USA

It's Time to Enshrine in Law Women's Right to Choose
COMMENTARY

By Maria CardonaSeptember 07, 2021

(Joel Martinez/The Monitor via AP)

Texas has passed the most draconian anti-women’s rights law in the country and the Supreme Court has chosen to let it go into effect by deciding not to stop it. In doing so, the court has vindicated the hair-on-fire concerns that many Americans had when ultra-conservatives Amy Comey Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neal Gorsuch were confirmed as justices.

The furious and passionate dissents by the court’s three liberals -- and even Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissent, though not as fervent -- should be flares burning bright on the political horizon for the 2022 midterm elections.
Recommended

The dissents made compelling arguments that the Texas law is blatantly unconstitutional, that its burden on Texas women is untenable, especially on low-income women, that it shamefully uplifts the “shadow docket” and allows the justices to skirt daylight by avoiding official briefs and arguments of the merits of the law.

But the dissenting justices also put in stark relief what is at stake in the upcoming midterms – the fundamental right of women to decide what happens to their bodies. It is time for Democrats to pull out all the political stops. We need to codify the rights women have under Roe v. Wade by passing the Women’s Health Protection Act. If Republicans refuse to join Democrats to pass it, then we take our argument straight to the American people in the 2022 elections. And I say: Bring. It. On.

Nearly two-thirds of the American people oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. By similar margins, a majority of Americans support keeping abortion legal in all or most cases. President Biden excoriated the extreme law, saying it “unleashes unconstitutional chaos” against women. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also blasted it and vowed to bring legislation that protected women’s health care rights to a floor vote as soon as the House is back in session.

The Women’s Health Protection Act would establish as the law of the land what the Supreme Court affirmed 50 years ago through Roe. It would guarantee women access to a legal abortion as a fundamental right; it would protect health care providers from frivolous but destructive lawsuits (the kind allowed today under the Texas law); and would remove any unnecessary restrictions that would hinder an individual’s right to decide for themselves what happens to their bodies.

Democrats must start pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of Republican leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott, who on one side of his mouth yelps about the importance of individual freedom and how the government has no right to tell anyone to wear a mask or get a vaccine, but on the other side he signs a cruel and abusive law that will roll back women’s rights in Texas more than a half-century.

We cannot stand for this utter disrespect of Americans’ rights, the stunning disregard of legal precedent, and the outright attempt to usurp a woman’s agency over her body and replace it with the misguided approach to governing of these lawmakers who happen to be overwhelmingly white and male.

This last descriptor is an important one. I can almost guarantee that if men were the ones who could get pregnant, we would have abortion clinics next to ATMs and Starbucks on every corner in this country.

Unless overturned by the courts, the Texas law will have an overwhelmingly and disproportionately detrimental effect on women of color in the state. African American women and Latinas are overly represented in the populations that community health care clinics, including Planned Parenthood clinics, serve. Most are low-income women and many live in rural communities where there is a dearth of any kind of health care services.

Incredibly, this law has no provisions for rape or incest and very narrow exceptions for the life of the mother. So today, if a young girl gets pregnant by an abusive father and she finds out 6½ into her pregnancy, she will be forced to bring to term the child of her rapist father. If, God forbid, the health of that same young girl is put in jeopardy by bringing to term that child, unless her life is at risk or unless the pregnancy “will lead to substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function,” she will have no recourse but to carry the pregnancy to term.

On top of that, any person who is suspected of helping this young child get an abortion, from the health care provider to the Uber driver who took her to the appointment, to the person who made the appointment, can be sued and taken to court.

Liberals were right to fear the installation to the high court of Kavanaugh, Comey Barrett and Gorsuch as the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade. Sen. Susan Collins was wrong to trust they would in any way respect precedent.

It is now up to all Americans who treasure the Constitution and the personal freedoms it guarantees, and who believe that health care decisions should be made by women, their families, and their doctors, to support Democratic Party efforts to enshrine these sacred personal rights for women into law.

And it is Republicans who should fear political repercussions if they do not support permanently giving these rights to women through legislation, as opposed to holding them hostage to the whims of an ultra-conservative court.


Maria Cardona is a Democratic strategist, a CNN and CNN Espanol political commentator, and former DNC communications director. She also helped pioneer the New Democrat Network’s 2004 multimillion-dollar Hispanic Project for the Democratic Party.

ABORTION IS SATANIC SACRIFICE

‘Abortion is just demonic’: Ex-Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson responds to ‘evil’ amid Texas abortion law battle

By Billy Hallowell, Op-ed Contributor| Tuesday, September 07, 2021

People gather for a reproductive rights rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall on September 01, 2021, in Downtown Brooklyn in New York City. NOW-NYC and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York Action Fund organized a rally for reproductive rights after a Texas law that has been dubbed the "Heartbeat Bill" went into effect. The law ends access to abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and would allow anyone to sue abortion providers and “aiders and abetters” in civil court. Abortion rights activists have asked the Supreme Court to block the law, but as of Wednesday morning the court has allowed the law to go into effect. In May, Supreme Court justices agreed to review a Mississippi case on the state's ban on abortion procedures after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that legalized abortion nationwide. A ruling on that case is expected in 2022. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Ex-Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson called abortion “demonic” in a recent episode of her “Politely Rude” podcast as she unveiled her unequivocal reaction to Texas’ controversial new heartbeat law.

Johnson, who is an outspoken and celebrated pro-life activist, started her show by expressing her elation over the Texas law, which bans most abortions around the six-week gestational period when cardiac activity can be detected.

Hear Johnson’s full and unfettered reaction to the Texas abortion law:

LISTEN TO ABBY JOHNSON’S POLITELY RUDE PODCAST ON EDIFI

“Today, babies with a detectable heartbeat in the womb must be protected,” Johnson said. “And that just thrills me to bits. … I’m just so excited.”

The outspoken pro-life icon was particularly disturbed by “sick” reports that some clinics were performing abortions up until 11:59 p.m. before the new law took effect on Sept. 1.

“How … gross that you’re like, ‘Gotta kill babies up until that last second,’” she said. “That’s how you know that abortion is just demonic. That’s how you know that we’re just dealing with evil here — that there’s like just, ‘Gotta kill them right up until the last second.’”

Johnson credited the heartbeat bill with helping eliminate “85 to 95 percent of abortions in the state of Texas,” and said it's her goal to make abortion harder to attain.

“I want to make it super hard because I want your baby to live,” she said. “I don’t want you to live a lifetime of regret because of a decision that you made in haste … a decision that you made in crisis.”

Johnson said she has met many thousands of women who have come up to her at events to recount their regret over having an abortion.

“Women are living with lifelong regret because of these hasty decisions that they make inside of these abortion facilities each and every day,” she said.

MORE CRAZY CHRISTIANS (STRANGE PROTESTANT CULTISTS)

Tamela Mann emotionally shares that focusing on Jesus is her only goal in life



Danny Gokey says the world need Jesus People

THE BELIEF THAT WHEN A WOMAN HAS 

A MISCARRIAGE IT'S SATAN'S FAULT 

IF ABORTION IS DEMONIC

Afghanistan and the US Corporate Media


Sep 8, 2021 | Opinion


The Taliban’s lightning fast takeover of Afghanistan was amazingly achieved with relatively little killing and bloodshed. Since the rout of the government, an entity essentially installed by the US, the Taliban has been assuring the Afghan people that its governance style will be more moderate than under its previous rule. Many people in Afghanistan are very fearful and particularly skeptical about the idea that the Taliban will change its ways. Many in the US share this skepticism and view the comments by the Taliban about including women in government, an amnesty and honoring human rights as simply public relations spin.

In contrast, very few people in the US political arena or the corporate-controlled US media express any skepticism about the US and its trustworthiness. It appears the possibility that the US is not trustworthy never crosses their minds. However, if it does, they realize that it is likely not to their political or professional advantage to raise this possibility with others.

President Obama benefited from this lack of skepticism when he falsely touted the precision of the US drone program. When Obama claimed that few civilians were killed, the mainstream media generally accepted this claim until there was too much evidence of civilian deaths to be denied.

The hypocritical US political/media elite are now raising concerns about the safety and well being of the Afghan population under the Taliban’s rule. However, it appears that these concerns about Afghan lives were not a major issue for these elites when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected a proposed surrender by the Taliban in December 2001, a surrender that would have brought an end to most of the fighting there.

These elite also didn’t show much concern about Afghan lives during the past 20 years when the US forces were bombing and then militarily occupying the country. In addition, the fighting with the Taliban, especially the air campaign, continued throughout these past 20 years and killed a large number of civilians. In fact, according to a excellent recent article by Jim Lobe in Responsible Statecraft, using research by Andrew Tyndall, in 2020 the corporate-controlled media mostly ignored Afghanistan with a total of 5 minutes coverage during the 14,000 minutes of weekday evening news coverage on the three national broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC). In the previous five years prior to 2020, the networks averaged 24 minutes per network per year. Thus there is little evidence of any real concern being shown about the safety and well being of the Afghanistan people before the Taliban recaptured control of Afghanistan.

Moreover, the US has denied the Taliban access to $9.5 billion of Afghan government funds and has worked with the IMF to cut off aid to Afghanistan. These acts clearly demonstrate a hypocritical lack of concern for the welfare of the Afghan people who are facing desperate conditions.

There is also much concern expressed about the treatment of women under the Taliban rule. However, if the US and its corporate media were really concerned about the treatment of women, both entities would certainly challenge Saudi Arabia about its treatment of women. It appears that the issue of women is used selectively and hypocritically to advance US political interests.

There are certainly grounds for being very skeptical about the Taliban and its claims of moderation. However, there are overwhelming grounds for doubting US claims as well. For example, under the Trump administration the US reneged on the Obama administration’s agreement with Iran and other nations on the enrichment of uranium. The Biden administration broke the Trump agreement with the Taliban for the withdrawal of US troops by May 1, 2021. The George W. Bush administration used the false claim of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as the basis for its illegal attack on Iraq. The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all broke the George H.W. Bush promise to the Soviet Union not to expand NATO one inch to the east if the Soviet Union would allow the unification of East and West Germany. This shameful record of the US duplicity stretches all the way back to its very beginning when it broke its treaties with American Indians.

Afghanistan’s future is uncertain, but it depends upon how well the Taliban can deliver on its promises. Given that the Taliban consists of very conservative members as well as members who are relatively progressive, it faces a major challenge in being able to live up to its words. If the US and its allies stop being vindictive losers and allow the international community to help Afghanistan through the current dire situation, Afghanistan will have a chance. In addition, Afghanistan’s relations with its neighbors will play a key role in the success of the Taliban and Afghanistan.

Ron Forthofer is a retired professor of biostatistics and former Green candidate for Congress and for Governor of Colorado.

www.counterpunch.org

 PRACTICAL PHYSICS

Walking with coffee is a little-understood feat of physics

by Arizona State University

A schematic illustration of the cart-pendulum system to simulate human’s handling of a complex object, such as a cup of hot coffee: (a) a conceptual model of a ball rolling inside a circular cup and (b) a nonlinear mechanical model of a pendulum attached to a moving cart, which is mathematically described by a set of differential equations. Credit: Brent Wallace, Ying-Cheng Lai, Arizona State University

Walking with coffee is something most of us do every day without considering the balancing act it requires. In fact, there's a lot of physics preventing the coffee from spilling over.

The coffee, a thermally agitated fluid contained in a cup, has internal degrees of freedom that interact with the cup which, in turn, interacts with the human carrier.

"While humans possess a natural, or gifted, ability to interact with complex objects, our understanding of those interactions—especially at a quantitative level, is next to zero," said ASU Professor Ying-Cheng Lai, an Arizona State University electrical engineering professor. "We have no conscious ability to analyze the influences of external factors, like noise or climate, on our interactions."

Yet, understanding these external factors is a fundamental issue in applied fields such as soft robotics.

"For example, in design of smart prosthetics, it is becoming increasingly important to build in natural modes of flexibility that mimic the natural motion of human limbs," said Brent Wallace, a former undergraduate student of Lai's and now a doctoral student in ASU's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. "Such improvements make the prosthetic feel more comfortable and natural to the user."

According to Lai, it is conceivable that, in the not-too-distant future, robots will be deployed in various applications of complex object handing or control which require the kind of coordination and movement control that humans do quite well.

If a robot is designed to walk with a relatively short stride length, then relatively large variations in the frequency of walking are allowed. However, if a longer stride is desired, then the walking frequency should be selected carefully.

A new paper published in Physical Review Applied, "Synchronous Transition in Complex Object Control," originated with Wallace as part of his senior design project in electrical engineering, supervised by Lai. Wallace has received an NSF Graduate Fellowship and now is a doctoral student in ASU's School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering.

The ASU team's research expands on a ground-breaking, virtual experimental study recently conducted by researchers at Northeastern University, using the coffee-cup-holding paradigm and adding a rolling ball, to examine how humans manipulate a complex object. Participants deliberately rotated the cup in a rhythmic manner with the ability to vary force and frequency to ensure the ball stayed contained.

The Northeastern study showed that the participants tend to select either a low-frequency or a high-frequency strategy—rhythmic motion of the cup—to handle a complex object.

A remarkable finding was that when a low-frequency strategy was used, the oscillations exhibit in-phase synchronization, but antiphase synchronization arises when a high-frequency strategy was employed.

"Since both the low- and high-frequencies are effective, it's conceivable that some participants in the virtual experiment switched strategies," said Wallace. "This raises questions.

"How does a transition occur from in-phase synchronization associated with a low-frequency strategy to antiphase synchronization associated with a high-frequency strategy, or vice versa," asked Wallace. "In the parameter space, is the boundary between the in-phase and antiphase synchronization regimes sharp, gradual, or sophisticated?"

The ASU team's research, prompted by Wallace's curiosity, studied the transition between the in-phase and antiphase synchronization using a nonlinear dynamical model of a pendulum attached to a moving cart subject to external periodic forcing.

The researchers found that, in the weakly forcing regime, as the external driving frequency is varied, the transition is abrupt and occurs at the frequency of resonance, which can be fully understood using the linear systems control theory.

Beyond this regime, a transitional region emerges in between the in-phase and antiphase synchronization, where the motions of the cart and the pendulum are not synchronized. It was also found that there is bistability in and near the transitional region on the low-frequency side.

Overall, the results indicate that humans are able to switch abruptly and efficiently from one synchronous attractor to another, a mechanism that can be exploited for designing smart robots to adaptively handle complex objects in a changing environment.

"It is possible that humans are able to use both in-phase and antiphase strategies skillfully and to switch from one strategy to another smoothly, perhaps without even realizing it. The findings from this study can be used to implement these human skills into soft robots with applications in other fields, such as rehabilitation and brain-machine interface," Lai said.

Additionally, tasks as trivial as running wires in a car body on an assembly line—which humans carry out with ease—still elude the most advanced machines.

"A systematic quantitative understanding of how humans interact dynamically with their environment will forever change how we engineer our world, and may revolutionize the design of smart prosthetics and usher in new age of manufacturing and automation," said Wallace. "By mimicking the dynamically-favorable behaviors adopted by humans in handling complex objects, we will be able to automate processes previously thought to be impossible."Transients and synchronization are unified in ecological networks

More information: Brent Wallace et al, Synchronous Transition in Complex Object Control, Physical Review Applied (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.16.034012

Provided by Arizona State University 

Exploring quantum gravity and entanglement using pendulums

THE PENDULUM IS USED FOR SCRYING 

ANOTHER FORM OF QUANTUM PHENOMENA

by National Institute of Standards and Technology

In an atomic interferometer, the atom's wave function is split into left and right arms. The left and right arms are then recombined, producing an interference pattern. Credit: S. Kelley/NIST

When it comes to a marriage with quantum theory, gravity is the lone holdout among the four fundamental forces in nature. The three others—the electromagnetic force, the weak force, which is responsible for radioactive decay, and the strong force, which binds neutrons and protons together within the atomic nucleus—have all merged with quantum theory to successfully describe the universe on the tiniest of scales, where the laws of quantum mechanics must play a leading role.

Although Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes gravity as a curvature of space-time, explains a multitude of gravitational phenomena, it fails within the tiniest of volumes—the center of a black hole or the universe at its explosive birth, when it was less than an atomic diameter in size. That's where quantum mechanics ought to dominate.

Yet over the past eight decades, expert after expert, including Einstein, have been unable to unite quantum theory with gravity. So, is gravity truly a quantum force?

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have now proposed an experiment that may help settle the question.

The experiment takes advantage of two of the weirdest properties of quantum theory. One is the superposition principle, which holds that an undisturbed atomic particle can be described as a wave, with some probability of being in two places at once. For instance, an undisturbed atom traveling through a region with two slits, passes through not one or the other of the slits but both.

And because the atom is described by a wave, the portion that passes through one slit will interfere with the part that passes through the other, producing a well-known pattern of bright and dark fringes. The bright fringes correspond to regions where the hills and valleys of the two waves align so that they add together, creating constructive interference and the dark regions correspond to regions where the hills and valleys of the waves cancel each out, creating destructive interference.

When the experiment begins, the atom's wave function is unaffected by the pendulum. This means the two arms of the single atom interfere fully with each other. Credit: S. Kelley/NIST

The second strange quantum property is known as entanglement, a phenomenon in which two particles can be so strongly correlated that they behave as a single entity. Measuring a property of one of the particles automatically forces the other to have a complementary property, even if the two particles reside galaxies apart.

In a quantum theory of gravity, the gravitational attraction between two massive objects would be communicated by a hypothetical subatomic particle, the graviton, in the same way that the electromagnetic interaction between two charged particles is communicated by a photon (the fundamental particle of light). So, if a graviton truly exists, it should be able to connect, or entangle, the properties of two massive bodies, just as a photon can entangle the properties of two charged particles

The proposed experiment by Jake Taylor of NIST's Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, along with Daniel Carney, now at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Holger Müller of the University of California, Berkeley, provides a clever way to test if two massive bodies can indeed become entangled by gravity. They described their work in an article published online in Physical Review X Quantum on August 18, 2021.

The experiment would use a cold cloud of atoms, trapped inside an atomic interferometer. The interferometer has two arms—a left arm and a right. According to the superposition principle, if each atom in the cloud is in a pure, undisturbed quantum state, it can be described as a wave occupying both arms simultaneously. When the two portions of the wave, one from each arm, recombine, they will produce an interference pattern that reveals any changes to their paths due to forces like gravity.

A small, initially stationary mass suspended as a pendulum is introduced just outside the interferometer. The suspended mass and the atom are gravitationally attracted. If that gravitational tug also produces entanglement, what would that look like?

If gravitational attraction indeed causes an entanglement between the pendulum and the atom, the pendulum will partially measure the position of the atom, concentrating it into one arm or the other. Credit: S. Kelley/NIST

The suspended mass will become correlated with a specific location for the atom—either the right arm of the interferometer or the left. As a result, the mass will start swinging to the left or the right. If the atom is located on the left, the pendulum will start swinging to the left; if the atom is located on the right, the pendulum will start swinging to the right. Gravity has entangled the position of the atom in the interferometer with the direction in which the pendulum begins swinging.

The position entanglement means that the pendulum has effectively measured the location of the atom, pinpointing it to a particular site within the interferometer. Because the atom is no longer in a superposition of being in both arms at the same time, the interference pattern vanishes or diminishes.

Half a period later, when the swinging mass returns to its starting point, it loses all "memory" of the gravitational entanglement it had created. That's because regardless of what path the pendulum took—initially swinging to the right, which picks out a location for the atom in the right interferometer arm, or initially swinging to the left, which picks out a location for the atom in the left arm—it returns to the same starting position, much like a child on a swing.

And when it returns to the starting position, it's equally likely that the pendulum will pick out a location for the atom in the left or right arm. At that moment, entanglement between the mass and the atom has been erased and the atomic interference pattern reappears.

Half a period after that, as the pendulum swings to one side or the other, entanglement is re-established and the interference pattern diminishes once again. As the pendulum swings back and forth the pattern repeats—interference, diminished interference, interference. This collapse and revival of interference, the scientists say, would be a "smoking gun" for entanglement.

"It is difficult for any phenomenon other than gravitational entanglement to produce such a cycle," said Carney.

After each half oscillation period, the pendulum will return to where it started, losing all memory of the gravitational entanglement it had created and restoring full interference. Credit: S. Kelley/NIST

Although the ideal experiment may be a decade or more from being built, a preliminary version could be ready in just a few years. A variety of shortcuts could be exploited to make things easier to observe, Taylor said. The biggest shortcut is to embrace the assumption, similar to Einstein's theory of general relativity, that it doesn't matter when you start the experiment—you should always get the same result.

Taylor noted that non-gravitational sources of quantum entanglement must be considered, which will require careful design and measurements to preclude.

An atom chip interferometer that could detect quantum gravity

More information: Daniel Carney et al, Using an Atom Interferometer to Infer Gravitational Entanglement Generation, PRX Quantum (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PRXQuantum.2.030330

Provided by National Institute of Standards and Technology 

 

Massive new animal species discovered in half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale

by Royal Ontario Museum

View of Titanokorys gainesi reconstruction. Credit: Lars Fields, © Royal Ontario Museum

Palaeontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) have uncovered the remains of a huge new fossil species belonging to an extinct animal group in half-a-billion-year-old Cambrian rocks from Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies. The findings were announced on September 8, 2021, in a study published in Royal Society Open Science.

Named Titanokorys gainesi, this new species is remarkable for its size. With an estimated total length of half a meter, Titanokorys was a giant compared to most animals that lived in the seas at that time, most of which barely reached the size of a pinky finger.

"The sheer size of this animal is absolutely mind-boggling, this is one of the biggest animals from the Cambrian period ever found," says Jean-Bernard Caron, ROM's Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology.

Evolutionarily speaking, Titanokorys belongs to a group of primitive arthropods called radiodonts. The most iconic representative of this group is the streamlined predator Anomalocaris, which may itself have approached a meter in length. Like all radiodonts, Titanokorys had multifaceted eyes, a pineapple slice-shaped, tooth-lined mouth, a pair of spiny claws below its head to capture prey and a body with a series of flaps for swimming. Within this group, some species also possessed large, conspicuous head carapaces, with Titanokorys being one of the largest ever known.

Fossil of Titanokorys gainesi carapace close up. Credit: Jean-Bernard Caron, © Royal Ontario Museum

"Titanokorys is part of a subgroup of radiodonts, called hurdiids, characterized by an incredibly long head covered by a three-part carapace that took on myriad shapes. The head is so long relative to the body that these animals are really little more than swimming heads," added Joe Moysiuk, co-author of the study, and a ROM-based Ph.D. student in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto.

Why some radiodonts evolved such a bewildering array of head carapace shapes and sizes is still poorly understood and was likely driven by a variety of factors, but the broad flattened carapace form in Titanokorys suggests this species was adapted to life near the seafloor.

"These enigmatic animals certainly had a big impact on Cambrian seafloor ecosystems. Their limbs at the front looked like multiple stacked rakes and would have been very efficient at bringing anything they captured in their tiny spines towards the mouth. The huge dorsal carapace might have functioned like a plough," added Dr. Caron, who is also an Associate Professor in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, and Moysiuk's Ph.D. advisor.

The carapace of Titanokorys gainesi (lower) along with two symmetrical rigid plates (upper) that covered the head from the underside. All together they form a three-part set of armour that protected the head from all sides. The illustration “Titanokorys gainesi, viewed from the front” shows them wrapping around behind the mouth and claws. Credit: Jean-Bernard Caron, © Royal Ontario Museum

All fossils in this study were collected around Marble Canyon in northern Kootenay National Park by successive ROM expeditions. Discovered less than a decade ago, this area has yielded a great variety of Burgess Shale animals dating back to the Cambrian period, including a smaller, more abundant relative of Titanokorys named Cambroraster falcatus in reference to its Millennium Falcon-shaped head carapace. According to the authors, the two species might have competed for similar bottom-dwelling prey.

The Burgess Shale fossil sites are located within Yoho and Kootenay National Parks and are managed by Parks Canada. Parks Canada is proud to work with leading scientific researchers to expand knowledge and understanding of this key period of earth history and to share these sites with the world through award-winning guided hikes. The Burgess Shale was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 due to its outstanding universal value and is now part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.

Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron, Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology, Royal Ontario Museum, seated above a fossil of Titanokorys gainesi at the quarry site located in Kootenay National Park. Credit: Joe Moysiuk, © Joseph Moysiuk

The discovery of Titanokorys gainesi was profiled in the CBC's The Nature of Things episode "First Animals." These and other Burgess Shale specimens will be showcased in a new gallery at ROM, the Willner Madge Gallery, Dawn of Life, opening in December 2021.

A voracious Cambrian predator, Cambroraster, is a new species from the Burgess Shale

More information: A giant nektobenthic radiodont from the Burgess Shale and the significance of hurdiid carapace diversity, Royal Society Open Science, royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210664

Journal information: Royal Society Open Science 

Provided by Royal Ontario Museum

Giant 'swimming head' creature lived in our oceans 500 million years ago


By Ashley Strickland, CNN
Updated Wed September 8, 2021






Photos: Ancient finds
This illustration shows the primitive arthropod Titanokorys gainesi from the front. This creature lived along the ocean floor half a billion years ago

.(CNN)Half a billion years ago, the oceans were filled with life that looked more like aliens than the marine animals we know today. Now, researchers have uncovered the fossil of an unusual creature that was likely a giant compared to tiny ocean life 500 million years ago.
Radiodonts, a group of primitive arthropods, were widespread after the Cambrian explosion event 541 million years ago -- a time when a multitude of organisms suddenly appeared on Earth, based on the fossil record.
The newly discovered fossil belonged to Titanokorys gainesi, a radiodont that reached 1.6 feet (half a meter) in length -- which was huge, compared to other ocean creatures that were about the size of a pinkie finger.
The fossil was found in Cambrian rocks from the Kootenay National Park, located in the Canadian Rockies. A study detailing the fossil published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.



New find shows animal life may have existed millions of years before previously thought

"The sheer size of this animal is absolutely mind-boggling, this is one of the biggest animals from the Cambrian period ever found," said study author Jean-Bernard Caron, the Royal Ontario Museum's Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology, in a statement.
Titanokorys would have been a bewildering animal to encounter. It had multifaceted eyes, a mouth shaped like a pineapple slice that was lined in teeth, and spiny claws located beneath its head to catch prey. The animal's body was equipped with a series of flaps that helped it swim. And Titanokorys had a large head carapace, or a defensive covering, like the shell of a crab or turtle.


This is an artist's illustration reconstructing Titanokorys gainesi as it appeared in life.

"Titanokorys is part of a subgroup of radiodonts, called hurdiids, characterized by an incredibly long head covered by a three-part carapace that took on myriad shapes. The head is so long relative to the body that these animals are really little more than swimming heads," said study coauthor Joe Moysiuk, a Royal Ontario Museum-based doctoral student of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto, in a statement.

A 550-million-year-old worm was one of the first animals to move and make decisions, a new study says

Researchers are still trying to understand why some radiodonts had such a variety of head carapaces, which came in all shapes and sizes. It's unclear what this head gear was protecting them from, given their size compared to other sea life at the time. In the case of Titanokorys, the broad, flat carapace suggests it had adapted to live near the seafloor.
"These enigmatic animals certainly had a big impact on Cambrian seafloor ecosystems. Their limbs at the front looked like multiple stacked rakes and would have been very efficient at bringing anything they captured in their tiny spines towards the mouth. The huge dorsal carapace might have functioned like a plough," Caron said.

The carapace of T. gainesi (lower), along with two symmetrical rigid plates (upper), covered the head from the underside. They formed a three-part set of armor that protected the head on all sides.

The fossils of Titanokorys were found in Marble Canyon, located in northern Kootenay National Park, which has been the site of many discoveries of Cambrian fossils dating back 508 million years ago. The site is part of the Burgess Shale, a deposit of well-preserved fossils in the Canadian Rockies. The Burgess Shale is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
One of those discoveries includes the radiodont Cambroraster falcatus, so named because its head carapace is similar in shape to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. It's possible that these two species scuffled on the bottom of the sea for prey.
Titanokorys, and other fossils collected from Burgess Shale, will be displayed in a new gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum beginning in December.

Newly discovered dinosaur predated tyrannosaurs — and at the time was a bigger apex predator

Social Sharing

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Email

• Reddit

• LinkedIn

Calgary researcher helped identify Ulughbegsaurus through bone fragments found in Uzbekistan rock formation

Sarah Rieger · CBC News · Posted: Sep 07, 2021 5:46 PM MT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

The Ulughbegsaurus, a previously unknown apex predator, would have been much larger than a small species of tyrannosaur that existed at the time. (Julius Csotonyi

It's roughly 90 million years ago, the Cretaceous period, and continents have begun to rift apart. 

A small tyrannosaur — roughly the size of a large horse — peers through the ferns in what would now be Uzbekistan, listening for any sign of prey to tear into with its blade-like teeth.

But the tyrannosaur's time hasn't come yet; there's still a larger apex predator ruling the jungle — a previously unknown species that may become another piece in the puzzle of how tyrannosaurs took over and ruled Asia and North America for millennia. 

Darla Zelenitsky, associate professor of dinosaur paleobiology at the University of Calgary, worked with researchers from Canada, Japan and Uzbekistan to identify a new species of carcharodontosaur — large, carnivorous dinosaurs with shark-like teeth. They announced their discovery in the Royal Society Open Science journal on Tuesday. 

Kohei Tanaka and Darla Zelenitsky have authored a paper announcing their discovery of a new dinosaur species. (University of Calgary)

The new species, Ulughbegsaurus (pronounced oo-LOOG-bek-SAW-rus), was named after 15th century astronomer and mathematician Ulugh Beg, who lived in the region. 

Like an early tyrannosaur, this carnivore would have walked on two legs, with a large head, short forelimbs and sharp claws. But that's where the similarities ended. An Ulughbegsaurus would have weighed around 1,000 kilograms and stretched more than 7.5 metres from nose to tail.

"It would have been the largest carnivorous predator of the ecosystem at that time," said Zelenitsky, who explained that the small tyrannosaurs that lived during the same period would have been one-fifth of the bigger animal's body mass.

The fossil fragments of the newly discovered Ulughbegsaurus were found in Uzbekistan. (Tanaka et al. 2021)

While it's not known what caused them to die out, the disappearance of carcharodontosaurs from the ecosystem may have helped enabled tyrannosaurs to grow larger and into their dominant predator role. 

"We don't know why carcharodontosaurs went extinct around 90 million years ago … [or] exactly how tyrannosaurs became apex predators that we see, like tyrannosaurus rex, later on in the Cretaceous," she said.

"This window of the dinosaur fossil record is pretty murky … when you've got a window of time that's very poorly known for fossils, you're always just trying to fill in gaps.

"And this is one more gap that we were able to fill in, because this is the latest occurrence of one of these shark-tooth dinosaurs."

A carcharodontosaur skeleton is pictured on the left, in comparison with a tyrannosaur skeleton on the right. (Darla Zelenitsky)

The new species was identified in part via bone fragments and teeth originally found in the 1980s by a Russian paleontologist as part of the Bissekty rock formation in the Kyzylkum Desert.

It was stored in Uzbekistan's state geological museum until a few years ago when Kohei Tanaka, the paper's lead author, found an upper jaw in the formation and realized it belonged to a kind of predator that hadn't been found in the area before.

"I was kind of surprised because … the fossils from this formation have been well studied," Zelenitsky said. 

A reconstruction shows the upper jaw of the Ulughbegsaurus. (Dinosaur Valley Studios)

But the formation is largely filled with fragmented fossils, unlike the full skeletons that are more common in fossil beds in Alberta. And the discovery of a new carnivorous dinosaur like this is extremely rare. 

"If we're looking at dinosaurs that are younger than 100 million years, so in the 66-million- to 100-million-year window, there's only three species of this type of dinosaur [a carcharodontosaur] known from Asia."

Zelenitsky is hoping the discovery will unlock more knowledge from that period. 

"There is the possibility in the future, now that we know this species existed in that ecosystem, that we can find more of this animal and identify it."

‘A kick in the teeth’: West Kootenay doctors, nurses react to protests

Local health care workers are critical of demonstrations held in their name

Doctors and nurses gathered outside the emergency room at Nelson’s Kootenay Lake Hospital on Friday evening as local police and firefighters paraded by to show support. 

Photo: Tyler Harper

TYLER HARPER
Sep. 7, 2021 
LOCAL NEWS
NELSON STAR


As hundreds in Nelson were demonstrating against the provincial government’s plan for vaccine passports, an impossible choice was being made at the city’s hospital.

Taryn O’Genski, a registered nurse at Kootenay Lake Hospital (KLH), was working in the emergency room when a woman arrived in need of what O’Genski says was advanced breathing support.

KLH is a relatively small hospital and has no intensive care unit. The two isolation rooms it has were occupied by patients diagnosed with COVID-19, one of whom was a 51-year-old man who wasn’t vaccinated.

The woman, O’Genski said, had to be sent an hour away to Trail’s Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital (KBRH).

She later died there.

O’Genski thinks the woman may have been saved if the hospital had the resources being used by COVID patients.

In a pandemic that has now gone on 17 months with no end in sight, this is now a regular dilemma in B.C. hospitals.

“The reality is that these are the choices that we’re having to make, and I’m much more inclined to be helping someone who’s vaccinated, with breast cancer, and going through chemotherapy than a 51-year-old who’s like, ‘Why does it matter if I got vaccinated?’ ”

After the Sept. 1 protests that were held throughout B.C. and advertised as being in support of health care workers, the Nelson Star interviewed 10 doctors and nurses working in Nelson, Castlegar and Trail. Every one of them reacted to the demonstrations with anger, frustration and disappointment.

Dr. Mike Van Vliet, who works in the emergency room at KBRH, and previously spent five years in the Nelson ER, described the protests as “a kick in the teeth.

“We’ve been working so hard, and then to see people out there [protesting] without masks, and continuing to say that this is a hoax and a joke and isn’t real … I’m a bit embarrassed by it.”

A Castlegar native, Van Vliet comes from a family of local physicians. His father was a doctor for 35 years. His sister works as a radiologist, and another as a nurse practitioner. His mother is a retired nursing instructor at Selkirk College.

Daily, he’s disappointed in patients who haven’t taken the pandemic seriously or are yet to be vaccinated.

“We are making hard decisions right now on who can safely go home, who needs to be admitted, who needs to go to ICU, who needs to be put on a ventilator, and then, when we are full, where we need to send them – Kelowna, Penticton, Cranbrook, or another site that is not at capacity.

“It is making my difficult job as an ER physician a lot harder, and my empathy is running out for the patients who are not vaccinated.”

The West Kootenay went mostly untouched by COVID-19 throughout 2020, but an outbreak in the province’s Interior has seen new cases skyrocket in 2021.

The Nelson health area, which includes nearby Salmo and parts of the Slocan Valley, has had 454 cases since July 25, according to the BC Centre for Disease Control. Cases are also surging in Castlegar, Trail, Creston and Grand Forks.

On Aug. 23, the provincial government announced at least one dose of vaccine will be required for people visiting restaurants, movies and ticketed sports events as of Sept. 13. Those restrictions change to two doses on Oct. 24.

Dr. Dharma McBride, a Nelson family physician and vice-chair of Kootenay Boundary Division of Family Practice, supports the right to protest, but also believes the government is out of options.

“I really don’t know how as a society we’re going to get through this pandemic unless we reach COVID immunity via vaccination, and if this helps move the needle a little bit, maybe it’ll be seen as a success. I think we’re going to have a lot of soul-searching in terms of how we got to that place.”

Castlegar’s Dr. Megan Taylor calls the protests “farcical.” She supports the passport, which she believes will push more British Columbians to get vaccinated. There’s evidence to show she’s right – the number of first doses rose by 90 per cent in the week after the passport was announced.

“I honestly feel a little bit sad that people are motivated to get a vaccine to go to a restaurant, and not to protect the health of themselves and those around them. But if that’s what it takes, great.”


Hundreds of people gathered in Nelson on Sept. 1 to protest the provincial government’s planned vaccine passport program. 

Photo: Bill Metcalfe

Nelson’s Dr. Lauren Galbraith said she was disheartened by the protests, but relieved they didn’t occur outside local hospitals. In Kelowna, scenes of a crowd outside the hospital there, blocking the path of an ambulance, went viral.

“It’s tough when people’s decisions are affecting other people’s health. This small group of individuals, for whatever reason, can’t seem to wrap their head around.”

A sore point for the doctors and nurses interviewed focuses on the people claiming they were supporting health care workers while also refusing to wear masks, get vaccinated, or follow a public health mandate.

A registered nurse at KLH, Cam Butler was disappointed to be lumped in with a cause he does not support.

“We live in a country where we have freedom of speech and choice, and all those things, and protesting for what you believe in, objectively, is great and I support that.

“It just comes at a challenging time when we’ve been working against this pandemic for a year and a half … and we all just want it to be over. I feel this is kind of like a step in the wrong direction.”

For Dusty Portz, a registered nurse in Castlegar, being vaccinated is a key element to working in public health.

“I know the huge majority of people really actually do care and are doing the right thing. This is just a small minority of outspoken people who for some reason think they’re warriors for humanity, when really they’re just putting us backwards.”

Other doctors and nurses interviewed expressed outrage that some colleagues, who they did not name, were at the demonstration.

Ty Wright, a registered nurse in Castlegar, said those health care workers did not speak for the majority of nurses.

“It’s shocking to me that there’s so many people who are just caught in this loop of protecting their rights and freedoms when it’s not even really a restriction of the rights and freedoms in the grand scheme of things.”

But not everyone has lost hope.

Lisa Keech, a registered nurse in Trail, is critical of the protests and any health care workers who took part, especially as there is now ample evidence to show the seriousness of the pandemic.

“I can’t believe that our communities are going to be divided. People are going to see that their lives really aren’t going to be that impacted … and most people are doing the right thing.”

READ MORE:

• Outbreak at Nelson Jubilee Manor over: Interior Health

• ‘We can’t handle this many cases’: Trail doctor warns hospital ICU could be overrun by COVID-19

• Vaccine card plan leaves too many unanswered questions, says Nelson Chamber of Commerce

• 43 days, 187 cases: Nelson and surrounding area suffers as COVID-19 spreads