Tag: science

‘Identity and Justice’ scholar explores ‘structural racism in chemistry’

Critical race theory can be applied to the teaching of chemistry, according to a University of Illinois-Chicago professor.

Professor Terrell Morton is an “Identity and Justice in STEM Education” scholar who “draws from critical race theory, phenomenology, and human development to ascertain Black students’ consciousness and how it manifests in their various embodiments and actions that facilitate their STEM postsecondary engagements,” according to his faculty bio.

He held a similar job at the University of Missouri where he was brought on as a diversity hire. He was in the “inaugural cohort of Preparing Future Faculty Postdoctoral Fellows for Diversity at MU,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

He wrote in Nature that CRT can “identify tangible strategies for redressing and mitigating structural racism in chemistry.”

Professor Morton (pictured) wrote that chemistry and the science field at large “has maintained a culture that typically favours white, cisgender, middle-to-high socioeconomic status, heterosexual, non-disabled men.”

Minority students, he wrote, “must alter their presentation of themselves to be seen as someone capable of succeeding — including abandoning aspects of their home and cultural identities, having to go above and beyond to demonstrate their intellectual capabilities.”

Morton says that “is not divisive, it is not designed to shame, demonize or encourage hate, and it does not inherently produce feelings of guilt or blame” and is not taught in schools, despite the claims of conservative politicians. In fact, it is “rarely taught” even in undergraduate, according to the UIC “scholar-activist.”

There are several ways the scholar found racism embedded in chemistry. “Racial realism applied to chemistry acknowledges that the field, and science generally, exists as a microcosm of the broader society and thereby perpetuates structural racism or gendered racism,” he wrote.

“Whiteness as property,” according to Morton, explains why the contributions of black scientists are not respected. “The erasure of Black perspectives and experiences in science, historical and contemporary, normalize science as white property, perpetuating feelings of invisibility and hypervisibility for Black students.”

Morton previously gave a presentation in 2021 on “deprogramming whiteness” which made similar points as his 2023 essay.

Keep reading

‘Scientist’ Neil deGrasse Tyson claims biology is ‘insufficient’ during unhinged rant defending radical trans agenda

Astrophysicist and noted science personality Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke out in favor of gender ideology and the ability of a person to actually change their sex. He made the remarks on the Stephen A Smith podcast “K[no]w Mercy.”

“Apparenly the XX/XY chromosomes,” he said with obvious derision, “are insufficient because when we wake up in the morning, we exaggerate whatever feature we want to portray the gender of our choice. Either the one you’re assigned, the one you choose to be—whatever it is!”

“And so now,” he went on as though swapping sex was the most obvious thing in the world, “just to tie a bow on this, I say to you, somewhere I read— somewhere, I think I read— that the United States was a land where we have the pursuit of happiness. Suppose no matter my chromosomes today, I feel 80 percent female, 20 percent male. Now I’m gonna, I’m gonna put on makeup. Tomorrow, I might feel 80 percent male. I’ll remove the makeup and I’ll wear a muscle shirt. Why do you care? What businesses is it of yours to require that I fill your inability to think of gender on a spectrum?”

Detransitioner Chloe Cole took issue with Tyson, noting that in his assessment, he conflates appearance and cosmetics with biology, as though a person’s external presentation has an effect on their biological reality.

Keep reading

The LK-99 superconductor could be world changing or a total hoax. Here’s why you should care either way

Outside of Sheldon Cooper and The Big Bang Theory, physics generally isn’t part of the day-to-day conversation for most people. But a recent claim from scientists has everyone paying attention. A trio of physicists claims to have created a superconductor, dubbed LK-99, that works at room temperature and ambient pressure. 

In basic terms, that means they might have discovered a material that can conduct electricity with no notable resistance, meaning it loses zero energy. And, if that’s true, it could be world altering.

Keep reading

“I’ve been here before”: DMT study explores a strange memory phenomenon

If you take a psychedelic drug that can throttle your conscious perception into an otherworldly space where people often report encountering beings that are unlike anything on Earth, the last thing you would expect to feel is the sense that this all seems pretty familiar. But that’s precisely what some people report after taking the world’s strongest psychedelic: DMT. 

“It felt like I had been reunited with everything, like I was complete again,” psychiatrist Dr. Chloe Sakal told Freethink in 2021 while describing a DMT experience she had as a participant in a study that examined the drug’s effects on the brain. “I no longer knew I was in an MRI scanner. My entire reality was very different — really colorful, really vibrant. And I couldn’t even remember that I was in a study. I was in a different dimension.”

Online reports from the r/DMT subreddit convey similarly intense and familiar experiences. “I was beyond time and matter and had no sense of identity whatsoever,” wrote one person. “I definitely felt this common thing like I was ‘at home,’ that I have already been there, and that I will go there again.”

Keep reading

AI search of Neanderthal proteins resurrects ‘extinct’ antibiotics

Bioengineers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to bring molecules back from the dead1.

To perform this molecular ‘de-extinction’, the researchers applied computational methods to data about proteins from both modern humans (Homo sapiens) and our long-extinct relatives, Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and Denisovans. This allowed the authors to identify molecules that can kill disease-causing bacteria — and that could inspire new drugs to treat human infections.

“We’re motivated by the notion of bringing back molecules from the past to address problems that we have today,” says Cesar de la Fuente, a co-author of the study and a bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The study was published on 28 July in Cell Host & Microbe1.

Keep reading

Swiss Scientists Identify Bronze Age Iron Arrowhead Made from a Meteorite!

A team of scientists recently completed a study of prehistoric metal artifacts collected in Switzerland over the past couple of centuries, with a very clear purpose in mind. They were looking to see if any of these ancient artifacts might have been made from metal salvaged from meteorites, which have been hitting Earth for billions of years . Much to their delight, the Swiss researchers were able to identify one such object: a small, rusted Bronze Age iron arrowhead with a chemical and mineral composition that was undoubtedly not of earthly origin.

As a part of their search process, the team of Swiss scientists led by geologist Beda Hofmann from the National History Museum of Bern concentrated on pre-Iron Age artifacts taken from various sites close to Switzerland’s Lake of Biel region. The one iron arrowhead made from meteoritic metal they did find was excavated from a Late Bronze Age (900 to 700 BC) settlement known as Mörigen, from where it had been unearthed all the way back in the 19th century.

Keep reading

Have 46,000 Year Ago Nematodes in Suspended Animation Really Been Resuscitated?

For more than two decades scientists have been collecting frozen microbes from deep layers of the Siberian permafrost, to see if they can be thawed and brought back to life. In the most recent revival experiments, a team of genetic researchers from Russia and Germany first reawakened and then identified a previously undiscovered nematode species, which they claim is 46,000 years old. Assuming this is true, this is the most ancient type of microscopic lifeform to have even been recovered from the freeze-dried Siberian soil.

In an article about their research just published in  PLOS Genetics , the genetic researchers describe how they confirmed the existence of this new species of roundworm, which was unearthed near  Siberia’s Kolyma River and has now been named  Panagrolaimus kolymaensis  (or P. kolymaensis ). There are many  nematode species that belong to the  Panagrolaimus line, so this ancient species has living relatives.

Interestingly, P. kolymaensis  was not recognized as a new type of nematode when it was  first revived in 2018 . It was incorrectly identified as belonging to another previously identified species, which lived 42,000 years ago.

But in the latest study, anomalies were detected that threw the initial identification of this variety of microscopic roundworm into doubt. Further analysis revealed it was a different species altogether, and one that had lived in an earlier time period.

 “The radiocarbon dating is absolutely precise, and we now know that they really survived 46,000 years,” study co-author Teymuras Kurzchalia, a cell biologist affiliated with the the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, told  Scientific American.

Keep reading

Computer chip with built-in human brain tissue gets military funding

Last year, Monash University scientists created the “DishBrain” – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.

The micro-electrode array at the heart of the DishBrain was capable both of reading activity in the brain cells, and stimulating them with electrical signals, so the research team set up a version of Pong where the brain cells were fed a moving electrical stimulus to represent which side of the “screen” the ball was on, and how far away from the paddle it was. They allowed the brain cells to act on the paddle, moving it left and right.

Then they set up a very basic-reward system, using the fact that small clusters of brain cells tend to try to minimize unpredictability in their environment. So if the paddle hit the ball, the cells would receive a nice, predictable stimulus. But if it missed, the cells would get four seconds of totally unpredictable stimulation.

It was the first time lab-grown brain cells had been used this way, being given not only a way to sense the world, but to act on it, and the results were impressive.

Impressive enough that the research – undertaken in partnership with Melbourne startup Cortical Labs – has now attracted a US$407,000 grant from Australia’s National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants program.

These programmable chips, fusing biological computing with artificial intelligence, “in future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware,” says project lead, Associate Professor Adeel Razi.

“The outcomes of such research would have significant implications across multiple fields such as, but not limited to, planning, robotics, advanced automation, brain-machine interfaces, and drug discovery, giving Australia a significant strategic advantage,” he said.

Keep reading

Scientists Receive Green Light to Merge Human Brain Cells with Computer Chips

Brain cells merging with computer chips could be the next evolution of artificial intelligence (AI). Scientists in Australia have been awarded funding to grow human brain cells and combine them with silicon chips.

A team led by researchers from Melbourne’s Monash University are receiving more than $405,000 as part of Australia’s National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants Program. The new project, led by Associate Professor Adeel Razi, from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, in collaboration with Melbourne start-up Cortical Labs, will see scientists grow around 800,000 brain cells in a lab. They will then “teach” these cells to perform goal-directed tasks.

The project’s goal is to create what the team calls the DishBrain system, “to understand the various biological mechanisms that underlie lifelong continual learning.”

Last year, the brain cells made headlines around the globe after displaying their ability to perform simple tasks in a video game, like the tennis-style game, Pong. The team hopes these continual learning capabilities will transform machine learning — a branch of AI. The technology is becoming increasingly relevant in society, playing a role in everything from self-driving cars to intelligent wearable devices.

According to Associate Professor Razi, the research program’s work using lab-grown brain cells embedded onto silicon chips, “merges the fields of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to create programmable biological computing platforms.”

“This new technology capability in future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware,” Razi says in a university release.

Keep reading

Metals Really Can Heal Themselves Just Like The Cyborgs in “Terminator,” Scientists Reveal

According to new research, metals have the remarkable ability to heal themselves, just like the terrifying cyborg assassins in the “Terminator” movies. This discovery opens up possibilities for self-repairing engines, bridges, airplanes, and even rockets — which is especially promising for future manned missions to Mars.

In groundbreaking experiments, scientists were astonished to witness microscopic cracks disappear, offering hope for machines that can mend themselves on the spot.

“This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand. What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale,” says lead author Dr. Brad Boyce from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, in a media release.

Fatigue damage, resulting from repeated stress or motion, leads to the formation of tiny cracks in materials over time. These cracks grow and propagate until the entire device fails. This issue is of particular concern in spacecraft design, as a round trip to Mars takes at least 21 months.

Keep reading