Nature Magazine – March 13, 2024: The latest issue cover features ‘Burning Question’ – How drought conditions are driving overnight fires in North America…
The de-extinction company Colossal is the first to convert elephant cells to an embryonic state, but using them to make mammoths won’t be easy, say researchers.
Nature Magazine – March 6, 2024: The latest issue cover features ‘Flood Warning’ – Sinking land and rising sea pose increased threat to US coastal cities.…
DW Documentary (March 4, 2024): Patagonia’s icefields are very difficult to access. As a result, they remain largely unexplored by climate researchers. Now, a scientist and two extreme mountaineers are venturing into this hard-to-reach area, in search of new data for climate research.
Even after 15 years of research in Chile, scientist Tobias Sauter says that for him, many questions remain unanswered. To clarify them, he decides to venture into areas that are difficult to access. The mountaineers Robert Jasper and Jörn Heller agree to help – and put themselves in great danger in the process. The two icefields in the Patagonian Andes, which stretch across the borders of Chile and Argentina, represent the largest ice mass outside the polar ice caps.
However, as a result of climate change, the ice here is losing mass. In some areas, the icefields are losing up to 20 meters in height per year. Little is known about these dramatic developments and their specific causes. The ice field to the north in particular has so far mainly been studied using satellite-based data. The area’s extreme weather conditions and great remoteness make field research on site a challenge. Tobias Sauter from Humboldt University in Berlin is one of the few researchers to take on this challenge.
Science Magazine – February 29, 2024: The new issue features ‘Protoplanetary Disk’ – Ultraviolet radiation drives rapid mass loss; What awaits scientist who take the witness stand; Nitrogen sneaks into carbon’s reaction; Endocannabinoids help shape spatial representation…
Nature Magazine – February 28, 2024: The latest issue cover features ‘Tale of the Tails’ – How a genetic element aided tail loss in humans and apes; RNA-editing therapies for genetic diseases have in the past few months gained approval for clinical trials, raising hopes for safer treatments…
NEW HUMANIST MAGAZINE – SPRING 2024 ISSUE: The new issue features Emma Park on how the culture wars are damaging the sciences, theoretical physicist Tasneem Zehra Husain on why the imagination is key to decoding the universe, and Alom Shaha on what can be gained by thinking like a scientist…
Beyond the two cultures
Amid a polarised debate, science and art seem further apart than ever. Emma Park, editor of The Freethinker, explores what humanism has to teach us about the apparent conflict between these ways of thinking and how to bridge the divide.
“While humanities scholars are often (not without justification) accused of being Luddites, those on the science and technology side could also benefit from the knowledge that the humanities have accumulated over the centuries … [And] no intellectual activity worth the name can flourish in a politically repressive environment: freedom of expression and enquiry should be an issue to unite artists, scholars and scientists.”
The poetry of science
Metaphors are key to unlocking the secrets of the universe – scientists should do more to harness their power, writes acclaimed physicist Tasneem Zehra Husain.
“Metaphors aren’t only a means of description, they can also lead to revelations. Centuries ago, Newton was able to calculate the gravitational attraction between two objects … [but] would ‘feign no hypothesis’ as to why it was so. He had the equation, but he did not understand gravitation … With Einstein, we finally have a metaphor. When we picture space-time as a dynamic ‘fabric’ … we begin to understand what gravity means.”
Science Magazine – February 15, 2024: The new issue features ‘A record drought in October 2023 that lowered the Amazon River near the Brazilian city of Tefé, revealing sand dunes and forcing local fishing boats to compete for spots.
Boomers Daily 