Tracking tagged animals from space. It operated for about a year in 2020, but then issues in an ISS module shut it down. The Russians were hosting it, but then came Ukraine. Now it's been done independently of the ISS.
snip
...
The new system allows for greater global coverage — the ISS receiver couldn’t communicate with tags at the planet’s highest latitudes — and Wikelski’s team has used the intervening years to shrink the tags by several grams and design new ways for animals to “wear” them, vastly expanding the number of species scientists can study. The team is currently upgrading 4,000 older tags to work with the new system. The tags provide hourly accounts of the animal’s energy expenditure; measure environmental factors like air pressure, altitude, temperature, and humidity; and even use AI to help interpret the animal’s behavior.
The trove of data “will open a lot of doors for researchers,” said Ashley Lohr, who coordinates North American projects for ICARUS through the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “How stressed was the animal? What were the environmental conditions when the animal was at this place at this time?”
Wunder’s lab group tagged 17 mountain plovers in Colorado in 2021. Native to the plains of the north-central United Staes, the species has declined by 80 percent in the past six decades. But the birds are hard to study because of their habitat and behavior. “They’re singing and vociferous but not in your face,” Wunder said, and in breeding season they like their space, living in densities of only about three birds per square kilometer. The plovers often occupy private ranchlands, which makes them hard to find without trespassing. And they breed in late March and April, while bird surveys, timed to count migratory songbirds, happen in May.
...
the maga cultural revolution
Paul Krugman notes disturbing parallels with the Chinese Cultural Revolution
snip
...
Once you’ve seen the parallel between what MAGA is trying to do and China’s Cultural Revolution, the similarities are everywhere. Maoists sent schoolteachers to do farm labor; Trumpists are talking about putting civil servants to work in factories.
The Cultural Revolution was, of course, a huge disaster for China. It inflicted vast suffering on its targets and also devastated the economy. But the Maoists didn’t care. Revenge was their priority, never mind the effects on GDP.
The Trumpists are surely the same. Their rampage will, if unchecked, have dire economic consequences. Right now we’re all focused on tariff madness, but undermining higher education and crippling scientific research will eventually have even bigger costs. But don’t expect them to care, or even to acknowledge what’s happening. Trump has already declared that the inflation everyone can see with their own eyes is fake news.
...
04:45 in Current Affairs, General Commentary, history | Permalink | Comments (0)