno spacecraft during a close flyby in October 2018.

Video credit: NASA/​JPL-Caltech/​SwRI/​MSSS/​Gerald Eichstädt
#space #science #nasa

Here's a very calm, well researched video analyzing the facts and data about AI technology progress. And all the stunning tech demos that were faked.

I really like the scientific approach to this and I feel like I'd want to adapt this kind of analytical process to other things in my life.

youtu.be/VctsqOo8wsc?si=XcuufC…

#AiRant #AI #fAIl #tech #science

AI Hype is completely out of control - especially since ChatGPT-4o

Now that ChatGPT4o is out, it's time to revisit my previous thoughts on AI, and discuss what might be happening in the future, and what evidence we have of w...

^YouTube

#PPOD: This stunning photo was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. Phobos is the larger and closer of Mars's two moons, the other being Deimos. One hypothesis of their origin involves the possible capture of primitive asteroids. Unfortunately, Phobos is being pulled apart and closer by Mars's tidal forces and gravity. Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/ @andrealuck CC BY (flickr.com/photos/192271236@N0…)

#mars #phobos #space #science #scicomm

Even with all the eclipse photos circulating right now, this one made my eyes pop. Great shot of jet contrails breaking up the edge of the eclipsed Sun. Quick calculation: The Sun is about 30,000,000 times wider than the jet.

(Photo by Bobby Goddin, Bloomington, IN) #eclipse #nature #science #photography

I had a couple things come across my timeline that made me think about how far science, especially space science, has come during my lifetime.

For example, when I was younger, Pluto was not much more than a few blurry pixels of a planet, now it is a richly detailed world (and dwarf planet).

When I was a kid, there were 9 planets, now we know thousands, most exoplanets outside the solar system. Wild to think about. 1/3 🧵

#science #space

I am sharing this here because of the title of the article but also everything else in it I guess:

"Scientists studied how cicadas pee. Their insights could shed light on fluid dynamics"

npr.org/2024/03/20/1239529315/…
#insects #science #urine (for your tag filter purposes)

This is the surface of a comet! Dust is swirling around the surface of Comet 67/P -- captured in 2016 by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, processing by Jacint Roger Perez.

Still one of the most remarkable scenes in space exploration.

#space #science #astronomy #ESA

Centuries old European-centric American history debunked by archaeology and advanced genomics

The Pueblo, Pawnee, Comanche and Lakota traditional owners gain confirmation of what they have always being saying, that they'd been using horses centuries earlier than what the Western narrative have claimed.

This is incredibly exciting. Not just this case, but how there’s the potential for history to be rewritten in many other periods of history, provided science is given the opportunity to explore
amp.abc.net.au/article/1035261…
#AusPol #AusEdu #Science #Archaeology #Genomics #IndigenousX

How the horse exposed a mistake in the history books but confirmed what First Nations people have known for generations

Authors of an award-winning US study that incorporated First Nations traditional knowledge say there are lessons for Australian researchers.

^{ABC News}

Just finisihed this & it's brilliant: Katalin Kariko's story of her life. She was convinced that mRNA therapies could work decades ago & did the foundation work, all while being ignored, never promoted & struggling for jobs.

Today, millions are vaccinated with mRNA vaccines & she has a Nobel prize.

It's a great story, and leaves a lot for the scientific system to think about. Highly recommended.

#books #mRNA #science #biography

Klára Dán von Neumann died #OTD in 1963.

Hungarian mathematician, self-taught engineer and computer scientist, noted as one of the first computer programmers. She was the first woman to execute modern-style code on a computer. Klára made significant contributions to the world of programming, including work on the Monte Carlo method, ENIAC, and MANIAC I. She was introduced to a lot of her work through her husband, John von Neumann. via @wikipedia

#science #mathematics

We have a new post in our Blog article series illuminating 🪔the #science background 👩🏻‍🔬 👨🏾‍🔬 of ##ESAEuclid 🛰️ and the techniques we'll employ for high-precision #cosmology: "Measuring the Universe with Baryon Acoustic Oscillations?"

👉 euclid-ec.org/measuring-the-un…

#astrodon #astronomy #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter #space

A large group of scientists has collaborated to produce the "2023 State of the Climate" report. And guess what, it's not pretty...
_________________________

Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory.

For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.

In the present report, we display a diverse set of vital signs of the planet and the potential drivers of climate change and climate-related responses. The trends reveal new all-time climate-related records and deeply concerning patterns of climate-related disasters. At the same time, we report minimal progress by humanity in combating climate change.

Given these distressing developments, our goal is to communicate climate facts and policy recommendations to scientists, policymakers, and the public. It is the moral duty of scientists and our institutions to clearly alert humanity of any potential existential threat and to show leadership in taking action.

The effects of global warming are progressively more severe, and possibilities such as a worldwide societal breakdown are feasible and dangerously underexplored. By the end of this century, an estimated 3 to 6 billion individuals — approximately one-third to one-half of the global population — might find themselves confined beyond the livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change.

Big problems need big solutions. Therefore, we must shift our perspective on the climate emergency from being just an isolated environmental issue to a systemic, existential threat. Although global heating is devastating, it represents only one aspect of the escalating and interconnected environmental crisis that we are facing (e.g., biodiversity loss, fresh water scarcity, pandemics). We need policies that target the underlying issues of ecological overshoot where the human demand on Earth's resources results in overexploitation of our planet and biodiversity decline.

To address the overexploitation of our planet, we challenge the prevailing notion of endless growth and overconsumption by rich countries and individuals as unsustainable and unjust. Instead, we advocate for reducing resource overconsumption; reducing, reusing, and recycling waste in a more circular economy; and prioritizing human flourishing and sustainability. We emphasize climate justice and fair distribution of the costs and benefits of climate action, particularly for vulnerable communities. We call for a transformation of the global economy to prioritize human well-being and to provide for a more equitable distribution of resources.
_________________________

It's wonderful to see these scientists boldly calling for system change in the face of a planetary overshoot emergency. Now if only someone will listen...

FULL REPORT -- academic.oup.com/bioscience/ad…

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth

Be ungovernable, like birds who make nests OUT OF ANTI-BIRD SPIKES. A new study describes resourceful Dutch & Belgian corvids besting evil architecture by stealing metal anti-bird strips and using them like thorny twigs, to construct their homes.

Like thorns, the spikes may protect their nests from predators.

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra wrote an epic 🧵 about his research that's worth a read: twitter.com/AukeFlorian/status…

Paper: hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/organis…

#science #SciComm #birds #netherlands

At a meeting in Germany that attracts dozens of Nobel prize winners, one of them objected to its focus on diversity, saying “as a male scientist, I have a feeling of discrimination when I am here, in the climate that this meeting is being held.” Science magazine reports that a visibly nervous early-career researcher stood up to respond….

science.org/content/article/no…

Link to video, her response is at 46:39
mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/r…

#stem #science #Nobels #womeninstem #womeninscience #lindaunobel