Scinerds

Science is the poetry of Nature.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Monday

SpaceTime 20260323 Series 29 Episode 35

The black hole merger that sent ripples through spacetime

Scientists have detected the merger of a pair of stellar mass black holes which was quickly followed seconds later by a powerful gamma ray burst.

A new type of ion propulsion system for spacecraft

Scientists are developing a new type of ion propulsion system for spacecraft which would be easier to produce and provide better performance than current xenon based plasma systems.

Thousands watch a fireball streak across the Ohio skies

Residents across North Eastern Ohio have seen a spectacular day time meteor streak across the skies.

The Science Report

Study shows Greenland’s Ice dome melted over 7,000 years ago..

Warnings of worsening human health impacts from the production of plastics.

Scientists discover the region of the brain responsible for controlling hypocrisy.

Skeptics guide to America’s growing belief in flying saucers.

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through your favourite podcast download provider or from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging well over two million downloads every year. It’s also number five in the United States. The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science. SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research. It’s written, produced, and hosted by award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary. He started the show in 1995 under the name ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network. Gary was part of the team that set up NewsRadio and continued there as a broadcaster and journalist. He created StarStuff during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor. Gary’s always loved science. He was the dorky school kid who spent his weekends at the Australian Museum. He went on to study astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on journalism and radio broadcasting. His radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. Gary’s first gigs were spent as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a broadcast journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. When asked to put his science background to use, he developed and presented the StarStuff Astronomy show which proved extremely popular, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience -- based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth). That compares to the ABC’s overall average radio ratings of 5.6 per cent. As the internet grew, the ABC also began publishing StarStuff as a podcast online – quickly achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually. However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC budget cuts, and a redirection of available funding to increase coverage of sports and horse racing. Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently. StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime” with the first episode broadcast in February 2016 through Bitesz.com. Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times a week (every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and is available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

[sea-slug-daily]

Today’s sea slug is Acanthodoris lutea, commonly known as the orange peel doris.

Image source: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/255819187

[kny111]

I think that a lot of us are shying away from an obvious truth, that the kind of blatant racial prejudice we are witnessing in Ferguson, Mis

From research:

“Longitudinal studies provide some of the most convincing evidence. One such study looked at general intelligence in 10- and 11-year-old kids, and then re-studied those kids as adults two decades later—and found a clear connection between low intelligence and subsequent racism and sexism. Similarly, higher intelligence in childhood has been shown to predict less racism in adulthood. These analyses strongly suggest that low intelligence actually leads to hateful attitudes later on.

This is just a sampling of the accruing evidence on this point, all of which points to another puzzling question: Why? Why would verbal ability and math skills and other cognitive assets translate, over the years, into such hateful attitudes?

Dhont and Hodson believe they have an answer to this, again one based on rigorous abundant evidence. Their theory is that right-wing ideologies attract people with lower mental abilities because they minimize the complexity of the world. Right-wing ideologies offer well-structured and ordered views of society, views that preserve traditions and norms, so they are especially attractive to those who are threatened by change and want to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity. Conversely, smart people are more capable of grasping a world of nuance, fluidity and relativity.

The empirical evidence supports this link, too. Low intelligence and “low effort thinking” are strongly linked to right-wing attitudes, including authoritarianism and conservative politics. And again, there appears to be a demonstrable causal link: Studies have found, for example, that children with poor mental skills grow up to be strongly right-wing adults.

There is a final link in the chain of causality, according to Dhont and Hodson. Considerable evidence shows that conservative ideology predicts all sorts of prejudice—against ethnic and racial minorities, the disadvantaged, any outgroup. Indeed, right wingers are much more likely to see outgroups as a threat to traditional values and social order, resulting in heightened prejudice. Dhont and Hodson tested and confirmed this mediation model: Lower childhood intelligence clearly predicts right-wing ideology and attitude, which in turn predicts prejudice in adulthood.

The scientists elaborate on this idea in the Current Directions article: Intelligence and thinking determine how people assess threats in the world. Those with lower ability—reasoning skills, processing speed, and so forth—prefer simple and predictable answers, because that is what they are capable of processing. Any uncertainty is threatening, and they respond to such threats by trying to preserve what is familiar and safe, the status quo. These conservative reactions are basic and normal—they reduce anxiety—but over time they harden into more stable and pervasive world views, which include stereotypical thinking, avoidance, prejudicial attitudes and over discrimination.”

[kny111]

Nearly 15K NYC nurses begin strike at hospitals in Manhattan, the Bronx

Some hospital reps say they anticipate the strike could last weeks.

Nearly 15,000 nurses are walking off the job at hospitals across Manhattan and the Bronx on Monday morning after contract talks with hospitals faltered over the weekend.

The New York State Nurses Association, making good on strike threats announced weeks ago, sent the first picket lines up before 6 a.m. outside the affected medical centers, which are operated by Montefiore Medical Center, Mount Sinai Health System and NewYork-Presbyterian.

Outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Harlem early Monday, striking nurses bundled up against the cold chanted "the nurses united will never be defeated" as they cheered on each other.

“I was on strike three years ago, and it sucks to be back outside, having to fight for health care, having to fight to protect my patients, having to fight to be protected myself,” said Donovan Carey, an emergency-room nurse at the hospital. He said “safe staffing” levels were needed to protect patients, and nurses are demanding metal detectors at each entrance to the hospital to help prevent shootings.

“Hospitals are to be places of healing, not of fear,” Carey said, noting nurses are also pressing for clearer policies around federal immigration agents’ access to hospitals.

NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said ahead of the walkout that nurses preferred to continue providing patient care, “but our bosses have given nurses no other option but to strike.”

Representatives of the affected hospital systems said they were prepared to continue serving the public during the job action, which had long been threatened. A spokesperson for Montefiore said on Sunday that he anticipated this strike could last weeks. And Dr. Brendan Carr, CEO of Mount Sinai Health System, shared a similarly bleak outlook in a memo to employees Sunday afternoon.

“The planning and personnel costs required to responsibly run our hospitals for what we anticipate could be a long strike are substantial, but we are prepared to maintain these operations,” Carr said.

Blog Editor's Note:

Health institutions and workers have notably shifted away from the usual capitalist imperialist colonialist approach to recovery systems. The run of the mill enslavement based market institutional approaches to health is clearly incompatible with current scientific approaches and methodologies.

Simply put; running a slave trade and trying to take care of others is scientifically a no-go (13th amendment clause which keeps the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade running covertly).

Not fixin this structural issue would make that workplace extremely difficult to even operate in. The level of power abuse because of these factors is sensed. I'm with all the workers who have to endure this, and I hope that we could repair and apply these simple facts. Please support the health workers any way you can. Even as we progress to more encompassing systems without the necessity of racist, classist, white supremacist extremism and their imperialist colonial market to get the work done.

[kny111]

Update via Gothamist:

“NYC nurses strike ends after NewYork-Presbyterian nurses ratify new contract

NewYork-Presbyterian nurses have ratified a new three-year contract, ending the largest and longest walkout by nurses in New York City history, the nurses’ union announced on Saturday evening.

The agreement was backed by 93% of the nurses voting, according to the New York State Nurses Association.

The 4,200 nurses in the NewYork-Presbyterian system will begin returning to work next week, the union said.

The NewYork-Presbyterian nurses were the last holdouts in the 41-day strike, which began on Jan. 12 and saw nearly 15,000 nurses at the hospital, along with Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and West and Montefiore Medical Center walk off the job and form picket lines on snow-covered sidewalks across the city. Their prior agreements ended Dec. 31.

More than 10,000 nurses with the Montefiore and Mount Sinai hospital systems ratified new contracts with their employers last week and began returning to work the following weekend. After an extended round of bargaining, the NewYork-Presbyterian nurses early Friday announced a tentative agreement with hospital management.

“We are so happy with the wins we achieved, and now the fight to enforce these contracts and hold our employers accountable begins,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said. “NYSNA nurses showed what it means to advocate for patients, and this moment will go down in history as a win for our communities, in the fight for health care justice, and for the labor movement.””-Gothamist

[brooklynbridgebirds]

Bufflehead Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 2

[besidethepath]

I need a splash of color from Africa again (September 2025). So here are a few pictures of the wonderful lilac-breasted roller. It's the national bird of Kenya and Botswana.

[taylornprice]

shells

[amurleopards]

B.C. Supreme Court grants injunction to remove Fairy Creek logging blockades

“The confrontation between logging company Teal-Jones and forest defenders in court is the result of the ongoing failure of the provincial government to follow through on their promise and deliver solutions to protect globally rare and endangered old-growth forest like the spectacularly intact Fairy Creek rainforest in Pacheedaht territory,” said Sierra Club BC campaigner Jens Wieting in a statement Thursday.

The Fairy Creek rainforest is the last intact watershed in the San Juan river system, representing an ancient and irreplaceable ecosystem, and if Teal-Jones is successful in logging it, trees hundreds to thousands of years old will be turned to sawdust…

[ Similar destruction in the nearby Caycuse watershed, where old-growth trees have been logged by Teal-Jones, photographed by TJ Watts. ]

Although this injunction has been granted, the defenders of Fairy Creek are not backing down, and are asking you to join the fight however you can.

Getting boots on the ground is of the utmost importance right now, and Fairy Creek Blockade are asking anyone who can to join them on the front lines, but for those who can’t physically join the blockade, donating is incredibly important and helpful as well.

You can also help by writing to + phoning decision makers and voicing your horror and disgust at the situation, some key individuals are:

B.C. Premier John Horgan: (250) - 387 - 1715 / [email protected]

Minister of Forests Katrine Conroy: (250) - 387 - 6240 / [email protected]

Minister of Enviro. George Heyman: (250) - 387 - 1187 / [email protected]

And Teal-Jones themselves, which can be reached at: (604) - 587 - 8700

Please take action for B.C.’s last old-growth forests, because we won’t have another chance to save them.

[herpsandbirds]

King Vulture (Sarcoramphus papa), family Cathartidae, order Cathartiformes, Costa Rica

photograph by Supreet Sahoo

[herpsandbirds]

Bat Falcon (Falco rufigularis), family Falconidae, order Falconiformes, Colombia

photographs by Juan Torres Tavera

[forever70s]

physicist Shirley Ann Jackson in 1973; she is the first Black woman to earn a doctorate from MIT

[kny111]

mammalian pot head sessions p1 edits2

[kny111]

Sun Dogs Dancing in Clouds

Photo credit: At about 9am I spotted this sun dog over a store. I noticed the right most sun dog first then realized it was a sun dog forming the 22 degree halo. -KG

The sun dog is a member of the family of halos caused by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the atmosphere. 

A sun dog (or sundog) or mock sun, also called a parhelion[1] (plural parhelia) in atmospheric science, is an atmosphericoptical phenomenon that consists of a bright spot to one or both sides of the Sun. Two sun dogs often flank the Sun within a 22° halo. - [**]

[kny111]

[70sscifiart]

Ken Kelly, 1975

[awwfulsounds]

Sony Vaio PCV-MX3GK manual scans Japan 2000 (x)

[kny111]

whycome in 1947 a ufo crashes in racist imperial colonial north west america and a year later 1948 palestinians start dealing with mass imperial colonial genocide?