University of Sydney researchers have harnessed human-made lightning to develop a more efficient method of generating ammonia – one of the world’s most important chemicals. Ammonia is also the main ingredient of fertilizers that account for almost half of all global food production.
The team have successfully developed a more straightforward method to produce ammonia (NH3) in gas form. Previous efforts by other laboratories produced ammonia in a solution (ammonium, NH4+), which requires more energy and processes to transform it into the final gas product.
The current method to generate ammonia, the Haber-Bosch process, comes at great climate cost, leaving a huge carbon footprint. It also needs to happen on a large scale and close to sources of cheap natural gas to make it cost-effective.
The chemical process that fed the world, and the Sydney team looking to revolutionize it
Naturally occurring ammonia (mostly in the form of bird droppings), was once so high in demand it fueled wars.
The invention of the Haber-Bosch process in the 19th century made human-made ammonia possible and revolutionized modern agriculture and industry. Currently 90 percent of global ammonia production relies on the Haber-Bosch process.
“Industry’s appetite for ammonia is only growing. For the past decade, the global scientific community, including our lab, wants to uncover a more sustainable way to produce ammonia that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels.
“Currently, generating ammonia requires centralized production and long-distance transportation of the product. We need a low-cost, decentralized and scalable ‘green ammonia’,” said lead researcher Professor PJ Cullen from the University of Sydney’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Net Zero Institute. His team has been working on ‘green ammonia’ production for six years.
“In this research we’ve successfully developed a method that allows air to be converted to ammonia in its gaseous form using electricity. A huge step towards our goals.”
The research was published in AngewandteChemie International edition.
Ammonia contains three hydrogen molecules, meaning it can be used as an effective carrier and source of hydrogen as an energy source, even potentially as an effective means of storing and transporting hydrogen. Industry bodies have found they can access the hydrogen by ‘cracking’ ammonia to separate the molecules to use the hydrogen.
Ammonia is also a strong candidate for use as a carbon-free fuel due to its chemical make-up. This has caught the interest of the shipping industry which is responsible for about 3 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions.
Cracking a chemical conundrum
Professor Cullen’s team’s new method to generate ammonia works by harnessing the power of plasma, by electrifying or exciting the air.
But the star is a membrane-based electrolyser, a seemingly non-descript silver box, where the conversion to gaseous ammonia happens.
During the Haber-Bosch process, ammonia (NH3) is made by combining nitrogen (N2) and hydrogen (H2) gases under high temperatures and pressure in the presence of catalyst (a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction).
The plasma-based method Professor Cullen’s team developed uses electricity to excite nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air. The team then passes these excited molecules to the membrane-based electrolyser to convert the excited molecules to ammonia.
The researchers said this is a more straightforward pathway for ammonia production.
Professor Cullen said the findings signal a new phase in making green ammonia possible. The team is now working on making the method more energy efficient and competitive compared to the Haber-Bosch process.
“This new approach is a two-step process, namely combining plasma and electrolysis. We have already made the plasma component viable in terms of energy efficiency and scalability.
“To create a more complete solution to a sustainable ammonia productive, we need to push the energy efficiency of the electrolyzer component,” Professor Cullen said.
Correspondence: Eojin Choi, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 733 N Broadway, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA, Email [email protected]
Abstract: Religion and spirituality are increasingly recognized as important aspects of patient care and medical education, yet many medical schools still lack structured curricula in this area. This is particularly relevant given the increasing gap between younger medical learners who identify as “spiritual but not religious” and their older adult patients who identify as religious. This article explores the potential of museum-based education as an innovative approach to integrate religion and spirituality into medical education. By using museums’ diverse collections of religious and cultural artifacts, medical students can learn about various religious traditions around the world and engage in discussions on religion and spirituality in a collaborative and supportive environment. Visual Thinking Strategies, a widely studied visual arts-based method in medical education, can be a particularly effective tool that fosters empathy, cultural humility, and critical thinking. This approach can ultimately help medical students integrate spiritual care into their future practice while also encouraging reflection on the role of religion and spirituality in their personal lives.
Keywords: medical education, museum-based education, visual thinking strategies, religion, spirituality, spiritual care
Introduction
Throughout human history, individuals have sought meaning in something greater than themselves, a search that intensifies for patients and families during healthcare crises. With 71% of young adults (ages 18–29 years) in the United States identifying as either religious or “spiritual but not religious”, young adult medical students are likely to have an interest in reflecting on religion and spirituality in their personal lives and/or a desire to learn how to provide spiritual care for their patients.1 Spirituality has been defined as “the personal quest for understanding answers to ultimate questions about life, about meaning, and about relationship to the sacred or transcendent, which may (or may not) lead to or arise from the development of religious rituals and the formation of community”.2 Religion, on the other hand, involves a search for the sacred and non-sacred goals (such as identity and meaning) within a structured community, often with institutional beliefs, practices, and rituals.3 Spiritual care is the process of identifying and addressing the spiritual needs of patients, whether they are secular, spiritual, and/or religious.4
Despite the importance of religion and spirituality to both personal growth and the practice of medicine, medical students have surprisingly few opportunities to engage in these topics as part of their formal education. Thus, little is known about how best to explore these human experiences—and the enduring questions they raise—with medical students. In this article, we explore the potential of museum-based education as an innovative way to integrate religion and spirituality into medical education.
The Evidence About Religion and Spirituality in Medical Education
While medical schools have increasingly incorporated spirituality and health into their curricula, these programs vary widely and have not been well described and/or evaluated, with some notable exceptions.5–7 A systematic review of the literature from 1926 to 2020 that included 19 publications found that only around half the courses were mandatory (11/20) and had a pre- and post-test design (11/20), while only three studies assessed the long-term outcomes of the course.5 Many courses included education on taking a spiritual history and the role of chaplains in spiritual care, often incorporating chaplain shadowing opportunities as well as reflective writing.5
Another systematic review on spiritual care training programs for students or healthcare professionals identified several barriers to integrating spiritual care into healthcare, such as negative perceptions on spirituality, spiritual care not being viewed as a priority, and a resistance to examining one’s own spirituality.7 A scoping review of religion and spirituality in residents (and inter-relationships with clinical practice and residency training) found that only about 40% of residents reported receiving education on religion and spirituality during medical school and, not surprisingly, many felt they lacked both the knowledge and skills to address these topics with their patients.8 Thus, more research is needed to guide curricular development and evaluate long-term outcomes.
Although most young adults identify as either religious or “spiritual but not religious”, these numbers are not static, and the gap is growing between the percentage of young adults who identify as religious and older adults who identify as religious.9 In 2007, 74% of young adults (ie, under 30 years of age) and 92% of older adults (ages 65 years or older) identified with a religion.9 In 2023–24, 54% of young adults and 83% of older adults identified with a religion.9 This trend suggests a significant and widening gap in religious identification between young adults and older adults. In turn, this may reflect a similar gulf in religious beliefs between medical students and the older patients they will serve.
For many older patients, religion is an important part of their lives, especially during their sickest and most vulnerable moments. In 2023–24, it was reported that 49% of older adults consider religion to be “very important” in their lives, and 55% pray at least once daily.9 This suggests that religion and spirituality are important aspects of being human for many patients and are therefore relevant in some way to all students who care about the well-being of their patients. The nature of health and healing, the role of suffering, what it means to live well and die well are all important, enduring questions whose answers often depend on one’s religious and spiritual beliefs. For example, healthcare providers may need to navigate challenging situations involving patients or surrogate decision makers who refuse blood transfusions or make decisions regarding pregnancy termination based on their religious beliefs. Thus, it is crucial for medical students to explore these questions and develop cultural competence and safety (an important aspect of the core clinical competencies) as they learn to work with patients of various identities and backgrounds.10,11 Cultural safety is a patient-centered approach that emphasizes the need for providers to reflect on cultural identities as well as their own cultural biases, understand the impact of power imbalances, and create an environment where patients feel respected and empowered.11,12 A lack of cultural competence and safety regarding religion and spirituality can negatively impact patient-physician relationships and patient-centered approaches to treatment.13 But how best to educate students on religion and spirituality in a way that is psychologically safe, engaging, and open to diversity?
Museum-Based Education on Religion and Spirituality
One innovative approach to providing medical education on spirituality and cultural humility involves museums. Museums are full of “third things”, which can be defined as objects, artwork, texts, and other types of media that provide a mediating focal point for reflection and conversation, thus helping create a safe space for openly discussing different perspectives.14 “Third things” can be especially helpful when facilitating discussions about difficult topics by balancing vulnerability and emotional safety, as participants can choose to share personal stories or to focus more on the “third thing” if the topic is too personal or painful.15,16 In medical education, “third things” have been used to help foster empathy, provide opportunities to reflect, and renew a sense of meaning among learners.17
As a substantial proportion of the art in museums is religious in nature, these collections can provide opportunities to explore various religious traditions around the world.18 Art and religion have often been intertwined throughout history, beginning with the use of religious objects and art to conduct rituals and decorate sacred places.19 For example, rituals and religious beliefs—such as the belief in the afterlife—significantly contributed to the development of Egyptian art.20 In recent decades, museum exhibitions have addressed the major religions of the world and showcased works from specific faiths in their cultural and historical contexts.19
Thus, museums can serve as transcendent spaces that cultivate introspection, especially on topics related to religion and spirituality. Immersion in museum exhibits offers opportunities for “aesthetic awareness”, where engaging deeply with art fosters connection and self-actualization, and “numinous experiences”, which are moments of transcendence that can inspire emotions such as grief, joy, or wonder.21,22 Museums have increasingly embraced this role and have shifted, as museum scholar Stephen Weil stated, “From being about something to being for somebody”.23 In particular, Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a well-studied visual arts-based teaching method, can encourage students to reflect and share their insights in a dynamic and collaborative environment. In a VTS session, participants first observe a work of art in silence and then engage in a group discussion guided by three specific questions: (1) What’s going on in this picture? (2) What do you see that makes you say that? and (3) What more can we find? These questions are designed to encourage participants to observe closely, ground their interpretations in visual evidence, and persistently engage in open-ended inquiry.24 VTS has been shown to help promote crucial skills and characteristics important for clinical practice, including empathy, observation, communication skills, cultural sensitivity, and tolerance for ambiguity.25 One study revealed that an art museum-based program helped clinical-level medical students gain a deeper awareness and progression of their professional identity.26
Spiritual care is relevant not only for patients’ health and quality of life but also for patients’ relatives, partners, and friends who may be caregivers and/or experiencing grief. As chaplains are integral members of the interdisciplinary healthcare team, clinicians and medical students can work with them to contribute to spiritual care. Moreover, museum-based education allows medical students to pause and reflect on religion and spirituality in their personal lives and clinical settings. As spirituality can be described as universal yet deeply personal in nature, these opportunities would allow students to reflect on their own understandings and perspectives on the meaning of spirituality. This reflective practice can potentially act as a protective factor against burnout, especially after emotionally challenging patient encounters.27
Discussion
Our article explores museum-based education as an innovative and impactful approach to integrating religion and spirituality into medical education. Using selected artwork and artifacts as “third things”, educators can design activities that foster deep reflection and discussions. This approach supports development of both technical and non-technical skills such as observation, communication, and empathy while also providing opportunities for personal insights. Additionally, group discussions in museum settings are often supportive and enhance appreciation of multiple perspectives.
However, this approach also has several limitations. First, it requires training in facilitation to ensure that discussions remain inclusive and meaningful.28 Second, evidence on the long-term impact of museum-based programs is limited.5 Third, more research in museum-based education for medical learners, especially regarding religion and spirituality, is needed. We also recognize that not everyone has access to museums in their community—however, many museum-based learning activities, like VTS, have been adapted successfully to classroom and virtual settings.29–31 Both in-person and virtual formats offer unique benefits, as virtual options offer increased accessibility and comfort for some learners while others may find in-person experiences to be more engaging and powerful.31
The advent and adoption of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) opens new possibilities for capitalizing on VTS methods in medical education. VR and AR can help create immersive museum-like experiences, allowing learners to engage with religious and spiritual artwork and artifacts even if they lack physical access to museums. In addition, recent advancements in generative AI—such as GPT-4 and easily accessed, responsive video generation—present opportunities for personalized educational content and simulated discussions. At the same time, arts and humanities-based methods can encourage students to reflect on the potential benefits and limitations of using AI tools as well as the uniquely human aspects of patient care.32 Museum-based educational methods, whether conducted in the museum or elsewhere, may ultimately help support core competencies in medical education, provide spiritual care training, and encourage students to reflect on the meaning of religion and spirituality in their personal and professional lives.
Dr. Chisolm is the Director of the Paul McHugh Program for Human Flourishing, through which her work is supported. She also receives compensation for serving as a coach in a Harvard online CME course on VTS. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.
References
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Since we know of no better thinking machine than the human brain, one of the main objectives of machine learning is to build an artificial copy of it. But while some very advanced machine learning algorithms have been developed in recent years, none of them are actually very much like the brain. By comparison, they are very slow on the uptake, easily fooled, and terribly inefficient. So why not just clone a brain and declare that artificial general intelligence has been achieved already? Surely we have more than enough GPUs to simulate all of the neurons.
That is much easier said than done. The problem is that we do not understand how the brain works well enough yet. A team led by researchers at the University of Sheffield wanted to fill in this gap in knowledge, but given that the human brain is extremely complex, they decided to start a bit smaller. They created a computational model of the sesame seed-sized brain of a bee. By using this model to better understand the function of bee brains, we can glean some insights that will help us to improve our algorithms today, and perhaps ultimately get us to a better model of the human brain.
The neural network model of a bee’s active vision (📷: H. MaBouDi et al.)
In the course of their work, the team found that bees do not just passively observe their environment. Rather, they actively shape what they see by moving their heads, bodies, and eyes in strategic ways. These flight movements create distinctive electrical patterns in their tiny brains, making it easier to extract meaningful information from the visual chaos of the natural world. And somehow, this tiny system can solve difficult visual discrimination tasks, such as recognizing human faces, with far fewer neurons than any artificial system in existence today.
The researchers used this insight to construct a highly efficient, biologically inspired digital brain. They then tested it with a range of challenges, including a pattern recognition task where the model had to distinguish a plus sign from a multiplication sign. Just like real bees, the model improved its accuracy dramatically when it mimicked natural bee scanning behavior.
This suggests that movement is more than just about getting around — it is also an integral part of how animals learn. Rather than brute-force number crunching, intelligent systems might benefit more from smart sampling: moving to see better, to think better. The bee model’s neurons gradually adapted to the motion patterns of the visual input, forming efficient, sparse codes that required minimal energy. Unlike standard AI models, this one used non-associative learning in which it refined itself without needing constant reinforcement.
The model mimics how bees scan a scene visually (📷: H. MaBouDi et al.)
Furthermore, the researchers found that active scanning helps encode information in a compressed and efficient form in the bee’s lobula, a visual processing center. When paired with additional neural structures that mirror the mushroom body (which is used for associative learning), the system performed well across a wide range of visual tasks.
Ultimately, this study might offer us a roadmap to smarter, leaner AI. If we want machines to learn with the efficiency and elegance of natural brains, we may need to start thinking not just about what they see, but how they move.
The soundtrack of the Age of Dinosaurs remains a mystery. The T-rex’s roars and the screams of velociraptors we see in the movies — such as the fourth installment of Jurassic World, which opened last week — are purely the invention of sound engineers seeking to shock viewers. These supposed dinosaur sounds have permeated the popular imagination, while for years scientists could do little more than speculate. Since the vocal apparatus of animals is composed of soft parts that almost never fossilize, until very recently, the sounds of dinosaurs could only be imagined based on the canals these animals had for perceiving sounds and on certain crests and ornaments on their skulls that could serve as sound chambers. But all that is changing.
The 70 million-year-old Parasaurolophus tubicen might have sounded like a ship’s horn or an Australian didgeridoo thanks to its distinctive cranial ornamentation, as shown in a scientific recreation at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. In 1995, paleontologists at the museum recovered a fossil of the hadrosaur with a massive crest nearly a meter long protruding from the back of its head.
Like a prehistoric wind instrument, inside this unique structure there were three pairs of hollow tubes running from the nose to the top of the crest, which researchers scanned in minute detail using a CT scan. After two years of work, the result was computer simulations of how the organ would resonate if air were blown through it, digitally reconstructed with the help of computer scientists. “I would describe the sound as otherworldly. It sent chills through my spine,” Tom Williamson, one of those paleontologists, recently told the BBC.
No one knows for sure what the enormous diversity of dinosaurs that existed throughout the Mesozoic sounded like. The soundscape would have been different at each of the three stages of the more than 180 million years that spanned it, but science has made some attempts. Based on the shape of the inner ears and other cranial cavities, scientists have developed theories about what this group of extinct reptiles might have sounded like.
If the purpose was to communicate and warn of danger, the dinosaurs’ hearing would have had to be subordinate to that function; their small auditory structures would have perceived low frequencies, just as modern crocodiles do. Animals are supposed to perceive the types of sounds they themselves can produce. No screams or roars. It’s more likely that most large dinosaurs emitted long-wavelength, low sounds capable of traveling long distances and shaking the earth. A low, amplified hiss, something like a beastly ancestor of the Italian opera singer Cesare Siepi, considered one of the best lyric basses of the 20th century.
Fossil of a ‘Parasaurolophus’ on display at the Chicago Museum of Natural History. Zissoudisctrucker/Wikimedia
However, the imagination must stretch in another direction, one that lessens the terror of the sounds of some of these prehistoric beasts. Until recently, it was believed that high-pitched calls and high shortwave frequencies were reserved for birds, but in 2023, a discovery emerged from the sands of the Gobi Desert (Mongolia) that changed everything.
It was a fossilized larynx of the ankylosaur Pinacosaurus grangeri — a three-ton, quadrupedal, herbivorous armored vehicle almost two meters in height and about five meters in length — which suggested that birdsong could have also come from wingless animals. “This is the first discovery of a vocal organ from non-avian dinosaurs in the long history of research on them. Interestingly, the larynx of Pinacosaurus is similar to that of modern birds, so it probably used it to modify the sound like birds, rather than the vocalization typical of reptiles. Therefore, we can say that Pinacosaurus basically sounded similar to birds,” says in an email the Japanese paleontologist Junki Yoshida, first author of the discovery, which was published in the journal Nature.
The larynx is made of cartilage, a type of soft tissue that is easily disintegrated by microorganisms and environmental erosion, so its natural preservation over millions of years is exceptional. Therefore, paleontology has turned to other resources to try to reconstruct something as intangible as sound. “Dinosaur sound communication had been studied only through the inner ear of the fossil skull, but not through the vocal organ itself,” explains Yoshida, openly proud of his work. “Therefore, my discovery of the larynx represents a completely new and more direct approach to studying dinosaur sound communication.”
Dawn with the song of a dinosaur
On the other side of sound — and the world — the Argentine paleontologist Ariana Paulina Carabajal, an expert in sensory biology at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), is working on cranial structures to elucidate how these extinct animals saw, heard, and moved to do what all living beings do: survive each day. “What do animals use sound for? Basically, to communicate with each other and to warn of danger, but very little is known about the emission side.”
The conclusions derived from the larynx of Pinacosaurus coincide with those drawn by Paulina Carabajal in Canada, Mongolia and Turkey, when studying a part of the inner ear of dinosaurs from the same family. “I studied one of the two ankylosaurs in which the lagena — a fundamental structure for hearing — was preserved, and when I reconstructed them, they were among the largest I’d found so far. Very long, much longer than in other dinosaurs.”
She continues: “In general, their lagenas are the same size as those of a modern crocodile; they don’t change much, but ankylosaurs have wider lagenas. So, we think they would have slightly increased their range of sound perception. Always at low frequencies because all dinosaurs tended to hear low frequencies. Now, in conjunction with the Gobi discovery, it makes sense. We understand that for some reason they heard a little differently than other dinosaurs. They had some specialization for vocalization. It’s interesting because it changes the interpretation of the entire group of ankylosaurs and opens the possibility of asking: what other dinosaurs could have had a similar development?”
It’s tempting to get excited about the implications of the discovery. Taking a bit of a risk, the scientist believes that, since they were desirable prey for large carnivores, it’s not unreasonable to think that these animals were capable of producing high-pitched sounds imperceptible to their predators. But she acknowledges that reality isn’t always as linear as that reasoning, and therefore, there are other aspects to consider.
An artist’s impression of the appearance of a ‘Pinacosaurus grangeri’, a Late Cretaceous ankylosaur.DiBgd/Wikimedia
Paleontologist Fedrico Agnolín, a researcher at CONICET and the Azara Foundation, worked 10 years ago on another discovery linked to prehistoric sound: an exceptionally preserved syrinx from a species of duck extinct 70 million years ago was the first direct evidence of the typical vocal apparatus of birds that coexisted with the last dinosaurs. In light of Yoshida’s discovery, he proposes a bold reconstruction. “That dinosaur’s vocal repertoire is somewhere between that of songbirds and parrots. It’s not that we’re thinking it sounded like an eagle, no. Maybe it was like a thrush that got up in the morning and started singing.”
For him, we must give free rein to our imagination. “The problem is that we have a whole wealth of previous research that we can’t get out of our heads. So, we keep imagining a Tyrannosaurus rex as a gigantic reptile, even though its relatives, whose fossils have preserved their skin, show that they were covered in protofeathers, something similar to hair. The whole body is covered in hair, let’s suppose, but we’re still unable to imagine a T. rex like that.”
More cautiously, Paulina Carabajal sets limits on creativity. “What shouldn’t be interpreted directly from Yoshida’s work is that when he emitted sounds like a bird, he had a song. It wouldn’t be like the beautiful songs birds make, but rather a rattling sound related to the way air passed through the larynx.”
This is a different instrument from that of birds, which, on the other hand, have a syrinx, a unique organ that allows them to produce those songs so appreciated by humans. “Reptiles have folds of tissue that protrude — move — into the space where the air comes out, and when they move, they generate sounds, hisses, but most reptiles don’t vocalize. Making a sound is one thing, and vocalization itself is another.” That’s why the case of the Pinacosaurus from the Gobi Desert is so surprising. Its discoverers emphasize that it and its mates could have vocalized.
The larynx of this ankylosaur is composed of two parts like that of any reptile, but with the peculiarity that between these two pieces there was mobility, which would have allowed it to control the air that entered and exited, producing sounds similar to those of some birds.
Re-evaluating many fossils
The tongue of reptiles is not mobile like that of mammals. Since it is attached to the lower part of the jaw, its movement is very limited, and only the tip remains free, preventing it from manipulating food. What is interesting about Pinacosaurus, according to Paulina Carabajal, is that “very large hyoid cartilages that support the tongue — essential for swallowing, breathing, and producing sounds — were also found. Therefore, the authors propose that this tongue was much more mobile than in other dinosaurs, perhaps allowing it to manipulate food a little when grabbing it.”
For Agnolín, surprises could emerge in specific cases. “We have to reevaluate many remains. Dinosaurs are found with some neck pieces whose exact nature is unknown. We have to see if they are syrinxes or similar structures.” Erosive factors, above all, limit certainties. “The syrinx is composed of several ossified cartilages that wrap around each other and form a kind of small drum. When the animal dies, this falls off, falls apart, and rots. So, if you find a small piece of a syrinx drum, which must be 2 millimeters in size, you wouldn’t recognize it,” the Argentine scientist laments.
Studies like his own and that of Pinacosaurus, however, encourage us to review the deposits in search of those fragments that were not identified at the time to assess the possibility that they might be sound tracks. This is something he has already done, and he regrets not having found any matches. Agnolin suspects that in many cases, human bias will also have to be overcome. “Perhaps there are some researchers who deny that this is a syrinx and will talk about other structures. All of this takes time and is part of the scientific debate, which is eternal.”
The consensus among paleontologists is that, with these insights and ongoing technological advances, solving the mystery of the dinosaurs’ sounds is closer than ever. Reconstructing the soundtrack of the Mesozoic is only a matter of time.
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The Full Moon is just days away now, but if you want to know what’s going on with the moon tonight, keep reading because we have all the info you need.
The moon changes each night, well, from our perspective it does anyway. This is because of the lunar cycle, a recurring series of eight unique phases of the moon’s visibility. The whole cycle takes about 29.5 days (according to NASA), and these different phases happen as the Sun lights up different parts of the moon whilst it orbits Earth. The moon is always there, but what we see on Earth changes depending on how much it is lit up.
See what’s happening with the moon tonight, July 5.
What is today’s moon phase?
As of Saturday, July 5, the moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. According to NASA’s Daily Moon Observation, 75% of the moon will be lit up and visible to us on Earth.
This is day 10 of the lunar cycle, and we’re only one phase away from the Full Moon. So, with so much of the moon lit up, there are plenty of geological features for us to spot, both with the naked eye and with aids.
Tonight, there is plenty to see with the naked eye, the most notable being the Mare Vaporum, the Copernicus Crater, and the Tycho Crater. With binoculars, you can add the Alps Mountains, Archimedes Crater, and the Alphonsus Crater to your list.
If you’re one of the lucky ones with a telescope, you’ve got a great night of moon gazing ahead of you, with additional viewings of the Linne Crater, Apollo 12, and the Rupes Altai.
Mashable Light Speed
When is the next full moon?
This month’s full moon will take place on July 10. The last full moon was on June 11.
What are moon phases?
Moon phases are caused by the 29.5-day cycle of the moon’s orbit, which changes the angles between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. Moon phases are how the moon looks from Earth as it goes around us. We always see the same side of the moon, but how much of it is lit up by the Sun changes depending on where it is in its orbit. This is how we get full moons, half moons, and moons that appear completely invisible. There are eight main moon phases, and they follow a repeating cycle:
New Moon – The moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The moon starts losing light on the right side.
Last Quarter (or Third Quarter) – Another half-moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
In the past fifteen years, five missions have returned samples of extraterrestrial material to Earth for analysis. These included missions that rendezvoused with Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), like the Hayabusa 1 and 2 and the OSIRIS-REx missions, and the Chang’e-5 and
-6 missions, which brought back samples from the far side of the Moon. In the coming years,
China plans to return samples from 469219 Kamoʻoalewa with its Tianwen-2 mission. With all the extraterrestrial materials being returned to Earth for analysis, one could argue that we are entering a “golden age of sample-return missions.”
As a result, efforts are underway to create facilities where scientists can safely contain, curate, and analyze these samples. At the University of Leicester’s Leicester Space Park, scientists are working on a Double-Walled Isolator (DWI) to store and analyze extraterrestrial materials safely. This could include future samples returned from Mars, which NASA and other space agencies are planning to do through crewed or robotic missions expected to happen during the late 2020s or early 2030s.
The DWI is essentially a miniature version of a clean room and is designed to keep materials at a high level of containment and cleanliness. This is ensured by an inert gas environment and state-of-the-art robotics (an arm and other manipulator technologies) to move samples between containment, an optical microscope, and a Raman spectrometer. These measures minimize interactions between scientists, prevent cross-contamination, and preserve sample integrity so scientists can obtain accurate results when conducting analyses.
As Andrew Cheney, DWI QM Project Manager at Space Park Leicester, said in a University of Leicester press release:
The SRR is a major milestone for the project that shows that we’ve fully understood the customer need, and translated that into a set of requirements to proceed with confidence into the design phase. Generating a good set of requirements is arguably the hardest part of any project and takes a lot of research, analysis, and industry expertise.
Now [that] we have that agreed baseline, we look forward to the design phase and the many, many challenges it will bring for this unique piece of equipment. We have a relatively compressed period now to push a concept through to detail design and manufacture. The dedicated qualification phase will involve simulating end-to-end curatorial and scientific processing of martian analogue samples at SPL.
This €5 million ($5.89 million) project was initially developed for the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission and builds on previous work where the Leicester team created a design for a prototype DWI. In the new phase, the Leicester team will be collaborating with experts from several British universities and institutes, including the Open University, the Francis Crick Institute, Imperial College London, and the Natural History Museum. They’ve also partnered with Extract Technologies, a UK-based manufacturer of advanced isolator technologies, to provide a detailed design for the main isolator and manufacture it. Said John Holt, DWI QM Principal Investigator at Space Park Leicester:
Whether or not an astronaut or a robotic spacecraft brings samples back from Mars, the Double Walled Isolator (DWI) is a key UK technology that enables planetary scientists to scrutinise returned rocks to understand the Martian environment and if there is microscopic evidence for life on the red planet. The milestone review [SRR] we have just conducted carefully looked at the complex needs of scientists to ensure we design an ultra-clean system that allows them to handle the precious samples and use a wide range of analytical techniques to unlock the secrets within each piece of rock.
The facility recently passed its System Requirements Review (SSR) with the European Space Agency (ESA) and is now proceeding to the Design and Qualification phase. Currently, there are four missions in the works to return samples from Mars, including NASA’s proposed crewed missions to Mars, China’s Tianwen-3, JAXA’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX), and Russia’s Mars-Grunt mission.
When Mike Papish, a diver and underwater photographer, first spotted Lenny — a 322-pound loggerhead sea turtle — he knew he needed to get him help. The turtle wasn’t using his front flipper, which was partially missing, and he had wounds on his head.
Mike Papish
“It was most certainly from a shark attack,” Papish told The Dodo of Lenny’s injuries.
But rescuing a turtle of Lenny’s magnitude was no easy feat. It took the combined efforts of Papish and a crew of divers from Sundance Watersports to bring the loggerhead to their boat. And that’s when the realities of transporting a wild animal the size of a grand piano set in: “Once we got him fully on board, it wasn’t even over,” Papish said. “We had to barricade him with three gigantic ice chests full of ice, and even those he was able to just swat out of the way, so it took all four of us sitting on giant chests of ice barricaded around Lenny to get him back to shore.”
Mike Papish
On land, Lenny was taken to The Turtle Hospital in Marathon, Florida, where he received fluids, wound care, antibiotics and laser therapy.
To call Lenny’s arrival at the hospital a “grand entrance” would be an understatement: “He was the largest loggerhead that I’ve ever seen,“ said Bette Zirkelbach, the manager of The Turtle Hospital. And, in her 13 years of managing the facility, she’s seen more than her fair share of sea turtles. The nonprofit hospital, which is dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing sea turtles in the Florida Keys, has treated more than 3,000 patients since it was founded in 1984.
THE TURTLE HOSPITAL/MARATHON TURTLE HOSPITAL
After just two weeks of care at the hospital, Lenny was ready to be released.
“It was critical to get Lenny back out there because it was mating season in the Florida Keys,” Zirkelbach said. Loggerhead turtles are an endangered species. And Lenny, who is estimated to be 60 to 70 years old, is of reproductive maturity.
“Sea turtles are a vital part of the ecosystem,” Papish explained. “They keep our seagrasses in check by grazing them like cows do. If they don’t, the seagrass gets overgrown, and it smothers the coral and hurts the reefs.”
In late March, Lenny made a triumphant return to the waters where he was first found.
THE TURTLE HOSPITAL/MARATHON TURTLE HOSPITAL
“It’s the best feeling,” Zirkelbach said of Lenny’s homecoming.
Since his release, Papish has crossed paths with Lenny several times, including during a recent encounter in early June.
“He’s doing better every time I see him. He’s got more strength in his injured flipper, and his swimming is stronger. When he goes up to get air, he gets it with more confidence. He doesn’t struggle like the day we released him” Papish said.
Mike Papish
Papish describes Lenny’s personality as curious and a little playful: “Every time I see him, he comes in and does a lap right under the boat so all the snorkelers can see him, and then he goes back to deeper waters.”
If you want to learn more about The Turtle Hospital or donate to help sea turtles like Lenny, visit their website.
BERLIN – Stone Age humans living by a lake in what’s now Germany systematically processed animal carcasses for fatty nutrients — essentially running what scientists describe as a “fat factory” to boil bones on a vast scale, according to new research. Archaeologists uncovered the factory by analyzing some 120,000 bone fragments and 16,000 flint tools unearthed over several years at a site known as Neumark-Nord, south of the city of Halle, they reported in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Excavators found the artifacts alongside evidence of fire use. The researchers believe that Neanderthals, an extinct species of human known to have lived in that area as far back as 125,000 years ago, smashed the marrow-rich bones into fragments with stone hammers, then boiled them for several hours to extract the fat, which floats to the surface and can be skimmed off upon cooling. Since this feat would have involved planning hunts, transporting and storing carcasses beyond immediate food needs, and rendering the fat in an area designated specially for the task, the finding helps paint a picture of the group’s organization, strategy and deeply honed survival skills. “This attitude that Neanderthals were dumb — this is another data point that proves otherwise,” said Wil Roebroeks, study coauthor and professor of Paleolithic archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. A string of archaeological discoveries in recent decades have showed that Neanderthals were smarter than their original brutish stereotype might suggest. The ancient humans lived across Eurasia and disappeared 40,000 years ago, and previous studies have found they made yarn and glue, engraved bones and cave walls, and assembled jewelry from eagle talons. Details in the new research suggest that Neanderthals may have been unexpectedly sophisticated in their approach to nutrition, too.
The Neanderthals living at the German site over a 300-year period also clearly understood the nutritional value of the bone grease they produced, according to the study. A small amount of fat is an essential part of a healthy, balanced diet. The substance was even more essential for hunter-gatherers, such as Neanderthals, who likely depended heavily on animal foods. A diet dominated by lean meat and deficient in fatty acids can lead to a debilitating and sometimes lethal form of malnutrition, in which the capacity of liver enzymes to break down the protein and get rid of excess nitrogen is impaired, the researchers noted in their paper. Known today as protein poisoning, the condition earned a reputation among early European explorers of North America as “rabbit poisoning” or “mal de caribou.”
Fruits and vegetables are often sprayed with fungicides to keep mold at bay. However, new research suggests one of these chemicals could be quietly harming insects that are critical to healthy ecosystems and could lead to an insect apocalypse.
According to a study from Macquarie University, one of the world’s most widely used fungicides, chlorothalonil, drastically reduces insect fertility. It does so even at the lowest levels commonly found on produce.
During testing and research, scientists exposed fruit flies to real-world doses of the chemical and found that their egg production dropped by over a third. The effect wasn’t something that happened slowly over time, either. Instead, it was immediate and significant, the statement says, affecting both male and female fertility. And this isn’t an effect like when researchers got fruit flies hooked on cocaine, either. This is actually life threatening for the population.
And while that might sound useful, especially considering how annoying fruit flies can be when they settle down a plant in your home, it’s a big deal for more than just flies. Insects like bees, flies, and other pollinators are crucial for growing the food we eat. If their populations decline, it could disrupt pollination and harm crops in the long run. This study is just the latest in a growing list of research documenting steep drops in insect populations around the world, which some scientists have heralded as an impending insect apocalypse.
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What’s especially concerning is that this fungicide isn’t just used when there’s a risk of infection. It’s often applied preventatively, when no disease is present in the crops. While it’s true that chlorothalonil is banned in the European Union, it remains widely used in places like Australia, where it’s applied to everything from vineyards to farms that harvest berries.
Despite its popularity, chlorothalonil hasn’t been studied under the microscope all that much. Fewer than 25 published studies have explored its impact on insects, so this new study could be a massive piece of a case against the future usage of this chemical. This also points to a major gap in how we evaluate the environmental effects of common pesticides we rely on.
The researchers behind the study suggest rethinking how often chlorothalonil is applied. By spacing out treatments, farmers could give insect populations time to recover between sprays. While not the best outcome by any means, it would at least mitigate some of the damage we’re doing to the insect populations, though how long it will take for them to recover between sprays would need to be determined, too.
