Indiana politics make it difficult for tech industry to recruit, keep employees in state


Binghui Huang, Indianapolis Star
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Everly Coleman is the exact type of person that Indiana is looking for — an entrepreneur who started her own data analytics company and bought a house to settle down in Indianapolis for more than a decade.

But she moved out of Indianapolis with her wife last year, as state legislators were getting ready to pass a near total-abortion ban. They now live in Santa Fe, N.M.

"We both believe reproductive rights are very important," said Coleman, who is a trans woman. But it wasn't just about abortion. They were worried that the state would follow Florida in passing a law restricting discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. And, in fact, a leading Republican has since signaled Indiana lawmakers will consider a so-called "don't say gay" law.

Indiana legislature:What lawmakers say about abortion, education and the economy ahead of 2023 session

The disconnect is growing between Indiana's mounting socially conservative policies, which includes not only the near-total abortion ban currently stalled in court, but also a ban on trans girls playing school sports, and the tech industry's increasingly vocal progressive workforce.

The tension is brewing as major employers struggle to recruit and keep employees in the state, a problem that is snowballing into a crisis for Indiana.

But pro-choice advocates, in or out of the tech industry, faced pressure to move away from Indiana for years before the Supreme Court's Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade's protection of a woman's right to have an abortion. South Bend area resident Karen Nemes made that point when she talked to The Tribune on June 24 at a Pro Choice South Bend rally following the release of the Dobbs decision.

"Friends have urged me to leave the area for years," she said then, adding she stays in Indiana because of the community. "We need people working at the state level pressuring state legislatures because that's where a lot of these draconian laws are coming through."

Increasing STEM workers in Indiana

In November, the governor's workforce cabinet rolled out a long list of recommendations to increase the number of STEM — for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — workers, in the state, including increasing education funding and incentives for colleges to graduate STEM students who stay in Indiana.

That same month, CEO David Ricks of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., a bio-tech company and drug maker, was quoted in a financial magazine saying that he's getting requests from employees to transfer out of Indiana.

He's declined to speak to IndyStar further about those requests.

Indiana abortion access:What's next after judge blocks Indiana abortion law

After Indiana passed a near-total ban on abortion, one of the most severe of such restrictions across the country, employees in tech and science industries put pressure on CEOs to warn Indiana that its conservative social policies will turn off the highly-sought-after STEM workers that it needs to sustain the economy.

Since then, tech workers from startups to global software companies told the IndyStar that the abortion ban has prompted coworkers to leave or start looking for other jobs. Some tech workers said the abortion ban would make it scary for them to start families because of concern that they couldn't get the health care if they developed complications during pregnancies.

The abortion ban that went into effect Sept. 15 has been temporarily blocked by an ACLU lawsuit, but Indiana's attorney general is appealing the decision.

South Bend:Abortion provider resumes services for at least three months after court ruling

But for others, it's not just the ban, but what it signals for the future for other social issues, such as LGBTQ rights.
Tech industry growing political power

Progressive tech workers are reshaping the way companies address political issues. They can leverage political power because they are some of the most in-demand applicants across the country. Many can pit multiple job offers against each other.

Attendees hold signs during a rally opposing the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade on Friday, June 24, 2022, at the Jon R. Hunt Plaza in downtown South Bend.

Media analysis of tech workers' political donations showed that employees overwhelmingly donated to Democratic candidates. About 89% of the money donated by Salesforce employees went to Democrats, according to CNBC analysis of the 2020 election cycle. That percentage is even higher in companies like Netflix, Adobe and IBM.

And they're doing more than just donating to political causes.

In the past few years, employees at the country's most prominent companies staged walkouts after clashing with their more conservative leadership on political issues.

'It's about freedom':'It's about freedom': Rally for abortion rights in South Bend after Roe v. Wade overturned

Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms Inc., employees staged a virtual walkout in 2020 to force the company to better regulate and control then-President Donald Trump's inflammatory posts. Netflix workers walked out in 2021 in protest of David Chappelle's new special for jokes mocking trans people.

While many of these walkouts are in the tech-heavy and Democratically-controlled California, the expansion of remote work means that these companies have employees joining virtual protests across the country.

That dynamic is alive and well in Indiana, albeit more privately and more timid in the Republican-controlled state.

Jordan Thayer, a trans woman working as a consultant in automation for a software development company in Carmel, said she's worried that she soon won't be free to live her life as she wants and her family won't be safe if they needs pregnancy care.

After the Dobbs decision:Anti-abortion rally draws counter protests in South Bend following overturn of Roe v. Wade

She sees states like Tennessee proposing to ban drag performances in public and worries those laws will come to Indiana and make it hard for her to be out in public, she said.

So, long term, her family won't stay.

"I don't want to have to jump employers and change states in a hurry," she said. "So we're looking now."

People hold signs at an abortion rights rally Wednesday, June 29, 2022, at the Robert A. Grant Federal Building & U.S. Courthouse in South Bend.

Indiana tech companies may have to offer remote work

Companies have to show applicants that they share their values in order to be compete in the cutthroat fight for tech and science workers, said Jim Stroud, a recruitment consultant who's worked with companies like Microsoft and Google.

"Salary and employer brand are neck in neck," Stroud said.

Tech companies in states where abortion access and LGBTQ rights are restricted will need to offer remote work to attract some applicants, Stroud said.

Others are reading:Changing economy, fewer students going to college will increase income gap, report says

"The issues come to play when they physically have to be there," he said.

In fact, some tech workers will forego a higher salary and opt for a company they believe shares their values, he said.

One telling example, he said, happened at a software company called Basecamp.

When the company banned "societal and political discussions" at work, its employees were so outraged that a third of them quit. Recruiters wasted no time in swarming in and showing them that their company shares their values, Stroud said.

"So any kind of company controversy is going to be like blood in the water," he said. "All these other recruiters are gonna converge on them like no tomorrow and be emailing everybody."

Attendees hold signs during a rally opposing the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade on Friday, June 24, 2022, at the Jon R. Hunt Plaza in downtown South Bend.

That puts companies in a bind when issues elicit strong support and opposition, such as abortion, Stroud said. And they're scared that they may upset employees, applicants and customers if they take strong stances. In those cases, he advises companies to support employees internally, through benefits or matching their donations to political causes.

In Indiana, major companies carefully treaded the issue.

Many of Indianapolis's largest companies declined to participate in several public advocacy letters supporting abortion rights last summer. Lilly and Cummins released statements against the ban only after it was passed.

'A slap in the face': 'A slap in the face': Some upset Lilly, Cummins wait to criticize abortion ban until Holcomb signed it

Several announced they would pay for employees to seek abortion care in other states.

Mike Murphy, a former Republican state legislator who also served in executive roles at Simon Property Group and Elevance Health, which was previously known as Anthem, said these companies could have done more if they were seriously concerned about retention or recruitment.

"I don't doubt they may be reflecting some honestly held beliefs," he said. "But I would say they're unique in the state, because they have the economic power and thought leadership to change all that."
Indiana has struggled to recruit talent

Long before the Supreme Court became a super conservative majority that would reshape federal and state policies, Indiana struggled with attracting top talent. Economists have pointed to a mix of reasons, including lack of good schools, flat and largely landlocked landscape, poor infrastructure, and sparse attractions and amenities compared to other states.

And so even when everything is equal — company brand, salary to cost of living ratio, amenities in the city — the social laws of the state is a tie-breaker, several tech workers said.

Same goes with those who are living in Indiana.

Kristen Cooper, the founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based Startup Ladies, said she knows people in the industry who have moved out of Indiana because of abortion ban and anti-LGBTQ bills.

"You want to live in a community that supports your values and your lifestyle," she said. "If you're a woman and you have a choice between living in a state that provides you a great job and your reproductive rights versus a state with a great job and no reproductive rights, it's easily a tie-breaker."

Binghui Huang / Bhuang@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana politics around abortion, social issues stifle tech recruiting

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Indian court grants bail to ICICI Bank ex-CEO Chanda Kochhar


ICICI Bank's CEO Chanda Kochhar listens to a speaker at a news conference in Mumbai

Sun, January 8, 202

MUMBAI (Reuters) -An Indian court on Monday granted bail to former ICICI Bank chief executive Chanda Kochhar and her husband after they were arrested in December in connection with an alleged loan fraud case involving the bank and Videocon Group

Kochhar was one of India's highest-profile business leaders before she was ousted as ICICI CEO in 2019 following allegations that the bank, under her watch, sanctioned "high value" loans to Videocon in violation of its lending policies.

In return, Videocon's owner invested in NuPower Renewables, founded by Kochhar's husband Deepak, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) alleges. The agency arrested Videocon Chairman Venugopal Dhoot late last month.

All the parties have denied the allegations of loan fraud.

The Bombay High Court on Monday ordered that the Kochhars be released on bail.

It said the arrests, done by the CBI alleging that the Kochhars had been not been cooperating with the investigation, were "not in accordance with law".

"The ground for arresting the petitioners as stated in the arrest memos, is unacceptable and is contrary to the reason(s)/ground(s) on which a person can be arrested," said the order by judges Prithviraj K. Chavan and Revati Mohite Dere.

The Kochhars will be released on cash bail of 100,000 rupees ($1,214) each "for a period of two weeks".

($1 = 82.3600 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Jayshree Pyasi and Arpan Chaturvedi; Writing by Sudipto Ganguly and Sakshi Dayal; Editing by Krishna N. Das)

Conservatives take aim at tenure for university professors
 

BEEN DOING THAT SINCE THE SIXTIES

Tenure Backlash

Max McCoy, the lone journalism professor at Emporia State University, poses for a photo in front of the school's administration building Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023, in Emporia, Kan. McCoy penned a column that began, “I may be fired for writing this” — before learning this would be his last year teaching at the school. “This is a purge,” he said. He said all the fired professors were “Democrats or liberal in our thinking.” (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Sun, January 8, 2023 

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — When Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.

Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”

In turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.

“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.

It’s a sentiment being echoed by conservative officials in red states across the country. The indefinite academic appointments that come with tenure — the holy grail of university employment — have faced review from lawmakers or state oversight boards in at least half a dozen states, often presented as bids to rein in academics with liberal views.

Tenure advocates are bracing for the possibility of new threats as lawmakers return to statehouses around the country.

The trend reflects how conservative scrutiny of instruction related to race, gender and sexuality has extended from schools to higher education. But budget considerations also play a role. Tenured faculty numbers have been declining even in more liberal states. Universities are hiring more part-time, adjunct instructors amid declines in financial support from state governments.

Traditionally, tenured professors can be terminated only under extreme circumstances, such as professional misconduct or a financial emergency. Advocates for tenure say it is a crucial component of academic freedom — especially as controversy grows over scholarly discussions about history and identity.

Without tenure, faculty are “liable to play it safe when it comes time to have a classroom discussion about a difficult topic,” said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors.

But in difficult financial and political times, even tenured professors may not be guaranteed employment.

In Kansas, Emporia State University this fall cut 33 faculty — most of them tenured — using an emergency pandemic measure that allowed universities to bypass policies on staff terminations to balance budgets.

Max McCoy, Emporia State’s sole journalism professor, penned a column that began, “I may be fired for writing this” — before learning this would be his last year teaching at the school.

“This is a purge,” he said. He said all the fired professors were “Democrats or liberal in our thinking.”

University spokesperson Gwen Larson said individual professors were not targeted for dismissal. She said the cuts followed a review of how demand for academic programs is changing and “where we needed to move in the future.

Attacks on higher education have been fueled by a shift in how conservatives see colleges and universities, said Jeremy Young, of the free-expression group PEN America. The share of Republicans and independent-leaning Republicans who said higher education was having a negative effect on the country grew from 37% to 59% from 2015 to 2019 in Pew Research Center polling.

In Texas, university administrators are working behind the scenes to squash anticipated legislation that would target tenure, fearful it will hurt recruitment, said Jeff Blodgett, president of the Texas Conference of AAUP.

Some people already aren’t applying for university jobs because of the discussions, said Pat Heintzelman, president of the Texas Faculty Association.

In Florida, a federal judge in November blocked the “Stop-WOKE" Act, a law pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that restricts certain race-based conversations and analysis in colleges. The governor’s office is appealing the injunction. Compliance with the law would be part of the criteria for evaluating tenured professors under a review process that the university system’s Board of Governors is weighing.

“They’ve latched onto the idea that many totalitarian regimes have done over the years, which is if you can stop students from learning about ideas that a political party in power disagrees with, that is one way to stop those ideas from existing in the society at all,” said Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida.

DeSantis, though, has questioned the argument that tenure provides academic freedom.

“If anything, it’s created more of an intellectual orthodoxy where people that have dissenting views, it's harder for them to be tenured in the first place," he said at a news conference in April.

In Louisiana, lawmakers set up a task force to study tenure with the Republican-backed resolution noting that students should be confident that courses are free of “political, ideological, religious, or antireligious indoctrination.” Professors raised concerns until they learned the task force’s members were mostly tenure supporters.

In Georgia, the state’s Board of Regents approved a policy that made it easier to remove tenured faculty who have had a negative performance review. Elsewhere, legislation to ban or restrict tenure also has been introduced in recent years in Iowa, South Carolina and Mississippi, but failed to win passage.

The pushback follows decades of declining rates of tenured faculty. According to the AAUP, 24% of faculty members held full-time tenured appointments in fall 2020, compared with 39% in fall 1987, the first year for which directly comparable information is available.

Part-time college instructors rarely receive benefits. They frequently must travel from campus to campus to cobble together a living.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Caprice Lawless, who wrote the “Adjunct Cookbook,” replete with recipes that poorly compensated Ph.D.s can cobble together with food pantry staples.

“I’ve taken Ph.D.s to foodbanks and watched them cry because they can’t get enough food for their family,” said Lawless, who said she served as a social worker of sorts before retiring two years ago from Front Range Community College in Westminster, Colorado.

The opposition to tenure has united conservatives for different reasons: Not all share the same concerns about “woke higher education,” said Marc Stein, a San Francisco State University history professor, who has written about the shift to part-time faculty.

“But,” he said, “if you attack the ‘wokeness’ of higher education and that leads to declining funding for higher education, then economic conservatives are happy.”

Tenure exploded after World War II when it helped with recruitment as the GI Bill sent enrollment soaring, said Sol Gittleman, a former provost of Tufts University who has written on the issue. Lately, the country has overproduced Ph.D.s, said Gittleman, who predicts tenure will largely disappear in the coming decades outside the top 100 colleges and universities.

“Critical race theory — that's an excuse,” he said. “If there was a shortage of faculty, you wouldn’t hear that.”

___

Associated Press writers Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this report. The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Federal judge hears arguments on state college campus surveys about freedom of thought

Ryan Dailey
Mon, January 9, 2023

A federal judge on Monday began hearing testimony in a trial over the constitutionality of a 2021 state law requiring colleges and universities to survey students and staff members about “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” on campus.

The plaintiffs, including the United Faculty of Florida union and individual teachers and students, are challenging three parts of the law (HB 233). The first day of the trial before Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker focused heavily on a requirement that colleges and universities conduct the surveys.

The law required the State Board of Education and the university system’s Board of Governors, to select or create “objective, nonpartisan, and statistically valid” questionnaires to weigh the “extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” on campuses. The surveys also are supposed to gauge how free students and staff feel to express ideas and are required to be conducted annually.

But the faculty members and other plaintiffs contend the surveys have the effect of chilling classroom speech.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs on Monday called Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., as their first witness. They questioned Lichtman about whether the law had the intent of discriminating against colleges and universities, with Lichtman arguing that the required surveys are “highly problematic.”

Lichtman was asked about statements by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the bill, and Rep. Spencer Roach, a North Fort Myers Beach Republican who was a sponsor of the legislation. Roach, for example, wrote in a March 2021 Facebook post that the measure would protect free-speech rights and “stem the tide of Marxist indoctrination on university campuses.”

Lichtman pointed to what he described as a “willingness by decision-makers to assail what they perceive as liberal … ideology” at the schools.

The history professor also said the law includes “no restriction” on how the Legislature could use survey data, which is required to be published each September.

“This survey, in perpetuity, has a chilling effect,” Lichtman said.

But attorneys representing the state argued in a court filing before the trial that the surveys, and the overall law, do not contemplate any potential punishment for schools, students and staff members.

“Like a thermometer, the surveys are meant to be a diagnostic tool designed to take the temperature of taxpayer-funded campuses. The survey provisions presuppose no diagnosis, prescribe no course of treatment, and predict no future action or consequence,” lawyers for the state wrote in a Dec. 8 brief.

Though Lichtman repeatedly said the law does not specifically require that the surveys be anonymous or voluntary, a first round of surveys administered in April made clear that the identities of respondents would not be published and participation was optional.

Writing that the law is “simply not enforceable against individual students or professors,” lawyers for the state disputed the plaintiffs’ claims of chilled speech and asked Walker to reject any testimony “regarding any chilling or self-censorship” attributed to the measure.

The state’s lawyers also argued colleges and universities face no threat of lost funding because of the law.

“As they have done throughout this litigation, plaintiffs are sure to testify at trial that they fear future funding reductions to their institutions or programs as a result of HB 233. But plaintiffs will not elicit any testimony at trial regarding any proposed or actual funding cuts to any institution based on HB 233, nor will they point to any provision in HB 233 that contemplates any funding decisions,” the state’s lawyers wrote.

Also being challenged in the lawsuit are parts of the measure that prohibit colleges and universities from “shielding” students and staff from speech protected by the First Amendment and that allow students to record classroom lectures.

Rare arctic creature visiting a California suburb draws crowds hoping to catch a glimpse


Brooke Baitinger
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Once quiet neighborhood streets are now lined with excited spectators — some from out of state — who hope for their chance to catch a glimpse of an unexpected visitor.

“People have come from out of state,” one TikToker said. “Why? There’s an owl on a roof…?”

A snowy owl perches on the top of a chimney of a home in Cypress, Calif., on Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 27, as bird watchers and photographers gather on the street below to see the very unusual sight. 

(Mark Rightmire/The Orange County Register via AP) 

The snowy owl’s presence in a neighborhood outside of Los Angeles, however, has perplexed wildlife experts and bird enthusiasts alike.

Eve Bradford, a digital artist on TikTok, documented the line of cars up and down a residential street and estimated a crowd of more than 100 people gathered to photograph and observe the owl as it perched on the roof of a house in Cypress, about 25 miles south of L.A. Many spectators shown in the video were equipped with long telephoto lenses.

@evessketchbook #cypressowl #california #snowyowl ♬ original sound - Eve Bradford

Another user explained why the owl’s presence is so significant.

“To those that don’t know, this is a very rare ARCTIC SNOW OWL, that’s now all the way down in CA,” the user wrote.

Someone else speculated that perhaps the arctic blast of cold air “tricked him into going too ... far south.”

“They’re most common in very, very North Canada,” 

Jaret Davey told CNN.

He’s a wildlife technician and volunteer coordinator at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, the outlet reported.

“The southern limit of their winter range is in the northern United States,” he told the news outlet. “So it’s not uncommon for them to be in Washington or Minnesota or Maine in the winter. But to be this far south is really exceptional.”

Especially in winter, according to the National Audubon Society. The snowy owl’s unique mottled white appearance camouflages it during northern winters, according to the society’s website. During the summer, snowy owls can be nomadic, nesting where its prey of small rodents called lemmings are plentiful.

California’s Audubon society also chimed in on Twitter.


“Have you heard about the rare #SnowyOwl in Cypress near Los Angeles? Birders are flocking to catch a glimpse of this large, powerful owl from the Arctic tundra. Spotting one as far south as Orange County is extremely rare,” the group said on Twitter.

Photographers and bird enthusiasts shared their images — and their awe — on social media.

“I took way too many photos of this gorgeous owl, but it was worth it,” one wrote on Twitter with a heart-eyes emoji. “When am I ever going to see a Snowy Owl against palm trees again?”


“It’s the last thing on Earth you’d expect to see there,” David Bell told SFGate. He’s a board member of the Los Angeles Birders, and he joined the groups flocking to Cypress to catch sight of the bird last month, the outlet reported. “You’re thinking to yourself that it couldn’t possibly be real, and then it swivels its head. Yep, it’s real.”

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Conscious Robots Will Be 'Bigger Than Curing Cancer,' Scientists Say


Tim Newcomb
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Is Robot Consciousness the Next Big Thing?

Paul Taylor - Getty Images

The latest robot research about robots choosing new behavior is a step beyond artificial intelligence.

Instead of simply adapting to situations, a conscious robot would proactively improve itself.

Is robot consciousness just a different form of human-programmed artificial intelligence?

Scientists have long considered robot consciousness a subject fraught with ethical—maybe even moral—pitfalls, and so they left it out of the artificial intelligence equation. But that’s no longer the case, says a Columbia University engineer.

Hod Lipson, Columbia’s director of the Creative Machines Lab, recently told the New York Times that the idea of a robot with a conscious was traditionally taboo. “We were almost forbidden from talking about it,” Lipson said. “Don’t talk about the c-word; you won’t get tenure. So in the beginning I had to disguise it, like it was something else.”

That disguise has now lifted. According to Lipson, the next step for robotic artificial intelligence will be allowing a robot to learn about its own function and make its own decisions on self-improvement. So, instead of just effectively responding to circumstances, a conscious robot would then predict how it might better its operations. Once this type of conscious robot is up and running, Lipson said it could one day outpace humans in function.

He continued:
“This is not just another research question that we’re working on—this is the question. This is bigger than curing cancer. If we can create a machine that will have consciousness on par with a human, this will eclipse everything else we’ve done. That machine itself can cure cancer.”

Before we get carried too far away, researchers aren’t yet sure if they can even effectively build a robot with a conscious. And can humans really create something smarter than ourselves? Add in the fact that nobody quite knows how to properly define conscious, and are we even sure exactly what we’re trying to create?

And that’s why, philosophy aside, researchers are focused on establishing a basic animal-like definition that centers on a robot becoming self-aware—able to see itself performing in the future and adapt function to better meet potential needs.

Of course, we’re a long way off from crafting any sort of robot that can challenge a human’s mind—after all, we don’t even fully understand how the mind works, so how could we program one?—but that won’t stop the discussion or the attempt to create a smarter, more helpful robot. If that means it needs a conscious, there’s at least one scientist eager to explore the next step.

A giant dolphin-like ichthyosaur fossil or a fake?

Geology

Dale Gnidovec
Sun, January 8, 2023 

Ichthyosaurs swam the world's oceans at the same time that dinosaurs ruled the land. A fossil of the dolphin-like seagoing reptile discovered on Scotland's Isle of Skye is one of the thousands of marine fossils found from the Jurassic Period.

Sometimes fossils are not what they seem.

That is especially true of ones that have been in museums for a long time. A recently reported bit of research by a team of three scientists, from England, Germany, and the U.S., discussed a good example.

The specimen was that of an ichthyosaur in the collections of the Reutlingen Natural History Museum in southern Germany, which bought it in 1984. Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles that co-existed with the dinosaurs. Most were about the size and shape of modern dolphins, but some got much bigger — one species may have been 85 feet long.

They were the first large prehistoric animals to be studied scientifically, as early as 1814, decades before dinosaurs were even discovered. Thousands of specimens were collected, especially from the Early Jurassic rocks along the southern coast of England. Many found their way onto the walls of private mansions as decorations.

Geology:Giant lumbering ground sloth inhabited much of North America in Ice Age | Geology

The specimen in question was supposedly collected in England, but paleontologists looking at photographs felt that something didn’t look quite right.

Close examination of the actual fossil showed why. The skull, while containing a few real fossil teeth, is fake, carved from plaster. The vertebrae (individual elements of the backbone) are real, but from a number of different individuals, and some are in the wrong position.

Dale Gnidovec

Also, the rock enclosing the pelvis and hind fins is a slightly different shade of grey. Further study showed that the pelvis/hind fin section was indeed from England, but the rest of the skeleton came from Germany, from the shale quarries around Holzmaden, Germany, which has also produced thousands of Jurassic ichthyosaur specimens.

It would be one thing if the parts were from the same species, but not only were they from different species, they were from animals that lived at different times.

Geology: The sands of time show impact of great quake of Lisbon in 1775 | Geology

Imbedded in the rock containing the bones of the ichthyosaurs were fossils of ammonites, mollusks related to the modern chambered nautilus. Ammonites were very abundant in Mesozoic seas, and they evolved rapidly, with new species constantly replacing old ones. Each species lived for only a short period of time, so like coins that have their date of manufacture stamped on them, they can be used to date other fossils they occur with.

The ammonites showed that most of the skeleton came from an animal that was alive around 179 million years ago. The pelvis and hind fin came from an animal that was living around 196 million years ago, 17 million years earlier.

The scientist dubbed the specimen the ‘iffyosaur’.

Geology:Geology: Ash shows ancient air

Dale Gnidovec is curator of the Orton Geological Museum at Ohio State University. Contact him at gnidovec.1@osu.edu

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Scientists thought they had an ichthyosaur fossil but it was fake

The Cure for Death Means Billionaires Will Live Forever—and Be Rich Forever

Tim Newcomb
Mon, January 9, 2023 

The Rich May Get Richer by Living Longer

Alex Wong - Getty Images

As science continues to move closer to a cure for death, the richest people will benefit the most.

If billionaires like Jeff Bezos live forever, their wealth and power compound longer, experts say.

Money drives the search for immortality.

The quest to cure death is a rich person’s game. And that doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon, which worries some experts in case humans ever figure out how to achieve immortality.

As science continues to push the possibilities of living longer—and living better longer—that science is often driven by funded research. And who better to provide a blank check than mega-billionaires like Jeff Bezos? Indeed, last year, the founder and former CEO of Amazon made a hefty investment in Altos Labs, a biotech startup focused on “cellular rejuvenation programming to restore cell health and resilience, with the goal of reversing disease to transform medicine.”

So, if the rich can live longer, the rich can get richer longer, compounding the already imbalanced spectrum of money, power, and control, experts argue in a new Financial Times article.

“The longer you’re around, the more your wealth compounds, and the wealthier you are, the more political influence you have,” Christopher Wareham, a bioethicist at Utrecht University, tells FT. The science of longevity will only widen existing gaps, he says.

Make no mistake, the effort to slow down aging isn’t slowing down. The Institute for Aging Research at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine claims we’ve moved beyond hope in turning anti-aging into reality, and we now sit “at the point between having promise and realizing it.”

The Financial Times article notes that private funding far outpaces public funding in the anti-aging research. So, if all the proponents of anti-aging research outlive their dreams—a big if at this point in time, but a goal many have—the first ones to benefit from said science will undoubtedly be those funding the research, like Bezos. And if mega-billionaires have all the insights in not only adopting anti-aging science, but then licensing that science out to the masses, not only do the rich get richer, but the rich get richer for ... forever.

Of course, a democratized solution to anti-aging will help the masses, but the rich can still compound their wealth and power, a byproduct worthy of a philosophical discussion.

Did hunter-gatherers have a writing system?

Devika Rao, Staff writer
Mon, January 9, 2023 

A caveman. Illustrated | Getty Images

Archeologists have decoded the markings on 20,000-year-old cave paintings created by Ice Age hunter-gatherers. The results show that early humans used writing to convey information far earlier than researchers previously believed. Here's everything you need to know:

Why did hunter-gatherers make cave drawings?

Scientists have known about prehistoric cave paintings for hundreds of years. Some of the oldest ones date back to the Neanderthals over 60,000 years ago, writes History. They depict people, animals, and hybrid creatures, as well as more abstract markings like dots and lines. These dots and lines have been found in over 600 cave drawings dating back to the Ice Age. Little was known about their purpose until recently.

Amateur archaeologist Ben Bacon spent years attempting to decode the abstract markings on the paintings, which experts believed to be a form of "proto-writing," reports The Guardian. He, along with a group of researchers, released a report identifying the drawings as means of artistic expression as well as record-keeping for animals' reproductive cycles.

They also deduced that in tracking reproductive cycles, early hunter-gatherers were following mating seasons by lunar month, BBC reports. "The results show that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and marks to record information about major ecological events within that calendar," explains Paul Pettitt of Durham University, one of the researchers who contributed to the report.
How was the discovery made?

Bacon was the first to see a pattern within the markings. About his process, he said, "Using information and imagery of cave art available via the British Library and on the internet, I amassed as much data as possible and began looking for repeating patterns." Bacon collaborated with researchers from Durham University and University College London (UCL) to release the findings in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.

The most common markings were dots, lines, and a symbol similar to the letter "Y." He noticed that the "Y" marking appeared in a number of animal species drawings and came to the conclusion that it was a symbol representing giving birth. The symbol was depicted in between dot and line markings, which "constitute numbers denoting months," per the report. The "Y"'s position within the dots and lines "denotes month of parturition," or birth-giving.

With the belief that the markings represented ecologically significant events per the lunar calendar, the researchers set out to map it, explains The Independent. "Lunar calendars are difficult because there are just under 12-and-a-half lunar months in a year, so they do not fit neatly into a year," explained Tony Freeth, professor at UCL and researcher on the study. He added that early humans would have used a "'meteorological calendar' — tied to changes in temperature, not astronomical events such as the equinoxes."

In turn, the researchers conceptualized a calendar that "helped to explain why the system that [Bacon] had uncovered was so universal across wide geography and extraordinary time scales."

Why is this discovery important?

The breakthrough shows that our ancestors may have had more in common with us than previously understood. This research falls under the area known as palaeopsychology, which is "the scientific investigation of the psychology that underpins the earliest development of human visual culture," per BBC.

"The implications are that Ice Age hunter-gatherers didn't simply live in their present, but recorded memories of the time when past events had occurred and used these to anticipate when similar events would occur in the future," remarked another contributing researcher, Robert Kentridge, from Durham University. This discovery can be tied to the evolution of modern humans. "We're able to show that these people — who left a legacy of spectacular art in the caves ... also left a record of early timekeeping that would eventually become commonplace among our species," Pettitt said.

"As we probe deeper into their world, what we are discovering is that these ancient ancestors are a lot more like us than we had previously thought," commented Bacon. "These people, separated from us by many millennia, are suddenly a lot closer."

1980s NASA Satellite Crashes Back to Earth Over Bering Sea


George Dvorsky
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Artist’s depiction of ERBS.

A 2.7-ton defunct satellite came down over the Bering Sea on January 8 near the Aleutian Islands, and while most of it burned up in the atmosphere, NASA says it’s likely that some pieces reached the surface.

NASA says its Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) made its reentry at 11:04 p.m. ET on Sunday, January 8, with Space Force’s Space Track confirming a reentry near the Aleutian Islands, as reported in SpaceNews. The 5,400-pound research satellite had spent the last 38 years in low Earth orbit, having been delivered to space on October 5, 1984 by the Space Shuttle Challenger. The ERBS mission was only supposed to last for two years, but it eked out a 21-year career, having been retired in 2005.

While it was in operation, ERBS gathered data on Earth’s energy budget, that is, the balance between the amount of solar energy that our planet receives and the amount it radiates back to space. Three instruments aboard the spacecraft were used to measure stratospheric concentrations of water vapor, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and various aerosols. ERBS boosted our understanding of climate and ozone layer health, and it contributed directly to the adoption of the 1987 Montreal Protocol Agreement limiting the use of damaging chlorofluorocarbons (CFS), according to NASA.

NASA “expected most of the satellite to burn up as it traveled through the atmosphere, but for some components to survive the reentry,” as the space agency explained in its statement. An earlier version of its post assessed the odds of potentially harmful debris reaching the ground at 1 in 9,400. There are no reports of injury or damage as a result of the falling debris.

This latest satellite reentry represents the old way of doing things, both in terms of the time it took the satellite to deorbit after retirement and the risk it posed to people on the ground. In September 2022, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission adopted a new five-year rule for the deorbiting of defunct satellites, a move designed to decrease the amount of space junk and minimize chances of in-space collisions. In addition, a 2019 update to U.S. government orbital debris mitigation standard practices states that the “risk of human casualty from surviving components” should be less than 1 in 10,000.

ERBS violates both of these rules, but obviously these policies weren’t in place when ERBS launched to space in 1984; these sorts of things are to be expected for legacy spacecraft, though on a decreasing basis. Or at least, for satellite and launch providers who adhere to these guidelines, whether they be domestic or international. Indeed, China designed its Long March 5B rocket such that it cannot perform a controlled reentry—a decision that has now threatened human life and property on four different occasions, the most recent in November 2022.

More on this story: China’s Wayward Rocket Has Disintegrated Over the Pacific Ocean

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NASA Begins Inspection of Orion Spacecraft, Freshly Returned From the Moon


George Dvorsky
Mon, January 9, 2023

Orion at at NASA’s Multi-Payload Processing Facility in Florida.

The Artemis 1 demonstration mission ended with a Pacific Ocean splash on December 11, but the task of evaluating the returned capsule, including its heat shield and internal payloads, has only begun.

Orion survived its historic 1.4-million-mile journey to the Moon and back, but it now needs to survive an entirely different test: the scrutiny of NASA engineers. The uncrewed capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean in mid-December and was transported to Naval Base San Diego following its recovery. A truck delivered the capsule to Kennedy Space Center in Florida on December 30, where it’s now being de-serviced at NASA’s Multi-Payload Processing Facility.

A NASA photo taken on January 2 shows the capsule in the inspection bay, with several engineers crawling beneath the spacecraft to take a closer look at its heat shield. This was done in preparation for removing the heat shield entirely and transporting it to a different facility for detailed inspections, NASA explained in a statement.

The heat shield took the brunt as it protected the capsule from 5,000-degree temperatures during reentry. Orion made history as being the fastest human-rated spacecraft to return from the Moon, hitting the atmosphere at speeds reaching 24,600 miles per hour (39,590 kilometers per hour). The performance and integrity of the heat shield is critical to the Orion system and the Artemis program as a whole, which seeks to return humans to the lunar surface later this decade. The Artemis 1 demonstration mission tested both the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft, as NASA now sets its sights on Artemis 2—a repeat of Artemis 1 but with astronauts aboard.

Related: 7 Things We Learned From NASA’s Wildly Successful Artemis 1 Mission

NASA technicians also removed external avionics boxes and are in the process of inspecting the capsule’s windows and the thermally protected back shell panels, which cover the spacecraft. Five airbags, now deflated, can still be seen atop the capsule. Those airbags kept Orion floating right-side-up after splashdown.

An important next step will be to extract air samples from within the capsule. Orion will then be fitted into a service stand that will allow technicians to access the interior. After opening the hatch for the very first time, technicians will remove internal avionics boxes and internal payloads, including the three manikins—Campos, Helga, and Zohar—who came along for the journey. NASA plans to reuse the avionics boxes for the Artemis 2 mission.

The de-servicing and inspecting of Orion will take months to complete, with other next steps including the removal of hazardous commodities and running acoustic vibrations tests at at NASA Glenn’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. Orion will eventually get its report card, allowing NASA to make any necessary changes in preparation for the crewed Artemis 2 mission, which won’t happen any earlier than late 2024.

More: See the Best Images from the Thrilling Artemis 1 Splashdown

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