1 For Science on Monday

(I’ve been interested in stemming light pollution for a few years, now. I like this progress. -A)

The making of Australia’s first Dark Sky Community at Carrickalinga

Sharolyn Anderson, University of South Australia

In a world increasingly illuminated by artificial light, the beautiful night skies of a small coastal town in South Australia have attracted international recognition. Carrickalinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula is Australia’s first official Dark Sky Community. The title rewards a dedicated community effort to combat light pollution and preserve the natural environment at night.

The journey began three years ago when I was a PhD candidate at the Australian National University, working on the value of night skies. I was a regular visitor to Carrickalinga, but this time conversations at a picnic one evening turned to the clarity and brilliance of the stars. I was inspired to work with the locals to nominate Carrickalinga as a “Dark Sky Place”.

My recent research suggests restoring dark skies would be worth US$3.4 trillion (A$5.16 trillion) to the world, annually. That’s largely because light pollution is disrupting nocturnal pollinators, altering predator-prey interactions, and changing the behaviours of nocturnal species.

Light pollution has detrimental effects on wildlife, human health, and ecosystem functions and services. But there are simple solutions. By embracing responsible lighting practices, everyone can contribute to a healthier future in which the wonders of the night sky are accessible to all.

Understanding light pollution

Light pollution refers to human alteration of outdoor light levels. Excessive or misdirected artificial light brightens the night sky, diminishing our ability to see stars.

Research shows the problem is getting worse. Light pollution increased by 7–10% a year from 2011 to 2022. More than a third of people on Earth cannot see the Milky Way.

Light pollution not only affects our view of the cosmos, but also wastes energy and money, contributes to climate change and has significant repercussions for both ecological and human health.

Nocturnal animals such as bats and certain birds rely on darkness to navigate and find food. Insects, crucial for pollination and as a food source for other wildlife, are also affected. Artificial light at night is contributing to their decline.

In humans, studies have shown artificial light interferes with circadian rhythms, leading to sleep disorders and other health issues.

The global Dark Sky movement

DarkSky International, formerly known as the International Dark Sky Association, is a global network of volunteers combating light pollution. The non-profit organisation established in 1988 is based in Tuscon, Arizona in the United States. But more than 193,000 people across more than 70 countries are involved, including astronomers, environmental scientists and the public.

The International Dark Sky Places Program was born in 2001 when Flagstaff, Arizona was named the first International Dark Sky City. Now the program certifies five types of Dark Sky Places: sanctuaries, reserves, parks, communities, and urban night sky.

DarkSky says the aim is to “preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting”. It recognises places that demonstrate a commitment to reducing light pollution through public education, policy, and promoting responsible lighting practices.

There are now well over 200 Dark Sky Places across the globe. This covers more than 160,000 square kilometres in 22 countries on six continents.

Australia’s Dark Sky Places

Australia is home to several Dark Sky Places, each recognised for their exceptional night skies and dedication to reducing light pollution. These include:

1. Warrumbungle National Park (2016) – Australia’s first Dark Sky Park, near Coonabarabran in west-central New South Wales.

2. The Jump-Up (2019) – Dark Sky Sanctuary in Winton, western Queensland

3. River Murray (2019) – Dark Sky Reserve, including parts of South Australia’s Riverland

4. Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary (2023) – Dark Sky Sanctuary, northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia

5. Carrickalinga (2024) – Australia’s first Dark Sky Community, Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia

6. Palm Beach Headland (2024) – Australia’s first Urban Night Sky Place, outer Sydney, New South Wales.

Our journey in Carrickalinga

Since 2021, the Carrickalinga community has worked tirelessly towards achieving International Dark Sky Community certification. The journey involved several key initiatives:

Sky Quality Metering Program: regular measurements of sky brightness to monitor light pollution levels
Community engagement: presentations to community groups and the district council to raise awareness about light pollution, information stalls at local markets, community consultation process (led by the District Council of Yankalilla)
Educational materials: printed flyers, video, and a “Star Party” including a presentation on First Nations cosmology
Policy development: collaboration with the district council to create a lighting policy including public lighting design that complies with both Australian standards and DarkSky requirements.

Carrickalinga is currently upgrading existing public lighting to reduce light pollution. This will involve a new lighting design plan that reduces correlated colour temperature, ensuring shielded downward-facing lights minimise skyglow, glare and light trespass.

Reducing light pollution by upgrading lighting fixtures does not compromise safety. Dark sky does not mean dark ground.

Light pollution has become such a problem because our lights are unnecessarily bright and poorly designed. Fixing the problem simply involves changing the colour from white to amber, shielding and targeting lights so they do not shine upwards and outwards, and reducing wattage where it is surplus to requirements for people’s safety.

A photograph of an illuminated red frame that says "welcome! Carrickalinga". The night sky can be seen in the background. — Carrickalinga became Australia’s first International Dark Sky Community in May, 2024. Credit: The Backyard Universe

How you can help

Achieving and maintaining dark sky status is not difficult but it does require ongoing community effort. Here are the five principles for responsible outdoor lighting, which apply equally to domestic as well as public lighting:

Useful – use light only if it is needed and has a clear purpose
Targeted – direct light so it falls only where it is needed
Low light levels – light should be no brighter than necessary
Controlled – use light only when it is needed
Warm colours – use warm coloured lights wherever possible and avoid short-wavelength (blue–violet) light.

An inspirational journey

Achieving International Dark Sky Community status was a significant achievement in preserving the natural night environment and educating the local community about light pollution. This accomplishment demonstrates the power of community action and serves as a model for others.

By protecting our night skies, we safeguard a vital part of our natural and cultural heritage and also promote healthier ecosystems and communities. Carrickalinga’s journey serves as an inspiring example of what can be achieved through collective effort and dedication to preserving our planet’s natural beauty.

I would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution of Carrickalinga Dark Sky Community volunteer Sheryn Pitman, who works for Green Adelaide in the South Australian Department for Environment and Water, and helped write this article.

Sharolyn Anderson, Research scientist and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

10 Unusual Objects Related to Presidents and Elections

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History houses thousands upon thousands of artifacts. Here are some of the more unusual items from their collection.

Don Vaughan

(And former Pres. McKinley is again a feature…)

Soap babies of Republican William McKinley and Democrat William Jennings Bryan from the 1896 election (The Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. was formally established on August 10, 1845, and over the years has amassed more than 157 million items across 21 museums and galleries. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History houses artifacts related to national elections and the presidency. We offer a look at some of the most unusual.

All images courtesy of The Smithsonian Institution unless otherwise noted

1. Bandana Featuring Excerpts from George Washington’s Farewell Address

In which Washington encouraged all Americans to put aside regional and party divisions in support of the newly formed republic. Observed Washington, “Your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, the love of the one ought to endear you to the preservation of the other.”

2. Presidential Hair Cabinet

John Varden, keeper of collections for the National Institute for the Promotion of Science at the U.S. Patent Office, began collecting locks of hair from prominent individuals in 1850 and quickly amassed a collection that included presidents, senators, artists, and other luminaries. Varden’s presidential hair collection includes strands from George Washington and Franklin Pierce.

(snip-MORE on the page; the photos are good.)

Danged Ants! 😏

Catastrophe might have created the first ant farms

October 4, 2024 Ariel Marcy

When an asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, it caused a mass extinction. Now researchers have evidence that this catastrophe ushered in the invention of agriculture by ants.

“Extinction events can be huge disasters for most organisms, but it can actually be positive for others,” says Ted Schultz, curator of ants at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and senior author of the paper. “At the end of the Cretaceous, dinosaurs did not do very well, but fungi experienced a heyday.”

What’s the link between fungi and ants?

Close up of a worker ant on top of a fungus farm — A worker ant of a fungus-farming species in Brazil. Credit: Don Parsons

The researchers propose this anti-culture heyday began with a cataclysmic collision that filled the atmosphere with debris and blocked out the sun, halting photosynthesis for years. As plants died en masse, they littered the ground with organic matter.

Fungi proliferated and ants ate the fungi for food. Some ants continued to eat fungi after Earth’s ecosystems rebounded and today more than 250 ant species have adapted and actively create conditions for fungus to thrive.

“Ants have been practicing agriculture and fungus farming for much longer than humans have existed,” says Schultz.

To pinpoint when this symbiotic interaction began, Schultz and colleagues amassed the largest genetic dataset of fungus-farming ants.

They also analysed the genetics of hundreds of fungi species, including those that are farmed by ants and their wild relatives.

Next, the team assembled evolutionary trees for both ants and fungi which revealed that farming ants and their fungus crops have been intertwined for 66 million years.

The data also revealed that “higher” forms of agriculture, where ants and fungi are completely reliant on one another, evolved around 27 million years ago. This coincided with a rapid global cooling event that fractured tropical environments. These changes led to ants cultivating a fungus outside its natural habitat.

“The ants domesticated these fungi in the same way that humans domesticated crops,” says Schultz. “What’s extraordinary is now we can date when the higher ants originally cultivated the higher fungi.”

Like humans, ant agriculturists have dealt with familiar challenges including the problems with monoculture and the trade-offs of selecting for higher food yields.

“We could probably learn something from the agricultural success of these ants over the past 66 million years,” says Schultz.

For Science on Wed.

Some sloths among animals unable to adapt to rapid climate change

A new study warns that sloths living in high-altitude rainforests of South and Central America could face extinction if temperatures there continue to rise according to climatic predictions.

The research, published in PeerJ Life & Environment, suggests that some sloths’ restricted ability to migrate to cooler regions and limited metabolic flexibility make them particularly vulnerable to climate change.

“Sloths are inherently limited by their slow metabolism and unique inability to regulate body temperature effectively, unlike most mammals,” says Dr Rebecca Cliffe, lead researcher of the study from Swansea University and The Sloth Conservation Foundation in the UK.

“Our research shows that sloths, particularly in high-altitude regions, may not be able to survive the significant increases in temperature forecast for 2100.” (snip-MORE)

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Structure of important male contraceptive target finally solved

A team at Monash University in Victoria developing a hormone-free, reversible male contraceptive has now figured out the 3D structure of one of their primary therapeutic targets – the P2X1-purinergic receptor (P2X1).

According to Dr Sab Ventura from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), this has been the main stumbling block that has so far hindered the team from progressing the drug discovery program to the next stage.

“Our primary goal is to develop a male contraceptive pill that is not only hormone-free but also bypasses side effects such as long-term irreversible impacts on fertility, making it suitable for young men seeking contraceptive options,” says Ventura.

In previous research in mice, the team showed that simultaneous inactivation of P2X1 and a second protein, α1A-adrenergic receptor, resulted in male infertility.

“Now we know what our therapeutic target looks like, we can generate drugs that can bind to it appropriately, which totally changes the game,” says Ventura. (snip-MORE)

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River piracy pushing Mount Everest upwards

Mount Everest is tall. In other news, the sky is blue.

But Everest (also called Chomolungma and Sagarmāthā) is taller than it logically should be – towering 238m above the world’s next highest peak, K2, and more than 250m higher than any of its counterparts in the relatively uniform Himalaya range.

Plus, it’s growing at about 2mm a year, faster than the expected rate for the range.

A team of Chinese and UK scientists have now suggested why this is the case.

The researchers think the culprit is a nearby river which “captured” another river 89,000 years ago, causing erosion that made Everest more buoyant.

They’ve published their findings in Nature Geoscience.

The Himalayan peaks get their extraordinary height from the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, causing the Earth’s crust to thicken and the mountain range to push upwards.

“An interesting river system exists in the Everest region,” says co-author Dr Jin-Gen Dai, from China University of Geosciences.

The team used numerical modelling to see how the river changed over time. They found that, about 89,000 years ago, the Arun river “captured” another nearby river.

This event, referred to as “river piracy”, happens when a river diverts its course and takes up the discharge of another river or stream.

“Our research shows that as the nearby river system cuts deeper, the loss of material is causing the mountain to spring further upwards,” says co-author Adam Smith, a PhD student at University College London, UK.

The team estimates that the river piracy has made Everest between 15 and 50m higher than it would otherwise be.

It’s also made neighbouring peaks, Lhotse and Makalu, unusually tall. These are the 4th and 5th highest mountains in the world, respectively. (snip-MORE)

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Science fiction health technology a step closer

It’s not the famous Star Trek tricorder but it’s close: researchers have developed a hand-held scanner that can generate highly detailed 3D images of body parts in almost real time.

The technology can accurately image blood vessels up to 15mm deep in human tissue, which the researchers say could help to diagnose conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis.

“We’ve come a long way with photoacoustic imaging in recent years, but there were still barriers to using it in the clinic,” says Paul Beard of University College London (UCL), UK, corresponding author of the new Nature Biomedical Engineering paper.

“The breakthrough in this study is the acceleration in the time it takes to acquire images, which is between 100 and 1,000 times faster than previous scanners.

“This speed avoids motion-induced blurring, providing highly detailed images of a quality that no other scanner can provide. It also means that rather than taking 5 minutes or longer, images can be acquired in real time, making it possible to visualise dynamic physiological events.

“These technical advances make the system suitable for clinical use for the first time, allowing us to look at aspects of human biology and disease that we haven’t been able to before.” (snip-MORE)

Busy Reading All These Articles

so reblogging Ten Bears’s page here-this one’s a doozy!

Page Tue: Titillating Tacos … !

2 For Science, on Monday

Each of these struck my fancy, so I’m sharing.

Could we hit the “pause button” on human embryo development?

September 27, 2024 Imma Perfetto

The mechanisms that allow some mammals to pause the development of their young inside the womb also seem work in human cells, according to a fascinating new study published in the journal Cell.

Biologists discovered they could induce a dormant state in human cells by decreasing the activity of the mTOR signaling pathway, which they previously showed is a major regulator of this process in mice.

They triggered this dormant state not in human embryos, but in human pluripotent stem cells and stem-cell based models known as blastoids, which mimic the blastocyst stage of embryonic development at about 5 days post-fertilisation. (snip)

Until now it was unclear whether diapause could be triggered in humans.

“The mTOR pathway is a major regulator of growth and developmental progression in mouse embryos,” says co-senior author Aydan Bulut-Karslioglu of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Germany.

“When we treated human stem cells and blastoids with an mTOR inhibitor we observed a developmental delay, which means that human cells can deploy the molecular machinery to elicit a diapause-like response.”

Cells in this dormant state show reduced cell division, slower development and a decreased ability to attach to the uterine lining. The ability to enter this dormant stage seems to be restricted to the blastocyst stage of development. (snip-MORE)

Explosive energy-dense material made from air (with plasma)

September 29, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

Chemists have made an extremely energy-dense, environmentally friendly fuel out of nitrogen.

They’ve done it by employing one of chemistry’s favourite hobbies, bullying nitrogen n (N₂₎ into weird structures. An explosion occurred, but it was a small one.

The Chinese team has successfully made the element adopt a diamond-like structure, called cubic gauche nitrogen (cg-N) and importantly made it without extremely high pressures. In fact, they managed it at standard atmospheric pressure.

They’ve published their triumph in Science Advances.

Pure nitrogen-based molecules have drawn interest from chemists because they can release a tremendous amount of energy when they decompose. (snip-MORE)

Despite federal protections, LGBTQ+ people are being mistreated at work

Sep 23, 2024 Orion Rummler Originally published by The 19th

In 2020, the Supreme Court found that gay and transgender workers are protected from workplace discrimination in the landmark case Bostock v. Clayton County. Despite those federal protections, LGBTQ+ people across the country — especially transgender and nonbinary people — continue to face rampant discrimination at work and don’t feel safe being out, according to research from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.

In a 2023 study of 1,902 LGBTQ+ adults in the workforce, released in August, 17 percent said they had experienced discrimination or harassment on the job in the past year. Trans and nonbinary employees were more than twice as likely as cisgender queer employees to face discrimination and harassment: Twenty-two percent of trans and nonbinary people experienced discrimination in the past year, and 26 percent experienced harassment.

“You would hope things have gotten better,” said Brad Sears, founding executive director of the Williams Institute and coauthor of the report.

Sears believes the high rate of recent discrimination is an indication that change has been slow after Bostock, even after the Biden administration implemented additional nondiscrimination policies. Shortly after Biden was inaugurated in 2021, he issued an executive order based on Bostock that mandated the protection of gay and transgender Americans in the workplace, as well as in schools and doctor’s offices. And as of this spring, extra protections were put in place to guard against employers who consistently misgender employees or deny them access to sex-segregated spaces.

Still, the study found that many LGBTQ+ Americans are not out in the workplace to avoid facing discrimination and harassment. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ employees said that they are not open about their identity to their current supervisor, and one-fifth are not out to any of their coworkers. Staying in the closet actually did protect them: LGBTQ+ employees who were out to at least a few coworkers, or just their supervisor, were three times as likely to report discrimination as employees who were not out.

“A lot of people, even if they are out, they’re kind of downplaying their identities in the workplace,” Sears said. “Maybe they use a different voice or different mannerisms at work, or they don’t dress exactly how they would otherwise dress when they’re not at work, or they use a bathroom that they would prefer not to be using at work.”

To avoid discrimination, transgender and nonbinary people are significantly more likely to hide their identities than cisgender queer people. In a new breakout analysis of the Williams Institute’s survey, the experiences of nonbinary people are found to be especially fraught.

Nonbinary people in the study described being ostracized and subjected to violence, harassment or threatsat work due to their physical appearance either not being “feminine” enough or “masculine” enough. Their gender expression made them a target and was used as a justification for their treatment by their bosses, coworkers and customers. Frequently, nonbinary people said they were passed over for raises and promotions, called slurs, and forced to work alone.

The nonbinary people surveyed were largely young, urban, and racially and ethnically diverse. To the survey authors, such data is a call for employers to take action — especially If they want to retain young employees.

About 87 percent of nonbinary adults in the workforce are under 35 years old, compared with 71 percent of transgender adults and 51 percent of cisgender queer adults, according to the study. That research aligns with other findings from KFF that Americans under 35 are more likely to identify as nonbinary than older Americans, and research from the Pew Research Center that found adults under 30 are more likely than older adults to be out as trans or nonbinary.

About 3 in 5 nonbinary people have experienced discrimination or harassment at work at some point in their lives, like being fired, not hired, not promoted, or verbally, sexually or physically harassed.

About 1 in 5 nonbinary people reported physical harassment at work because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, with some survey respondents reporting being “assaulted,” “attacked” and “strangled.”

For some, unfair treatment looked like having their hours reduced, being isolated from other employees or customers, or being excluded from company events or socializing.

“Oftentimes, I was passed up for a promotion because I wasn’t ‘manly’ enough, and they doubted my ability to lead a team,” a Latinx nonbinary person from California said in the survey. A Latinx nonbinary participant from Colorado shared: “A co-worker strangled me at a counter and said he was trying to ‘give a girl a massage.’” In Connecticut, a Black nonbinary person said they heard their manager talking “disparagingly” about them to the rest of their bosses because of their gender expression.

One in 4 nonbinary employees said they are currently experiencing adverse treatment at their job because of their LGBTQ+ identity. For many nonbinary people, the worst experiences of discrimination and harassment that they face at work are linked to their multiple marginalized identities. In particular, they were targeted for their disability or being bisexual in addition to being nonbinary.

This research shows that company-level policies, as well as state and federal nondiscrimination regulations, need to be specific so that they protect nonbinary employees, Sears said.

The Williams Institute plans to release more breakout analyses from its survey, including reports on the experiences of transgender, Black, Latinx and Asian-American employees. Breaking down the unique experiences of each demographic is key to understanding and addressing the issues that they’re facing at work, Sears said — for example, nonbinary people face rigid and gendered expectations at work, while bisexual women face high rates of sexual harassment.

“LGBTQ+ people are not monolithic. They’re different, they have intersecting identities … and those are leading to differences that are important in the workplace,” he said.

Peace & Justice History for 9/24:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september24

Lots of info here. Take a minute when you have one, and take a good look-

Julia Serano on Male Socialization: A Critical Perspective

This is great-

Open Tab

It’s a WaPo piece, free (I know because I got to read it all with no nagging, and it’s not a guest link according to MPS,) and really full of info concerning a place where our tax dollars work well for we the people. This is a thing at which the US excels as a public entity. More people should know about it, so we make sure it stays public, rather than outsourced to a for-profit. Also, there is plenty of general science, and it’s noticeable how many women have great positions and have done superlative work. Thanks!