tingilinde

where there is work

The trades..  

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

cte may be more common than thought

Some serious limitations on the study, but there's a message about banging the head around in contact sports.

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The fact that we were able to gather so many instances of a disease that was previously considered quite rare, in eight years, speaks volumes,” says corresponding author Ann McKee, a MED professor of neurology and pathology and director of BU’s CTE Center. “There’s just no way that would be possible if this disease were truly rare.”

“I think the data are very surprising,” she adds. “We’ve sort of become accustomed to it, but it is very shocking.

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a clown show

But their goal is to destroy government and they're showing they can do it.

 

ranking the glaciers

Taking a proper count as they shrink and disappear.

 

more abiological amino acid production

Miller and Urey's work led to a large number of mechanisms for producing amino acids abiologically. A few have involved meteorites .. now one that could use gamma rays as the energy source.

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Now a team of researchers at Yokohama National University in Japan led by the chemists Yoko Kebukawa and Kensei Kobayashi have shown that gamma rays could also have produced the amino acids in chondrites. In their new work, they showed that gamma rays from radioactive elements in the chondrites — most probably aluminum-26 — could convert the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen compounds into amino acids.

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beginnings of human life

On the science and religious issues.

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In the United States, there has long been a unique focus on the individual, and individual freedoms, often instead of the community or ecosystem. For the question of a new human life, that has led to an either/or priority on the pregnant woman or the developing baby.

“We think we are having a debate in the United States about when life begins, but we are not,” said Agustín Fuentes, an anthropologist at Princeton University. “We are having a debate about when society is going to decide that the person counts. And not only when the person counts, but which person counts more.”

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dan rather on the republican dumpster fire

A dumpster fire of their own making.

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There is a tendency among some in the beltway press to frame this as a battle of the political extremes, how the far right is undermining Republican initiatives. In this analysis there is often a perfunctory “both sides” mention of the political left, which also supposedly threatens the “center” and the ability to govern.

This simplistic framing misses the mark at this moment. On the Republican side, it is not clear what the renegades want, other than to figuratively burn down the house (or House). Some have specific demands, and McCarthy has caved more than a spelunker. But it’s still not good enough. Furthermore, these demands are almost exclusively about process and not policy. It’s about allowing a nihilistic minority to foment perpetual mayhem, thereby undercutting the debate and responsible compromise that should be the business of Congress. Ultimately, it’s about accommodating Steve Bannon and not delivering for constituents.

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building large wind turbines

Building infrastructure to make large wind turbines in New Jersey.

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The factory being built here is the largest offshore wind manufacturing plant in the U.S., according to its developers and Gov. Phil Murphy. This week, it is receiving and offloading the components from Europe needed to begin assembly. Located at the Port of Paulsboro on the Delaware River, directly opposite the Philadelphia airport, the site was used for decades as a petroleum and petrochemical storage facility before the state rebuilt and expanded its marine terminal.

Despite the concerns of environmental groups about the impacts of increased shipping on the river, the port is now expanding to handle these enormous offshore wind towers. Construction of buildings and commissioning of machinery will continue at the 70-acre port site until the end of 2024, boosting its capacity and reducing the team's reliance on pre-assembled components that require shipping from Europe.

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a dynamic debate

The vigorous scientific debate over the first Americans - and that's a good thing.

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Did humans first populate the Americas 100,000 years ago, 30,000 years ago, 15,000 years ago, or 13,000 years ago? Did they come by boat or by an overland route? Were the ancestors of Native Americans from one population or several? The answers to these questions would help us understand the grand story of human evolution. We know that the Americas were the last continents that anatomically modern Homo sapiens – humans like us – entered, but we don’t know exactly how this happened. These long-ago movements give us hints about the challenges ancient peoples across the world had to contend with during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a prolonged period of coldness and aridity, when animals, plants and humans retreated to environmental ‘refugia’ for several thousand years. How did we survive this Ice Age? What technological and biological adaptations arose as the result of these environmental conditions? These questions capture the popular imagination and challenge the scientists working to uncover the details of individual lives thousands of years in the past.

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perihelion!

Perihelion is at 11:17 am Eastern Time today.   We're at the closest approach to the Sun in our slightly elliptical orbit - about 5 million kilometers closer than we are at aphelion in early July.  The solar disk appears to be about seven percent lager than at aphelion.  Enjoy it, but don't look directly at the Sun .. after all, what kind of bonehead would do that?