A new era for biology: Opportunities and challenges of macrogenetics

by The Morton Arboretum

Oak acorns. Credit: The Morton Arboretum

The burgeoning field of macrogenetics is the focus of a new review published in Nature Reviews Genetics by a global, multidisciplinary team of researchers seeking to better answer fundamental biodiversity questions.

Led by Sean Hoban, Ph.D., tree conservation biologist at The Morton Arboretum, the researchers provide insights into macrogenetics, which uses big data to identify the global drivers of genetic diversity within and among populations at broad spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales.

"The goal of macrogenetics is to use thousands of datasets to answer a core question about life on earth: Why do some regions of the world have more biodiversity than others?" said Hoban.

Until recently, the authors say, large-scale analyses in population genetics, evolutionary biology and molecular ecology were extremely rare due to high costs and complicated methodologies. However, advances in technology, molecular biology, statistics and the widespread availability of large datasets, among other factors, have paved the way for the new field of study, addressing questions at a larger scale than ever before.

"Science is moving towards a more collaborative model of work in which researchers publish their full data online in easily searchable databases, so that others can reuse them for other purposes, including macrogenetics and conservation," said Hoban. "It is exciting to see that scientists are making their work accessible, reusable and easier to build on—some call it 'open science.'"

Hoban indicated that genetic diversity is a key driver of complexity and resilience in systems, allowing populations to thrive and adapt, but that its conservation is often neglected in public policy. "Macrogenetic studies assessing genetic diversity across time and space will provide valuable, large-scale opportunities to detect environmental change, including, for example, early genetic signals of climate change effects that might otherwise escape detection," he said.

Ultimately, according to the authors, observations of large-scale patterns must be linked to national legislation and global initiatives like the Convention on Biological Diversity or the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For this to occur, macrogeneticists must extend the communication of their scientific studies to the general public, industry and policymakers, the authors stressed.

"We hope that we can answer fundamental questions about biodiversity: Not just whether humans have an impact but at what scale, and at what threshold," Hoban said. "We can then use those findings to inform policies that are sustainable and impactful."

Hoban also noted that macrogenetic research could settle a long-lasting debate between scientists: Whether the same environmental factors that affect species diversity in a region also affect genetic diversity.

According to the review, growing access to data has opened many doors for genetic researchers, but it also has its own major statistical challenges. "The amount of data we can now access is staggering. The biggest challenge is determining the right statistical techniques," said Hoban. The authors write that most statistical and analytical tools used in macrogenetics are repurposed from other disciplines, and they expect and encourage researchers to explore which tools are best fitted to analyze upscaled macrogenetic datasets.

Hoban noted that large scale data analysis is also a growing trend among ecological researchers and conservation professionals. Scientists at The Morton Arboretum are using large datasets to conduct global conservation gap analyses, determine patterns of trait evolution of woody plants, discover how ecosystems evolve over long periods of time and document changes in forests under hotter temperatures, among other projects. They are also producing such datasets, including in the arboretum's herbarium.

"This is an extremely exciting time—the field is growing from a dozen or so studies, to hundreds on the horizon," Hoban said. "It feels as though we're in a new chapter of scientific advancement," he added.Conserving and monitoring genetic diversity will benefit nature and society

More information: Deborah M. Leigh et al, Opportunities and challenges of macrogenetic studies, Nature Reviews Genetics (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41576-021-00394-0

Journal information: Nature Reviews Genetics 

Provided by The Morton Arboretum

Nfld. & Labrador

N.L. artists unveil mural paying homage to the lost community of Crow Gulch

Mural raised on former site of Mi’kmaq neighbourhood

James Grudić · CBC News · Posted: Aug 22, 2021 6:00 PM NT | Last Updated: August 22

Jordan Bennett (left) and Marcus Gosse pose in front of their finished mural at its unveiling ceremony paying homage to the lost community of Crow Gulch.

 (James Grudić/CBC)

The community of Crow Gulch was broken up decades ago, but now Mi'kmaq artists Jordan Bennett and Marcus Gosse have come together to immortalize it.

The pair collaborated on a painted mural that was unveiled Friday where the community once stood, near Corner Brook's pulp and paper mill.

"It never dies if the spirit and memories are kept alive," Gosse said in an interview earlier this month.

The City of Corner Brook is prepping the site to serve as a new park and rest stop. Nestled into the hillside, the park will have picnic tables, a commemorative plaque and the billboard-sized mural celebrating the people who once lived there.

"We're trying to show that the spirits of Crow Gulch, and of other communities that are no longer inhabited, are still thriving," Gosse said.

Bennett works on one of six panels that make up the mural. 

(James Grudić/CBC)

The artists worked on the mural in pieces; barn door-sized sheets of aluminum were spaced around the lofty workspace at the School of Fine Arts at Memorial University's Grenfell campus.

When completed, the segments join into a single face, measuring nearly three metres tall by eight metres wide. They originally planned to paint on plywood, but later turned to metal for the sake of longevity.

"We want it to be on the land as long as it can be, as a public artwork," said Bennett.

Watch the unveiling of the mural during an event in Corner Brook on Friday:

Mural pays tribute to lost community of Crow Gulch
A new billboard-sized mural has been erected in Corner Brook to honour Crow Gulch, a largely Mi'kmaq community that was bulldozed in the 1960s. 2:12

A painful history

Crow Gulch is a place with a difficult legacy; originally, people came from afar to settle there in hopes of finding work in the bustling paper mill nearby.

The village was largely Mi'kmaq, and was stricken by poverty and marked by social stigma. Municipal services like electricity were never extended into the neighborhood. Eventually, it was bulldozed in the late 1960s, its inhabitants relocated.

Despite the hardships that people endured here, Bennett and Gosse are using their art to celebrate the history of their people in the area.

"For me, this piece is about continuation," said Bennett.

"It's about the communities that have been here in physical space, like Crow Gulch, that now live on through individuals that call this place home."

Artist Marcus Gosse says the two crows in the mural, seen over his shoulder, are a nod to the spiritual presence of their ancestors. (James Grudić/CBC)

The mural features many symbols, including two prominent crows — a nod to the spiritual presence of their ancestors.

"What we're trying to say is that the ancestors are with us in everything we're doing. They're proud that Indigenous culture is doing really well now," Gosse said.

"We live on a beautiful island that's rich in Mi'kmaq culture, and that's had some really beautiful communities with lots of memories. We want to showcase that in this painting."
Revisiting childhood

Margie Benoit Wheeler lived in Crow Gulch from 1951 until it was razed in 1969. She still remembers the stigma that followed her when she lived in the former community.

"We were called savages, we were called Indians, we were called everything down there. But we were still human beings," she said.

She attended the unveiling of the mural adorned with traditional clothing, symbols and beadwork.

Margie Benoit Wheeler, a former resident of Crow Gulch, says the mural will help keep the story of her community alive. (James Grudić/CBC)

"I feel so happy today, because this was a long time coming," said Benoit Wheeler.

"A lot of people are recognizing me for who I am, I guess."

Benoit Wheeler said the community she once called home was seldom talked about; nowadays, it's coming to the light.

"A lot of people talk about it now. When I was going to school, I didn't talk about it too much," she said.

Being of Mi'kmaq descent, which once brought her shame and scorn, has now become a point of pride.

"I'm a strong Mi'kmaw woman now."

A broader vision

But the scope of the mural goes beyond honouring one single community.

"For me, it represents Mi'kmaq communities throughout Newfoundland and other parts of Mi'kma'ki," Bennett said.

The mural is a first of its kind in the area: a large-scale, permanent outdoor public art piece by Indigenous artists has not existed in Corner Brook before.

"We're very proud that this is one the few pieces of exterior Indigenous art in Newfoundland," said Gosse.

The mural is the first of its kind in Corner Brook, and will stand in the city for decades to come. From left, Corner Brook Mayor Jim Parsons, Gosse, Bennett and Benoit Wheeler. (James Grudić/CBC)

As their work honours the people of the past, Bennett and Gosse want the painting to leave its mark on people in the present and into the future.

"My hopes, and I know it will come true, are that there will be a lot more pieces by other Indigenous artists around this province, to show presence and community within our communities and towns," Bennett said.

"It's going to be there for years to come," said Gosse.

"People are going to see it and they're going to talk to each other about it.… It'll help preserve Mi'kmaq culture."

Despite a past that includes the trauma of stigmatization, Gosse said he sees a brighter future for his people.

"I don't think any part of Mi'kmaq culture is lost. It's like a treasure — we just need to get out there and dig it up again."

Wuhan lab leak theory: How Fort Detrick became a centre for Chinese conspiracies



A disinformation campaign claiming that the Covid-19 virus originated from an American military base in Maryland has gained popularity in China ahead of the release of a US intelligence report on the virus origins.

In May, US president Joe Biden ordered a 90-day probe into whether the Covid-19 virus came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal.

Until then, the "Wuhan lab leak" theory had been dismissed by most scientists as a fringe conspiracy theory.

But now as the report is due to be released, China has gone on the offensive. In the past few weeks, Chinese sources have been amplifying a baseless claim that Covid-19 was made in the US.

Using everything from rap music to fake Facebook posts, experts say the propaganda efforts have been successful at convincing the domestic Chinese audience to cast scepticism on international criticism of the country's role in the Covid-19 pandemic. But, experts say, it has done little to legitimise China to the outside world.

What are the allegations?

Most Americans may have never heard of Fort Detrick, but it is becoming a household name in China.\

Chinese propagandists have pushed a conspiracy suggesting that the Covid-19 coronavirus was made and leaked from the military installation in Frederick, Maryland, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Washington DC.

IMAGE SOURCEGETTY IMAGES

Once the centre of the US biological weapons programme, it currently houses biomedical labs researching viruses including Ebola and smallpox. Its complicated history has sparked speculation in China.

A rap song by the Chinese nationalist group CD Rev suggesting nefarious plots being hatched by the lab was recently endorsed by Zhao Lijian, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman.

The rhythms of the song -"How many plots came out of your lab/How many dead bodies hanging a tag/What are you hiding/Open the door to Fort Detrick" - are awkward, but its sentiment "speaks our mind," Mr Zhao wrote in a tweet in August.

IMAGE SOURCETWITTER


Mr Zhao, who is known for his aggressive style of diplomacy, has played an important role in spreading the "US origin" theory. Several tweets from his account last year first drew wide attention to Fort Detrick. "What's behind the closure of the biolab at Fort Detrick?" he wrote in July 2020, "When will US invite experts to investigate the origin of the virus in US?"

In recent months, his calls have been joined by Chinese diplomats based in various countries, and the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV even aired an hour-long special report, "The Dark History behind Fort Detrick", focusing on breaches of containment at the lab in 2019, to bolster claims of lax lab security echoed by Chinese officials and state media. A related hashtag has had more than 100 million views on Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent.

"We see a more sustained campaign involving more numerous and geographically spread accounts to promote the narrative," about Fort Detrick, says Ira Hubert, a senior investigative analyst at social analytics firm Graphika.

Another popular theory, pushed by the nationalist tabloid the Global Times, attempts to connect the virus's origins to a US coronavirus expert, Dr Ralph Baric, and researchers at Fort Detrick.

The newspaper suggested that Dr Baric created a new human-infecting coronavirus, citing a paper the North Carolina-based researcher co-authored about the virus's transmission from bats in Nature Medicine.

In an editor's note, the journal said it was aware the paper was being used to spread the false theory, but the note was not included in the Global Times report.

The newspaper also launched an online petition calling for Chinese netizens to sign an open letter demanding a World Health Organisation (WHO) investigation into Fort Detrick. People could "sign" the letter with a single click, and the appeal reportedly gathered more than 25 million "signatures".

Propaganda from Switzerland to Fiji

Experts say Beijing is seeking to bring non-Chinese audiences into the dispute about Covid-19 origins to further muddy the waters.

A clear example unfolded in July, when Chinese state media outlets began relentlessly reporting on criticism written in a Facebook post by "Wilson Edwards", a user claiming to be a Swiss scientist.

"Mr Edwards" argued that Washington was "so obsessed with attacking China on the origin-tracing issue that it is reluctant to open its eyes to the data and findings."

But the Swiss embassy in China later said that there is no registry of a Swiss citizen with the name, and urged Chinese media to remove "false" news reports.

Experts believe "Wilson Edwards" likely does not exist, but is instead a fictitious propaganda profile. His Facebook page was launched on the day that he published the Covid-19 post. A new Twitter account under the name of "Wilson Edwards" also tweeted out the same message on that day.

The "Wilson Edwards" story appears to have first been reported through an obscure Fiji-based Chinese-English bilingual outlet, the Voice of South Pacific.

Though it is unclear whether Voice of South Pacific is backed by the Chinese state, its mobile app is developed by a wholly-owned subsidiary of state news agency China News Service, the first major Chinese state-owned outlet to report on Edwards' claims.

The BBC found that even before Edwards' Facebook post drew wide media attention, it had been shared by hundreds of Facebook accounts which claim to be based in Southeast Asia, for example, "Eastman Tyla" in Malaysia and "Tyree Schmidt" in Indonesia.

"Tyla" and "Schmidt" also circulated a long and identical list of pro-China news stories on their Facebook pages, praising Beijing's handling of the pandemic.

IMAGE SOURCE FACEBOOK

There is no conclusive evidence as to who operates these social media accounts, they often direct-quote phrases used by China's state spokespersons or from major Chinese state media outlets.


And Graphika, the social analytics firm, has identified a network of fake and covert pro-China accounts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube who are key amplifiers of the Fort Detrick theory.

How a fake network pushes pro-China propaganda
The disinformation tactics used by China

What does this say about China's propaganda?

China's latest global influence campaign over Covid-19 may not have made the country many new friends overseas, but analysts say it has been successful in convincing Beijing's domestic audience.


"For the most part, the biggest concern [of the Chinese government] is domestic legitimacy," Georgia State University Global Communication Assistant Professor Maria Repnikova told the BBC


More Chinese diplomats have recently surged onto Twitter, which is banned in the country, but their combative messages appear to aim at a domestic audience.


Prof Repnikova says China has blurred the boundaries between domestic and external propaganda for years, but this strategy doesn't come without risks, as the less effective external messaging could put strain on China's foreign relations.


Meanwhile, Chinese state media have cherry-picked more foreign sources, and foreign video bloggers have played an increasingly prominent role in Beijing's disinformation drive. These efforts aim at "legitimising China from the outside," according to Prof Repnikova.


The uptick of foreign elements in China's disinformation campaign signals a change in Beijing's propaganda strategy.


"It's not just about telling a story," Prof Repnikova says, "It's about creating a story."

World's Largest Hybrid Drive Wind Turbine Has 387-Ft Long Blades, Can Power 20,000 Homes

23 Aug 2021, 
by Cristina Mircea 

With mankind looking to make the transition toward cleaner, sustainable energy solutions, more and more companies choose to focus their attention on offshore wind power. MingYang Smart Energy is one of them and has recently announced what seems to be the world’s largest hybrid drive wind turbine.

 
It is called MySE 16.0-242 and according to the Chinese company, its blades are 387 ft long (118 meters) and it features a swept area the size of six soccer fields. The wind turbine has a 794-ft (242 m) diameter rotor and a nameplate capacity of 16MW.

Its nacelle weighs less than 37 tons per MW, which is impressively low and helps with more efficient use of the tower and foundation construction. That also means lower costs in materials. Both the MV-transformer as well as all the power electronics are located up-tower into the nacelle, making the wind turbine more convenient in terms of maintenance and cabling. This is the first model made by the Chinese company with this kind of placement of the components.

MingYang claims a single one of these turbines can generate 80,000 MWh of electricity per year, which is enough to power over 20,000 households in need of electricity.

In addition to having a lifespan of 25 years, the colossal turbine is also an environmentally friendly energy solution, as it can eliminate over 1.6 million tons of CO2 emissions during the two and a half decades when it is expected to be in operation.

Qiying Zhang, President and CTO of Ming Yang Smart Energy, claims the new turbine is an apt illustration of the three essential drivers to technology evolution: demand, combination, and iteration.

A prototype of the new MySE 16.0-242 wind turbine is scheduled for launch in 2022 and commercial production is set for the first half of 2024.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

PNG to resume talks on P’nyang gas project

Angela Macdonald-Smith

Senior resources writer
Aug 23, 2021 – 2.57pm

ExxonMobil has advised of movement in the stalemate with the Papua New Guinea government over the development of a major natural gas field in further evidence of a thawing in the chilly investment climate for resources development under James Marape’s government.

The US energy giant’s managing director in PNG, Peter Larden, and PNG petroleum minister Kerenga Kua jointly announced they intend to re-engage in talks towards an agreement that would set out the terms for the development of the P’nyang field.

PNG Petroleum Minister Kerenga Kua said that the P’nyang and Papua gas projects could be developed over an eight-year period. Supplied

ASX-listed Oil Search, a partner in the field, described the announcement as “a positive step” towards the development of the gas resource held by the PRL3 joint venture.

Oil Search executive vice-president commercial Diego Fettweis said it “signals the strength of support between the PRL3 joint venture and the Government of Papua New Guinea for a mutually beneficial outcome”.

The news comes after Newcrest last week said negotiations had restarted with the PNG government over a special mining lease for the gold miner’s long-delayed Wafi-Golpu copper and gold project in the highlands region.


Talks on P’nyang gas, which is intended to supply Exxon’s PNG LNG venture, have been stalled since early February last year when the government and Exxon could not agree on terms for the development of the field after months of negotiations. Mr Marape had been looking to put in place improved terms for the expansion of the PNG LNG venture that would have provided more benefits for the nation but Exxon baulked.

The project was in any case put on hold in March last year after the crude oil price crashed, and Oil Search and France’s TotalEnergies have since continued to progress the Papua LNG project alone, rather than as a part of a broader LNG expansion that would have included P’nyang.

RELATED
Path clears for smaller LNG expansion in PNG

Now the PNG government is aiming to sign an initial agreement for the development of P’nyang “around the end of this next month”, followed by a formal Gas Agreement for the project, petroleum minister Kerenga Kua said.

Credit Suisse energy analyst Saul Kavonic was still downbeat about the prospects for real progress towards the development of P’nyang.

“We don’t hold our breath, given similar deadlines in the past have slipped (and may be driven more by local politics than substance), although Exxon’s co-authoring lends the announcement more credence,” Mr Kavonic said.

He said that in any case, he doubted that a deal would bring an expansion of PNG LNG back onto the table, saying P’nyang gas is more likely to be used for “backfill” gas for the existing two-train LNG project once existing gas supplies start to decline. Gas from P’nyang could displace a field such as Juha which appears unviable despite being included in proven and probable reserves,” he said.

Still, Mr Larden said the intent to develop the P’nyang gas field “helps demonstrate the encouraging growth opportunities for our operations in PNG” while Mr Kua underscored the benefits of phasing the construction of the Papua and P’nyang gas projects over an eight-year period.

Separately, Santos made progress towards development of its $US2 billion Dorado oil project in Western Australia, awarding a contract for initial engineering and design of an offshore production ship to Altera Infrastructure. Santos and partner Carnarvon Petroleum decided in June to start front-end engineering and design work for the project, which is targeted for a final go-ahead for construction in mid-2022.

Angela Macdonald-Smith writes on the resources industry with a focus on energy, including gas, oil, electricity and renewables. Connect with Angela on Twitter. Email Angela at amacdonald-smith@afr.com

Clever orangutans invent nutcrackers from scratch

Chimpanzees are not the only great apes to develop tools without tutoring

A Sumatran orangutan named Padana raps nuts with a log ‘hammer’ atop a tree stump ‘anvil’, a technique she invented herself. Credit: Claudio Tennie

ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR

18 AUGUST 2021

Chimpanzees have long been thought to be the only non-human great apes to regularly smash nuts with stones or wooden hammers — one of the most complex forms of tool use observed in nature. Now, researchers have found that orangutans, too, can use hammers to crack open nuts, and they learn to do so without copying others.

Elisa Bandini at the University of Tübingen in Germany and her colleagues observed 12 zoo-dwelling orangutans (Pongo abelii and Pongo pygmaeus) that were given hard nuts and small wooden logs as potential hammers. None of the animals had previously broken nuts open with tools.

Some of the apes never tried the potential tools. But most wielded the logs as hammers to crack open the nuts, and three used a tree stump or another object as an anvil to stabilize the nuts.

Four animals started to use the tools without observing more experienced individuals, which suggests that orangutans can spontaneously learn to use objects as efficient nutcrackers, the researchers say.

Am. J. Primatol. (2021)

In his unfinished essay, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man,” Frederick Engels attempts to demonstrate the role of labor in human evolution. In this way he is trying to create a synthesis of Darwin’s theory of the evolution of humans and the Marxist philosophy with which he is associated.

Engels. The Part Played by Labour in the Transition From ...

suezemka.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/engels-the-part-played-by-labour-in-the-tr…

Are 20 seconds of handwashing really necessary? 

Physics says yes

No shortcuts, please: modelling supports the public-health directives to wash hands for 20 seconds. Credit: David Cliff/NurPhoto/Getty

FLUID DYNAMICS

 

20 AUGUST 2021

A simple model suggests that there’s no fast way to rid hands of virus-sized particles.

Handwashing must be done at a minimum speed to dislodge viruses and bacteria, and it should last roughly 20 seconds, on par with the time that public-health experts recommend, according to an analysis of the fluid dynamics of soaping up.

The simple act of handwashing masks some complex physics. Two rough surfaces — hands — slide past one another, separated by a thin layer of water and soap.

To illuminate the physical details, Paul Hammond, a consultant based in Bourn, UK, turned to a 135-year-old branch of fluid dynamics called lubrication theory, which excels at describing the physics of thin layers of fluids wedged between surfaces. Hammond used its formulas to devise a simple model that could be used to estimate how long it takes to dislodge any virus-sized particles.

The results confirmed that it does indeed require about 20 seconds of hand-rubbing to knock off pathogens. Although the analysis did not take the chemistry and biology of handwashing into account, the author says the results are an encouraging starting point for further study.

Wind farms get noisier at night, say physicists

23 Aug 2021 Margaret Harris


Noise from wind farms may be more bothersome at night than it is during the day – and not only for the reasons you might expect.

While it’s true that competing sources of background noise (such as traffic) tend to die down at night, and people are more likely to notice sounds when they’re trying to fall asleep, scientists in Australia have found that physics as well as psychology plays a role in wind-farm-induced sleep disturbances.


According to Kirsty Hansen, an acoustics expert at Flinders University, one of the most noticeable types of wind farm noise is the “swooshing” sound produced as the blades rotate. In her latest research, published in Measurement and Applied Acoustics, Hansen and colleagues at Flinders and the University of Adelaide found that this swooshing sound (known technically as amplitude modulation, or AM) is by no means constant. “The noise seems to worsen after sunset,” explains Duc Phuc Nguyen, a PhD student at Flinders and the lead author of both studies. “We found that the amount of amplitude modulation present during the daytime versus night-time varies substantially, occurring two to five times more often during the night-time.”

Members of the team used a combination of long-term noise monitoring and machine learning to analyse how often AM occurred. They found that observers located around 1 km from a wind farm experience AM more than 50% of the time between the hours of about 8pm and 5am, whereas at mid-day the prevalence drops to around 20%. For observers 3.5 km away, the comparable figures are 30% and less than 5%.

READ MORE

Optimal size for wind farms is revealed by computational study

The team attribute the day-night variations to differences in prevailing wind and air conditions at the locations they studied. Hansen, who is also involved in a separate study that aims to quantify sleep disturbances due to wind farm noise, notes that people living downwind or crosswind to turbines are also more likely to experience AM.

Hansen says that her long-term goal is to make wind energy more acceptable to the public by improving noise assessment methods, regulatory guidelines and turbine designs for wind farms. “These studies advance our ability to measure and monitor the noise from wind turbines tha

 

THE PASSING OF A JASON

Steven Weinberg: the passing of science's most intellectual spokesman

As important as his Nobel Prize-winning technical accomplishments was his ability to communicate to the public.

TOM HARTSFIELD

21 August, 2021

Physicist Steven Weinberg, January 28, 2008.

Credit: Larry Murphy / University of Texas at Austin

• Theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg passed away on July 23.
• Due to his heavyweight intellect and unparalleled ability to communicate, he was science's most effective spokesman.
• His passing leaves a void in the world of science communication.

I recently read two Big Think articles (here and here) memorializing Steven Weinberg, who passed away last month. These articles were written by Marcelo Gleiser, a theoretical physicist, and they concern Weinberg's place in that field and its meaningfulness to a practitioner. Weinberg's role in creating the Standard Model and its candidate successor string theory rank him as possibly the greatest theorist of the last 60 years. He was also a giant in another field.

Weinberg was a science communicator — a writer, a speaker, a steady scientific advisor to decades of governments. In other words, he was a rare, true public intellectual. Beyond his Nobel Prize-winning technical accomplishments, he played a big part outside of his specialty: an exceptional spokesman for science.

Weinberg the spokesman

As a PhD student in his physics department — but more interested in science communication than in mathematical theory — I periodically encountered not the towering physicist but the spokesman. Walking along the theory floor I would occasionally see his door open. Men of Weinberg's stature have assistants, regulating the flow of visitors and maintaining a careful schedule. One time, his entire office was open and his assistant had stepped away, so I stuck my nose in. The rows of packed bookshelves were largely obscured. On that random day, a set of silvered umbrellas and stage lights were arranged about, preparing for the filming of some television show.

On film, Weinberg spoke for scientists on many matters: religion, philosophy, history, the meaning of mathematics, the story of everything. Many of these videos are freely available on the internet. These were not scripts for computer-generated movies of black holes. They were interviews and discussions. He professed himself to be "an unreconstructed believer in the importance of the word" despite "the ascendency of the culture of the image."

His book, The First Three Minutes — well before A Brief History of Time or The Elegant Universe — was one of the first books on cosmology written for the layman. Weinberg penned elegant essays on a wide array of topics outside of his research for publications such as The New York Times Book Review and Physics Today. These span astronauts to educated Texans and debates on Whig history to Israel. They have been published in a series of books over the past two decades, forming a style guide for a particular sort of popular science writing — not flashy but careful, intelligent, and clear of thought.

While Weinberg's fame was not as great as other science popularizers of recent decades, his gravitas outweighed them. Weinberg was widely read, carefully considered, and respectful of those with whom he disagreed.

Weinberg the statesman

His spokesmanship extended to government leadership and secret programs. Weinberg was an early member of the JASON advisory group. This body sought to recruit a panel of geniuses to advise U.S. government decision-makers on important matters. JASON's assessments included tactical nuclear weapons, magnetic gun fusion, the SDI ("Star Wars") program, the direction of the U.S. National Laboratories, and laser spacecraft propulsion. Much of this work is still classified

Weinberg as an elder statesman carried an aura. His deep authoritative speaking silenced the room. (When Weinberg came to a talk, the speaker was given a mark of importance and might be visibly intimidated.) We badly need voices like Weinberg's — carefully considered and polymathic — speaking up in our public debates and advising our leadership. His death leaves a void in that world.

• To the very beginning: going back in time with Steven Weinberg ›
• The first three minutes: a tribute to Steven Weinberg - Big Think ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) ›
• Steven Weinberg - Biographical - NobelPrize.org ›
• Steven Weinberg, Groundbreaking Nobelist in Physics, Dies at 88 

JASON (advisory group) - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JASON_(advisory_group)

• Overview
• Membership
• Activities
• Chairs
• Early history
• Vietnam War
• Recent history
• Research

JASON members, known informally as "Jasons," include physicists, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, mathematicians, and computer scientists, predominated by theoretical physicists. They are selected by current members, and, over the years, have included eleven Nobel Prize laureates and several dozen members of the United States National Academy of Sciences. All members have a wide range of security clearances that allow them to do their work.

1. The JASON Society & The JASON Group - Red Ice

   https://redice.tv/news/the-jason-society-and-the-jason-group

   2007-06-08 · The Jason Society (Jason Scholars) - Former President Eisenhower commissioned a secret society known as the Jason Society (or Jason Scholars) under the leadership of the following; Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Welsh Dulles, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, President of the Trilateral Commission from 1973 until 1976, and Dr. Henry Kissenger, leader of the scientific effort, to sift through all the 

Amazon.com: The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's ...

https://www.amazon.com/Jasons-Secret-History-Sciences-Postwar/dp/...

The Jasons are a well-guarded group of world-class scientists, briefly outed in the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, who have been meeting every summer since 1960 to tackle classified problems that the Defense Department cannot solve.

Steven Weinberg: probably the greatest theorist of his age

21 Aug 2021 Matin Durrani

Matin Durrani recalls his brushes with the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, who died on 23 July 2021 at the age of 88.

A passion for physics: Steven Weinberg at the 2016 March meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore, US (Courtesy: Matin Durrani/IOP Publishing)

For reasons I can no longer quite remember, I was once invited to CERN to interview the Nobel-prize-winning theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg. I think Weinberg, who died last month, had travelled to Geneva to lecture on the development of the Standard Model of particle physics, in which he had played a key part, and there was time in his schedule for journalists like me to quiz the great man.

It’s usually the case that the simplest questions reveal the most illuminating answers, but that tactic, with Weinberg, was like asking someone who’d scaled Everest what they thought of the picnic tables at base camp. I was completely out of my depth.

If he was irritated or bored by my remarks, Weinberg was too polite to let it show.

If he was irritated or bored by my remarks, Weinberg was too polite to let it show and he responded with trademark lucidity and insight. He probably felt that anyone seeking a succinct explanation of his thinking should read one of his many books and essays, which set out his ideas precisely as he wanted.

The First Three Minutes remains one of the best popular books about cosmology, while his three-volume The Quantum Theory of Fields was vital for any serious theorist thirsting to make progress on nature’s inner workings.READ MORE

US Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg dies aged 88

Despite some misgivings, I wrote up the interview and e-mailed it to Weinberg to check. He replied pointing out a few errors I’d made near the start – and flatly refused to read it further. I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that Weinberg was used to working largely alone.

Most of his papers were single-authored, including “A model of leptons” (Phys. Rev. Lett. 19 1264), in which he described the unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces. Just three pages long, it led to his Nobel prize, which he shared with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow, and remains one of the most highly cited papers of all time.

Weinberg’s approach was atypical in a world where thousands routinely collaborate – as they did, for example, to generate the first image of a black hole. But that’s not to say that Weinberg was a loner or curmudgeon. He enjoyed the arts and had a keen interest in the history of science, as I witnessed firsthand (see photo) at a session of the 2016 March meeting of the American Physical Society (APS), organized by Physics World columnist Robert Crease.READ MORE

A trip through Weinberg’s world

Speaking in the wake of his book To Explain the World, which outlined the development of the scientific method, Weinberg reminded delegates at the APS that he was unashamedly a “Whig historian”. The notion that we can only understand the past from the present enraged historians, but Weinberg’s position was at least clear and honest.

He defended his stance in a letter to Physics World a few months later, saying that René Descartes, for example, was flawed not because of his scientific errors but his “mistaken self-confidence” in his method for seeking truth. After all, as he wryly noted, “All scientists make scientific errors – even me.”

I just wish he’d corrected mine.


Matin Durrani is editor-in-chief of Physics World magazine

CAPITALI$M IN SPACE

Suing your way to the stars

Lucas Matney@lucasmtny 

August 22, 2021

Image Credits: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg / Getty Images


Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review!

I’m back from a very fun and rehabilitative couple weeks away from my phone, my Twitter account and the news cycle. That said, I actually really missed writing this newsletter, and while Greg did a fantastic job while I was out, I won’t be handing over the reins again anytime soon. Plenty happened this week and I struggled to zero in on a single topic to address, but I finally chose to focus on Bezos’s Blue Origin suing NASA.

If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny.


The big thing

I was going to write about OnlyFans for the newsletter this week and their fairly shocking move to ban sexually explicit content from their site in a bid to stay friendly with payment processors, but alas I couldn’t help myself and wrote an article for ole TechCrunch dot com instead. Here’s a link if you’re curious.

Now, I should also note that while I was on vacation I missed all of the conversation surrounding Apple’s incredibly controversial child sexual abuse material detection software that really seems to compromise the perceived integrity of personal devices. I’m not alone in finding this to be a pretty worrisome development despite Apple’s intention of staving off a worse alternative. Hopefully, one of these weeks I’ll have the time to talk with some of the folks in the decentralized computing space about how our monolithic reliance on a couple tech companies operating with precious little consumer input is very bad. In the meantime, I will point you to some reporting from TechCrunch’s own Zack Whittaker on the topic which you should peruse because I’m sure it will be a topic I revisit here in the future.

Now then! Onto the topic at hand.

Federal government agencies don’t generally inspire much adoration. While great things have been accomplished at the behest of ample federal funding and the tireless work of civil servants, most agencies are treated as bureaucratic bloat and aren’t generally seen as anything worth passionately defending. Among the public and technologists in particular, NASA occupies a bit more of a sacred space. The American space agency has generally been a source of bipartisan enthusiasm, as has its goal to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024.

Which brings us to some news this week. While so much digital ink was spilled on Jeff Bezos’s little jaunt to the edge of space, cowboy hat, champagne and all, there’s been less fanfare around his space startup’s lawsuit against NASA, which we’ve now learned will delay the development of a new lunar lander by months, potentially throwing NASA’s goal to return astronauts to the moon’s surface on schedule into doubt.

Bezos’s upstart Blue Origin is protesting the fact that they were not awarded a government contract while Elon Musk’s SpaceX earned a $2.89 billion contract to build a lunar lander. This contract wasn’t just recently awarded either, SpaceX won it back in April and Blue Origin had already filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office. This happened before Bezos penned an open letter promising a $2 billion discount for NASA which had seen budget cuts at the hands of Congress dash its hoped to award multiple contracts. None of these maneuverings proved convincing enough for the folks at NASA, pushing Bezos’s space startup to sue the agency.

This little feud has caused long-minded Twitter users to dig up this little gem from a Bezos 2019 speech — as transcribed by Gizmodo — highlighting Bezos’s own distaste for how bureaucracy and greed have hampered NASA’s ability to reach for the stars:

“To the degree that big NASA programs become seen as jobs programs and that they have to be distributed to the right states where the right Senators live, and so on. That is going to change the objective. Now your objective is not to, you know, whatever it is, to get a man to the moon or a woman to the moon, but instead to get a woman to the moon while preserving X number of jobs in my district. That is a complexifier, and not a healthy one…[…]

Today, there would be, you know, three protests, and the losers would sue the federal government because they didn’t win. It’s interesting, but the thing that slows things down is procurement. It’s become the bigger bottleneck than the technology, which I know for a fact for all the well meaning people at NASA is frustrating.

A Blue Origin spokesperson called the suit, an “attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System.” But the lawsuit really seems to highlight how dire this deal is to the ability of Blue Origin to lock down top talent. Whether the startup can handle the reputational risk of suing NASA and delaying America’s return to the moon seems to be a question very much worth asking.