How Black communities cope with trauma triggered by police brutality

Deion Scott Hawkins, Assistant Professor of Argumentation & Advocacy, Emerson College
Sun, March 26, 2023 

A portrait of Tyre Nichols at the entrance of the church where his funeral was held in Memphis, Tenn., on Feb. 1, 2023. Lucy Garrett/Getty Images

The release of footage showing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police and protests in Atlanta have renewed public debate on the issues of police brutality and police reform.

For some people, seeing is believing, and the circulation of videos documenting police violence is valued as a tool of accountability.

But for many in the Black community, which studies show is disproportionately affected by police brutality, viewing videos of and having conversations about police violence can have several adverse effects, including psychological distress and trauma.
What is trauma?

The American Psychological Association defines trauma as “any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning.”

In her seminal book “Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror,” published in 1992, Dr. Judith Lewis Herman notes that encountering a traumatic event permanently alters one’s perceptions of safety.

To prepare for a threat, these individuals develop intense feelings of fear and anger. These changes in emotional state are usually biological, as shifts in attention, perception and emotion are normal physiological reactions to a perceived threat.

This is known as our “fight or flight response.”

Trauma can manifest itself in various ways. For example, on some occasions, traumatic events are known to lead to feelings of depression and intense sadness and episodes of helplessness.

Additionally, trauma is known to increase one’s state of hypervigilance, or the elevated state of constantly assessing potential threats in the area. This state of elevated alertness often creates anxiety around dying and can have physiological impacts on the body, such as sweating and elevated heart rate.
Police brutality and Black trauma

As a critical scholar and researcher, I use trauma-informed interview techniques to better understand the intersections of police brutality and mental health in the Black community. My research focuses on those most affected, and that research highlights the human experience.

There is always a face behind the statistic.

Thus, my work typically uses critical race theory, as it focuses on the perspectives of marginalized people. For example, my study published in the Journal of Health Communication explored how stories of police brutality are circulated within the Black community and how these stories affect mental health.

Through dozens of interviews, I discovered three key ways in which trauma is triggered by incidents of police brutality that often appear in Black communities.

Valerie Castile stands by a portrait of her son, Philando Castile, on July 6, 2020. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Intense sadness, hypervigilance and sense of helplessness

The excerpts below are direct quotations from members of the Black community whom I interviewed as part of a larger research project. This study was conducted in Washington, D.C., in 2018, but its findings are still relevant, as it reveals how police brutality directly fuels trauma in the Black community.

Because of research protections and protocol, pseudonyms are used, and no other identifying information can be published.

1. Intense sadness

When asked about feelings after viewing videos or images of brutality, every interviewee indicated intense sadness as the primary emotion. This sadness often affected how individuals went about their day, especially work-related activities.
Darius

I remember I walked into work, face cut up and people were like, “What’s wrong? What happened?” I told them I had been in a fight. But really, I had been beat up by a police officer who assumed I was someone else. I appreciated them asking me if I was OK, but I wasn’t really comfortable telling them, you know? We had previous conversations that let me know they didn’t really think Black lives mattered. After Philando, I had to take a sick day to recover. That’s how sad I was, man.
Chanelle

Philando Castile. I was rrreealllly sad. Philando was the boiling point. I cracked. I literally had to leave my desk at work and take a break. When I came back, my white co-workers told me I was overreacting because I didn’t know him, which pissed me off. What they don’t get is that Philando could be anyone in my family. It’s not just Philando, it’s that I fear my brothers could be shot in cold blood at any moment. That’s why I was so damn sad.

2. Hypervigilance

Interviewees also discussed their chronic fear of dying at the hands of law enforcement. In turn, this fear prompts a permanent state of hypervigilance or hyperalertness; many members of the Black community constantly feel they are going to die if they encounter a police officer.
Mary

Whenever I see cops, I tense up. One time, cops pulled up to me when I was in a car and my friend looked at me with the straightest face and said, “One of us is about to die.” I was so shocked, and I said, “That’s not funny.” But he was serious. He really thought one of us was going to die.

Each headstone in Minneapolis’ ‘Say Their Names’ cemetery represents a Black American killed by police – deaths that create a ripple effect of pain felt in Black communities nationwide. Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Luke

There is not a single time where I can sit in a car and hear a siren or see a cop light flash, that I’m not fearful. I imagine it’s like what soldiers feel when they hear anything that sounds like a bomb. When I hear sirens, I start to look around and hope that someone else is around. Because, if I were to get shot, I would want someone to be able to tell the truth. People are straight up dropping at the hands of police. I never want to be in that situation.

Corey

I’m always scared and alert, honestly. I walk around on campus, and I use my iPad to listen to music. I always have my iPad with me. I’m afraid the police are going to see me holding my iPad and assume it’s something else, and before I have time to explain what it is, I’m afraid I would be shot. I always have my headphones in, too. I replay this terrible scenario in my head over and over again. A cop is yelling at me to stop, but since my headphones are in, I can’t hear him and keep walking. He thinks I am running away and shoots me in my back.

3. Sense of helplessness

Adding to sadness and hyperalertness, many Black Americans also feel they have little control over interactions with police and cannot change the outcome. This is true regardless of their tone, behavior or actions. This is known as helplessness, a known symptom of trauma.

Lena

It’s a sad reality to accept that no matter how you dress, how you talk, a police officer will always judge you and think you’re a threat. I don’t think we have control over if we are going to get beat or not. Black folks could literally read a how-to-survive book and do every step, but cops would still find some reason to make the situation worse. We are always in a Catch-22. If we talk too much, we are talking back. If we talk too little, we are suspicious. I do everything in my power to avoid cops. Listen, someone broke in my house and I refused to call the police. I be damned. Because I think they would have assumed I was the robber and shot me.

Virginia

Every time I see a video, I feel an intense sadness. It feels like you are in the world’s worst … cycle I guess; some kind of sick joke. It’s like, damn, it happened again. Like nothing is ever going to change. Things may look like they are getting better, but then even when they are arrested, the sadness continues.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Deion Scott Hawkins, Emerson College.

Read more:

Tyre Nichols’ death underscores the troubled history of specialized police units

Tyre Nichols: U.S. police violence stems from a long history of fighting ‘internal enemies’

Black police officers aren’t colorblind – they’re infected by the same anti-Black bias as American society and police in general

What is mRNA? The messenger molecule that's been in every living cell for billions of years is the key ingredient in some COVID-19 vaccines

Penny Riggs,

 Associate Professor of Functional Genomics and Associate Vice President for Research, Texas A&M University
Sat, March 25, 2023 

MRNA is an important messenger, carrying the instructions for life from DNA to the rest of the cell. ktsimage/iStock via Getty Images Plus

One surprising star of the coronavirus pandemic response has been the molecule called mRNA. It’s the key ingredient in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. But mRNA itself is not a new invention from the lab. It evolved billions of years ago and is naturally found in every cell in your body. Scientists think RNA originated in the earliest life forms, even before DNA existed.

Here’s a crash course in just what mRNA is and the important job it does.
Meet the genetic middleman

You probably know about DNA. It’s the molecule that contains all of your genes spelled out in a four-letter code – A, C, G and T.

DNA is found inside the cells of every living thing. It’s protected in a part of the cell called the nucleus. The genes are the details in the DNA blueprint for all the physical characteristics that make you uniquely you.


But the information from your genes has to get from the DNA in the nucleus out to the main part of the cell – the cytoplasm – where proteins are assembled. Cells rely on proteins to carry out the many processes necessary for the body to function. That’s where messenger RNA, or mRNA for short, comes in.

Sections of the DNA code are transcribed into shortened messages that are instructions for making proteins. These messages – the mRNA – are transported out to the main part of the cell. Once the mRNA arrives, the cell can produce particular proteins from these instructions.

The double-stranded DNA sequence is transcribed into an mRNA code so the instructions can be translated into proteins. Alkov/iStock via Getty Images Plus

The structure of RNA is similar to DNA but has some important differences. RNA is a single strand of code letters (nucleotides), while DNA is double-stranded. The RNA code contains a U instead of a T – uracil instead of thymine. Both RNA and DNA structures have a backbone made of sugar and phosphate molecules, but RNA’s sugar is ribose and DNA’s is deoxyribose. DNA’s sugar contains one less oxygen atom and this difference is reflected in their names: DNA is the nickname for deoxyribonucleic acid, RNA is ribonucleic acid.

Identical copies of DNA reside in every single cell of an organism, from a lung cell to a muscle cell to a neuron. RNA is produced as needed in response to the dynamic cellular environment and the immediate needs of the body. It’s mRNA’s job to help fire up the cellular machinery to build the proteins, as encoded by the DNA, that are appropriate for that time and place.

The process that converts DNA to mRNA to protein is the foundation for how the cell functions.

[Research into coronavirus and other news from science Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter.]
Programmed to self-destruct

As the intermediary messenger, mRNA is an important safety mechanism in the cell. It prevents invaders from hijacking the cellular machinery to produce foreign proteins because any RNA outside of the cell is instantaneously targeted for destruction by enzymes called RNases. When these enzymes recognize the structure and the U in the RNA code, they erase the message, protecting the cell from false instructions.

The mRNA also gives the cell a way to control the rate of protein production – turning the blueprints “on” or “off” as needed. No cell wants to produce every protein described in your whole genome all at once.

Messenger RNA instructions are timed to self-destruct, like a disappearing text or snapchat message. Structural features of the mRNA – the U in the code, its single-stranded shape, ribose sugar and its specific sequence – ensure that the mRNA has a short half-life. These features combine to enable the message to be “read,” translated into proteins, and then quickly destroyed – within minutes for certain proteins that need to be tightly controlled, or up to a few hours for others.

Once the instructions vanish, protein production stops until the protein factories receive a new message.
Harnessing mRNA for vaccination

All of mRNA’s characteristics made it of great interest to vaccine developers. The goal of a vaccine is to get your immune system to react to a harmless version or part of a germ so when you encounter the real thing you’re ready to fight it off. Researchers found a way to introduce and protect an mRNA message with the code for a portion of the spike protein on the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s surface.

Messenger RNA vaccines get the recipient’s body to produce a viral protein that then stimulates the desired immune response. Trinset/iStock via Getty Images Plus

The vaccine provides just enough mRNA to make just enough of the spike protein for a person’s immune system to generate antibodies that protect them if they are later exposed to the virus. The mRNA in the vaccine is soon destroyed by the cell – just as any other mRNA would be. The mRNA cannot get into the cell nucleus and it cannot affect a person’s DNA.

Although these are new vaccines, the underlying technology was initially developed many years ago and improved incrementally over time. As a result, the vaccines have been well tested for safety. The success of these mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, in terms of safety and efficacy, predicts a bright future for new vaccine therapies that can be quickly tailored to new, emerging threats. Early-stage clinical trials using mRNA vaccines have already been conducted for influenza, Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus. Certainly, creative scientists are already considering and developing therapies for other diseases or disorders that might benefit from an approach similar to that used for the vaccines against COVID-19.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. Like this article? 

It was written by: Penny Riggs, Texas A&M University.

Read more:


Coronavirus: A new type of vaccine using RNA could help defeat COVID-19


COVID-19 vaccines were developed in record time – but are these game-changers safe?


Designer proteins that package genetic material could help deliver gene therapy

Penny Riggs has received funding from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute for Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.

Who owns the moon? A space lawyer answers

Frans von der Dunk, Professor of Space Law, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

THE CONVERSATION
Sun, March 26, 2023 

Edwin E. 'Buzz' Aldrin Jr. poses for a photograph beside the U.S. flag deployed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. Neil A. Armstrong/NASA/AP Photo

Most likely, this is the best-known picture of a flag ever taken: Buzz Aldrin standing next to the first U.S. flag planted on the Moon. For those who knew their world history, it also rang some alarm bells. Only less than a century ago, back on Earth, planting a national flag in another part of the world still amounted to claiming that territory for the fatherland. Did the Stars and Stripes on the moon signify the establishment of an American colony?

When people hear for the first time that I am a lawyer practicing and teaching something called “space law,” the question they ask most frequently, often with a big smile or a twinkle in the eye, is: “So tell me, who owns the moon?”

Of course, claiming new national territories had been very much a European habit, applied to non-European parts of the world. In particular the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the English created huge colonial empires. But while their attitude was very Europe-centric, the legal notion that planting a flag was an act of establishing sovereignty quickly stuck and became accepted worldwide as part and parcel of the law of nations.

Obviously, the astronauts had more important things on their mind than contemplating the legal meaning and consequences of that planted flag, but luckily the issue had been taken care of prior to the mission. Since the beginning of the space race the United States knew that for many people around the world the sight of a U.S. flag on the Moon would raise major political issues. Any suggestion that the moon might become, legally speaking, part of U.S. backwaters might fuel such concerns, and possibly give rise to international disputes harmful to both the U.S. space program and U.S. interests as a whole.

By 1969, decolonization may have destroyed any notion that non-European parts of the world, though populated, were not civilized and thus justifiably made subject to European sovereignty – however, there was not a single person living on the moon; even life itself was absent.

Still, the simple answer to the question of whether Armstrong and Aldrin by way of their small ceremony did transform the moon, or at least a major part thereof, into U.S. territory turns out to be “no.” They, nor NASA, nor the U.S. government intended the U.S. flag to have that effect.
The first outer space treaty

Most importantly, that answer was enshrined in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which both the United States and the Soviet Union as well as all other space-faring nations, had become a party. Both superpowers agreed that “colonization” on Earth had been responsible for tremendous human suffering and many armed conflicts that had raged over the last centuries. They were determined not to repeat that mistake of the old European colonial powers when it came to decide on the legal status of the moon; at least the possibility of a “land grab” in outer space giving rise to another world war was to be avoided. By that token, the moon became something of a “global commons” legally accessible to all countries – two years prior to the first actual manned moon landing.

So, the U.S. flag was not a manifestation of claiming sovereignty, but of honoring the U.S. taxpayers and engineers who made Armstrong, Aldrin, and third astronaut Michael Collins’ mission possible. The two men carried a plaque that they “came in peace for all mankind,” and of course Neil’s famous words echoed the same sentiment: his “small step for man” was not a “giant leap” for the United States, but “for mankind.” Furthermore, the United States and NASA lived up to their commitment by sharing the moon rocks and other samples of soil from the lunar surface with the rest of the world, whether by giving them away to foreign governments or by allowing scientists from all over the globe to access them for scientific analysis and discussion. In the midst of the Cold War, this even included scientists from the Soviet Union.

Case closed, no need for space lawyers anymore then? No need for me to prepare University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s space law students for further discussions and disputes on the lunar law, right?
No space lawyers needed?

Not so fast. While the legal status of the Moon as a “global commons” accessible to all countries on peaceful missions did not meet any substantial resistance or challenge, the Outer Space Treaty left further details unsettled. Contrary to the very optimistic assumptions made at the time, so far humankind has not returned to the moon since 1972, making lunar land rights largely theoretical.

This 1964 file photo from the World’s Fair in the borough of Queens in New York shows a views of a moon colony in the Futurama 2 ride put together by General Motors. AP Photo

That is, until a few years ago when several new plans were hatched to go back to the moon. In addition at least two U.S. companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, which have serious financial backing, have started targeting asteroids for the purpose of mining their mineral resources. Geek note: Under the aforementioned Outer Space Treaty, the moon and other celestial bodies such as asteroids, legally speaking, belong in the same basket. None of them can become the “territory” of one sovereign state or another.

The very fundamental prohibition under the Outer Space Treaty to acquire new state territory, by planting a flag or by any other means, failed to address the commercial exploitation of natural resources on the moon and other celestial bodies. This is a major debate currently raging in the international community, with no unequivocally accepted solution in sight yet. Roughly, there are two general interpretations possible.
So you want to mine an asteroid?

Countries such as the United States and Luxembourg (as the gateway to the European Union) agree that the moon and asteroids are “global commons,” which means that each country allows its private entrepreneurs, as long as duly licensed and in compliance with other relevant rules of space law, to go out there and extract what they can, to try and make money with it. It’s a bit like the law of the high seas, which are not under the control of an individual country, but completely open to duly licensed law-abiding fishing operations from any country’s citizens and companies. Then, once the fish is in their nets, it is legally theirs to sell.

OSIRIS-REx will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The mission launched Sept. 8, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. As planned, the spacecraft will reach Bennu in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.

  NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/ASSOCIATED PRESS

On the other hand, countries such as Russia and somewhat less explicitly Brazil and Belgium hold that the moon and asteroids belong to humanity as a whole. And therefore the potential benefits from commercial exploitation should somehow accrue for humanity as a whole – or at least should be subjected to a presumably rigorous international regime to guarantee humanity-wide benefits. It’s a bit like the regime originally established for harvesting mineral resources from the deep seabed. Here, an international licensing regime was created as well as an international enterprise, which was to mine those resources and generally share the benefits among all countries.

While in my view the former position certainly would make more sense, both legally and practically, the legal battle by no means is over. Meanwhile, the interest in the moon has been renewed as well – at least China, India and Japan have serious plans to go back there, raising the stakes even higher. Therefore, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln we will need to teach our students about these issues for many years to come. While ultimately it is up to the community of states to determine whether common agreement can be reached on either of the two positions or maybe somewhere in between, it is of crucial importance that agreement can be reached one way or another. Such activities developing without any law that is generally applicable and accepted would be a worst-case scenario. While not a matter of colonization anymore, it may have all the same harmful results.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:

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Mining the moon for rocket fuel to get us to Mars


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Frans von der Dunk has a consultancy addressing issues of space law and policy.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS 

2 megamouth sharks caught on video for the 1st time ever


Joshua A. Krisch
Fri, March 24, 2023 

Stunning new footage shows a pair of extremely elusive megamouth sharks (Megachasma pelagios) swimming together off the coast of San Diego.

The video, captured by fishers in early September 2022, may show the deep-dwelling beasts in a courtship ritual and is one of just a handful of sightings of the creatures alive. In the 50 years since the species was discovered, there have been just 273 sightings, most involving sharks caught in fishing gear. Only five megamouth sharks have been spotted swimming freely in the wild. Never before had two been seen swimming together.

Now, a new study analyzing the footage suggests that the two sharks were engaging in courtship or mating behaviors.


"The curiosity of these fishermen benefited the field as a whole," study lead author Zachary Skelton, a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, told Live Science. "The 10 minutes the fishermen had with the sharks contains the only knowledge we have on megamouth shark sociality."

The elusive megamouth shark can grow to be 18 feet (5.5 meters) in length and weigh up to 2,679 pounds (1,215 kilograms). These bulbous-headed creatures are filter feeders that sift food from the water captured in their enormous mouths. Yet, despite their size and distinctive features, megamouth sharks evaded detection until 1976.

Related: The biggest sharks in the world

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"It's pretty darn rare to see one, let alone two at a time swimming at the surface during the day," Christopher G. Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at California State University Long Beach, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. To better understand megamouth shark behavior, Skelton and colleagues analyzed the footage in light of whatever they could find in the literature on the social behaviors of other filter-feeder sharks, such as basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) and whale sharks (Rhincodon typus). "Because the encounter was so brief, we had to heavily rely on other studies and species to try and make sense of why the sharks were at the surface, why they were together, and why at that specific place," Skelton said.

Visible male sex organs known as claspers suggested the smaller of the two sharks was male. And although the team could not confirm the sex of the other shark, they determined that it was probably female, based on a lack of obvious claspers and a series of scars on its back similar to the mating scars found on female sharks from other species.

Given that the male was closely following the putative female shark and that neither shark was seen attempting to feed, the researchers concluded that the footage likely reflects a courtship display. The results were published March 13 in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.

"This anecdotal observation has all the hallmarks of precopulatory mating behavior," Carl Meyer, an associate researcher at the Shark Research Lab at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "We still know comparatively little about the biology and ecology of megamouth sharks so this observation is an interesting addition to our understanding of this species."

Neil Hammerschlag, director of the Shark Research & Conservation Program at the University of Miami, who was not involved in the study, was similarly impressed. "The paper does a good job of speculating what could be occurring," he told Live Science in an email. "The social behavior of [megamouth] sharks is still a bit of a black box to scientists, and observations like these are exciting, generating a bunch of questions and theories that can be further studied."

2,000 mummified ram heads left in honor of Egypt's most powerful pharaoh are found inside an ancient temple

Bethany Dawson
Sun, March 26, 2023 

In this article:
Ramesses II
Third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt

Some of the 2,000 ram heads discovered in Egypt.Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

More than 2,000 mummified ram heads have been discovered in Egypt.


Archaeologists at the King Ramses II Temple of Abydos found the mummified remains.


They also discovered mummified dogs, wild goats, cows, deer and an ostrich.

More than 2,000 mummified ram heads and a palatial Old Kingdom structure have been uncovered by archaeologists at the King Ramses II Temple of Abydos.

The finds, located roughly 270 miles south of Cairo, come from a period of over 1,000 years, from the Sixth Dynasty to the Heroic Age, making some of the discoveries over 4,300 years old.

One of the ancient ram heads discoveredEgyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

In addition to the ancient ram's head, archaeologists from the University of New York also discovered a group of mummified dogs, wild goats, cows, deer and an ostrich.- ADVERTISEMENT -


The mummified remains are believed to have been left at the site to honor Ramses II about 1,000 years after his death, the Egyptian Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities said.

It is thought that the rams and other animals would have been used as offerings during worship of the rams in Abydus during the Bipidus period, Dr Sameh Iskandar, head of the mission added in a statement.

View of a new area uncovered by a team from New York University- Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at the temple of Ramesses II in Abydos, Sohag Governorate, Egypt, in this handout image released on March 25, 2023.The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities/Handout via REUTERS

In addition to the wealth of animal remains, the archaeological team also uncovered a "huge building" with walls roughly five meters thick from the Old Kingdom's sixth dynasty.

The structure contained a number of statues, tree remains, leather shoes, clothing, and papyri.

The discovery could help "reestablish the sense of the ancient landscape of Abydos before the construction of the Ramses II temple," Iskandar said, per Reuters.

Ancient zodiac paintings on Egyptian temple see the light of day after 2,200 years

Owen Jarus
Thu, March 23, 2023 

This zodiac sign depicts Sagittarius. While the zodiac signs at Esna were known before cleaning was done the work allows them to be seen more clearly. Here we see a centaur with a scorpion's tail aiming a bow and arrow.

Gorgeous zodiac paintings decorating the roof and walls of the 2,200-year-old Temple of Esna in southern Egypt have been revealed during a restoration project that's clearing away two millennia's worth of grime, soot and bird poop, researchers announced March 20.

Restorers painstakingly cleaned the zodiac artworks, many of which were painted onto the temple's ceiling. Other restored images include depictions of the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, as well as images of stars and constellations used by the ancient Egyptians to help measure time, researchers said in a statement. The team also conserved ancient images of snakes, crocodiles and hybrid creatures, such as a snake with a ram's head.

While the existence of the zodiac and some of the other images at the temple were already known to researchers, the cleaning and conservation have allowed the artwork to be seen in more detail. The restoration work also revealed previously unknown inscriptions, team co-leader Christian Leitz, an Egyptology professor at the University of Tübingen in Germany, told Live Science in an email.

Related: Roman 'zodiac' coin with cancer sign unearthed in Israel

This zodiac sign depicts Scorpio. With the cleaning and restoration the colors of the signs are more visible.. Here we see a scorpion with claws at the front, eight legs, and a sharp stinger at the end of it's tail.
Ancient zodiac

"The zodiac itself is part of Babylonian astronomy and does not appear in Egypt until Ptolemaic times," Leitz said in the statement. The Ptolemies were a dynasty of rulers descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals, who ruled Egypt between 304 B.C. and 30 B.C, Leitz said. It may have been the ancient Greeks who introduced the zodiac to Egypt.

After its introduction, the zodiac became popular in ancient Egypt. "The zodiac was used to decorate private tombs and sarcophagi and was of great importance in astrological texts, such as horoscopes found inscribed on pottery sherds," Daniel von Recklinghausen, a researcher at the University of Tübingen, said in the statement. While few ancient Egyptian temples had zodiacs depicted on them, a well-known example is a temple at Dendera, which has the zodiac along with images of five of the planets, Leitz told Live Science.

Images of hybrid animals were revealed in better detail during the cleaning and restoration work. Here we see a bird-like creature with four wings, a dog-like head, and a snake for a tail. There are also two winged serpents flying about and one snake-like creature at the bottom.

The zodiac used at Esna is similar to the zodiac used today, Leitz told Live Science. "There is no difference apart from some depictions of the signs," he noted.

From the photos the team released, it is clear that the images are much more visible than before the restoration, Juan Antonio Belmonte Avilés, an astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) in Spain who has conducted extensive research on astronomy in ancient Egypt, told Live Science in an email. We will have to wait until more is published until we can tell exactly how much new information the cleaning has provided, said Avilés, who was not involved in the restoration.

related stories

—How old is ancient Egypt?

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The team is in the process of analyzing the new inscriptions, Leitz said. The Temple of Esna is located 37 miles (60 kilometers) south of Luxor (ancient Thebes), the statement notes. Hisham El-Leithy, an archaeologist with at the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, is a co-leader of the team, while Ahmed Emam, a conservation expert at the ministry, led the restoration work.

Previously, archaeologists working on the Temple of Esna restoration project unveiled 46 depictions of goddesses from ancient Egypt. The temple is dedicated to the Egyptian deity Khnum, who is associated with fertility and water.

Chad nationalizes assets by oil giant Exxon, says government

SAM MEDNICK
Fri, March 24, 2023 

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Chad is nationalizing all assets from multinational oil giant Exxon Mobil, including its hydrocarbon and exploration permits, said the government.

″The finance and budget minister must make sure the said decree is implemented from the date of its publishing," said Haliki Choua Mahamat the government's general secretary on state media.

The nationalization of a private company means that all assets are now owned by the government. While this used to happen in the 1960s and 1970s, it hasn't happened recently and doesn't conform to usual legal frameworks in the sector, say energy experts.

Chad began producing oil in 2003 and Exxon has been operating in the country for several decades. It was running the Doba oil project in Chad.

The move could scare away investors from West Africa at a time of growing global energy demand and a decline in foreign investments in the region, said Olufola Wusu, a partner and head of the oil and gas desk at Megathos Law Practice based in Nigeria.

“Expropriation of any sort without compensation is not a step in the right direction, because it is going to erode investor confidence in that particular country and once investors are jittery, they pull back their investment, so regulators and leaders in Africa need to play by the rules,” he said.

The government’s decision came after a long dispute between Exxon and Chad, which rejected the sale of the company’s operations last year.

Tensions have risen in the West African nation in recent months with unprecedented protests mounting against the government of President Mahamat Idriss Deby.

Deby was declared the head of state after his father’s death in April 2021. The son's succession did not follow Chad's constitutional line of succession. Opposition political parties at the time called the handover a coup d’etat, but later agreed to accept Deby as interim leader for 18 months.

———-

Associated Press reporter Chinedu Asadu in Abjua Nigeria contributed

Apache Stronghold Fights for Entire Way of Life in Oak Flats Case


Darren Thompson
Fri, March 24, 2023

Wendsler Nosie (Via Facebook)

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court heard arguments from Apache leaders who are opposing a federal land swap they say will destroy their entire way of life.

The Apache Stronghold — a non-profit organization of San Carlos Apache Tribal citizens — filed suit on January 21, 2021 against a federally approved land deal between the U.S. Forest Service and Resolution Copper, a joint venture of mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP. The land deal, which was included in federal legislation that passed in 2014, swapped the 2,422 acres of federal land above a copper deposit for 5,459 acres of Arizona land owned by Resolution Copper.

Resolution Copper hopes to build a copper mine near a place the Apache and other tribes consider sacred, a ceremonial ground called Chí’chil Biłdagoteel, or “Oak Flat.”- ADVERTISEMENT -

Oak Flat is in the Tonto National Forest, which is the land the federal government is willing to exchange, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It has been protected from mining by Congress for more than 60 years.

If completed, the mine would be nearly 2 miles wide and almost 1,100-feet deep. According to Resolution Copper, the mine would become the largest copper mine in North America and would supply up to a quarter of domestic copper demand per year. The company estimates it will produce as much as 40 billion pounds of copper over 40 years.

The 9th Circuit Court decided in early 2022 that Resolution Copper could proceed with operations while the lawsuit is pending in court. Last November, the court announced that it would rehear Apache Stronghold v. United States “en banc”—meaning in front of a full panel of 11 judges. The en banc hearing was requested by the court, to rehear the case, and is extremely rare, Apache Stronghold’s legal counsel Becket Law told Native News Online last fall. A call to rehear a case happens in less than 0.5 percent of cases the court hears.

In the lawsuit, the Apache Stronghold states,“the Apaches view Oak Flat as a ‘direct corridor’ to the Creator's spirit.” They also argued that the land exchange violates their First Amendment rights and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, where “government should not substantially burden religious exercise without compelling justification.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, the court’s 11 judges questioned both sides about whether the government can do what it wants with federal land, even if it prevents some citizens from fully exercising their religious rights.

"Oak Flat is where my people have come to connect with our Creator for millennia, and we have the right to continue that sacred tradition,” Apache Stronghold Executive Director Wendsler Nosie Sr. said in a statement after the hearing. "Today we stood up in court for that right, determined to stop those who think that our place of worship can be treated differently simply because it lacks four walls and a steeple.”

The hearing in Pasadena brought Apache Stronghold with elders and allies from other Tribes to a ceremony outside the courthouse. Peter Roybal, executive counsel for Chiricahua Apache Nation, lives in Pasadena and traveled to Arizona to transport elders to attend the ceremony.

“We are here to support Oak Flat and the Apache Stronghold,” Roybal, told Native News Online. “We pray the panel of judges have strength, wisdom and good judgment. This is a decades old battle and it has been fought on many fronts, but regardless of today’s outcome, we have seen many people come together with kindness and support.”

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to issue a decision in the next few months.

About the Author: "Darren Thompson (Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe) is a staff reporter for Native News Online who is based in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Thompson has reported on political unrest, tribal sovereignty, and Indigenous issues for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Indian Country Today, Native News Online, Powwows.com and Unicorn Riot. He has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Voice of America on various Indigenous issues in international conversation. He has a bachelor\u2019s degree in Criminology & Law Studies from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "

Contact: dthompson@nativenewsonline.net

NASA investigates veteran Mars orbiter to solve a missing fuel mystery


Robert Lea
Fri, March 24, 2023 

An illustration of the Mars Odyssey Orbiter as it circles Mars

Engineers at NASA and Lockheed Martin Space have performed the difficult task of measuring the fuel supply of the oldest Mars orbiting spacecraft without the use of a fuel gauge, after calculations indicated the probe may be close to running on empty.

Estimates from 2021 and 2022 indicated the Mars Odyssey orbiter has exhausted its propellant much faster than expected, prompting the investigation of the craft's "missing fuel." Eventually, the scientists concluded that the missing fuel was never missing at all! That means Odyssey should have enough propellant to keep going until the end of 2025.

The Mars Odyssey orbiter has been in space for 22 years. During this time, the mission has completed over 94,000 orbits of Mars and delivered a wealth of impressive discoveries such as the detection of water ice under the planet's surface that could be used by future astronauts.

Related: The big reveal: What's ahead in returning samples from Mars?

During its mission, Odyssey has traveled the equivalent of 1.37 billion miles (2.21 billion kilometers) around Mars, which has required careful fuel management. The problem is that the spacecraft, launched in 2001, isn't fitted with a fuel gauge.

That means NASA operators have to rely on mathematics and ingenious tests to calculate how much of the 500 pounds (225.3 kilograms) of hydrazine propellant the craft lifted off from Earth with is left.

The remaining fuel supplies are measured by applying heat to Odyssey's two propellant tanks to see how quickly they reach a set temperature, which indicates how full of fuel they are. Just like an empty teapot which heats up faster than a full one, an empty fuel tank should hit a target temperature more rapidly than a full one, NASA said in a statement.

In 2021, the test indicated that Odyssey had just 11 pounds (5 kg) of propellant left, which is less than mathematical modeling of the probe's fuel consumption predicted. In January 2022, the NASA team used the method again, and again came up with a lower than expected amount of remaining fuel: just 6 pounds (2.8 kg) of hydrazine. If the results are correct, Odyssey would be running on empty in less than a year.

The engineers didn't know how to explain the discrepancy between the test results and the expectations and set out to conduct a deeper investigation, which revealed hitherto unknown details about how the craft's complex fuel system has aged while in flight.
So where did Odyssey's "missing fuel" go?

Following the calculations that indicated the Mars Odyssey Orbiter may be running low on fuel, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists drafted in Lockheed Martin Space engineers, who not only built Odyssey, but also maintain its mission operations and provide engineering support for the craft.

"First, we had to verify the spacecraft was OK," Odyssey's project manager at JPL, Joseph Hunt, said in the statement. "After ruling out the possibility of a leak or that we were burning more fuel than estimated, we started looking at our measuring process."

The combined JPL/Lockheed Martin Space team decided that they needed "fresh eyes" to assess the Odyssey issue. These fresh eyes came in the form of spacecraft propellant estimation consultant, Boris Yendler.

Yendler connected the missing fuel to the fact that, like all spacecraft, Odyssey uses some fuel to keep its systems at optimal operating temperatures and protect them from the cold of space. The consultant wondered if some source on Odyssey was adding heat to its fuel. This would have the effect of causing temperatures to rise faster during the fuel tank heating test, thus giving inaccurate fuel measurements.

The painstaking investigation led to the discovery that heaters along an Odyssey fuel line were warming connected propellant tanks, making them appear emptier than they actually are. Accounting for this in their method of measurement and factoring in more complex fluid dynamics, the team was able to determine that Odyssey has about 9 pounds (4 kg) of hydrazine left.

Mars Odyssey doesn't actually burn through much fuel each day, as solar panels on the craft supply the energy needed to power its systems. Additionally, the probe uses reaction wheels to stay pointed toward Mars during science investigations. These wheels spin inside the spacecraft's body, generating torque that allows Odyssey to maintain its attitude without propellant.

Related stories:

— New evidence for liquid water on Mars suggests the planet is geothermally active

— Mars crater complex shows layers of ice in stunning spacecraft photos

— Melting ice cores on frozen worlds could speed up the search for alien life

Where the hydrazine actually comes in is when Odyssey completes a full orbit and needs to offload increasing momentum in its reaction wheels. The spacecraft does this by releasing tiny precisely measured bursts of propellant via its thrusters.

Thanks to such limited use Odyssey has enough fuel left to last a few more years at least. The team, however, acknowledges that the remaining fuel quantity they calculated may change as they refine their calculations and improve measurement accuracy. Nevertheless, the team is certain that they now understand the craft better than they did previously.

"It's a little like our process for scientific discovery," Odyssey's mission manager at NASA JPL, Jared Call, said in the statement. "You explore an engineering system not knowing what you'll find. And the longer you look, the more you find what you didn't expect."

How to watch Ceres, a dwarf planet 14 times smaller than Pluto, photobomb a spiral galaxy this weekend


Jamie Carter
Sat, March 25, 2023 at 8:00 AM MDT·2 min read

A preview of the dwarf planet Ceres "meeting" spiral galaxy Messier 100 in the night sky

This weekend, you can watch live as the first asteroid ever discovered passes across one of the night sky's most beautiful spiral galaxies.

The Rome-based Virtual Telescope Project will host a livestream starting at 11 p.m. EDT on Sunday, March 26 (03:00 UTC on Monday, March 27), when Ceres will be visible in front of Messier 100 (M100), a stunning example of a grand-design spiral galaxy, according to NASA.

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to NASA, and accounts for nearly a third of the asteroid belt's mass. Initially labeled an asteroid upon its discovery more than 200 years ago, it's been classed as a dwarf planet since 2006, the same year that Pluto was demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet. Ceres is about 14 times smaller than Pluto and is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system.

This weekend, Ceres will appear to "meet" the distant spiral galaxy M100 in the night sky, according to the Virtual Telescope Project, though the two objects will actually be trillions of miles apart.

At the time of the line-of-sight view, Ceres will be about 150 million miles (240 million kilometers) from Earth while M100 is at about 55 million light-years away.

The meeting will take place in the constellation Coma Berenices just a few days after Ceres' opposition, which is when Earth passes between it and the sun. That's great news for skywatchers because Ceres only appears 100% illuminated from Earth when close to opposition. It will shine at magnitude 7, which is just out of view of the naked eye. A pair of stargazing binoculars should reveal Ceres, while a good small telescope will also show M100, according to the Virtual Telescope Project.

Ceres was discovered by astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801. Its average distance from Earth is comparable to that of Mars, and its closeness has inspired some researchers to suggest that in the future it could be a target for human habitats. NASA's Dawn spacecraft visited Ceres from 2015 to 2016, taking some stunning images.

M100's spectacular spiral arms host several small black holes, including the youngest one ever observed in our cosmic neighborhood, according to NASA. M100 was discovered by French astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781.

This story originally appeared on Livescience.

Artificial intelligence could help hunt for life on Mars and other alien worlds

Robert Lea
Sat, March 25, 2023 

a section of the Martian surface covered in rocks

A newly developed machine-learning tool could help scientists search for signs of life on Mars and other alien worlds.

With the ability to collect samples from other planets severely limited, scientists currently have to rely on remote sensing methods to hunt for signs of alien life. That means any method that could help direct or refine this search would be incredibly useful.

With this in mind, a multidisciplinary team of scientists led by Kim Warren-Rhodes of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in California mapped the sparse lifeforms that dwell in salt domes, rocks and crystals in the Salar de Pajonales, a salt flat on the boundary of the Chilean Atacama Desert and Altiplano, or high plateau.

Related: The search for alien life (reference)

Biosignature probability maps from convolutional neural network models and statistical ecology data. The colors in a) indicate the probability of biosignature detection. In b) is a visible image of a gypsum dome geologic feature (left) with biosignature probability maps for various microhabitats (e.g., sand versus alabaster) within it.

Warren-Rhodes then teamed up with Michael Phillips from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and University of Oxford researcher Freddie Kalaitzis to train a machine learning model to recognize the patterns and rules associated with the distribution of life across the harsh region. Such training taught the model to spot the same patterns and rules for a wide range of landscapes — including those that may lie on other planets.

The team discovered that their system could, by combining statistical ecology with AI, locate and detect biosignatures up to 87.5% of the time. This is in comparison to no more than a 10% success rate achieved by random searches. Additionally, the program could decrease the area needed for a search by as much as 97%, thus helping scientists significantly hone in their hunt for potential chemical traces of life, or biosignatures.

"Our framework allows us to combine the power of statistical ecology with machine learning to discover and predict the patterns and rules by which nature survives and distributes itself in the harshest landscapes on Earth," Warren-Rhodes said in a statement. "We hope other astrobiology teams adapt our approach to mapping other habitable environments and biosignatures."

Such machine learning tools, the researchers say, could be applied to robotic planetary missions like that of NASA's Perseverance rover, which is currently hunting for traces of life on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater.

"With these models, we can design tailor-made roadmaps and algorithms to guide rovers to places with the highest probability of harboring past or present life — no matter how hidden or rare," Warren-Rhodes explained.

Picking an analog for Mars on Earth

The team chose Salar de Pajonales as a testing stage from their machine learning model because it is a suitable analog for the dry and arid landscape of modern-day Mars. The region is a high-altitude dry salt lakebed that is blasted with a high degree of ultraviolet radiation. Despite being considered highly inhospitable to life, however, Salar de Pajonales still harbors some living things.

The team collected almost 8,000 images and over 1,000 samples from Salar de Pajonales to detect photosynthetic microbes living within the region's salt domes, rocks and alabaster crystals. The pigments that these microbes secrete represent a possible biosignature on NASA's "ladder of life detection," which is designed to guide scientists to look for life beyond Earth within the practical constraints of robotic space missions.

The team also examined Salar de Pajonales using drone imagery that is analogous to images of Martian terrain captured by the High-Resolution Imaging Experiment (HIRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This data allowed them to determine that microbial life at Salar de Pajonales is not randomly distributed but rather is concentrated in biological hotspots that are strongly linked to the availability of water.

Related stories:

— How artificial intelligence is helping us explore the solar system

— Machine learning spots 8 potential technosignatures

— Tricky alien worlds easier to find when humans and machines team up

Warren-Rhodes' team then trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to recognize and predict large geologic features at Salar de Pajonales. Some of these features, such as patterned ground or polygonal networks, are also found on Mars. The CNN was also trained to spot and predict smaller microhabitats most likely to contain biosignatures.

For the time being, the researchers will continue to train their AI at Salar de Pajonales, next aiming to test the CNN's ability to predict the location and distribution of ancient stromatolite fossils and salt-tolerant microbiomes. This should help it to learn if the rules it uses in this search could also apply to the hunt for biosignatures in other similar natural systems.

After this, the team aims to begin mapping hot springs, frozen permafrost-covered soils and the rocks in dry valleys, hopefully teaching the AI to hone in on potential habitats in other extreme environments here on Earth before potentially exploring those of other planets.

The team's research was published this month in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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