Tag: science

The Brain’s Hidden Radar: How Theta Waves Sweep the Mind to Spot the Unexpected

New research from MIT suggests that brainwaves sweep across the cerebral cortex much like radar scans the sky, helping the brain detect unexpected visual anomalies.

Neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, led by Hio-Been Han in Professor Earl K. Miller’s lab, made the discovery while studying how the brain stores and processes visual information in the short term—a process known as visual working memory.

The Cortex

The cerebral cortex maps what the brain perceives in space. When we focus on our surroundings, theta-frequency waves sweep across them, searching for visual anomalies that might demand attention. Using animal subjects, the researchers sought to understand why performance in visual working memory tasks varies and why memory capacity appears limited.

Their work builds on previous studies identifying theta waves as being strongly correlated with attention—particularly during tasks requiring the brain to track multiple points at once. Miller’s earlier research supported the theory that different brainwave frequencies act as carriers for distinct forms of neural computation. The new study takes this a step further, revealing how those traveling waves may actively drive such computations.

“It shows that waves impact performance as they sweep across the surface of the cortex,” said Professor Miller, also of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. “This raises the possibility that traveling waves are organizing, or even performing, neural computation.”

Brainwaves and Video Games

For their experiments, the team trained animals to play a simple video game: an array of colored squares appeared briefly on-screen, followed by a second array in which one square had changed color. The animals’ task was to look at the altered square as quickly as possible. Researchers tracked their eye movements and reaction times while recording brainwave activity in the frontal eye fields—a region of the cortex responsible for mapping visual information from the retina.

After analyzing hundreds of trials, the researchers found that both theta brainwave activity and the vertical location of the changed square were strongly correlated with how accurately and quickly the animals detected changes. Certain horizontal bands of the cortex appeared tuned to specific theta frequencies, meaning that a subject’s performance depended on whether the brain’s internal rhythm aligned with the position of the visual change.

“The optimal theta phase for behavior varied by retinotopic target location, progressing from the top to the bottom of the visual field,” the researchers wrote in Neuron. “This could be explained by a traveling wave of activity across the cortical surface during the memory delay.”

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“We Don’t Know Why It Happens”: Scientists Discover Bats That Glow an Eerie Green Under UV Light

University of Georgia (UGA) scientists studying North American bats have discovered six different species that glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light.

Although several animals and plant species possess the ability to generate their own light, called bioluminescence, and some mammals, like pocket gophers, also emit a glow under ultraviolet light, called photoluminescence, the team says this is the first known evidence of bats in this part of the world emitting light in any spectrum.

The research team that discovered the glowing bats says they are not sure if this trait, which has been passed down to several generations from one original species, offers a current survival advantage or is simply a genetic relic that once offered enough survival benefits to propagate over time since it first evolved, but is no longer needed.

“It’s cool, but we don’t know why it happens,” said Steven Castleberry, corresponding author of the study and a UGA professor in wildlife ecology and management. “What is the evolutionary or adaptive function? Does it actually serve a function for the bats?”

In a statement detailing the team’s work, the researchers note that the illuminating discovery was made when examining 60 bat specimens stored at the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Specifically, the team found that when they exposed the specimens to UV light, several of the bat’s wings and hind limbs produced an eerie but clearly visible glow.

To determine the nature of the emitted light, the team measured the unexplained photoluminescence with a light-measuring sensor and found that the unexpected glow was a shade of green. Although they couldn’t immediately determine its function, the team said its location and color are likely to rule out an environmental cause. Instead, they suggest the ability to glow in the dark is likely a genetic trait.

“It’s ultimately some sort of mutation, and then that mutation somehow gets perpetuated, usually because it’s beneficial,” Castleberry explained. “Individuals that have that trait tend to survive and reproduce better, so it gets more common in the population.”

“There is evidence that glowing is a common trait,” the researcher added.

The study, co-authored by UGA alumnus Santiago Perea and Warnell graduate student Daniel DeRose-Broecker, details six bat species that glow in the dark. The photoluminescent species highlighted in the study included big brown bats, eastern red bats, Seminole bats, southeastern myotis, gray bats, and Brazilian free-tailed bats.

Briana Roberson, lead author of the study and a UGA alumna, noted that it’s possible that the function of glowing in animals may be “more diverse” than researchers previously thought.

“Bats have very unique social ecology and sensory systems, and the characteristics we found in these species differ from many other observations in nocturnal mammals,” Roberson explained.

When discussing possible reasons for the genetic mutation that causes bats that glow in the dark, the team noted that the color emitted under UV light was similar between the sexes. This similarity makes it less likely that the glowing ability is for reproduction or species recognition.

Further analysis seemed to rule out the glow being used as camouflage. Instead, the research team suspects the photoluminescence may represent an inherited trait once used for communication. Whatever the reason for these bats’ unusual ability to glow in the dark, the team says it probably comes from a single mutation that was likely passed along for a currently unknown survival advantage.

“The data suggests that all these species of bats got it from a common ancestor. Castleberry said. “They didn’t come about this independently.”

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DARPA is Exploring Physics’ Strangest New Frontier to Develop the Next Generation of Defense Technology

In an effort to reshape the foundations of military computing and electronics, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is exploring one of the newest and strangest frontiers in physics: altermagnetism.

Recently, the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO) issued a Request for Information (RFI) titled “Altermagnetism for Devices,” inviting researchers to help chart a course toward practical electronic and spintronic technologies that could harness this exotic magnetic behavior. 

Altermagnetism sounds like something pulled from science fiction. It combines properties of two long-known types of magnetism—ferromagnetism (the kind that drives refrigerator magnets) and antiferromagnetism (found in many metals but invisible to the naked eye). 

However, its true intrigue lies in what DARPA calls its “non-relativistic spin splitting,” a phenomenon that allows materials to act magnetically without producing any net magnetic field.

In practical terms, altermagnetic materials could enable circuits that manipulate the quantum spin of electrons without the interference, power drain, or sluggishness that plague conventional electronics.

The RFI notes altermagnetism “exhibits features of both ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism.” Like the latter, the magnetic spins inside these materials point in opposite directions, canceling each other out. However, unlike antiferromagnets, the spins are related by a rotational symmetry that still allows for energy band splitting, a property more like ferromagnets.

That seemingly small structural quirk could be transformative. The agency notes that altermagnets “might sidestep the major roadblocks ferromagnets and antiferromagnets face when designing spintronic devices.” This makes it possible to design “ultralow energy computation” technologies that vastly outperform the energy efficiency of traditional semiconductor architectures.

If successful, DARPA’s program could lay the groundwork for an entirely new category of computing systems that are smaller, faster, and orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than anything in existence today.

Spintronics, short for “spin electronics,” has already found its way into the real world. Modern hard drives, magnetic sensors, and emerging MRAM chips all rely on the quantum spin of electrons rather than their charge to read, store, or sense information. These technologies are fast, durable, and energy-efficient. However,  they still use spin only in a limited way.

DARPA is looking to do something more ambitious by using spin to not only store data but also compute with it. That would require materials capable of switching and controlling spin states as quickly and precisely as transistors manipulate charge. 

Current existing options fall short. Ferromagnets, though easy to magnetize, create interfering magnetic fields and switch too slowly for logic operations. Antiferromagnets avoid interference but lack the internal spin-splitting needed to manipulate spin-polarized currents.

However, altermagnets could change that balance. With zero net magnetization yet naturally spin-split electronic bands, they offer the tantalizing possibility of fast, interference-free spin-based computation. This breakthrough could finally make true spintronic processors possible.

The big problem? No one yet knows how to build a working device out of altermagnets. “While several device-switching proposals have been put forward, the ideas remain experimentally untested,” DARPA writes. 

Additionally, as DARPA notes, “characterization of altermagnetism is also a challenge.” The current “gold standards” for verifying altermagnetism rely on techniques usually reserved for large-scale physics facilities, and methods like spin-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, muon spin rotation, and neutron scattering.

That means many potential research groups lack the infrastructure to explore these materials at all, let alone integrate them into working prototypes.

To change that, DARPA is soliciting “realistic, data- or theory-supported information on the types of improvements expected when using altermagnetism versus state-of-the-art computing architectures.” The agency also wants feedback on the fundamental limitations of such devices, and on the technical hurdles that must be overcome to make them practical.

This suggests DARPA isn’t merely chasing a curiosity—it’s laying the groundwork for a new national research initiative that could parallel other efforts like “INSPIRE” (Investigating how Neurological Systems Process Information in Reality), which seeks to understand how the human brain constructs reality. 

While DARPA’s notice doesn’t explicitly mention defense applications, the potential implications are clear. Altermagnetic devices could become the foundation for ultralow-power AI processors, cryptographic accelerators, or radiation-resistant electronics suitable for space and battlefield conditions.

The Department of Defense has long sought to reduce power requirements for deployed systems, whether in satellites, autonomous drones, or field-deployable sensors. Altermagnetism could offer a way to shrink computational energy costs by orders of magnitude, enabling persistent surveillance and decision-making at the edge without the need for constant resupply or cooling.

It could also revolutionize secure communications. Spintronic devices based on altermagnets might allow quantum-level control of electron spins, paving the way for tamper-resistant data encoding and secure hardware architectures that are inherently immune to many forms of cyberattack.

All of these potential defense applications could also ripple far beyond the battlefield, shaping the commercial technology sector in profound ways. For example, a study published earlier this year showed that the Pentagon’s drive to cut fuel costs during the height of the Global War on Terror inadvertently helped ignite America’s modern clean energy boom.

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Researchers consider infecting Americans with ticks to make them allergic to red meat

There have been countless examples of liberalism being a mental disorder.

Here is another one:

Two researchers from Western Michigan University have written a paper titled “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” which was published by the journal Bioethics this past July. (No, it isn’t about vampires.)

The paper argues that intentionally spreading alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a potentially life-threatening allergy to red meat, could be not only morally defensible, but perhaps even necessary, in order to reduce animal suffering and combat climate change.

Here are the authors, Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, in their own words:

Because promoting tickborne AGS prevents something bad from happening, doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and promotes virtuous action or character, it follows that promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto (‘to that extent’) morally obligatory.

Say what?

Enlisting genetically engineered ticks to curb the consumption of hamburgers, steaks, and other red meats violates the hell out of everyone’s rights.

It is a “bad” thing in and of itself.

Ticks can carry Lyme disease, as well, which also can be deadly.

Who do they think they are? They have no right to force others to give up red meat … or drive a Prius for that matter, whether it be via overt or covert acts.

As one might expect, there were numerous negative online comments, prompting Crutchfield to characterize the paper as “just a thought experiment and not an endorsement of spreading the allergy-causing ailment.” 

A thought experiment? The hell it was!

The authors actually wrote that promoting tickborne AGS is “morally obligatory.”

Those in the “Earth would be better off if there were nobody here but me” crowd are enough to make the rest of us sick.

Pointy-headed academic asshats who live in a lab and/or bubble have already caused far too much damage.

These two really ticked me off. In fact, I’m seeing red (meat).

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The Net Zero, extreme weather, climate science consensus is breaking apart as COP30 nears

The 30th Conference of the Parties on climate change (“COP30”) will promote its climate, energy and economic fantasies and demands from 10 to 21 November in Belém, Brazil. Some 70,000 grifter scientists, activists, politicians and journalists (plus observers) will attend.

Despite pre-summit hype and proclamations of hope, the summiteers are nervous.

Increasing evidence demonstrates that claims of a planetary crisis are rooted in meaningless computer models and fearmongering, not in actual science, data or fact.

More voters worldwide are rejecting and rebelling against Net Zero/anti-fossil fuel policies that have raised energy costs, destroyed jobs and industries, and crushed hopes and living standards.

Even the poorest US state (Mississippi) now boasts a higher GDP per capita than climate-obsessed Britain, where the average household price of electricity is US$0.35 per kilowatt hour (likely to rise to $0.55/kWh by 2027) compared to a 17.5¢ US average and 13.5¢ in Mississippi.

UK industries now pay the world’s highest electricity prices – 27% more than equally obsessed Germany – and conservative or alternative political parties in both countries are surging in popularity against the entrenched interests that imposed these destructive, job-killing, unsustainable policies.

The United States economy is outpacing Europe’s largely because the Trump Administration has re-embraced abundant, reliable, affordable fuels, petrochemicals and electricity, while Britain, Germany and most of Europe refuse to drill or frack for oil and gas or retreat from their unattainable climate pledges.

Trump agencies have slashed subsidies, favouritism and environmental fast-tracks for wind and solar projects – and clawed back billions of dollars that the Biden Administration had given to “green energy” and “climate justice” groups during its last weeks in office.

President Trump again withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, may not let US representatives participate in COP30 and is unlikely to allow US taxpayer money to flow into UN slush funds for climate “reparations,” “resilience” or “losses and damages.”

Mr. Trump also excoriated Net Zero policies before the UN General Assembly, calling them a “green scam” concocted by “stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.” UN member states chastened by the Russia-Ukraine war, growing dependence on Russian gas and Chinese minerals and wind turbines, and their own economic demise were hard-pressed to disagree. Developing countries also paid attention.

Meanwhile, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance – beloved by eco-imperialists for opposing and preventing financing for fossil fuel projects in Africa and around the world – has ceased all operations, following a mass exodus by its US, Canadian, British and Swiss bank members.

“The 2.1 billion humans who suffer in abject energy poverty” and families of “the 16.5 million loved ones” who died from “indoor air pollution during the 5-1/2 years the Alliance was working” can now breathe sighs of relief, said energy realist and human rights campaigner Ryan Zorn.

The EU Parliament agreed to roll back multiple environmentalist mandates and regulations on businesses, in what Politico calls an “emerging rightward rupture that is reshaping European policymaking.”

Criticism of junk climate and energy science in the UN, US and other government and academic institutions has become frequent and furious since President Trump was re-elected in November 2024, and the shackles of government, media, social media and search-engine censorship have been loosened.

The world is rapidly learning about wind and solar power shortcomings; their decimation of raptors and other wildlife; the massive mining and pollution involved in manufacturing these “clean, green” energy systems; the millions of acres of farm, habitat and scenic lands impacted by them; the trillion-dollar costs of battery and gas backup systems for windless and sunless periods; and the economic devastation that climate-centric policies are inflicting worldwide.

Developed and developing nations alike are beginning to realise they have been asked to destroy the world with wind-solar-battery systems that can never meet growing electricity demands – to save it from climate crises that exist only in computer models and fevered imaginations.

The Net Zero, extreme weather, climate science consensus is breaking apart as COP30 nears. 

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The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward

Scientific journals have had enormous positive impact on the development of science, but in some ways, they are now hampering rather than enhancing open scientific discourse. After reviewing the history and current problems with journals, a new academic publishing model is proposed. It embraces open access and open rigorous peer review, it rewards reviewers for their important work with honoraria and public acknowledgement, and it allows scientists to publish their research in a timely and efficient manner without wasting valuable scientists’ time and resources.

The Birth of Scientific Journals

The printing press revolutionized scientific communication in the 16th century. After a few years of thinking and pondering, or maybe a decade or two, scientists published a book with their new thoughts, ideas, and discoveries. This gave us classics that laid the foundation for modern science, such as De Nova Stella by Tycho Brahe (1573), Astronomia Nova by Johannes Kepler (1609), Discours de la Methode by René Descartes (1637), Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton (1686), and Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus (1735). For more rapid communication, scientists relied on handwritten letters to each other.

Until they published a book, which took considerable effort and resources, scientists could only communicate with a few close friends and colleagues. That was not efficient. This gave rise to the scientific journal, an invention with profound impact on the development of science. The first one, Journal des Sçavans (Journal of the Learned), appeared in France in 1665. A decade later, this journal published the calculation of the speed of light by Ole Romer. The fastest thing in nature was communicated at a speed previously unavailable to scientists.

Over the next few hundred years, scientific journals became increasingly important, overtaking books as the primary means of scientific communication. As scientists became more specialized, so did the journals, with subject matter periodicals such as Medical Essays and Observations (1733), Chemisches Journal (1778), Annalen der Physik (1799), and Public Health Reports (1878). Printed journals were sent to scientists and university libraries around the world, and a truly international scientific community was created.

Without journals, science would not have developed as it did, and those early journal editors and printers are unsung heroes of scientific progress.

Commercial Publishers

In the mid-20th century, academic publishing took a turn for the worse. Starting with Robert Maxwell and his Pergamon Press, commercial publishers understood that the monopoly situation in scientific publishing could be very profitable. When a paper is only published in one journal, major university libraries must subscribe to that journal no matter how expensive it is, to ensure that their scientists can access the whole scientific literature.

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Scientists Discover a New Form of Ice That Shouldn’t Exist

Researchers at the European XFEL and DESY are investigating unusual forms of ice that can exist at room temperature when subjected to extreme pressure.

Ice comes in many forms, even when made of nothing but water molecules. Scientists have now identified more than 20 unique solid structures, or “phases,” of ice, each with its own molecular arrangement. These variations are labeled with Roman numerals, such as ice I, ice II, and ice III.

In a recent breakthrough, an international team of researchers led by scientists from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) has discovered a completely new phase known as ice XXI. Using advanced X-ray facilities at the European XFEL and PETRA III, the team captured and analyzed this previously unknown structure. Their findings have been published in Nature Materials.

Ice XXI is unlike any other form of ice observed so far. It develops when liquid water is subjected to rapid compression, creating what scientists call “supercompressed water” at room temperature. This phase is metastable, meaning it can persist for a time even though another type of ice would normally be more stable under the same conditions. The discovery provides valuable new insights into how ice behaves and transforms under extreme pressure.

Water or H2O, despite being composed of just two elements, exhibits remarkable complexity in its solid state. The majority of the phases are observed at high pressures and low temperatures. The team has learned more about how the different ice phases form and change with pressure.

“Rapid compression of water allows it to remain liquid up to higher pressures, where it should have already crystallized to ice VI,” KRISS scientist Geun Woo Lee explains. Ice VI is an especially intriguing phase, thought to be present in the interior of icy moons such as Titan and Ganymede. Its highly distorted structure may allow complex transition pathways that lead to metastable ice phases.

Because most ice variants exist only under extreme conditions, the researchers created high-pressure conditions using diamond anvil cells. The sample – in this case, water – is placed between two diamonds, which can be used to build up very high pressure due to their hardness. Water was examined under pressures of up to two gigapascals, which is about 20,000 times more than normal air pressure. This causes ice to form even at room temperature, but the molecules are much more tightly packed than in normal ice.

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Paper Chase: A Global Industry Fuels Scientific Fraud in the U.S.

In southern India, a new enterprise called Peer Publicon Consultancy offers a full suite of services to scientific researchers. It will not only write a scholarly paper for a fee but also guarantee publishing the fraudulent work in a respected journal.   

It is one of many “paper mills” that have emerged across Asia and Eastern Europe over the last two decades. Paper mills are having remarkable success peddling tens of thousands of bogus academic journal papers and authorships to university and medical researchers seeking to pad their resumes in highly competitive fields. 

These sophisticated outfits also engage in trickery to get papers published, infiltrating journals with their own editors and reviewers and even resorting to bribery, according to investigators and a white paper from Wiley, a New Jersey-based publisher. The scale of the fraud is eye-popping: One Wiley subsidiary, Hindawi, retracted more than 8,000 articles two years ago for suspected paper mill involvement. 

U.S. universities and regulators have been able to brush off the threat of paper mills because they have mostly sold their services in China, where research integrity standards are rarely enforced, according to experts. But these rogue operators are building on their success in Asia and expanding to the U.S. and Western Europe, where the prize is the prestige of naming an author on an article from a famous university. 

“Paper mills have become a huge business,” said Jennifer Byrne, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Sydney, who studies the enterprises. “If some journals are pushing back on papers from China, and they probably are, it makes sense that paper mills will try to diversify their clientele and start working with people in different countries.” 

 As paper mills expand from the fringe to the center of research, placing professional-looking articles in high-impact journals owned by major publishers like Springer Nature, experts worry about the potential harm to scientific discovery. Researchers willing to break the rules in a Darwinian world of ‘publish or perish’ may mislead other scientists who incorporate their false findings into their own work. “We know little about the actual impact of paper mills on research,” Byrne says. “But if scientists are building on bad information, they are wasting resources and not making progress in their fields.”

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How Trans-Activists Hatched A Plot In The 1980s To Hijack ‘Science’

The latest headlines that have thrust transgender violence and left-wing radicalism into the news cycle:

Hmm. 

Well, not the legacy media’s news cycle (if that’s MSNBC, CNN, CBS, NBC, NPR, etc.), they’re still fixated on “misinformation” and “disinformation” campaigns in their effort to bring down President Trump and crush the MAGA movement for their globalist friends. But the American people no longer believe their nonsense and have rejected the globalists. 

On Wednesday, the New York Post Editorial Board penned in a title: “How many high-profile trans killers can the media ignore?”

But let’s take a step back several decades to understand how the radical left and its woke trans-activist movement managed to hijack science within gender medicine – to grasp better how we ended up in a world experiencing both a surge of kids identifying as transgender and, as noted above, a rising trend in trans-related violence.

Plus, if you’ve noticed, the radical left’s woke army is comprised of …   

Mia Hughes, a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and director of the advocacy group Genspect Canada, spoke at a closed-door Genspect event in late September titled “The Bigger Picture Conference” in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In her speech, Hughes described how woke ideology hijacked science within gender medicine by infiltrating psychiatry, endocrinology, and surgery, reshaping modern medicine as we know it. She warned of the dangers of mistaking ideology for evidence (or “science”) and urged a return to compassion, scientific clarity, and the courage to confront uncomfortable truths.

Here’s what she told the audience: 

Back in the 1980s, a small group of trans activists hatched a plot: to take an absurd, illogical overvalued belief—that being transgender is innate, natural, healthy—and force all of society to live in a fictional world built on it.

Given the sheer audacity of that plot, there must have been people who said it couldn’t be done. But if such voices existed, they were ignored. And the activists pressed on until they succeeded in nothing less than reshaping reality itself.

And they didn’t just persuade people to politely look the other way.

They rallied good, decent people to march in the streets demanding that teenagers sacrifice their health, their fertility, and their sexual function in the name of this belief.

They convinced governments to write laws based on a non-existent, fictional concept.

They enlisted well-meaning teachers to poison the minds of a generation with absurd lies.

And they drove doctors to amputate healthy organs and call it medicine.

If they could succeed in creating that false reality, then surely we can succeed in restoring truth.

Because our cause is not built on lies but on logic and reason. Not on ideology but on sound ethical principles. Not on harm but on healing.

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Scientists sound alarm on DEI’s threat to academic freedom at ‘War on Science’ event

Articles on “the importance of teaching science with a feminist framework.” Observations of whiteness in the physics classroom. A prohibition on the use of the word “intelligence” when discussing extraterrestrial intelligence at a meeting of astrobiologists.

These are just a few of the examples highlighted at an event Thursday called “The War on Science” hosted by the American Enterprise Institute and led by one of the globe’s top theoretical physicists Lawrence Krauss. 

“This is going to be a long war to fight, and it’s difficult because it’s so ingrained, and I think one of the only ways it will end is when enough academics within the academic community finally say enough,” he said.

Krauss, joined by Yale School of Medicine lecturer in psychiatry Dr. Sally Satel, classicist Solveig Lucia Gold, and evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven, focused on themes in a recent book he edited by the same name, “The War on Science,” a collection of essays from 39 scientists and scholars speaking out against attempts to impose ideological restrictions on science and scholarship in western society. 

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