An investor in the startup that fired its CEO after he microdosed LSD at work reportedly sold roughly $92 million in shares before the ousting

awilliams@insider.com (Annabelle Williams) 

4/28/2021

© Iterable Iterable co-founder Justin Zhu Iterable

Index Ventures recently sold about half its shares in Iterable, The Information reported.

The sale, to Silver Lake Partners, came before Iterable's CEO was fired for LSD use while at work.

Two investors on the board previously had concerns about the CEO's leadership, The Information reported..

Prior to marketing startup Iterable firing its CEO, Justin Zhu, this week, a major investor sold roughly $92 million of its shares in the company, The Information's Kate Clark reported Wednesday.

Iterable, founded in 2013 by Zhu and Andrew Boni, made headlines this week after Bloomberg reported that its CEO had been fired for violating company policy. Zhu told Bloomberg he had used LSD while at work in an effort to boost his focus and creativity, taking a small dose of the drug in a practice commonly known as microdosing before an investor meeting in 2019. Boni is taking over the top job as a result of Zhu's departure.

The new report from The Information, arriving a day after the news of the CEO ousting, sheds light on broader investor concern of the CEO's leadership that could extend beyond his use of LSD.

The investor, Index Ventures, sold roughly 50% of its shares in the marketing startup to Silver Lake Partners, which took the investor's board seat as a result, according to the report. The sale happened in early April, according to The Information, just weeks prior to Zhu's ousting.

While it's not clear what exactly happened at that investor meeting in 2019, The Information reports two investors, Murat Bicer at VC firm CRV, and Index Ventures' Shardul Shah, who departed the board as a result of the share sale, had previously been unhappy with Zhu's leadership of the startup.

The Information reports the CEO had also voiced plans to be more vocal about the issue of racism against Asian Americans in the US, which has seen a rise in hate crimes. Zhu is Chinese, and helped create Stand With Asian Americans, a group of hundreds of Asian American and Pacific Islander business leaders who are spending $10 million in an effort to combat discrimination.

In a Monday vote, three board members, including co-founder Boni, voted to remove Zhu, The Information reported, with his drug use being listed as the main reason.

Iterable, Index Ventures, Silver Lake Partners, CRV, and Zhu did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the sale of Index Venture's shares and the circumstances surrounding it.

Iterable, based in San Francisco, was most recently valued at $2.1 billion, according to PitchBook.

Zhu may be the first Silicon Valley CEO fired for using LSD, an increasingly common trend where users take small amounts of the psychedelic drug in an effort to experience purported beneficial side effects. Emojibator cofounder and CEO Joe Vela told Insider in 2020 that psychedelics helped him solve problems at work: "Even a microdose can flip the prospect of a long, boring task into one that is exhilarating," he said.

While some in Silicon Valley, including Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, have embraced LSD and spoken positively about their experiences with it, the drug remains illegal in the US.

 LSD

THE BOSSES STATE IS THE BIGGEST SCAB
Commons expected to approve back-to-work legislation to reopen Port of Montreal

OTTAWA — The House of Commons was expected in the wee hours Thursday to approve legislation to put an end to a strike that has shut down one of Canada's busiest ports.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Operations at the Port of Montreal, through which millions of tonnes of goods flow, came to a halt after 1,150 dockworkers began a strike Monday morning.

Labour Minister Filomena Tassi said if the strike is allowed to drag on it would cost the economy $40 million to $100 million per week, directly threaten 19,000 other jobs and indirectly affect hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.

And she said it's a matter of life and death because the strike has left essential medical supplies and pharmaceuticals sitting in shipping containers as the COVID-19 pandemic rages.

"I cannot impress upon you enough, this situation is dire," she said Wednesday in the Commons, where debate on the bill was expected to continue past midnight before finally being put to a vote.

"The supply chains are critical and we have to keep goods moving. And this is really a situation where, for the health and safety of Canadians and the economy, we must take this action."

Tassi said the back-to-work legislation is a last resort after more than two years of efforts to find a negotiated solution failed.

Workers at the port have been without a contract since December 2018 and started to refuse overtime and weekend work earlier this month.

The union previously held a 10-day strike in August.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents the dockworkers, said the current dispute was sparked by their employer, the Maritime Employers Association, imposing extended workday hours without consulting workers.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said the strike could be called off immediately if the federal government ordered the employers association to cancel the work schedule changes.

"Take your damn phone, call them," he said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the bill undermines the right to collective bargaining and will do long-term damage to relations between dockworkers and their employer that will cause tensions down the road.

The government has also been criticized by the Conservatives for not doing enough to avert the strike. But leader Erin O'Toole has said his party will support the legislation because of the potential damage a prolonged strike could cause Canada's economy.

Manitoba Conservative MP Dan Mazier said he was "devastated" that government inaction had led to the strike. Nevertheless, he said putting an end to it is necessary to give assurance to farmers that they'll receive needed shipments of seeds and fertilizer as they start planting their crops.

"I am standing up for jobs, I'm standing up for our economy and I'm standing up for my country," he told the Commons.

Conservatives abstained Wednesday on a vote to impose closure on debate over a motion setting out the procedural steps for fast-tracking the back-to-work bill.

That allowed the closure motion to pass by a vote of 152-58, paving the way for hours of debate on the procedural motion and, eventually, on the bill itself.

The Senate, which is currently adjourned, has been recalled to deal with the bill on Friday.

The legislation would require dockworkers to return to work immediately after the bill receives royal assent.

It would extend their previous collective agreement until a new one is negotiated and prohibit any strikes or lockouts in the meantime. If negotiations fail again, the bill would impose a mediator-arbitrator on both parties

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2021.

Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

A conservative ETF designed to boycott 'hostile' companies like Disney and Nike that support the 'liberal agenda' has beaten the broader market since Biden took office

SO DID WALL ST. FOR THE PAST 100 DAYS

egraffeo@businessinsider.com (Emily Graffeo) 12 hrs ago

Like15 Comment© Jamie Squire/Getty Image Jamie Squire/Getty Image

The American Conservative Values ETF attempts to track the market while also boycotting "liberal" companies.

The fund has outperformed the S&P 500 since Biden's inauguration.

The ETF's founder says companies that engage in political activity negatively impact shareholder returns.

An exchange-traded fund designed to track the broader market while also boycotting companies that outwardly support left-wing causes has beaten the S&P 500 since president Joe Biden took office.

The American Conservative Values ETF ($ACVF) has gained 9.1% since January 20, slightly outperforming the S&P 500's 8.7% gain. It has about $7 million in assets under management, according to Bloomberg data.

The fund has a basket of large cap US equities, but also boycotts "hostile" companies that are deemed to be too politically active and in support of "the liberal agenda.

Among the list of boycotted companies are Twitter, Nike, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Delta Airlines.

Bill Flaig, founder and CEO of Ridgeline Research, the investment advisor to the American Conservative Values ETF, told Insider he launched the fund in late October because he wanted to give politically conservative investors something they could feel good about investing in and not feel that "their dollars are going to the worst offending, most egregious liberal companies."

"Our goal is to balance the advocacy of boycotting and still maintain predictable, large cap performance," Flaig said.

The ACFV website states the investment thesis of the fund: "Our ETF is based on the conviction that politically active companies negatively impact their shareholder returns, as well as supporting issues and causes which conflict with our conservative political beliefs and values."

Flaig told Insider that he thinks companies that are participating in political activities are misallocating shareholder resources and not maximizing shareholder value. He said this could even apply to companies that are too engaged in conservative political activities, but the fund is focused on catering specifically to conservative investors.

Ridgeline Research doesn't have explicit numerical data that supports the thesis that politically active companies negatively impact shareholder returns.

"We don't have a historical back test for that, and it's hard to prove because a company could still be doing well that's allocating shareholder resources, they just would be doing better if they hadn't done it," Flaig said.

The fund comes as a growing number of corporations begin to engage in political activities or speak on partisan issues. After Georgia signed a new voting bill into law that changed nearly all aspects of voting and elections in the state, Coca-Cola said in a statement that they were "disappointed in the outcome of the Georgia voting legislation." Meanwhile Delta CEO Ed Basitan said the bill was "unacceptable and does not match Delta's values."

Read more: Goldman Sachs names 19 crypto-exposed stocks that have piggybacked on bitcoin's surge to achieve returns that have nearly quadrupled the S&P 500

Flaig said the political engagement from Delta and Coke was taking away from shareholder values.

"I can't see how it would have helped their shareholders' value, or their businesses actually. And I think they did get internal pushback and pushback from their boards, and we did see them backtrack in a certain sense. So I think that kind of illustrates the danger of companies that are overly political," he said.

Flaig added that conservatives are more "quiet", and he thinks that corporate America has come to the conclusion it can "pander progressive customers without alienating their conservative customers." He wants the American Conservative Values ETF to be a place for conservative investors to park their money with peace of mind that they are not supporting the "worst of the worst" and the "most hostile" companies.

One of the most important issues to Ridgeline is protecting first and second amendment rights.

He said tech companies including Apple, Google, and Facebook have been "hostile to conservatives," and free speech, though he admitted it's difficult to quantify that, and a lot of the decisions on whether a company is too liberal to be in the fund are subjective.

One of the more quantifiable measures of "hostility" is political contributions by companies and senior employees to liberal causes, charities, candidates, and advocacy groups. In the fund's SEC filings, Ridgeline lists Planned Parenthood, the Center for American Progress, and the Courage to Change PAC as examples of "liberal advocacy groups.

The fund's top holding is Microsoft, with a 6.5% weight. Flaig said that although Microsoft is not "inherently conservative," it's not the "worst offender of the larger technology companies." Microsoft is the second largest company in the S&P 500.

"Through the lens of delivering our investment objective, we can't boycott every single technology company and maintain predictable performance to the S&P 500. So we do own companies like Microsoft that have historically been hostile to conservative values," he said.

Flaig added that it would be ideal if the ETF's advocacy changed the behavior of the corporations, but that is a secondary objective of the fund.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Feds Arrest Alleged Launderer Of Nearly $336 Million In Bitcoin After 10 Year Hunt

BY DOUGLAS CHARLES

APRIL 28, 2021



PIXABAY


After an over 10 year investigation, U.S. authorities arrested the alleged launderer of nearly $336 million in Bitcoin, Roman Sterlingov, the administrator of the anonymizing system Bitcoin Fog.

Sterlingov, a citizen of Russia and Sweden, was arrested this week in Los Angeles on charges of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, laundering of monetary instruments, and money transmission without a license, according to court documents.

He stands accused of laundering more than 1.2 million bitcoins – worth $336 million at the times of the payments – taking commissions on those transactions of 2 to 2.5 percent, reports Wired.


In a twisted bit of irony, despite his service allowing its users to blend their transactions with those of others to prevent anyone examining the Bitcoin blockchain from tracing the payments, Sterlingov was caught by the IRS using the 2011 transactions he allegedly used to set up Bitcoin Fog’s server hosting.


Of the $336 million the complaint accuses Bitcoin Fog of laundering, at least $78 million passed through the service to various narcotics-selling dark web markets like the Silk Road, Agora, and AlphaBay over the years that followed. The IRS also appears to have used undercover agents in 2019 to transact with Bitcoin Fog, in one case sending messages to Bitcoin Fog’s administrator that explicitly stated that they hoped to launder proceeds from selling ecstasy. Bitcoin Fog completed that user’s transactions without a response.

Most remarkable, however, is the IRS’s account of tracking down Sterlingov using the very same sort of blockchain analysis that his own service was meant to defeat. The complaint outlines how Sterlingov allegedly paid for the server hosting of Bitcoin Fog at one point in 2011 using the now-defunct digital currency Liberty Reserve.

“While the identity of a Bitcoin address owner is generally anonymous (unless the owner opts to make the information publicly available), law enforcement can often identify the owner of a particular Bitcoin address by analyzing the blockchain,” IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent Devon Beckett wrote in an affadvit.

As Wired points out, one of the supposed benefits of Bitcoin is being able to use it for making anonymous, untraceable transactions. So much for that.

The blockchain’s ledger of all Bitcoin transactions since the cryptocurrency’s creation has often instead served as a means for law enforcement to trace even years-old transactions.

The arrest of Bitcoin Fog’s administrator based on blockchain analysis represents just how far back in time investigators can reach with those “follow the money” techniques, says Sarah Meiklejohn, a computer scientist at University College of London whose work pioneered Bitcoin-tracing techniques in 2013. “With blockchain analytics the thing we say over and over is that all this activity is on this ledger forever, and if you did something bad 10 years ago you can be caught and arrested for it today,” says Meiklejohn. “The fact that they’re pulling up those transactions is really significant.”


Interestingly, despite Sterlingov’s arrest, Bitcoin Fog is currently still online.

Speculation is that law enforcement has taken over the service as it continues its investigation. However, both the IRS and the Department of Justice declined to comment on that issue, so make your own assumptions.

Exclusive: Government, industry push bitcoin regulation to fight ransomware scourge

By Joseph Menn and John Shiffman 

4/28/2021

© Reuters/Kacper Pempel Hooded man holds laptop computer as blue screen with an exclamation mark is projected on him in this illustration picture

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Government and industry officials confronting an epidemic of ransomware, where hackers freeze the computers of a target and demand a payoff, are zeroing in on cryptocurrency regulation as the key to combating the scourge, sources familiar with the work of a public-private task force said.

In a report on Thursday, the panel of experts is expected to call for far more aggressive tracking of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. While those have won greater acceptance among investors over the past year, they remain the lifeblood of ransomware operators and other criminals who face little risk of prosecution in much of the world.

Ransomware gangs collected almost $350 million last year, up threefold from 2019, two members of the task force wrote this week. Companies, government agencies, hospitals and school systems are among the victims of ransomware groups, some of which U.S. officials say have friendly relations with nation-states including North Korea and Russia.

"There’s a lot more that can be done to constrain the abuse of these pretty amazing technologies," said Philip Reiner, chief executive of the Institute for Security and Technology, who led the Ransomware Task Force. He declined to comment on the report before its release.

Just a week ago, the U.S. Department of Justice established a government group on ransomware. Central bank regulators and financial crime investigators worldwide are also debating if and how cryptocurrencies should be regulated.

The new rules proposed by the public-private panel, some of which would need Congressional action, are mostly aimed at piercing the anonymity of cryptocurrency transactions, the sources said. If implemented, they could temper enthusiasm among those who see the cryptocurrencies as a refuge from national monetary policies and government oversight of individuals' financial activities, having surged past $1 trillion in total capitalization.

The task force included representatives from the FBI and the United States Secret Service as well as major tech and security companies. It will recommend steps such as extending “know-your-customer” regulations to currency exchanges; imposing tougher licensing requirements for those processing cryptocurrency; and extending money-laundering rules to facilities such as kiosks for converting currency.

It also calls for the creation of a special team of experts within the Justice Department to facilitate seizures of cryptocurrency, a process currently fraught with logistical and legal challenges.

Some of the ideas echo those proposed by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which would expand disclosure rules for transactions worth more than $10,000.

Federal investigators said a proposal to register accounts would be especially helpful for identifying drug smugglers, human traffickers and terrorists as well as ransomware groups.

"That would be huge," said a senior Homeland Security Official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss emerging policy proposals. "This is a world that was created exactly to be anonymous, but at some point, you have to give up something to make sure everyone's safe."

Governments are already using the blockchain ledger that documents all bitcoin transactions to bring some charges. Last week, authorities arrested a man in Los Angeles and accused him of laundering more than $300 million through a service that combines transactions from multiple cryptocurrency wallets to obscure who is paying whom.

Records from the U.S. Marshals Service show that more than $150 million in crypto assets were seized last year and offered to the public at auction. Last week, the Marshals Service signed a $4.5 million deal with BitGo, a California-based exchange, to hold and sell more forfeited cryptocurrency.

But many of the exchanges, which conduct the critical operation of turning cryptocurrency into dollars or other widely accepted currencies, are in countries outside the reach of U.S. regulators.

The Institute for Security and Technology's Reiner said that international cooperation will be critical, and that pressure could be brought by allies with similar regulations, which could help push exchanges into countries where Americans will hesitate to send their funds.

"However much crypto markets think they have created their own networks, they still rely on existing financial markets," Reiner said.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and John Shiffman in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Grant McCool

Black hole-neutron star collisions may help settle dispute over Universe's expansion

Studying the violent collisions of black holes and neutron stars may soon provide a new measurement of the Universe's expansion rate, helping to resolve a long-standing dispute, suggests a new simulation study led by researchers at UCL.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Research News

E

 

IMAGE: A STILL FROM A NASA ANIMATION OF A BLACK HOLE DEVOURING A NEUTRON STAR. view more 

CREDIT: DANA BERRY/NASA

Studying the violent collisions of black holes and neutron stars may soon provide a new measurement of the Universe's expansion rate, helping to resolve a long-standing dispute, suggests a new simulation study led by researchers at UCL (University College London).

Our two current best ways of estimating the Universe's rate of expansion - measuring the brightness and speed of pulsating and exploding stars, and looking at fluctuations in radiation from the early Universe - give very different answers, suggesting our theory of the Universe may be wrong.

A third type of measurement, looking at the explosions of light and ripples in the fabric of space caused by black hole-neutron star collisions, should help to resolve this disagreement and clarify whether our theory of the Universe needs rewriting.

The new study, published in Physical Review Letters, simulated 25,000 scenarios of black holes and neutron stars colliding, aiming to see how many would likely be detected by instruments on Earth in the mid- to late-2020s.

The researchers found that, by 2030, instruments on Earth could sense ripples in space-time caused by up to 3,000 such collisions, and that for around 100 of these events, telescopes would also see accompanying explosions of light.

They concluded that this would be enough data to provide a new, completely independent measurement of the Universe's rate of expansion, precise and reliable enough to confirm or deny the need for new physics.

Lead author Dr Stephen Feeney (UCL Physics & Astronomy) said: "A neutron star is a dead star, created when a very large star explodes and then collapses, and it is incredibly dense - typically 10 miles across but with a mass up to twice that of our Sun. Its collision with a black hole is a cataclysmic event, causing ripples of space-time, known as gravitational waves, that we can now detect on Earth with observatories like LIGO and Virgo.

"We have not yet detected light from these collisions. But advances in the sensitivity of equipment detecting gravitational waves, together with new detectors in India and Japan, will lead to a huge leap forward in terms of how many of these types of events we can detect. It is incredibly exciting and should open up a new era for astrophysics."

To calculate the Universe's rate of expansion, known as the Hubble constant, astrophysicists need to know the distance of astronomical objects from Earth as well as the speed at which they are moving away. Analysing gravitational waves tells us how far away a collision is, leaving only the speed to be determined.

To tell how fast the galaxy hosting a collision is moving away, we look at the "redshift" of light - that is, how the wavelength of light produced by a source has been stretched by its motion. Explosions of light that may accompany these collisions would help us pinpoint the galaxy where the collision happened, allowing researchers to combine measurements of distance and measurements of redshift in that galaxy.

Dr Feeney said: "Computer models of these cataclysmic events are incomplete and this study should provide extra motivation to improve them. If our assumptions are correct, many of these collisions will not produce explosions that we can detect - the black hole will swallow the star without leaving a trace. But in some cases a smaller black hole may first rip apart a neutron star before swallowing it, potentially leaving matter outside the hole that emits electromagnetic radiation."

Co-author Professor Hiranya Peiris (UCL Physics & Astronomy and Stockholm University) said: "The disagreement over the Hubble constant is one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. In addition to helping us unravel this puzzle, the spacetime ripples from these cataclysmic events open a new window on the universe. We can anticipate many exciting discoveries in the coming decade."

Gravitational waves are detected at two observatories in the United States (the LIGO Labs), one in Italy (Virgo), and one in Japan (KAGRA). A fifth observatory, LIGO-India, is now under construction.

Our two best current estimates of the Universe's expansion are 67 kilometres per second per megaparsec (3.26 million light years) and 74 kilometres per second per megaparsec. The first is derived from analysing the cosmic microwave background, the radiation left over from the Big Bang, while the second comes from comparing stars at different distances from Earth - specifically Cepheids, which have variable brightness, and exploding stars called type Ia supernovae.

Dr Feeney explained: "As the microwave background measurement needs a complete theory of the Universe to be made but the stellar method does not, the disagreement offers tantalising evidence of new physics beyond our current understanding. Before we can make such claims, however, we need confirmation of the disagreement from completely independent observations - we believe these can be provided through black hole-neutron star collisions."

The study was carried out by researchers at UCL, Imperial College London, Stockholm University and the University of Amsterdam. It was supported by the Royal Society, the Swedish Research Council (VR), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

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Measuring the Moon's nano dust is no small matter

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST)

Research News

 

IMAGE: COLORIZED SCREENSHOTS OF THE EXACT SHAPES OF MOON DUST COLLECTED DURING THE APOLLO 11 MISSION. NIST RESEARCHERS AND COLLABORATORS DEVELOPED A METHOD OF MEASURING THESE NANOSCALE PARTICLES AS A PRELUDE... view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: E. GARBOCZI/NIST AND A. SHARITS/AFRL

Like a chameleon of the night sky, the Moon often changes its appearance. It might look larger, brighter or redder, for example, due to its phases, its position in the solar system or smoke in Earth's atmosphere. (It is not made of green cheese, however.)

Another factor in its appearance is the size and shape of moon dust particles, the small rock grains that cover the moon's surface. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are now measuring tinier moon dust particles than ever before, a step toward more precisely explaining the Moon's apparent color and brightness. This in turn might help improve tracking of weather patterns and other phenomena by satellite cameras that use the Moon as a calibration source.

NIST researchers and collaborators have developed a complex method of measuring the exact three-dimensional shape of 25 particles of moon dust collected during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. The team includes researchers from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Space Science Institute and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

These researchers have been studying moon dust for several years. But as described in a new journal paper, they now have X-ray nano computed tomography (XCT), which allowed them to examine the shape of particles as small as 400 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in length.

The research team developed a method for both measuring and computationally analyzing how the dust particle shapes scatter light. Follow-up studies will include many more particles, and more clearly link their shape to light scattering. Researchers are especially interested in a feature called "albedo," moonspeak for how much light or radiation it reflects.

The recipe for measuring the Moon's nano dust is complicated. First you need to mix it with something, as if making an omelet, and then turn it on a stick for hours like a rotisserie chicken. Straws and dressmakers' pins are involved too.

"The procedure is elaborate because it is hard to get a small particle by itself, but one needs to measure many particles for good statistics, since they are randomly distributed in size and shape," NIST Fellow Ed Garboczi said.

"Since they are so tiny and because they only come in powders, a single particle needs to be separated from all the others," Garboczi continued. "They are too small to do that by hand, at least not in any quantity, so they must be carefully dispersed in a medium. The medium must also freeze their mechanical motion, in order to be able to get good XCT images. If there is any movement of the particles during the several hours of the XCT scan, then the images will be badly blurred and generally not usable. The final form of the sample must also be compatible with getting the X-ray source and camera close to the sample while it rotates, so a narrow, straight cylinder is best."

The procedure involved stirring the Apollo 11 material into epoxy, which was then dripped over the outside of a tiny straw to get a thin layer. Small pieces of this layer were then removed from the straw and mounted on dressmakers' pins, which were inserted into the XCT instrument.

The XCT machine generated X-ray images of the samples that were reconstructed by software into slices. NIST software stacked the slices into a 3D image and then converted it into a format that classified units of volume, or voxels, as either inside or outside the particles. The 3D particle shapes were identified computationally from these segmented images. The voxels making up each particle were saved in separate files that were forwarded to software for solving electromagnetic scattering problems in the visible to the infrared frequency range.

The results indicated that the color of light absorbed by a moon dust particle is highly sensitive to its shape and can be significantly different from that of spherical or ellipsoidal particles of the same size. That doesn't mean too much to the researchers -- yet.

"This is our first look at the influence of actual shapes of lunar particles on light scattering and focuses on some fundamental particle properties," co-author Jay Goguen of the Space Science Institute said. "The models developed here form the basis of future calculations that could model observations of the spectrum, brightness and polarization of the moon's surface and how those observed quantities change during the moon's phases."

The authors are now studying a wider range of moon dust shapes and sizes, including particles collected during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. The moon dust samples were loaned to NIST by NASA's Curation and Analysis Planning Team for Extraterrestrial Materials program.

###

Paper: S. Baidya, M. Melius, A.M. Hassan, A. Sharits, A.N. Chiaramonti, T. Lafarge, J.D. Goguen and E.J. Garboczi. Optical Scattering Characteristics of 3D Lunar Regolith Particles Measured using X-Ray Nano Computed Tomography. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters. Published online April 27, 2021. DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2021.3073344

 

How acidic are atoms?

The acidity of molecules can be easily determined, but until now it was not possible to measure this important property for atoms on a surface. With a new microscopy technique from the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), this has now been achieved.

VIENNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Research News

 

IMAGE: USING THE MODIFIED TIP OF AN ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPE, INDIVIDUAL ATOMS IN THE SURFACE CAN BE PROBED. view more 

CREDIT: TU WIEN

The degree of acidity or alkalinity of a substance is crucial for its chemical behavior. The decisive factor is the so-called proton affinity, which indicates how easily an entity accepts or releases a single proton. While it is easy to measure this for molecules, it has not been possible for surfaces. This is important because atoms on surfaces have very different proton affinities, depending on where they sit. Researchers at TU Wien have now succeeded in making this important physical quantity experimentally accessible for the first time: Using a specially modified atomic force microscope, it is possible to study the proton affinity of individual atoms. This should help to analyze catalysts on an atomic scale. The results have been published in the scientific journal Nature.

Precision instead of average

"All previous measurements of surface acidity had one severe drawback," says Prof. Ulrike Diebold from the Institute of Applied Physics at TU Wien. "Although the surface atoms behave chemically differently, one could only ever measure the average value."

Thus it is not known which atoms contributed to chemical reactions, and to what extent, which makes it impossible to adjust the atomic scale of the surface to favor certain chemical reactions. But that is exactly what is needed, for example, when looking for more effective catalysts for hydrogen production.

"We analyzed surfaces made of indium oxide. They are particularly interesting because there are five different types of OH groups with different properties on the surface," says Margareta Wagner, who carried out these measurements in Prof. Diebold's lab.

With a special trick it was possible to study these OH groups individually: The researchers placed a single OH group at the tip of an atomic force microscope. This tip was then positioned specifically over one particular atom on the surface. A force then acts between the OH group on the tip and the OH group directly below it on the indium oxide surface, and this force depends sensitively on the distance between them.

"We vary the distance between the tip and the surface and measure how this changes the force," explains Margareta Wagner. "This gives us a characteristic force curve for each OH group on the surface of a material." The shape of this force curve provides information about how well the respective oxygen atoms on the indium oxide surface hold their protons - or how easily they will release them.

In order to obtain an actual value for the proton affinity, theoretical work was necessary. This was carried out by Bernd Meyer at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. In elaborate computer simulations it was possible to show how the force curve of the atomic force microscope can be translated in a simple and precise way into those quantities that are needed in chemistry.

Nanostructure determines the quality of catalysts

"This is quite crucial for the further development of catalysts," says Bernd Meyer. "We know that atoms of the same type behave quite differently depending on their atomic neighbors and the way they are incorporated into the surface." For example, it can make a big difference whether the surface is perfectly smooth or has steps on an atomic scale. Atoms with a smaller number of neighbors sit at such step edges, and they can potentially significantly improve or worsen chemical reactions.

"With our functionalized scanning force microscope tip, we can now precisely investigate such questions for the first time," says Ulrike Diebold. "This means that we no longer have to rely on trial and error, but can precisely understand and improve chemical properties of surfaces."

CAPTION

Ulrike Diebold, Margareta Wagner, Michael Schmid, Bernd Meyer, Martin Setvin (left to right)

CREDIT

TU Wien

Causes of extreme weather and climate events in China during 2020/21

INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Research News

 

IMAGE: FIGURE 1. SCHEMATIC DIAGRAMS OF ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION PATTERNS ASSOCIATED WITH THE WINTER COLD SURGES. (A) A NORMAL, MILD WINTER WITH THE RELATIVELY FLAT JET STREAM. (B) A COLD SURGE IN... view more 

CREDIT: CHUNZAI WANG

During the summer of 2020, especially June and July, periods of extreme heavy rainfall occurred in China's Yangtze River Valley (YRV). These rain events caused the severest floods for the region since the summer of 1998. Despite this, the 2020 western North Pacific (WNP) typhoon season started slowly, but eventually produced 23 named tropical cyclones, still slightly below 27, the WNP seasonal average. As summer transitioned to winter, three severe cold surges swept most parts of China during late 2020 and early 2021, prompting the National Meteorological Center to issue its highest cold surge warning alert for the first time in four years. After a volatile weather year, scientists are finding answers as to why the past year featured so many extreme weather and climate events in China.

Professor Chunzai Wang and his team in the State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences were tasked to analyze global and regional climate influences that may have played roles in the 2020/21 extreme weather events. The researchers found many key oceanographic and meteorological connections, which have just been published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Sea surface temperature (SST) fluctuations in the tropical Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans can contribute to heavy rainfall events in China. However, observational data suggest that Atlantic and Indian Ocean influences dominate over those from the Pacific. Beginning in May 2020, positive SST anomalies, or change from average, throughout the tropical western North Atlantic (WNA) induced positive geopotential height anomalies in June over the mid-latitude North Atlantic. Geopotential height is the altitude above sea level at which a certain pressure surface exists, typically analyzed at 500mb. This metric is excellent for identifying the ridges and troughs which affect the rainfall anomalies in the YRV via an Atlantic-induced atmospheric "wave train" across Eurasia. Further analysis suggests that the Indian Ocean did not significantly affect June rainfall over the YRV. However, when considering June and July rainfall together, both the Indian Ocean and WNA influences are important.

Regarding the extremely cold surges during the 2020/21 winter, Prof. Wang's team points to the Siberian High. An enhancement and northward movement of the Siberian High force the jet stream to develop a wavy pattern. This disrupts the polar vortex, allowing cold polar air to invade southward, thus inducing the cold surges in China (Fig. 1b) and North America (Fig. 1c).

The below average 2020 typhoon season is associated with large vertical wind shear (which is defined as the wind difference between the upper and lower troposphere) and low humidity in the WNP. Tropical cyclones do not form and develop in heavily sheared and dry environments. Scientists believe that these are responsible for fewer typhoons in the first half of the 2020 typhoon season.

This study points out the importance of three-ocean interactions and their influences across the Northern Hemisphere. The tropical Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans can affect the anticyclone in the WNP, providing moisture transport to its northwest side, therefore increasing summer rainfall in China. The same anticyclone also modifies atmospheric circulation and thermodynamic factors in the WNP, influencing typhoon activity. Global warming can increase the occurrence of extreme weather and climate events. However, future studies are needed to quantify the influences of global warming on an individual extreme weather and climate event.

Matheson was well known for his poetic, almost Shakespearean language on air. He widely referred to "that most dreaded of all meteorological phenomena, the Siberian High" or its counterpart, the "Keep your eye on the Idaho High".

Professions: Weather presenter

Died: September 19, 2006

Born: April 26, 1926, Lethbridge

Bill Matheson - Wikipedia

Observations indicate strengthening of tropical Pacific western boundary currents for six decades

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

Research News

 

IMAGE: GEOSTROPHIC CURRENTS RETRIEVED FROM MULTI-DECADAL HYDROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONAL DATA BASED ON WOA18 ((A), (B), (D), (E), CM S?1) AND THE MEAN HORIZONTAL ABSOLUTE VELOCITY |U| IN THE UPPER 200 M SIMULATED... view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

Under the background of global warming, the energy budget of the earth is out of balance with more than 90% of additional heat entering the ocean.

The tropical Pacific Ocean has an important influence on the global tropical climate and the climate of China, and the tropical Pacific Western Boundary Currents (WBCs) that flow through it plays an important role in the climate system. Large-scale ocean circulation redistributes ocean heat and mass and is hence one of the basic dynamic processes that shape the earth's Marine environment. The tropical Pacific WBCs system is a key part of the global ocean circulation system. Accurate assessment of the variation of the tropical Pacific WBCs is of much significance for better understanding of the variability of the Earth's climate system.

Recent study has shown that under the background of global warming, the global mean ocean circulation has significantly accelerated over the past 20 years, and this acceleration process is mainly in the global tropical waters. However, it is not clear whether the tropical Pacific WBCs will strengthen or weaken in the context of global warming, and the key to answering this question lies in ocean observations.

Recently, an article titled "Multi-decadal trends in the tropical Pacific western boundary currents retrieved from historical hydrological observations" was published in the Science China Earth Sciences. The research team led by Professor Shijian Hu, who is the first author from Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, evaluate the multi-decadal trends in the tropical Pacific WBCs using historical hydrological observations collected in the past over 60 years.

Hu's team focused on the tropical Pacific region and calculated the geostrophic components of the North Equatorial Current (NEC), North Equatorial Countercurrent (NECC), Mindanao Current (MC), Kuroshio in the origin and the New Guinea Coastal Undercurrent (NGCUC) using decadal mean hydrological observations from the World Ocean Atlas 2018 (WOA18), which is available from 1955 to 2017. Volume transports of the WBCs and their multi-decadal trends are estimated, and contributions of temperature change and salinity change to the trends are discussed. It is found that the NEC, MC and NGCUC show a significant strengthening trend in the past six decades, mainly due to the contribution of temperature change, and the trend pattern of dynamic height is consistent with the WBCs trend. Zonal wind stress averaged over the WBCs' latitudes of the western tropical Pacific is found to accurately reproduce the decadal variability and multi-decade strengthening trend of the WBCs. The authors suggested that the observed intensification of WBCs is attributed to a strengthening of trade winds in the western Pacific Ocean. This study provides important observational evidence for estimating the multi-decadal trend of large-scale ocean circulation in the western Pacific under a rapid climate warming.

CAPTION

The volume transports ((a)-(e), unit: Sv) of the WBCs in the tropical Pacific and the linear trends (f). The red and blue lines represent the transport variations contributed by the temperature and salinity variations, respectively. The percentage of a total trend related to each mean volume transport over the six decades for each current is shown in panel (f) ("+" indicates increase). Positive values in zonal currents (NEC, NECC, NGCUC) represent transports to the east while positive values in meridional currents (KC, MC) represent transports to the north. The red, blue, and black lines represent the trends over the periods of 1955-2017, 1965-2017, and 1965-2004 while the solid dot line represents the uncertainty defined as the standard deviation of trend-removed time series.

CREDIT

©Science China Press

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the CAS-CSIRO Project Fund. Shijian HU is a member of the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS.

See the article: Hu S, Lu X, Li S, Wang F, Guan C, Hu D, Xin L, Ma J. 2021. Multi-decadal trends in the tropical Pacific western boundary currents retrieved from historical hydrological observations. Science China Earth Sciences, 64(4): 600-610, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-020-9703-4

https://www.sciengine.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCES/64/4/10.1007/s11430-020-9703-4?slug=fulltext

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11430-020-9703-4