It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
The charity Victim Support’ released a report on Thursday revealing that prolonged delays in the UK court system are leading to severe mental health impacts on survivors of sexual violence. These impacts include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicidal thoughts, and even a suicide attempt.
The report focused on victims of sexual violence whose cases have reached court. It surveyed 40 victim-survivors of sexual violence and specialists and analyzed 38 cases that went through the courts between March and October 2023. It found that in half of the cases, courts waited more than three years after the victim reported the crime to the police to hold the first court date. During these extended delays, many survivors were left without updates, some going months without any communication, adding to the trauma of the initial assault. Crucially, the delays do not end with the first court date. Victim Support found that nearly half (47 percent) of the cases were adjourned, often repeatedly, with little or no explanation given to survivors. These adjournments, often happening at the last minute, left survivors in a perpetual state of anxiety. For some, the impact on their mental health was so severe that they had suicidal thoughts. The report detailed how one young person tried to take their own life as a result of the trauma of going to court.
According to the report, victims also endured re-traumatization during cross-examination. Three-quarters (73 percent) of victims were subjected to questions rooted in rape myths. For example, many were asked what they did to prevent the crime or were accused of seeking revenge. Kate, a victim-survivor of sexual assault, said, “She [defence barrister] was implying a lot of the time that I had made it up … and she asked me what I was wearing and that really didn’t sit right with me because I don’t think it’s about that at all.” Victim Support is calling for an end to these practices that perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
Victim Support CEO Katie Kempen said the report’s findings should act as a wake-up call to the criminal justice system. She stated:
Victim-survivors who go to court are left dealing not only with the impact of the crime, but also their experience of the criminal justice system. The process is re-traumatising people and profoundly damaging their mental health – many regret that they ever reported the crime to the police. This research must be a catalyst for change – victim-survivors are paying way too high a price for justice.
The government has also pledged action to reduce court delays and waiting time. Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones said that “reducing waiting times for victims is a priority for me and this Government, which is why we have committed to fast-tracking rape cases through the justice system stating that the government is exploring ways to fast-track rape cases.” However, for many victim-survivors, this may come too late. Ellie, another victim-survivor of sexual violence, reflected, “In my mind, it doesn’t make sense that this man wouldn’t have done this to someone else over those five years … if this whole process had happened faster, it could have prevented more victims.”
Thousands of migrants in legal limbo as Canada changes course on immigration, India hit
Changes to Canadian immigration law will make it more difficult for international students to gain permanent residency. But Canada’s economy is now creating fewer jobs, and unemployment, at over 6 per cent, remains stubbornly high. It is even higher for temporary residents, at 14 per cent
Matina Stevis-Gridneff
Brampton, Ontario
Published 13.10.24
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau upon his arrival at Bharat Mandapam convention center for the G20 Summit, in New Delhi, India, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023.Reuters
A late-night Uber ride from Toronto’s Pearson Airport into the city usually guarantees a good fare for the driver.
But not for Sachindeep Singh on the evening of September 19.
A few kilometres into the ride, his Uber app stopped working.
Singh’s work permit had expired at midnight and, like Canada, Uber was putting him on notice.
Singh, 23, arrived in Canada as an international student in 2019. His immigration status permitted him to work and offered a path to permanent residence, an approach labelled “study-work-stay” on the Canadian government’s immigration website.
But after inviting millions of newcomers to Canada in recent years to help lift the economy, the government has reversed course amid growing concerns that immigrants are contributing to the country’s deepening challenges around housing, healthcare and other issues.
A series of measures unveiled this year, focused on Canada’s vast temporary residence programme, has imposed barriers that have left hundreds of thousands of migrants like Singh in legal limbo.
Shifting sands
The international student programme that Singh followed has made one route to the Canadian dream of permanent residency, through education, appealing for hundreds of thousands of young people — many of them from India.
International students, who after graduating are eligible for work permits to continue living legally in Canada, represent one major category of temporary residents. Another group is made up of workers who come at the invitation of specific employers, while the smallest cohort are migrants seeking asylum.
The temporary residence programme was ramped up after the coronavirus pandemic, as Canada’s economy struggled to fill a labour shortage.
As a result, nearly three million people living in Canada have some type of temporary immigration status, with 2.2 million arriving in just the past two years, according to government statistics. Temporary residents represent 6.8 per cent of the country’s total population of 41.3 million, up from 3.5 per cent in 2022.
Changes to Canadian immigration law will make it more difficult for international students to gain permanent residency. But Canada’s economy is now creating fewer jobs, and unemployment, at over 6 per cent, remains stubbornly high. It is even higher for temporary residents, at 14 per cent.
Many Canadian cities face a housing affordability crisis, and several provinces have overstretched healthcare systems.
Critics say the large number of temporary residents make these problems worse, and the public mood towards immigrants has soured.
In response, Marc Miller, the country’s immigration minister, has announced a series of cuts to immigration quotas since the start of this year, including lowering the number of student visas issued and capping the number of temporary foreign workers that a company can employ.
As part of the government’s efforts to rein in the temporary residence programme, expiring or expired work permits for many immigrants — like Singh — may not be renewed.
“Immigration, writ large, has been, in part, responsible for preventing us from going into a recession,” Miller told the news media last month. “But I think it’s safe to admit that we have allowed certain aspects of this to get overheated, and probably for too long.”
The government is expected to impose further restrictions next month.
With one in five Canadians born overseas, the country has long been open to immigrants. Conservative and Liberal governments have historically promoted immigration policies meant to bolster the ranks of workers and increase the population.
But that is now shifting. Most Canadians, polls show, believe the country has taken in too many newcomers in too short a period. An August poll, for example, showed that two-thirds of Canadians feel the current immigration policy is letting too many people in.
Many immigrants, however, argue they are unfairly being targeted, saying they were invited to Canada only to face the prospect of having to leave if their work permits are not renewed.
The debate over Canada’s immigration policy has echoes of far more polarised arguments in the US and Europe.
The overwhelming majority of Canada’s immigrants arrived legally, and, despite the recent change of sentiment, political discourse remains broadly civil.
Some experts argue that stresses on the housing market or healthcare reflect chronic underinvestment by the government, rather than the consequences of high immigration rates.
Still, the tension between the influx of immigrants and the economic problems can be seen playing out in places like Brampton, a city near Toronto where many Indian students and temporary workers have settled.
Gurpartap Singh Toor, a local councillor for Brampton and the broader region of Peel, arrived in Canada in 2011 as a migrant. He said the large numbers of newcomers had stretched resources.
The health infrastructure in Brampton — one hospital and a smaller medical centre — is insufficient for the population of around 700,000, Toor said.
Housing availability and costs, he said, have been worsening, partly because unscrupulous landlords rent out small properties to multiple students, charging them hundreds of dollars each and pricing out local families.
The Bank of Canada has said that in parts of Canada popular with temporary residents there is less rental housing and it is more expensive than in regions with a small number of such residents.
But the bank has blamed onerous government regulations, as well as a lack of construction labour, for the low availability of housing.
Study, work, limbo
Canada says it will take a more flexible approach to immigration, allowing people in when they are needed and closing the door when they’re not.
“I’ve said it before and I’m going to state it again: The temporary foreign worker programme is an accordion,” the employment minister, Randy Boissonnault, said at a recent news conference.
“It’s meant to flex with the economy,” he added. “When we have a high number of vacancies we can bring in more people and, as the economy tightens, we close the accordion and we make it harder for people to come in.”
Singh, like others whose work permits have expired, faces dwindling options.
Singh and his family in India spent 40,000 Canadian dollars, or $30,000, on office management and hospitality degrees at a Canadian college, believing it would secure him a stable footing in his adopted country.
He could go back to a Canadian college and pay the higher tuition fees for international students in exchange for being allowed to work and keep seeking permanent residency.
Or he could apply for a visitor’s visa, though it would not give him the legal right to work. He could go back to India, his least appealing possibility, given the years and the money he has invested in Canada.
The limbo facing many temporary residents whose permits have expired, or soon will, is pushing some into harmful or illegal paths, said Gurpreet Malhotra, the chief executive at Indus Community Services.
Some, he said, end up staying illegally and working as cleaners, in warehouses or restaurant kitchens, for a fraction of the minimum wage. A desperate need for money also makes them vulnerable to being recruited by criminal groups, he said.
New York Times News Service
Colombia guerilla group urges delegations not to attend COP16 in Cali
October 12, 2024 Colombian army vehicles and troops have been patrolling the streets of Cali to bolster security for COP16 - Copyright AFP/File JOAQUIN SARMIENTO
A Colombian guerilla group on Saturday urged delegations not to attend the COP16 biodiversity summit beginning in the southwestern city of Cali on October 21, after Bogota launched a military offensive against the rebels.
“Faced with the war with which (the authorities) responded to our desire for peace for COP16, we invite delegates from the national and international community to refrain from attending this event,” the Central General Staff (EMC) group said in a post on social media platform X.
Around 12,000 people, including representatives from some 200 countries, are expected to be at the UN-led conference.
The EMC’s message comes in the wake of a military raid that wounded around 17 people in the village of El Plateado in the Cauca department, where the armed group is active.
A dissident faction of the disbanded FARC guerilla group, the EMC has already threatened the summit, saying in July that it “will fail even if they militarize the city with gringos (Americans).”
Colombian army vehicles and troops have been patrolling the streets of Cali — the closest city to EMC-dominated territory — in a bid to bolster security for COP16, which runs until November 1.
Some 3,500 EMC members are estimated to be active and are involved in the drug trade and illegal mining, as well as fighting both the military and groups competing for trafficking routes and territory.
COP16, which takes place weeks before the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, will assess whether rich countries are making good on their promises to stump up $30 billion a year to help the developing world save its ecosystems.
Mexico Federal Judges Group Votes to End Strike, Keep Protesting
By Jose OrozcoOctober 12, 2024
(Bloomberg) -- A Mexican federal judges association voted to end a nearly two-month strike, resuming activities on Oct. 16, as it continues to protest against former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s judicial reform.
Members of JUFED, as the group is known, voted 684 to 572 to return to work but maintain some protest actions, according to a statement dated Friday. The group said formal talks were needed where concrete actions can be taken on its demands.
The reform calls for around half of Mexico’s judges — including those on the Supreme Court — to run for election in June 2025, with the rest in 2027. Critics including the US, investors and companies say the popular election of judges will erode checks on the ruling Morena party’s power and undermine democracy.
All judges are committed to “the defense of our human rights, separation of powers and the strengthening of the rule of law,” JUFED’s national directors said in the Oct. 11 statement. The group called on Mexico’s Supreme Court to protect “fundamental rights” when it rules on the judicial reform.
The judicial system’s resumption of activities remains in doubt, however, because the vast majority of its employees appeared likely to maintain the strike, the Reforma newspaper reported. Jorge Alejandro Perez Luna, a spokesman for workers in 32 judicial circuits, said on Friday that the suspension of activities would continue, according to Reforma.
Mexico’s judicial council, which administers the system, on Wednesday rejected appeals against the reform and ordered the delivery of judge lists to the Senate in order to call the 2025 elections, Reforma reported separately.
Congress passed the judicial overhaul last month. President Claudia Sheinbaum has said that nothing can stop the overhaul because it was a decision the people of Mexico made by voting for her.
Pope urged at LGBTQ meeting to reverse church ban on gender-affirming care Pope Francis poses for a photo with Michael Sennett, Cynthia Herrick, Nicole Santamaria, Francis DeBernardo, Matthew Myers, Michael Sennett, Laurie Dever, Deacon Raymond Dever, Robert Shine and Brian Flanagan during his meeting with transgender Catholics and supporters at the Vatican, Italy, Oct 12, 2024.
PHOTO: New Ways Ministry/Handout via Reuters
PUBLISHED ON October 12, 2024
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis faced calls to overturn the Catholic Church's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender people on Saturday (Oct 12) when he held talks with LGBTQ activists at the Vatican.
The 80-minute meeting, held privately at the guesthouse where the pope lives, included a Catholic sister who works with LGBTQ people, a member of the transgender community, and a US medical doctor who helps run a clinic providing gender-affirming hormonal care for adults.
"I really wanted to share with Pope Francis about the joy that I have being a transgender Catholic person," Michael Sennett, who took part in the meeting, told Reuters.
Sennett, a transgender man from Boston, said he told the pontiff about "the joy that I get from hormone replacement therapy and the surgeries that I've had that make me feel comfortable in my body".
The unusual encounter was not listed on the Vatican's official agenda of the pope's meetings for the day.
The meeting with around a dozen LGBT activists comes six months after the Vatican's doctrinal office firmly rejected gender-affirming care, saying it "risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception".
LGBTQ groups sharply criticised the Vatican document and said the doctrinal office did not seek input from transgender people about their experiences before rejecting gender-affirming care.
"We expressed that as the church makes policies in this area that it's very important to speak with transgender individuals," said Cynthia Herrick, an endocrinologist at a St. Louis, Missouri, clinic who took part in the papal meeting.
"The pope was very receptive," said Herrick. "He listened very empathetically. He also shared that he always wants to focus on the person, the well-being of the person."
Francis, who is 87, has been credited with leading the Catholic Church into taking a more welcoming approach towards the LGBTQ community, and has allowed priests to bless same-sex couples on a case-by-case basis.
But earlier this year he also used a highly derogatory Italian term about LGBTQ people, for which the Vatican apologised on his behalf.
New Ways Ministry, a US-based advocacy group for LGBTQ Catholics, organised Saturday's event.
"The message really is that we need to listen to the experiences of transgender people," said Sister Jeannine Gramick, the group's co-founder, who asked Francis for the encounter. The meeting "means that the church is coming along, the church is joining the modern era," she said.
Gramick's work with LGBTQ Catholics has attracted the ire of Vatican and US Catholic officials for decades, including Pope Benedict XVI. But she has developed a correspondence with Francis, who first welcomed her for a meeting at the Vatican last year.
The Vatican's press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Saturday's meeting.
In Hiroshima, Nobel Prize brings survivors hope, sense of duty
Kazumi Matsui, right, mayor of Hiroshima, bows at Hiroshima Memorial Cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan, HIROSHIMA, Japan —
Almost eight decades after an atomic bomb devastated her hometown of Hiroshima, Teruko Yahata carries the scar on her forehead from when she was knocked over by the force of the blast.
The U.S. bombs that laid waste to Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945, and to Nagasaki three days later, changed the course of history and left Yahata and other survivors with deep scars and a sense of responsibility toward disarmament.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to the Nihon Hidankyo group of atomic bomb survivors, for its work warning of the dangers of nuclear arms, has given survivors hope and highlighted their work still ahead, Yahata and others said.
"It felt as if a light suddenly shone through. I felt like I could see the light," the 87-year-old said on Saturday, describing her reaction to hearing about the award.
This 1945 photo shows a view of the devastation after the atom bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, Japan.
"This feels like the first step, the beginning of a movement toward nuclear abolition," she told Reuters at the site of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
She was just 8 years old and in the back garden of her home when the bomb hit. Although her house was 2.5 kilometers from the hypocenter, the blast was strong enough to throw her several meters back into her house, she said.
Seventy-nine years later, and a day after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the survivors the prize, a long line formed outside the museum, with dozens of foreign and Japanese visitors queuing up to get in.
A bridge leading into the memorial park was decorated with a yellow sheet and other handmade signs against nuclear weapons. Campaigners gathered signatures for nuclear abolition from those passing by.
Nihon Hidankyo, formed in 1956, has provided thousands of witness accounts, issued resolutions and public appeals, sent delegations to the U.N. and peace conferences, and collected signatures advocating nuclear disarmament.
Yahata, who is not a Nihon Hidankyo member, said it was that drive to gather signatures that finally paid off after bearing little fruit for most of a century.
"It's this amount of sadness and joy that led them to this peace prize. I think it's something very meaningful," she said.
Nihon Hidankyo's co-chair, Toshiyuki Mimaki, said he felt the award meant more responsibility, adding that most atomic bomb survivors were more than 85 years old.
"Rather than feeling purely happy, I feel like I have more responsibility now," he told Reuters, sitting in a Hidankyo office in Hiroshima in front of a map showing the impact of the bomb on the city.
In rural areas the group is on the verge of falling apart, the 82-year-old said. "The big challenge now is what to do going forward."
For Japan's atom bomb survivors, Nobel & reckoning: Nihon Hidankyo plea to abolish nuclear weapons
The group was honoured by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”
Hannah Beech, Hisako Ueno, Kiuko Notoya
Published 13.10.24 People take pictures of the preserved Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima on Saturday, a day after the Nihon Hidankyo won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.Reuters
Cities blasted to rubble. Burned bodies and flayed flesh. Invisible waves of radiation coursing through the air. And the indelible image of a mushroom cloud.
The atomic bombs dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed the world what an apocalypse looks like. Tens of thousands of people died in the immediate aftermath.
But some emerged from the devastation. Struggling with survivors’ guilt and sick with illnesses caused by the radiation, they were shunned for years as living reminders of the human capacity to engineer horror.
On Friday, Nihon Hidankyo, a collective of Japanese atomic bomb survivors, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for its decades-long campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
The group was honoured by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.
The survivors of the bombings — more than 100,000 are still living — “help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the committee chairman, said.
The Nobel committee noted that although nuclear weapons have not been used since the Japanese cities were attacked by American bombers in August 1945, nuclear powers are modernising their arsenals and other countries are trying to join the nuclear club.
The committee did not name any specific nations. But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And concerns are growing about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and Asia.
“At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves that nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen,” the committee said.
Other Nobel laureates have been awarded the Peace Prize for their campaigns against nuclear weapons, including the chemist turned activist Linus Pauling in 1962 and the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005.
It was nearly 80 years ago, on August 6 and 9, 1945, that American B-29 bombers dropped two atomic weapons, code-named Little Boy and Fat Man, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Nobel committee said that about 120,000 people were killed by the detonations. A similar number died from burns, injuries and radiation-induced diseases in the months and years that followed.
That first and only use of nuclear weapons was followed by the end of World War II, but also by a nuclear weapons arms race. In the deserts of China and Algeria and on the atolls of the South Pacific, nuclear powers tested increasingly more powerful weapons that spewed harmful radiation.
Today, nine countries are considered nuclear powers: the United States, Russia, France, China, Britain, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. There are nearly 13,000 weapons in the global nuclear stockpile, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In Japan, the payloads dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki echoed far beyond the ruined cities. A once martial Japan blossomed into a culture that has dedicated itself, even in its Constitution, to peace. Japanese children flashed peace signs for photos and Olympic ceremonies in Japan featured white doves. But many Japanese felt more comfortable averting their gaze from the hibakusha, or “the people affected by bombs”, as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors are known.
For many in Japan — and in the US — the hibakusha represented something that they didn’t want to see.When Terumi Tanaka, a representative of Nihon Hidankyo, visited the United Nations in 1976, he was shocked to discover that, at the time, the ruination caused by the atomic bombs was not that well known. The United Nations had drastically downplayed the death toll.
“Starting with the inhumane acts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were oppressed by the United States and abandoned by the Japanese government for a long time,” Sueichi Kido, the secretary-general of Nihon Hidankyo and a survivor of the Nagasaki bomb, told NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, on Friday.
When Nihon Hidankyo formed in 1956, its founding declaration described the stigma of outliving nuclear annihilation. “We have survived until now in silence, with our heads down,” the statement said.
In the years after the war, the hibakusha were living evidence of the fact that the US, which occupied Japan after World War II and imposed upon the nation a Constitution that renounced war, had caused the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The hibakusha were also a counternarrative to a Japan that was developing into a high-tech economic giant fuelled, in some cases, by nuclear power. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which led to a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, once again forced a national moment of reflection. Since the nuclear accident, most of Japan’s nuclear reactors remain shuttered.
These days, the hibakusha, whose largest grouping is Nihon Hidankyo, are celebrated for their continued campaign against nuclear weapons despite the obstacles. Many have dedicated their lives to recounting their stories of loss and pain, in an effort to ensure that the world comprehends the profound terror that a nuclear war could bring.
The Nobel committee said that such witness accounts “have contributed greatly to the establishment of a nuclear taboo”.
But that taboo, said Frydnes, the Nobel committee chairman, “is under pressure”.
Henrik Urdal, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said in a statement that threats by both longtime nuclear powers and by newer actors show the crucial timing of the prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo.
Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, gestures as he speaks during an interview with Reuters on the following day of Nihon Hidankyo winning the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, in Hiroshima, western Japan, October 12, 2024
.Reuters
“In an era where automated weapon systems and AI-driven warfare are emerging, their call for disarmament is not just historical, it is a critical message for our future,” Urdal said.
In awarding the peace prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the Nobel committee said that even though the hibakusha are growing old, a new generation of Japanese could campaign for nuclear disarmament.
But Japan’s neighbours include Russia and China.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, the chairman of Nihon Hidankyo, said on Friday that hisforemost wish was for the world to “please abolish nuclear weapons while we are alive”.
Ukraine military recruiters raid bars, restaurants looking for men not registered for conscription
Country has intensified its mobilization drive this year as war with Russia drags on
The Associated Press · Posted: Oct 12, 2024
A sapper of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces takes part in a training session near the front line in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Thursday. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters)
Ukrainian military recruitment officers raided restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Kyiv, checking military registration documents and detaining men who were not in compliance, media and witnesses reported Saturday.
Officers descended on Kyiv's Palace of Sports venue after a concert Friday night by Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy. Video footage aired by local media outlets appears to show officers stationed outside the doors of the concert hall intercepting men as they exit. In the footage, officers appear to be forcibly detaining some men.
Checks were also conducted at Goodwine, an upscale shopping centre, and Avalon, a popular restaurant.
It is unusual for such raids to take place in the capital, and reflects Ukraine's dire need for fresh recruits. All Ukrainian men aged 25-60 are eligible for conscription, and men aged 18-60 are not allowed to leave the country.
He said men felt in danger of being drafted whenever they ventured outside.
"That inner state of always being in danger, it's back again," he told The Associated Press, only giving his first name for fear of retribution. He said his university draft waiver was taken away after Ukraine passed laws in April that both lowered draft-eligible age for men from 27 to 25 and did away with some draft exemptions. WATCH | Thousands of men have fled Ukraine to avoid getting drafted:
Local reports said raids were also conducted in clubs and restaurants across other Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv and Dnipro in eastern and central Ukraine.
Ukraine has intensified its mobilization drive this year. A new law came into effect this spring stipulating that those eligible for military service must input their information into an online system or face penalties. Ukraine reports strikes on a Russian-run oil terminal
Meanwhile, Ukraine's military said on Saturday that it struck a Russian-controlled oil terminal in the partially occupied Luhansk region that provides fuel for Russia's war effort.
"Oil and oil products were stored at this base, which were supplied, in particular, for the needs of the Russian army," Ukraine's General Staff wrote on Telegram.
Russian state media reported that the terminal close to the city of Rovenky had come under attack from a Ukrainian drone and said there were no casualties and that the fire had been extinguished, but did not comment on the extent of any damage.
On Monday, Ukrainian forces said they struck a major oil terminal on the south coast of the Russia-occupied Crimea Peninsula.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shake hands before talks in Berlin on Friday. Kyiv has repeatedly asked its Western partners to allow it to use the long-range weapons they provide to hit targets on Russian soil. (Axel Schmidt/Reuters)
Both sides are facing the issue of how to sustain their costly war of attrition — a conflict that started with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and that shows no signs of a resolution.
Ukraine's aim is to impair Russia's ability to support its front-line units, especially in the eastern Donetsk region where the main Russian battlefield effort is stretching weary Ukrainian forces.
Kyiv is still awaiting word from its Western partners on its repeated requests to use the long-range weapons they provide to hit targets on Russian soil.
Meanwhile, Russia's Defence Ministry said 47 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted and destroyed by its air defence systems overnight into Saturday: 17 over the Krasnodar region, 16 over the Sea of Azov, 12 over the Kursk region and two over the Belgorod region, all of which border Ukraine.
Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Saturday that one person had been killed and 14 wounded in Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks over the previous 24 hours.
In Ukraine, the country's Air Force said air defences had shot down 24 of 28 drones launched overnight against Ukraine.
Zaporizhzhia regional Gov. Ivan Fedorov said two women were wounded Saturday in Russian attacks on the capital of the southern Ukrainian region, also called Zaporizhzhia.
A woman walks next to a house heavily damaged by a Russian airstrike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Saturday. (Reuters)
Hurricane Milton’s Floodwaters Are Hiding a Dirty Secret
By Zahra HirjiOctober 12, 2024
A person walks through flood waters that inundated a neighborhood after Hurricane Milton in Punta Gorda, Florida, on Oct. 10. (Joe Raedle/Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty I)
(Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Milton may have dissipated over the Atlantic Ocean, but the floodwaters it left across Florida still pose a major risk to human health and safety.
Even though the risk of drowning or getting injured in rising, fast-moving water is past, standing water remains treacherous to navigate and likely harbors dangerous diseases. Walking in it should be avoided at all costs, government officials and health experts warn.
“I think water can be deceiving,” says Seema Wadhwa, executive director for environmental stewardship for the healthcare company Kaiser Permanente. Even if the water looks clear, what’s in there is often a mix of “raw human sewage, septic tanks, wastewater,” she says, which means there’s also often “the presence of bacteria, viruses, parasites.” Those can cause a variety of issues from gastrointestinal distress to skin diseases.
Past hurricanes reveal just how harmful floodwaters can be. There was an 11% increase in North Carolina emergency department visits tied to acute gastrointestinal illness in the three weeks following Hurricane Matthew in October 2016 and Florence in September 2018, a 2022 study found. When Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area in 2017, emergency room visits for intestinal infectious diseases spiked by 39%, according to a 2021 analysis.
A few days after Milton made landfall in western Florida near Sarasota as a Category 3 storm, the extent of the flood damage — and what’s in all that water — is coming into view. The hurricane dropped record rainfall in several places, including nearly 19 inches (50 centimeters) in St. Petersburg. Initial reports also show the storm surge in many areas on the western coastline was 5 to 8 feet (1.5 to 2.5 meters) above high-tide marks.
The storm caused issues at wastewater facilities leading to overflows that mixed with Milton’s rain and surge, according to treatment plant operators’ filings to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. On Wednesday night, heavy rains severed a sewer main and caused a spill at the Anastasia Island Wastewater Facility in St. Augustine. Around that same time, some 200,000 gallons of partially treated sewage escaped at the Falkenburg Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility in Tampa. More waste-related spills occurred on Thursday, including an incident at the water treatment plant in Leesburg involving the release of nearly 2 million gallons of untreated waste.
Sewage and other waste introduce bacteria, among other things, into flooding, which can make people sick. For example, it’s possible flood victims can suffer from gastroenteritis, a stomach illness that can result in abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, according to Catharina Giudice, an emergency physician, and climate change and human health fellow at Harvard University’s FXB Center. She also warns of the risk of cuts and wounds getting contaminated.
In Florida, health officials have specifically warned about Vibrio infections, another disease that can be life-threatening. "Vibrio is a bacteria that can cause a serious skin infection and it is related to exposure to salt waters," Giudice explains.
Disease isn’t the only concern. Some affected areas still had debris piled up from Hurricane Helene’s strike a few weeks prior, adding another danger to standing floodwaters. People often don’t account for the dangers of detritus hidden below the surface, but it “can really cause some serious injuries,” says Julia Gohlke, an environmental health professor at Virginia Tech who has researched post-hurricane emergency room visits.
Even after waters recede from their flood stage, they still pose a health risk. Standing water can attract mosquitoes, which Giudice warns can spread diseases like dengue. And waterlogged homes can be hotbeds for mold, which can exacerbate asthma, cause new respiratory issues and trigger headaches, Giudice says. Outcomes can be even worse; a 2023 analysis found visits to emergency departments for mold infections spiked in the year after Hurricane Harvey and led to “severe” problems for patients.
Protests against Israeli attacks on Gaza, Lebanon held across Europe
Demonstrators call for halting support for Israel, cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon
Anadolu staff |12.10.2024
STOCKHOLM / PARIS / BERLIN
Protests against Israel's attacks on Gaza and Lebanon were held in several European cities on Saturday, with hundreds rallying in Stockholm, Paris, and Berlin calling for an immediate cease-fire.
In Stockholm, demonstrators gathered at Odenplan, marching toward the Swedish parliament while chanting slogans, such as "Killer Israel, get out of Palestine" and "Immediate and unconditional ceasefire."
Swedish activist Kajsa Ekis Ekman said that the ongoing violence constitutes genocide, highlighting the support of Western democracies for Israel.
In Paris, supporters of Palestine and Lebanon convened near the Fontaine des Innocents, demanding an end to Israeli attacks and urging the French government to withdraw its support for Tel Aviv.
Protesters displayed banners with photographs of Palestinians and criticized President Emmanuel Macron for his unwavering support of Israel.
In Berlin, around 2,000 participants marched from Innsbruck Square to Steglitz metro station, denouncing the attacks with slogans like "Stop funding genocide" and "Freedom for Palestine."
Police briefly detained several protesters amid minor scuffles during the protest.
Historic ocean liner could soon become world’s largest artificial reef
On its maiden voyage in 1952, the SS United States shattered the transatlantic speed record in both directions.
The SS United States moored on the Delaware River in Philadelphia (Matt Rourke/AP) (Matt Rourke/AP)
By Bruce Shipkowski,
Associated Press
October 12, 2024
The conservancy that oversees a famous but ageing ocean liner and its landlord have resolved a years-old rent dispute that will clear the way for a Florida county to turn the historic ship into the world’s largest artificial reef.
A federal judge had ruled in June that the SS United States Conservancy had until September 12 to present plans to move the ship, a 1,000-foot ocean liner that still holds the transatlantic speed record it set more than 70 years ago.
That deadline, though, came and went after the conservancy filed a lawsuit that accused Penn Warehousing of sabotaging its efforts to sell the vessel.
The conservancy had reached a tentative agreement earlier this month with Okaloosa County in Florida, a deal that was contingent upon the rent dispute being settled through court-imposed mediation. The deal resolving that dispute was announced on Friday.
Conservancy and county officials gathered on Saturday at the Philadelphia pier where the ship is berthed for a small transfer of title ceremony, although the deal with Okaloosa County still needs final approval from a federal judge, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Okaloosa officials plan to sink the ship and create what supporters hope will be a barnacle-encrusted star in the county’s constellation of more than 500 artificial reefs, making it a signature diving attraction that could generate millions of dollars a year in local tourism spending for scuba shops, charter fishing boats and hotels.
“We can tell you that you will not be lost, you will not be forgotten, you will no longer be neglected and abused,” conservancy board member Thomas Watkins said in a farewell to the ship.
“You will be rightly honoured, cherished and loved in a new home and in a new dimension. You will no longer be sailing the seas, but you will be surrounded and caressed by them.”
Officials have said the deal to buy the ship could cost more than 10 million dollars (£7.6 million). The lengthy process of cleaning, transporting and sinking the vessel is expected to take at least 18 months.
The rent dispute stemmed from an August 2021 decision by Penn Warehousing to double the ship’s daily dockage to 1,700 dollars (£1,300), an increase the conservancy refused to accept.
The firm had said through its lawyers that it wants to regain access to the berth so it can replace the ship with a commercial customer that will provide jobs and tax revenues to the city
.
Singer and dancer Cyd Charisse with her husband Tony Martin about to disembark from the SS United States on arrival from New York at Southampton (PA/PA)
When the conservancy continued to pay its previous rate, set in 2011, Penn Warehousing terminated the lease in March 2022. After much legal wrangling, district judge Anita B Brody held a bench trial in January but also encouraged the two sides to reach a settlement instead of leaving it up to her.
She ultimately ruled that the conservancy’s failure to pay the new rate did not amount to a contract breach or entitle Penn Warehousing to damages.
However, she found that under Pennsylvania contract law, the berthing agreement is terminable at will with reasonable notice.
Christened in 1952, the SS United States was once considered a beacon of American engineering, doubling as a military vessel that could carry thousands of troops.
On its maiden voyage in 1952, it shattered the transatlantic speed record in both directions, when it reached an average speed of 36 knots, or just over 41mph (66kph), the Associated Press reported from aboard the ship.
On that voyage, the ship crossed the Atlantic in three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes, besting the RMS Queen Mary’s time by 10 hours. To this day, the SS United States holds the transatlantic speed record for an ocean liner.
The SS United States became a reserve ship in 1969 and later sold to various private owners who hoped to redevelop it. But they eventually found their plans to be too expensive or poorly timed, leaving the vessel looming for years on south Philadelphia’s Delaware River waterfront.
Barca’s new Camp Nou construction workers in large brawl
BARCELONA (AFP) -Dozens of construction workers building Barcelona’s new Camp Nou stadium became embroiled in a fight, a Catalan police source told AFP.
Six were left with minor injuries after a brawl involving 20 to 30 people before the fighting was resolved, said the source, who confirmed no arrests had been made and nobody had yet pressed charges.
Spanish media reported that some construction workers had used wooden poles as weapons in the fight and that those involved had been fired by their employer, an external contractor appointed by Barcelona to tackle the renovation.
The Catalan club previously pledged to return to their Camp Nou home before the end of 2024 but have not yet set a date for it.
“The club is working to have the stadium ready for a return before the end of the year,” said Vice-President Elena Fort.
The stadium is set to open with a capacity of 62,000, with the aim of completing the works by the start of the 2026-27 season at an expanded capacity of 105,000.
TikTok slashes hundreds of jobs in AI shift
AFP – Social media platform TikTok said it will slash hundreds of jobs, with a significant number of employees in Malaysia expected to be affected, as the company shifts to artificial intelligence-assisted content moderation.
TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, said on Friday it would cut several hundred jobs around the world, without providing a breakdown by country. Less than 500 jobs in Malaysia are expected to be affected by the move.
A TikTok spokesperson said that the job cuts were part of an effort to boost content moderation.
“We expect to invest USD2 billion globally in trust and safety in 2024 alone and are continuing to improve the efficacy of our efforts, with 80 per cent of violative content now removed by automated technologies,” the spokesperson said in a brief statement. The company uses a combination of human moderators and automated detection to review content posted on the platform. The restructuring follows months of speculation that TikTok was planning to significantly reduce its global operations and marketing workforce.
According to the company website, ByteDance has over 110,000 employees based out of more than 200 cities globally.
The layoffs also come as tech giants face increased regulatory pressure in Malaysia, where a surge of malicious content on social media was reported earlier this year. The government of the Southeast Asian country has since asked social media platforms to apply for an operating licence in an effort to tackle rising cybercrime, including online fraud, crimes against children and cyberbullying.
Iran overturns death sentence of labor activist Sharifeh Mohammadi
Iran's national flag waves in Tehran, Iran, March 31, 2020. Iran's highest court has overturned the death sentence of a woman labor rights activist, local media reported Saturday.
Iran's highest court overturned the death sentence of a woman labor rights activist who was accused of links to an outlawed Kurdish group, local media reported Saturday.
"The Supreme Court ... has overturned the verdict against my client, Ms. Sharifeh Mohammadi," her lawyer Amir Raisian was quoted as saying by the reformist Shargh daily newspaper.
He added that the case was referred for a re-trial.
In response to the Supreme Court's annulment of Mohammadi's death sentence, the campaign to defend Mohammadi released a statement demanding "the complete acquittal of Sharifeh Mohammadi from all charges and her immediate, unconditional release."
The statement emphasized that the reversal of Mohammadi's death sentence was the outcome of a collective effort involving labor unions, teachers, trade organizations, students, retirees from both Iran and abroad, as well as human rights groups and media outlets.
The statement underscores that the annulment of Mohammadi's death sentence does not erase the oppression, abuse, and the suffering endured by her, her child, her mother, her husband, and her entire family.
Mohammadi, 45, was sentenced to death in early July following her arrest in December 2023 by the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Rasht on charges of "rebellion," according to rights groups.
She's accused of being a member of the Komala party, an exiled Iraq-based Kurdish separatist group that Tehran considers a terrorist organization.
Tehran accused Kurdish groups in Iraq of fomenting monthslong nationwide mass protests triggered by the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini.
Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, died following her arrest over an alleged violation of the Islamic Republic's strict dress code for women.
The statement from Mohammadi's defenders goes on to assert, "We will persist, with clarity and determination, in our fight and organizing efforts for Sharifeh Mohammadi's unconditional release."
Mohammadi's supporters also note that complaints regarding her torture and the violation of her fundamental rights — including her rights to association and freedom of expression — are being actively pursued in international forums.
This report originated from VOA's Persian Service. Some information used in this story was provided by Agence France-Presse.
Report uncovers human rights abuses at Rio Tinto gold mine in Bougainville, 35 years after closure
By Papua New Guinea correspondent Marian Faa for the ABC
The Panguna mine in Bougainville. Photo:
A large-scale study of social and environmental impacts from Rio Tinto's abandoned Panguna mine in Bougainville has found a plethora of actual and potential human rights violations, including risks to life.
It is the first comprehensive assessment of issues stemming from the massive gold and copper mine at the centre of a devastating civil war that claimed up to 15,000 lives between 1988 and 1998.
Despite being closed for more than three decades, masses of mine waste and decaying infrastructure continue to impact thousands of people in the area, the study found.
At some sites, it revealed violations of indigenous people's rights to water, education and culture.
Potential impacts to their rights to life, and possible impacts to rights to health, adequate food, housing and standard of living were also discovered.
The Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment (PMLIA) was initiated in the wake of a human rights complaint brought by The Human Rights Law Centre on behalf of about 170 Bougainvilleans against mining giant Rio Tinto in 2020.
The regional headquarters of Rio Tinto in Perth in Western Australia. Photo: 123rf
High-level results from the assessment were presented to members of the community this week, ahead of a public release in November.
Linda Koloua, who lives in Dapera village next to the open mine pit, said she was shocked at how widespread the damage was.
"I could see that the degree of the destruction has gone all the way to down to the coast, starting from where I live," she told the ABC.
"There are many, many people who are affected by all these changes."
Koloua and others are urging Rio Tinto to commit to addressing the problems and rehabilitating areas impacted by the decommissioned mine.
A view of the tailings downstream of the Panguna mine. Photo: OCCRP / Aubrey Belford From riches to ruin
Panguna was majority owned by British-Australian company Rio Tinto until 2016, when it sold its stake to the Bougainville and PNG governments.
At its peak, it was one of the largest and most profitable gold and copper mines in the world, responsible for almost half of Papua New Guinea's exports.
The mine was forced to close abruptly in 1989 when conflict broke out and, since then, formal decommissioning and rehabilitation has not been undertaken.
Results from the PMLIA show parts of the mine pit, levee, roads and old buildings are at extreme or high risk of collapsing, which could cause death and cut off access to medical care.
It also found toxic chemicals present in old fuel storage tanks, shipping containers, a warehouse site and sewage treatment plant, as well as in some soil samples, posing risks to people's health.
Mine-related flooding in parts of the river system may also affect people's access to land, the ability to grow food crops, access to safe drinking water and the ability to attend school or access essential services.
The study found that water quality in the Kawerong-Jaba River had improved over time, but some sources were still unsafe to drink due to metal contamination.
A lake in the pit of the abandoned mine. Photo: www.travelinspired.co.nz
Theonilla Roka Matbob, a Bougainville government member and lead complainant in the human rights case, said her community needed to know they would be safe.
"It is now time for Real Tinto to come out public and make its commitment known to the people so that it can restore its trust as a company, as an institution," she said.
"What's so hard about Real Tinto committing that same energy as it did some 34 years ago in [establishing the mine at] Bougainville, to also manage and control the damage that it has created?"
Matbob said fixing the issues was key to the health and survival of her people.
"The exercise we're doing is not for us, but it is for the unborn generation," she said. Mining giant under pressure to act
Rio Tinto did not respond directly to questions posed by the ABC.
In a statement on its website, the company says it is awaiting the final report and is committed to engaging with all parties on the next steps.
"The primary objectives are to mitigate potential hazards and enhance community safety. To achieve these goals, the parties have scheduled work on these structures to begin in the fourth quarter of 2024," the website states.
It is understood remediation will focus on a pump station, bridge, workshop and storage facilities in the Panguna town area.
But a number of at-risk areas identified in the PMLIA are not covered by the MOU.
Rio Tinto said it was also supporting a water sanitation project in Central Bougainville and was seeking to partner with stakeholders to design and implement a remedy framework to respond to the impacts identified through the PMLIA.
Landowner Daniel Nari said hearing the results of the impact assessment was validating for locals who had suffered in the wake of the mine's closure.
"This pain that we hold, for all this time we just talked about it among ourselves. We didn't have a formal process to address it," he said.
"So this process now, the way I see it, things will be resolved. It will really resolve our pain."
-ABC
New Zealand ship didn’t sink because its captain was a woman, says defence minister
AP – New Zealand’s defence minister issued stinging rebukes of what she said were “vile” and “misogynistic” online remarks by “armchair admirals” about the woman captain of a navy ship that ran aground, caught fire and sank off the coast of Samoa.
“Seriously, it’s 2024,” Judith Collins told reporters. “What is going on here?”
After days of comments on social media directed at the gender of Commander Yvonne Gray, Collins urged the public to “be better”.
Women members of the military had also faced verbal abuse in the street in New Zealand since the ship – one of nine in the country’s navy – was lost last Sunday, Collins said. All 75 people on board evacuated to safety with only minor injuries after the vessel ran aground on the reef it was surveying about a mile off the coast of Upolu, Samoa’s most populous island.
The cause of the disaster is not known.
“The one thing that we already know did not cause it is the gender of the ship’s captain, a woman with 30 years’ naval experience who on the night made the call to get her people to safety,” Collins said.
One of the posters was a truck driver from Melbourne, Australia, she added.
“I think that he should keep his comments to people who drive trucks rather than people who drive ships,” Collins said.
“These are the sorts of people I’m calling out and I’m happy to keep calling them out for as long as it takes to stop this behaviour.”
J.D. Vance slammed for announcement seen as 'attacking workers' right to organize'
David McAfee October 12, 2024 Sen. J.D. Vance (Photo by Jeff Kowalsky for AFP)
J.D. Vance on Saturday was criticized heavily for an announcement that many saw as a condemnation of the rights of U.S. workers.
Another answer that caught attention of labor unions was about a bill for workers' rights.
Specifically, Vance was asked about the PRO Act, which would enable workers to unionize without fear of being fired.
"You asked about the PRO act. The problem with the PRO act is that in some ways it doubles down on a lot of the failed things that we have done, instead of looking at American labor policy as something that's going to be better for the 21st century than it was in the 20th century," Vance replied.
The official presidential campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris took to social media, saying, "J.D. Vance announces he and Trump oppose the PRO Act, a bill that would strengthen the power of workers to organize and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions."
The Harris campaign also shared a video of Harris in which she vows to "pass the PRO Act and end union-busting once and for all."
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the largest federation of unions in the U.S., said, "If Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were pro-worker, they would support the PRO Act, the labor movement’s landmark bill to make it easier to form and join a union."
"But instead, they oppose it. Trump and Vance don’t care about unions and they don’t care about working people," the group added.
The Laborers’ International Union of North America, Eastern region, also chimed in:
"Surprise surprise, [Vance] announces he and [Trump] oppose the [PRO Act]. TRUMP IS A [SCAB]!" the group said. "You know who DOES support the PRO Act? [Harris]. VOTE with your Union book, brothers and sisters."
It’s tempting to assume that a person’s moral values are stable across time and circumstances, and to some extent they are — but not entirely. Moral values are malleable and can sometimes change depending on the specific thoughts, feelings and motivations that arise in different situations.
Seasons are characterized not just by changes in the weather, but also by many additional changes in our surroundings and the rhythms of our lives. These may include spring cleaning, spending more time with family in summer, back-to-school shopping in the autumn or preparing for winter holidays.
We examined five core principles that previous research has identified as fundamental moral values. Two of these principles — don’t hurt other people and treat all people fairly — pertain to individual rights and are referred to as “individualizing” values.
Three other principles — be loyal to one’s group, respect authority and maintain group traditions — promote group cohesion and are referred to as “binding” values.
Most people endorse all these values, but people differ in the extent to which they prioritize them, and these priorities have important implications. People who prioritize individualizing values are more politically liberal, whereas people who prioritize binding values are more conservative, more punitive and express stronger prejudices against out-groups. Seasonal cycles
Do the seasons affect the extent to which people endorse these core moral values? To find out, we obtained data from YourMorals, a research website that uses online survey methods to assess people’s self-reported endorsement of all five of these core moral values.
Our analyses focused on the values reported by 232,975 respondents in the United States across a decade (2011-20) of data. The results revealed no apparent seasonal cycle in Americans’ endorsement of individualizing values, but there was clear and consistent seasonal cycle in Americans’ endorsement of all three binding moral values.
This seasonal cycle was bimodal, with two peaks and two valleys each year: Americans endorsed binding moral values (valuing loyalty, authority and group traditions) most strongly in the spring and autumn, and least strongly in midsummer and midwinter. This bimodal seasonal cycle in binding moral values showed up again and again in the data, year after year.
A graph depicting Americans’ endorsement of binding and individualizing moral values. (I. Hohm and M. Schaller), CC BY
This seasonal cycle in binding moral values wasn’t unique to the U.S. either. Additional analyses on data from Canada and Australia revealed similar patterns: Canadians and Australians also endorsed binding moral values most strongly in the spring and autumn, and least strongly in midsummer and midwinter.
Anxiety patterns
What might explain this seasonal cycle in people’s endorsement of binding moral values? One possibility is that it has something to do with the perception of threat, which encourages people to close ranks within a group. Previous research has linked this to increased endorsement of binding moral values.
To test this idea, we analyzed data on an emotion associated with threat perception: anxiety. Results revealed that Americans’ self-reported anxiety showed the same bimodal seasonal cycle, and so did 10 years of data on Americans’ Google searches for anxiety-related words. This seasonal cycle in anxiety helps to explain the seasonal cycle in binding values.
Anxiety tends to change with the seasons, decreasing in summer and midwinter. (Shutterstock)
This explanation raises a new question: what might explain the seasonal cycle in anxiety? Although we can only speculate, our analyses on moral values revealed an intriguing clue. The summertime dip in Americans’ endorsement of binding moral values was bigger in places with more extreme seasonal changes in the temperature. There was no such effect on the size of the midwinter dip.
Perhaps something similar might be going on with anxiety: maybe that summertime decrease is the result of pleasant weather, whereas the midwinter decrease is more of a holiday effect.
Double-edged sword
Regardless of the cause, seasonal cycles in binding moral values could have consequences that affect people’s lives, for better or worse. Binding moral values promote cohesion, conformity and co-operation within groups, which can be beneficial, especially when coping with crises.
The implication is that groups might cope better with crises that emerge in the spring and autumn, compared to those that occur in the summer and winter.
But binding moral values also promote distrust of people who fail to adhere to group norms and traditions. The implication is that there may also be seasonal cycles in prejudices against immigrants, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals and anybody else who is perceived to be different.
People who more strongly endorse binding moral values are also more punitive, so there could be seasonal effects on judicial decision-making in the millions of legal cases that occur every year.
And given the link between binding moral values and conservative attitudes, there are potential implications for politics. One intriguing possibility: the timing of political elections (whether they are scheduled for summer or autumn, for instance) might have some subtle effect on some votes — which, for an election that is especially tight, might even influence its outcome.
On October 10, NASA is launching a hotly anticipated new mission to Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, Europa.
Called Europa Clipper, the spacecraft will conduct a detailed study of the moon, looking for potential places where Europa might host alien life.
It’s the largest planetary exploration spacecraft NASA has ever made: as wide as a basketball court when its solar sails are unfolded. It has a mass of about 6,000 kilograms – the weight of a large African elephant.
But why are we sending a hulking spacecraft all the way to Europa?
Looking for life away from Earth
The search for life in places other than Earth usually focuses on our neighbour Mars, a planet that’s technically in the “habitable zone” of our Solar System. But Mars is not an attractive place to live, due to its lack of atmosphere and high levels of radiation. However, it’s close to Earth, making it relatively easy to send missions to explore it.
But there are other places in the Solar System that could support life – some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Why? They have liquid water.
Here on Earth, water is the solvent of life: water dissolves salts and sugars, and facilitates the chemical reactions needed for life on Earth to proceed. It’s possible life forms exist elsewhere that rely on liquid methane or carbon dioxide or something else, but life as we know it uses water.
Saturn’s moons, Titan and Enceladus, are stretched and compressed by gravity as they go around their host planet. This movement results in vast underground oceans with a surface of solid ice, with plumes of water vapour exploding 9,600 kilometres from the surface.
It is strongly suspected that Europa is the same. While we know a lot about Europa from more than four centuries of observation, we have not confirmed it has an under-ice liquid ocean like Titan and Enceladus.
But all clues point to yes. Europa has a smooth surface despite being hit by many meteors, suggesting the surface is young, recently replaced. Ice volcanoes raining down water over the surface would make sense.
It also has a magnetic field, suggesting that like Earth, Europa has a liquid layer inside (on Earth, this liquid is molten rock).
This artist’s concept (not to scale) shows what Europa’s insides might look like: an outer shell of ice, perhaps with plumes venting out; a deep layer of liquid water; and a rocky interior, potentially with hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. NASA/JPL-Caltech
What will Europa Clipper do?
At the surface, Europa is bombarded by high levels of space radiation, concentrated by Jupiter. But deeper down, the thick ice sheet could be protecting life in the liquid subsurface ocean.
This means it would be difficult for us to find concrete evidence for life without drilling down deep. But where to look? Through flybys of the icy moon, Europa Clipper will be looking at areas where life could be dwelling under the icy shell.
To achieve this, Europa Clipper has nine scientific instruments. These include a wide-angle camera to study geologic activity and a thermal imaging system to measure surface texture and detect warmer regions on the surface.
There’s also a spectrometer for looking at the chemical composition of the gases and surface of Europa, and for any explosive plumes of water from the surface. The mission also has tools for mapping the moon’s surface.
Other instruments will measure the depth and salt levels of the moon’s ocean and the thickness of its ice shell, and also how Europa flexes within the strong gravitational pull of Jupiter.
Excitingly, a mass spectrometer will analyse the gases of the moon’s faint atmosphere and potential plumes of water. By examining the material ejected from the plumes, we can understand what is hidden within the under-ice oceans of Europa.
A dust analyser will also look at matter that has been ejected from Europa’s surface by tiny meteorites or released from the plumes.
Unfortunately, we will have to wait a while for any discoveries. Europa Clipper will take more than five years to reach Jupiter. And the mission is only equipped to look for the potential of life, not life itself. If we see evidence that might point towards life, we will need future missions to return and explore Europa in depth.
So we must be patient. But this is an exciting opportunity for humanity to get one step closer to find life beyond our own home planet.
Space business is evolving fast – a new book provides much-needed insight
Space Business: Emerging Theory and Practice examines the space business, its business models, actors, ecosystems and networks, and opens up new perspectives and research opportunities for the future of the industry.
University of Vaasa
image:
Many University of Vaasa researchers were involved in writing the book. In this photo: Doctoral students Khaled Abed Alghani, Professor Marko Kohtamäki, Professor Heidi Kuusniemi, University Lecturer Minna-Maarit Jaskari, Professor Arto Ojala, and Post-doctoral Researcher Hafiz Haq.
Space Business: Emerging Theory and Practice, a new book edited by Professor Arto Ojala, Professor of International Business at the University of Vaasa, Finland, and Professor William W. Baber, University of Kyoto, examines the space business, its business models, actors, ecosystems and networks, and opens up new perspectives and research opportunities for the future of the industry.
– Space business is a relatively new field, both from a research and a business perspective. The sector is changing rapidly and new space companies are emerging all the time. The book is important now because there is still little research in the field and some of the existing knowledge is already outdated, says Professor Arto Ojala.
The book Space Business focuses in particular on the space boom, the so-called New Space phenomenon, where private companies have entered the space business alongside government actors. This development has created new business opportunities such as the commercialisation of satellite data, satellite imagery and remote sensing services.
Ojala predicts that the space business will continue to grow strongly in the future.
– The number of companies operating in the sector will increase as there is a great need for new innovations. Regulatory and technological standardisation will also have a significant impact on the sector. At the same time, business opportunities will expand as new products and services are introduced to the market, says Ojala.
"I hope the book will stimulate more research"
The book is aimed at an academic audience, researchers and students, but also at entrepreneurs and companies operating in the space sector.
– I hope that this book will inspire further research in the space industry and increase interest in its potential. It is a broad subject. Space business is an ecosystem with many players. This ecosystem can be examined and studied from many angles, says Ojala.
The book is divided into three sections on the space business ecosystem, business models and future prospects. The book includes chapters on commercial aspects of navigation satellites, value chains of business models, regulation of ground stations, business use of space data and the development of space tourism. The Kvarken Space Center has been included in the book as a case study.
– It is great that such a book on the growth and future of the space economy has been written and published, as there has not been one before. I am particularly pleased that so many researchers from the University of Vaasa and Kvarken Space Center have contributed to the book, even though we have only been involved in the new space economy research for five years, says Professor Heidi Kuusniemi, Director of the University of Vaasa Digital Economy Research Platform and Kvarken Space Center.
In addition to Professor Ojala and Professor Kuusniemi, the University of Vaasa researchers involved in writing the book include Professor Marko Kohtamäki, university lecturer Minna-Maarit Jaskari, post-doctoral researcher Hafiz Haq, project researcher Sofia Hassinen, doctoral students Khaled Abed Alghani, Mikko Punnala and Jari Ratilainen, who is also project manager at the Vaasa University of Applied Sciences.
The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan and will be published as open science, which means it will be widely available. Researchers, students, practitioners, experts and anyone interested in the subject can read the book free of charge as an open access publication.
Crew biologist Anushree Srivastava collecting lichens near the Mars Desert Research Station while wearing a simulated spacesuit, an important part of analog space missions at this research site.
Once you know where to look for them, lichens are everywhere! These composite organisms – fungal and photosynthetic partners joined into a greater whole, can survive on a vast array of surfaces, from rocks and trees to bare ground and buildings. They are known from every continent, and almost certainly every land mass on planet Earth; some species have even survived exposure to the exterior of the International Space Station. This hardy nature has long interested researchers studying what life could survive on Mars, and the astrobiologists studying life on Earth as an analog of our planetary neighbour. In the deserts surrounding two Mars analog stations in North America, lichens comprise such an important part of the local ecosystems that they inspired a biodiversity assessment with a unique twist: this collections-based inventory took place during a simulated mission to Mars!
The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, USA (on Ute and Paiute Territory), and the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Nunavut, Canada (in Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit Homeland) are simulated Martian habitats operated by The Mars Society, where crews participate in dress rehearsals for crewed Martian exploration. While learning what it would take to live and work on our planetary neighbour, these “Martians” frequently study the deserts at both sites, often exploring techniques for documenting microbial life and their biosignatures as a prelude to deploying these tools and methods off world. These studies are enhanced by a comprehensive understanding of the ecosystems being studied, even if they are full of Earthbound life. During the Mars 160 – a set of twin missions to both Utah and Nunavut in 2016 and 2017 – our team undertook a floristic survey of the lichen biodiversity present at each site.
During simulated extra-vehicular activities, Mars 160 mission specialists wearing simulated spacesuits scouted out various habitats at both stations, seeking out lichen species growing in various microhabitats. Collecting over 150 specimens, these samples were “returned to Earth”, and identified at the National Herbarium of Canada at the Canadian Museum of Nature. Through morphological examination, investigations of internal anatomy and chemistry, and DNA barcoding, “Mission Support” identified 35 lichen species from the Mars Desert Research Station, and 13 species from the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station.
These species, along with photographs and a synopsis of their identifying characteristics, are summarized in a new paper out now in the open-access journal Check List. This new annotated checklist should prove useful to future crews working at both analog research stations, while also helping Earthly lichenologists better understand the distribution of these fascinating organisms, including new records of rarely reported or newly described species from some of Earth’s most interesting, and otherworldly habitats.
Research article:
Sokoloff PC, Srivastava A, McMullin RT, Clarke J, Knightly P, Stepanova A, Mangeot A, Laroche C-M, Beattie A, Rupert S (2024) An annotated checklist of the lichen biodiversity at two Mars analog sites: The Mars Desert Research Station (Utah, USA) and The Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (Nunavut, Canada) recorded during the Mars 160 Mission. Check List 20(5): 1096-1126. https://doi.org/10.15560/20.5.1096
The Mars Desert Research Station is nestled in amongst the red sandstone hills of southeast Utah, USA, in a geological analog to Mars.
Rich lichen communities are abundant in the deserts surrounding the Mars Desert Research Station, with visible crusts being one part of a vibrant ecosystem.
The Bright Cobblestone Lichen (Acarospora socialis) fluoresces bright yellow under ultraviolet light on rocky outcrops near the Mars Desert Research Station. This fluorescence is one of many key characteristics useful in identifying lichen species.
An ascospore from a Northern Polyblastia Lichen (Polyblastia hyperborea) collected near the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Nunavut, Canada. Spore morphology is another important character for lichen identification.
An annotated checklist of the lichen biodiversity at two Mars analog sites: The Mars Desert Research Station (Utah, USA) and The Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (Nunavut, Canada) recorded during the Mars 160 Mission
Article Publication Date
8-Oct-2024
The european project ‘ZEUS’ seeks to collect in-space solar energy in an efficient, long-lasting way
It has been granted almost €4 million for the development of a new photovoltaic technology over the next 4 years
University of Malaga
image:
Specifically, ‘ZEUS’ will focus on advancing the development of nanowire solar cells, a highly innovative, radiation-resistant photovoltaic technology capable of absorbing solar energy in space, where the environment is highly aggressive.
The University of Malaga, through the Materials and Surfaces Laboratory, participates in an international consortium that has received one of the eight grants ‘Horizon EIC Pathfinder Challenges - In-space solar energy harvesting for innovative space applications’ that have been awarded this year at European level, with the aim of achieving significant advances in the fields of in-space solar energy collection and transmission and the new concepts of propulsion that will be used by the energy obtained.
Coordinated by the University of Lund (Sweden), the ‘ZEUS’ -Zero-loss energy harvesting using nanowire solar cells in space- project has been granted almost €4 million (€3,998,622.50) for its development over the next four years. The other participants that, together with the UMA, make up this project are the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Germany), the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Technological Institute of Packaging, Transport and Logistics.
An innovative, radiation-resistant photovoltaic technology
Specifically, ‘ZEUS’ will focus on advancing the development of nanowire solar cells, a highly innovative, radiation-resistant photovoltaic technology capable of absorbing solar energy in space, where the environment is highly aggressive.
Nanowires are needle-shaped structures with a diameter of 200 nanometers –that is, a thousand times thinner than human hair–, explains Enrique Barrigón, Professor of the Department of Applied Physics I, the researcher who will lead this project at the UMA. Their nanometric scale and careful geometric distribution make them behave as “hollow” devices from the point of view of radiation damage, which significantly increases their resistance to radiation, while effectively collecting nearly one hundred percent of the possible incoming light, due to the improved optical absorption that occurs in these cells.
“Covering approximately 10 percent of a surface with active material is all that is needed to absorb as much light as a thin layer covering the entire surface of the same material would do,” says the UMA researcher.
Greater efficiency
In this respect, Enrique Barrigón explains that while current space-tested nanowire solar cells offer around 15% efficiency, ZEUS aims to significantly enhance this efficiency by employing triple junction nanowire cells with a carefully selected set of III-V semiconductor materials, potentially reaching 47% theoretical efficiency.
Likewise, this project will investigate the transfer of these solar cells onto lightweight, flexible substrates, which would enable the creation of large deployable photovoltaic panels.
Environmental sustainability
Additionally, the project underscores its commitment to sustainability by focusing on two key aspects: decarbonization and the efficient use of critical raw materials. “ZEUS aims to demonstrate not only the commercial potential of the technology, but also the environmental benefits by means of a life cycle assessment of nanowire solar cells, particularly for space energy generation”, says Professor Enrique Barrigón. Thus, increasing the electrical power of communications satellites is one of its possible applications, among others.
The main tasks of the University of Malaga in this international research will be the advanced characterization of these solar cells and the execution of the necessary tests to evaluate their resistance in the space environment.
The other participants that, together with the UMA, make up this project are the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Germany), the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Technological Institute of Packaging, Transport and Logistics.
Enrique Barrigón, Professor of the Department of Applied Physics I, the researcher who will lead this project at the UMA
The Horizon EIC Pathfinder Challenges program awards grants to projects that explore new technological areas, especially ‘deep-tech’–based on a scientific discovery or a significant engineering innovation– which may become radically innovative technologies in the future, capable of creating new market opportunities. The overall goal is to feed the innovation market with revolutionary technologies and get them to the proof-of-concept stage.
So far, within the current Horizon Europe framework, the University of Malaga has another project of this same program. This is ‘BioRobot-MiniHeart’, whose principal researcher is Juan Antonio Guadix, from the Department of Animal Biology. In the previous H2020 program, another proposal from the UMA was also recognized: ‘SONICOM’ -Transforming auditory-based social interaction and communication in AR/VR-, by Professor Arcadio Reyes, Department of Electronic Technology.
This project has been funded through the European Union Research and Innovation Program, Horizon Europe, with Grant Agreement 101161465.
"Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.”
Researchers find clues to the mysterious heating of the sun’s atmosphere
Experimental findings about plasma wave reflection could answer questions about high temperatures
An image showing two coronal holes, depicted as relatively dark regions. Coronal holes are lower density and temperature regions of the sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona.
There is a profound mystery in our sun. While the sun’s surface temperature measures around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, its outer atmosphere, known as the solar corona, measures more like 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, about 200 times hotter. This increase in temperature away from the sun is perplexing and has been an unsolved mystery since 1939, when the high temperature of the corona was first identified. In the ensuing decades, scientists have tried to determine the mechanism that could cause this unexpected heating, but so far, they have not succeeded.
Now, a team led by Sayak Bose, a researcher at the U.S.Department of Energy’s (DOE)Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has made a significant advancement in understanding the underlying heating mechanism. Their recent findings show that reflected plasma waves could drive the heating of coronal holes, which are low-density regions of the solar corona with open magnetic field lines extending into interplanetary space. These findings represent major progress toward solving one of the most mysterious quandaries about our closest star.
Collaborators included scientists from Princeton University; the University of California-Los Angeles; and Columbia University. The research was funded by the DOE under contracts DE-AC0209CH11466, and DE-SC0021261, as well as the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant number 2209471. The experiment was performed at the Basic Plasma Science Facility, which is a collaborative user facility that is part of the DOE Office of Science Fusion Energy Sciences program and is funded by DOE contract DE-FC02-07ER54918 and the NSF under contract NSF-PHY 1036140.
***
PPPL is mastering the art of using plasma — the fourth state of matter — to solve some of the world's toughest science and technology challenges. Nestled on Princeton University’s Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, New Jersey, our research ignites innovation in a range of applications, including fusion energy, nanoscale fabrication, quantum materials and devices, and sustainability science. The University manages the Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the nation’s single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences. Feel the heat at https://energy.gov/science and http://www.pppl.gov.
‘Inside-out’ galaxy growth observed in the early universe
University of Cambridge
image:
Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the ‘inside-out’ growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700 million years after the Big Bang.
Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the ‘inside-out’ growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700 million years after the Big Bang.
This galaxy is one hundred times smaller than the Milky Way, but is surprisingly mature for so early in the universe. Like a large city, this galaxy has a dense collection of stars at its core but becomes less dense in the galactic ‘suburbs’. And like a large city, this galaxy is starting to sprawl, with star formation accelerating in the outskirts.
This is the earliest-ever detection of inside-out galactic growth. Until Webb, it had not been possible to study galaxy growth so early in the universe’s history. Although the images obtained with Webb represent a snapshot in time, the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, say that studying similar galaxies could help us understand how they transform from clouds of gas into the complex structures we observe today. The results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“The question of how galaxies evolve over cosmic time is an important one in astrophysics,” said co-lead author Dr Sandro Tacchella from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “We’ve had lots of excellent data for the last ten million years and for galaxies in our corner of the universe, but now with Webb, we can get observational data from billions of years back in time, probing the first billion years of cosmic history, which opens up all kinds of new questions.”
The galaxies we observe today grow via two main mechanisms: either they pull in, or accrete, gas to form new stars, or they grow by merging with smaller galaxies. Whether different mechanisms were at work in the early universe is an open question which astronomers are hoping to address with Webb.
“You expect galaxies to start small as gas clouds collapse under their own gravity, forming very dense cores of stars and possibly black holes,” said Tacchella. “As the galaxy grows and star formation increases, it’s sort of like a spinning figure skater: as the skater pulls in their arms, they gather momentum, and they spin faster and faster. Galaxies are somewhat similar, with gas accreting later from larger and larger distances spinning the galaxy up, which is why they often form spiral or disc shapes.”
This galaxy, observed as part of the JADES (JWST Advanced Extragalactic Survey) collaboration, is actively forming stars in the early universe. It has a highly dense core, which despite its relatively young age, is of a similar density to present-day massive elliptical galaxies, which have 1000 times more stars. Most of the star formation is happening further away from the core, with a star-forming ‘clump’ even further out.
The star formation activity is strongly rising toward the outskirts, as the star formation spreads out and the galaxy grows in size. This type of growth had been predicted with theoretical models, but with Webb, it is now possible to observe it.
“One of the many reasons that Webb is so transformational to us as astronomers is that we’re now able to observe what had previously been predicted through modelling,” said co-author William Baker, a PhD student at the Cavendish. “It’s like being able to check your homework.”
Using Webb, the researchers extracted information from the light emitted by the galaxy at different wavelengths, which they then used to estimate the number of younger stars versus older stars, which is converted into an estimate of the stellar mass and star formation rate.
Because the galaxy is so compact, the individual images of the galaxy were ‘forward modelled’ to take into account instrumental effects. By using stellar population modelling that includes prescriptions for gas emission and dust absorption, the researchers found older stars in the core, while the surrounding disc component is undergoing very active star formation. This galaxy doubles its stellar mass in the outskirts roughly every 10 million years, which is very rapid: the Milky Way galaxy doubles its mass only every 10 billion years.
The density of the galactic core, as well as the high star formation rate, suggest that this young galaxy is rich with the gas it needs to form new stars, which may reflect different conditions in the early universe.
“Of course, this is only one galaxy, so we need to know what other galaxies at the time were doing,” said Tacchella. “Were all galaxies like this one? We’re now analysing similar data from other galaxies. By looking at different galaxies across cosmic time, we may be able to reconstruct the growth cycle and demonstrate how galaxies grow to their eventual size today.”
The galaxy NGC 1549, seen 700 million years after the Big Bang.
A core in a star-forming disc as evidence of inside-out growth in the early Universe
Article Publication Date
11-Oct-2024
SwRI-led instrument aboard Jupiter-bound spacecraft nails in-flight test
The Ultraviolet Spectrograph demonstrated its accuracy and reliability
Southwest Research Institute
image:
The UVS instrument recorded spatial information produced by hydrogen atoms radiating from the Earth. In the background a number of individual stars are identified along with the Pleiades star cluster. Juice-UVS plans to similarly observe hydrogen atoms radiating from Ganymede and Jupiter’s other icy moons.
SAN ANTONIO — October 9, 2024 —As European Space Agency (ESA)’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft hurtled past the Moon and Earth in mid-August to provide its first gravity assist maneuver to the Jovian system, the Southwest Research Institute-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) instrument imaged the UV emissions radiating from the Earth and Moon.
It was a successful test of one of three science instrument projects comprising NASA’s contribution to ESA’s Juice mission. The UVS data collected were then analyzed and found to be consistent with expectations for the Moon and the Earth. This confirmation that the instrument works within specifications was not able to be fully achieved during pre-launch testing in a laboratory setting.
“This high-fidelity test confirmed what the instrument is supposed to do. We can now be confident that the data we will get from Jupiter’s moons will be just as accurate,” said SwRI’s Steven Persyn, Juice-UVS project manager (PM).
Weighing just over 40 pounds and drawing only 7.5 watts of power, UVS is smaller than a microwave oven, yet this powerful instrument will determine the relative concentrations of various elements and molecules in the atmospheres of Jupiter’s moons once in the Jovian system.
Aboard Juice, UVS will get close-up views of the Galilean moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, all thought to host liquid water beneath their icy surfaces. UVS will record ultraviolet light emitted, transmitted and reflected by these bodies, revealing the composition of their surfaces and tenuous atmospheres and how they interact with Jupiter and its giant magnetosphere. Additional scientific goals include observations of Jupiter itself as well as the gases from its volcanic moon Io that spread throughout the Jovian magnetosphere.
The Juice spacecraft is now on its way to Venus, where it will complete a gravity assist maneuver before heading back to Earth for another gravity assist to attain the momentum needed for its journey to the Jovian system.
The mission’s science goals focus on Jupiter and its system, making multiple flybys of the planet’s large, ocean-bearing satellites with a particular emphasis on investigating Ganymede as a potentially habitable planetary body. Being the only moon in the solar system known to have an internal magnetic field, Ganymede has auroral ovals like the northern and southern lights on Earth. The UV emissions from Earth’s atmosphere observed during the recent gravity assists provide an especially good test of the plans for Juice-UVS to observe Ganymede’s UV aurora and other atmospheric features. It will also study the system as an archetype for gas giants in our solar system and beyond.
UVS is one of 10 science instruments and 11 investigations on the Juice spacecraft. As it begins an approximately 4.1-billion-mile (6.6-billion-kilometer), eight-year journey to the Jupiter system, the spacecraft has been busy deploying and activating its antennas, booms, sensors and instruments to check out and commission all its important subsystems. SwRI’s UVS instrument is the latest to succeed in this task.
A similar instrument, Europa-UVS, will travel aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will take a more direct route to arrive at the Jupiter system 15 months before Juice and focus on studying the potential habitability of Europa.
“Our UVS instrument will complement the work that will be done by Europa-UVS allowing us to learn even more at the same time,” said SwRI’s Dr. Kurt Retherford, principal investigator (PI) of Europa-UVS and deputy PI for Juice-UVS. “Having both teams working with the UVS instruments based here at SwRI will make that coordination all the more efficient.”
The Juice spacecraft and science instruments were built by teams from 15 European countries, Japan and the United States. SwRI’s UVS instrument team includes additional scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder, the SETI institute, the University of Leicester (U.K.), Imperial College London (U.K.), the University of Liège (Belgium), the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and the Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (France). The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center oversees the UVS contribution to ESA through the agency’s Solar System Exploration Program. The Juice spacecraft was developed by Airbus Defence and Space.
Leicester spinout company Perpetual Atomics to transform power generation in space
Space Park Leicester and the University of Leicester to launch new space nuclear power systems, space science and exploration spin-out company at International Astronautical Congress (IAC) – Perpetual Atomics Ltd
Credit: University of Leicester/Space Park Leicester
Transformative technology that harnesses the power of nuclear material for space missions is set to enable a whole range of new space missions as Space Park Leicester launches Perpetual Atomics, a bold new start-up to commercialise its research.
The University of Leicester is excited to announce the launch of a new spin-out company, Perpetual Atomics, which is set to revolutionise the application of nuclear technology in space.
Perpetual Atomics is a space nuclear power systems, space science and exploration business that will commercialise the know-how and expertise in space nuclear power developed over more than 20 years at the University of Leicester.
Perpetual Atomics, will aim to bring innovative solutions to power challenges in space missions, ensuring sustainability and reliability in some of the harshest environments known to humanity.
Perpetual Atomics will be announced to visitors of International Astronautical Congress 2024 on the UK Space Agency stand, MS-B05, on Tuesday 15 October.
Professor Richard Ambrosi, Executive Director of Space Park Leicester, said: “Since Space Park Leicester last attended the International Astronautical Congress we’ve seen some exciting developments in space nuclear power, and we are delighted to be able to share more on those at 75th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Milan this October.
“We are entering a new chapter in our journey, one that will see us harness the potential of nuclear technology to power deep space exploration and to pioneer new frontiers and are ready to bring others with us on that journey. The use of nuclear power in space is not just a concept for the future—it’s happening now.”
Building on the success of attendance in Paris in 2022, a team of leading experts from the University of Leicester’s space nuclear division will be present in Milan, showcasing cutting-edge advancements and discussing the future of nuclear power in space exploration.
The technology at the heart of the new venture has the potential to enable longer, more ambitious missions beyond Earth’s orbit in some of the harshest environments of deep space. Perpetual Atomics aims to establish a new global market leader in mature radioisotope power solutions based on research from the University of Leicester.
Perpetual Atomics’ mission builds on two decades work in developing radioisotope power systems by the Space Nuclear Power group at the University of Leicester. These power systems use the heat generated from the decay of radioisotopes, and can be used to provide heat to spacecraft, or converted to electricity to power key subsystems. Their Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) and Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator or RTG (also sometimes referred to as a 'space battery') use americium fuel, which can provide stable power outputs to spacecraft for many decades.
Based at Space Park Leicester, the University of Leicester’s £100 million science and innovation park, where a space nuclear power community is being developed, the team are the main developer of radioisotope thermoelectric generators in Europe. The technology development has been funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) European Devices Using Radioisotope Energy (ENDURE) program, as well as the UK Space Agency.
The Perpetual Atomics team is looking forward to working with a number of national and international partners to expand the use of radioisotope power technologies in space.
The investment in Perpetual Atomics has been made by Reef Global, the impact investment division within Reef Origin. Piers Slater, Reef Global Executive Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Perpetual Atomics commented: “We are very excited that our first investment in the space sector is in Perpetual Atomics a business aligned with Reef Global’s goal to deliver a sustainable earth and space economy. We thank both University of Leicester and the co-founders for giving us the opportunity to invest in and support the commercialisation and scale up of Perpetual Atomics an innovative and exciting business led by a talented team with the shared ambitions of building a pioneering global space company from the UK.”
Professor Sarah Davies, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Leicester said: “Perpetual Atomics is an exemplar of the type of business that Space Park Leicester was established to create: originating from world-leading research that has been nurtured at the University of Leicester for many years, and enabled by the dedicated, highly skilled and innovative community at our flagship Space Park Leicester. The spin-out launch will seize an opportunity that is already pushing new frontiers for the space industry globally, and we are excited to see it do the same for humanity’s exploration beyond our world. It also further cements Leicester’s place as the UK’s Space City, building on our city’s long heritage in space and its contribution to the region’s economy.”
Julie Black, Director of Missions and Capabilities at the UK Space Agency, said: "The University of Leicester has long been at the forefront of world leading research into innovative space technologies. This addition of an exciting new start-up to Space Park Leicester continues this tradition of innovation and highlights the skilled workforce in the region.
"The cutting-edge technology that the team at Perpetual Atomics are developing could not only harness nuclear power to sustain exploration of space for longer periods of time but allow us to venture further into space than ever before, enabling more science and bringing more benefits back to Earth.”
William Wells, Deputy Director Research and Enterprise at the University of Leicester, said: “At the University of Leicester we are committed to seeing our globally leading research deliver real world impact, Perpetual Atomics will transform power solutions for space and will form part of a growing community of innovative energy businesses at Space Park. In addition it becomes a further business at Space Park spun out of research at Leicester.”
Professor Sarah Davies, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Science and Engineering, and Professor Richard Ambrosi, Executive Director of Space Park Leicester.
Shock Test (IMAGE)
University of Leicester
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator being subjected to extreme shock levels to test its resilience for the harsh environment of a launch or planetary surface landing.
Lunar rover powered by an Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator.
Credit
University of Leicester/Space Park Leicester
NASA’s Hubble, New Horizons team up for a simultaneous look at Uranus
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
image:
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (left) and NASA's New Horizon's spacecraft (right) image the planet Uranus.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Samantha Hasler (MIT), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), New Horizons Planetary Science Theme Team; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very different viewpoints. The results inform future plans to study like types of planets around other stars.
Astronomers used Uranus as a proxy for similar planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets, comparing high-resolution images from Hubble to the more-distant view from New Horizons. This combined perspective will help scientists learn more about what to expect while imaging planets around other stars with future telescopes.
"While we expected Uranus to appear differently in each filter of the observations, we found that Uranus was actually dimmer than predicted in the New Horizons data taken from a different viewpoint," said lead author Samantha Hasler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and New Horizons science team collaborator.
Direct imaging of exoplanets is a key technique for learning about their potential habitability, and offers new clues to the origin and formation of our own solar system. Astronomers use both direct imaging and spectroscopy to collect light from the observed planet and compare its brightness at different wavelengths. However, imaging exoplanets is a notoriously difficult process because they're so far away. Their images are mere pinpoints and so are not as detailed as the close-up views that we have of worlds orbiting our Sun. Researchers can also only directly image exoplanets at "partial phases," when only a portion of the planet is illuminated by their star as seen from Earth.
Uranus was an ideal target as a test for understanding future distant observations of exoplanets by other telescopes for a few reasons. First, many known exoplanets are also gas giants similar in nature. Also, at the time of the observations, New Horizons was on the far side of Uranus, 6.5 billion miles away, allowing its twilight crescent to be studied—something that cannot be done from Earth. At that distance, the New Horizons view of the planet was just several pixels in its color camera, called the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera.
On the other hand, Hubble, with its high resolution, and in its low-Earth orbit 1.7 billion miles away from Uranus, was able to see atmospheric features such as clouds and storms on the day side of the gaseous world.
"Uranus appears as just a small dot on the New Horizons observations, similar to the dots seen of directly-imaged exoplanets from observatories like Webb or ground-based observatories," added Hasler. "Hubble provides context for what the atmosphere is doing when it was observed with New Horizons."
The gas giant planets in our solar system have dynamic and variable atmospheres with changing cloud cover. How common is this among exoplanets? By knowing the details of what the clouds on Uranus looked like from Hubble, researchers are able to verify what is interpreted from the New Horizons data. In the case of Uranus, both Hubble and New Horizons saw that the brightness did not vary as the planet rotated, which indicates that the cloud features were not changing with the planet’s rotation.
However, the importance of the detection by New Horizons has to do with how the planet reflects light at a different phase than what Hubble, or other observatories on or near Earth, can see. New Horizons showed that exoplanets may be dimmer than predicted at partial and high phase angles, and that the atmosphere reflects light differently at partial phase.
NASA has two major upcoming observatories in the works to advance studies of exoplanet atmospheres and potential habitability.
“These landmark New Horizons studies of Uranus from a vantage point unobservable by any other means add to the mission’s treasure trove of new scientific knowledge, and have, like many other datasets obtained in the mission, yielded surprising new insights into the worlds of our solar system,” added New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute.
NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch by 2027, will use a coronagraph to block out a star’s light to directly see gas giant exoplanets. NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, in an early planning phase, will be the first telescope designed specifically to search for atmospheric biosignatures on Earth-sized, rocky planets orbiting other stars.
“Studying how known benchmarks like Uranus appear in distant imaging can help us have more robust expectations when preparing for these future missions,” concluded Hasler. “And that will be critical to our success.”
Launched in January 2006, New Horizons made the historic flyby of Pluto and its moons in July 2015, before giving humankind its first close-up look at one of these planetary building block and Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, in January 2019. New Horizons is now in its second extended mission, studying distant Kuiper Belt objects, characterizing the outer heliosphere of the Sun, and making important astrophysical observations from its unmatched vantage point in distant regions of the solar system.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio and Boulder, Colorado, directs the mission via Principal Investigator Alan Stern and leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of NASA's New Frontiers program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Lightning strikes kick off a game of electron pinball in space
University of Colorado at Boulder
When lightning strikes, the electrons come pouring down.
In a new study, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder led by an undergraduate student have discovered a new link between weather on Earth and weather in space. The group used satellite data to show that lightning storms on our planet can knock especially high-energy, or “extra-hot,” electrons out of the inner radiation belt—a region of space filled with charged particles that surrounds Earth like an inner tube.
The team’s results could help satellites and even astronauts avoid dangerous radiation in space. This is one kind of downpour you don’t want to get caught in, said lead author and undergraduate Max Feinland.
“These particles are the scary ones or what some people call ‘killer electrons,’” said Feinland, who received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering sciences at CU Boulder in spring 2024. “They can penetrate metal on satellites, hit circuit boards and can be carcinogenic if they hit a person in space.”
The findings cast an eye toward the radiation belts, which are generated by Earth’s magnetic field. Lauren Blum, a co-author of the paper and assistant professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder, explained that two of these regions encircle our planet: While they move a lot over time, the inner belt tends to begin more than 600 miles above the surface. The outer belt starts roughly around 12,000 miles from Earth. These pool floaties in space trap charged particles streaming toward our planet from the sun, forming a sort of barrier between Earth’s atmosphere and the rest of the solar system.
But they’re not exactly airtight. Scientists, for example, have long known that high-energy electrons can fall toward Earth from the outer radiation belt. Blum and her colleagues, however, are the first to spot a similar rain coming from the inner belt.
Earth and space, in other words, may not be as separate as they look.
“Space weather is really driven both from above and below,” Blum said.
Bolt from the blue
It’s a testament to the power of lightning.
When a lightning bolt flashes in the sky on Earth, that burst of energy may also send radio waves spiraling deep into space. If those waves smack into electrons in the radiation belts, they can jostle them free—a bit like shaking your umbrella to knock the water off. In some cases, such “lightning-induced electron precipitation” can even influence the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere.
To date, researchers had only collected direct measurements of lower energy, or “colder,” electrons falling from the inner radiation belt.
“Typically, the inner belt is thought to be kind of boring,” Blum said. “It’s stable. It’s always there.”
Her team’s new discovery came about almost by accident. Feinland was analyzing data from NASA’s now-decommissioned Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) satellite when he saw something odd: clumps of what seemed to be high-energy electrons moving through the inner belt.
“I showed Lauren some of my events, and she said, ‘That’s not where these are supposed to be,’” Feinland said. “Some literature suggests that there aren’t any high-energy electrons in the inner belt at all.”
The team decided to dig deeper.
In all, Feinland counted 45 surges of high-energy electrons in the inner belt from 1996 to 2006. He compared those events to records of lightning strikes in North America. Sure enough, some of the spikes in electrons seemed to happen less than a second after lightning strikes on the ground.
Electron pinball
Here’s what the team thinks is happening: Following a lightning strike, radio waves from Earth kick off a kind of manic pinball game in space. They knock into electrons in the inner belt, which then begin to bounce between Earth’s northern and southern hemispheres—going back and forth in just 0.2 seconds.
And each time the electrons bounce, some of them fall out of the belt and into our atmosphere.
“You have a big blob of electrons that bounces, and then returns and bounces again,” Blum said. “You’ll see this initial signal, and it will decay away.”
Blum isn’t sure how often such events happen. They may occur mostly during periods of high solar activity when the sun spits out a lot of high-energy electrons, stocking the inner belt with these particles.
The researchers want to understand these events better so that they can predict when they may be likely to occur, potentially helping to keep people and electronics in orbit safe.
Feinland, for his part, is grateful for the chance to study these magnificent storms.
“I didn't even realize how much I liked research until I got to do this project,” he said.
Other co-authors of the new study included Robert Marshall, associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU Boulder, Longzhi Gan of Boston University, Mykhaylo Shumko of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Mark Looper of The Aerospace Corporation.
- 
