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☆ Inside the Quest to Make Fusion Energy a Reality
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-15 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +15 min

The Quest to Build a Star on Earth Start-ups say we’re closer than ever to near-limitless, zero-carbon energy from fusion. Today’s fusion start-ups aren’t just preparing for this moment in the lab. Such advances helped the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory produce more fusion energy than the energy in the incoming laser beams, for the briefest of moments, in 2022. They also helped European researchers generate record amounts of fusion energy at a facility in Britain last year. What worries researchers is how much some fusion start-ups are promising, and how soon.

Persons: General Atomics, Lawrence, —, Charles Darwin’s, Lord Kelvin, Darwin, Arthur Eddington, Nicolas Tucat, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Vinod Khosla, Sam Altman, Kitty, presale, Gerald Navratil, Navratil, “, it’s, ”, Robert Goldston, you’ve, David James Bartho, Simon Simard, Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr, Stark, Bob Mumgaard, Mumgaard, Brandon Sorbom, Sorbom, “ We’re, Dr, Earl Marmar, Thea Energy, Salvador Dalí, Cary Forest, Grant Hindsley, Richard Magee, “ It’s, Jean Paul Allain, there’s, Steven Cowley, Cowley, ” David Gates, you’d, Gates, ” Thea, Thea, Eos Organizations: Nuclear Fusion Facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Agence France, Princeton University, University of Sydney, Underwood Archives, Getty, Fairfax Media, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, SPARC, The New York Times, ARC, Commonwealth, The New York, Dawn Princeton Plasma Physics, tokamaks, That’s, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Energy, Thea, Zap Energy, Helion, Microsoft, General Fusion, West, Technologies, Department of, Princeton Plasma Physics Locations: France, Columbia, Princeton, Harwell , England, Britain, Massachusetts, Russian, Commonwealth, Seattle, Vancouver, Southern California

☆ Why Do People Make Music?
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-15 | by ( Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Music baffled Charles Darwin. He speculated that music evolved as a way to win over potential mates. Some researchers are developing new evolutionary explanations for music. Others maintain that music is a cultural invention, like writing, that did not need natural selection to come into existence. On Wednesday, a team of 75 researchers published a more personal investigation of music.

Persons: Charles Darwin, “, William James, Darwin Locations: Darwin, Basque, Cherokee

☆ Camels evolved from a cold-weather ancestor. We could learn from their remarkable transformation
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-16 | by ( Bill Weir | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

“Gentoo penguins are big climate change winners in the Antarctic,” Heather Lynch told me. Conversely, the more flexible gentoo penguins keep moving farther and farther south, chasing new prey, and even abandoning nests to increase the odds of long-term survival. Julian Quinones/CNNThe gentoo population has exploded by as much as 30,000% in just a few years. Bill Weir/CNNHere lieth the lesson of the camel and the gentoo: Heat will move us, one way or another. I just know River won’t be satisfied without a magic plot twist that somehow saves all creatures great and small.

Persons: Bill Weir, —, “, ”, Bill, CNN's, Julian Quinones, Camels, CNN Bill, I’d, ” Heather Lynch, penguins, we’ve, it’s, Xiulin Ruan, CNN Julian Quinones, “ Don’t, Energy's Organizations: CNN, Brooklyn, Central Park Zoo, CNN Penguins, Stony Brook University, gentoo, Purdue, International Energy Agency, Global Locations: Canada, North America, dromedaries, Sudanese, Egypt, Southern Ocean, Antarctica, Manhattan, British Columbia, Yorkshire, England, Phoenix, Japan, Seville, Spain, Miami, Los Angeles, Angeles, Olivia, Colombia, CNN Seville, China, India, Maine

☆ ‘Amusing insight’ revealed in Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ gift to Darwin
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-22 | by ( Jack Guy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Karl Marx once gifted a signed copy of “Das Kapital” to scientist Charles Darwin, but the book remained largely unread, providing an “amusing insight” into the dynamics between these two intellectuals, according to experts. In “Das Kapital,” economist and philosopher Marx explored how the capitalist system works and, he argued, its tendencies toward self-destruction. The gift copy of "Das Kapital" with Marx' inscription top right. Down House, Darwin's former home, in Kent, southern England. The catalog includes 9,300 links to copies of the library contents that are available for free online, inviting the public to peruse what Darwin read.

Persons: CNN — Karl Marx, “, Charles Darwin, Marx, Darwin, Karl Marx, ”, Mankind, Darwin's, Tal Cohen, Reuters Tessa Kilgarriff, Kilgarriff, Francis Darwin, Francis Organizations: CNN, Heritage, Down, Cambridge University Library, Reuters, Kapital, Darwin Locations: Darwin, Kent, England

☆ Mummified animals Napoleon's scientists brought back from Egypt sparked a pre-Darwinian debate about evolution
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-19 | by ( Jenny Mcgrath | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte brought a slew of savants — geologists, engineers, and other scientists — on his unsuccessful attempt to take over Egypt. A collection of mummified animals that the scholars brought back from Egypt seemed to hold the key to the question of species transformation. Naturalists Cuvier and Lamarck had first sparred three decades earlier when a mummified ibis arrived at the museum. The skeleton of a mummified ibis (middle) that Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire brought back from Egypt, along with a cat and a hawk. "I have shown that it is at the present time precisely as it was in the time of the Pharaohs ," he later wrote of the mummified ibis.

Persons: Darwin, —, Napoleon Bonaparte, Naturalists Georges Cuvier, Jean, Baptiste Lamarck, Cuvier, Lamarck, transformism, Naturalists Cuvier, Lamarck’s, Charles Darwin, Marie Jules Cesar Savigny, ” Cuvier, Geoffroy, savants, Etienne Geoffroy Saint, Hilaire, lungfish, Geoffroy Saint, Jenny McGrath, “, Charles Darwin’s “ Organizations: Service, Naturalists, French Museum of, French Academy of Sciences, Getty Locations: transformism, Egypt

☆ Last Chance Lake: A ‘soda lake’ in North America could point to the origin of life on Earth
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-17 | by ( Ayurella Horn-Muller | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Last Chance LakeLast Chance Lake is no more than 1 foot deep. Haas displays a piece of dry-season lake crust taken from Last Chance Lake in September 2022. Last Chance Lake isn’t 4 billion years old — in fact, it’s estimated to have been around less than 10,000 years. Past studies suggest a primordial version of the soda lake may very well have included the substance. “Understanding how life originated on Earth has this importance for our search for life outside of Earth,” Haas told CNN.

Persons: —, David Catling, “, ” Catling, It’s, Sebastian Haas, Haas, David C, isn’t, ”, ” Haas, Catling, Charles Darwin, Matthew Pasek, Pasek, they’re, Woodward Fischer, Ayurella, Muller Organizations: CNN, British Columbia, University of Washington, geosciences, University of South, California Institute of Technology, “, Climate Central Locations: Canadian, British, British Columbia, Chance, Yellowstone, University of South Florida, Axios, ”

☆ Charles Darwin’s complete library has been reassembled for the first time
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-11 | by ( Ashley Strickland | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —For the first time since his death in 1882, Charles Darwin’s impressive library has been virtually reassembled to reveal the multitude of books, pamphlets and journals cited and read by the influential naturalist. The catalog includes 9,300 links to copies of the library contents that are available for free online, inviting the public to peruse what Darwin read. After receiving letters from researchers and the public asking about specific titles from Darwin’s library, van Wyhe and his colleagues began their project to recreate it virtually in 2007. “He was a very highly educated person who learned ancient Greek and Latin in school as well as French,” van Wyhe said. “Instead of basing one’s understanding on the authors Darwin read that are mentioned in biographies, etc., anyone can now scroll through his whole library.

Persons: Charles Darwin’s, Darwin, “, ”, Dr, John van Wyhe, of Charles Darwin ”, Darwin’s, van Wyhe, ” van Wyhe, Charles Darwin, Walter William Ouless, John James Audubon, Paul Du Chaillu, John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, Elizabeth Gaskell’s “ Organizations: CNN, Darwin, National University of Singapore, of, University of Cambridge, Down, “, Cambridge University Library, Christ’s College Cambridge, HMS Locations: Darwin, Piecing, Downe , England, Down, Rischgitz, South America, Equatorial Africa, Africa, Swedish, Spanish

☆ How the mystery of electricity helped 18-year-old Mary Shelley create 'Frankenstein'
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-09 | by ( Jenny Mcgrath | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

In 1818 Mary Shelley published “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.”In the novel, Frankenstein brings a creature to life with a "spark of being." Both scientists influenced “Frankenstein.” Shelley incorporated some of Davy’s writings into her novel, and the 1818 and 1831 prefaces both reference Darwin. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" when she was 18 years old. Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesPoet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom Mary Shelley married the same year she started "Frankenstein," was also fascinated with science. “Could it be electricity?”The electrical experimentsIn her 1831 revised edition of "Frankenstein," Shelley removed the part about lightning and instead referenced galvanism.

Persons: Mary Shelley, “, ”, Frankenstein, Shelley, —, Lisa Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, Shelley doesn’t, Mary Shelley’s, William Godwin, Erasmus Darwin, Charles ’, Humphry Davy, “ Frankenstein, ” Shelley, Darwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Erasmus Darwin’s, she’d, Byron, Boris Karloff, reenacted Benjamin Franklin ’, Franklin, Michael Faraday, Georg Ohm, Juliet Burba, he'd, Luigi Galvani, he’d, Alessandro Volta, Dominique Jean Larrey, Galvani’s, Giovanni Aldini, Aldini, Thomas Forster, Shelley’s Organizations: Service, Getty, Universal, Obscura Locations: Hulton, Lake Geneva

☆ Peter Grant Has Documented Evolution in Action
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-03 | by ( Emily Bobrow | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Around two million years ago, a group of birds from South America flew 600 miles west to make their home on the Galápagos Islands. They belonged to a single species, but by the time Charles Darwin arrived in the Galápagos in the 1830s he found nearly 10 different species, with beaks of various shapes and sizes. He deduced that the birds, now known as Darwin’s finches, developed these differences to keep from competing for the same food: pointy beaks were better for catching insects, broad beaks were handy for cracking seeds.

Persons: Charles Darwin Organizations: South America Locations: South, Galápagos

☆ Ecuador Strikes a Landmark Deal to Save Nature, and Some Cash
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Catrin Einhorn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The NewsEcuador announced a record-setting deal on Tuesday designed to reduce its debt burden and free up hundreds of millions of dollars to fund marine conservation around the Galápagos Islands, an archipelago of unique biodiversity that’s famous for inspiring Darwin’s theory of evolution. The arrangement, known as a debt-for-nature deal, is a bit like refinancing a mortgage, only for government bonds. Gustavo Manrique Miranda, the Ecuadorean foreign minister, called it a historic agreement that takes into account the value of nature. He said Ecuador was as wealthy as any of the richest countries in the world, “but our currency is the biodiversity.”

☆ Coral reef discovered in Ecuador's Galapagos Islands
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

Quito, Ecuador Reuters —A scientific expedition has discovered a previously unknown coral reef with abundant marine life off Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, the country’s environment ministry said on Monday. “A deepwater scientific expedition has found the first totally pristine coral reef, approximately two kilometers (1.2 miles) long, at 400 meters (deep), on the summit of a submarine mountain,” Environment Minister Jose Davalos said on Twitter. “Galapagos surprises us again.”Scientists had believed that the only Galapagos reef to survive El Nino weather in 1982 and 1983 was one called the Wellington reef, along the coast of Darwin Island, but the new discovery shows other coral has persisted, the ministry said in a statement. The South American country last year expanded the Galapagos marine reserve by 60,000 square kilometers (23,166 square miles), an extension of the 138,000 square kilometers already in place, to protect endangered migratory species between the Galapagos and the Cocos Island in Costa Rica. The Galapagos, which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, are also home to giant tortoises, albatrosses, cormorants and other species, some of which are endangered.

☆ ‘The Huxleys’ Review: Darwin’s Bulldog and the Line He Bred
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Richard Davenport-Hines | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

Thomas Huxley thought “the smallest fact is a window through which the Infinite may be seen.” His ideas moved from minute particulars to universal propositions. In 1869 he coined the word “agnostic’” to denote a method of thinking that required empirical data rather than biblical revelation to accept the existence of God. The Huxley tenets entailed wrestling with conscience, psychological stresses, spiritual anxiety, and anguish. Her focus is on two eminent scientific thinkers, Thomas (1825-1895) and his grandson Julian Huxley (1887-1975), but she does not provide a conventionally structured family biography following a neat chronological sequence. His descendants became investigators and thinkers who worked with high intensity to clarify some of the boldest, most contentious ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries.

☆ When Does Life Begin?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Elizabeth Dias | Bethany Mollenkof | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +19 min

“It is not black and white.”America’s fight over abortion has long circled a question, one that is broad and without consensus:When does life begin? The question of when life begins has been so politicized it can be hard to thoughtfully engage. Ancient Egypt gave the power to create new human life almost entirely to men. The scientific revolution, from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to reproductive science, disrupted centuries of thought on human life. “When does the responsibility for a life begin and end?”

Note: Data for 2020 is from June 2020 through May 2021; for 2021, it is from June 2021 through May 2022. Path of Hai Feng 718 over 365 days Encounters with Chinese fishing vessels Note: Data is from June 2021 through May 2022. Transshipment allows fishing vessels to stay at sea year-round Parked side by side, carrier vessels exchange fuel, crew supplies and the catch from fishing vessels. This allows fishing ships to fish for longer periods. Fish hold where fish is transported from Fender to maintain a safe distance between ships FISHING VESSEL CARRIER VESSEL Crane to transport catch from fishing vessel to carrier vessel Fish hold where fish is transported from Fender to maintain a safe distance between ships FISHING VESSEL CARRIER VESSEL Crane to transport catch from fishing vessel to carrier vessel Transshipment between a squid fishing vessel and a cargo carrier in the North Indian Ocean last year.

☆ Imperialist movement vs. NGOs. Op-Ed by Victor Pelin
▼ + stars: | 2020-11-03 | by ( ) www.ipn.md time to read: +6 min

Imperialist movement vs. NGOs. Cultural Wars”, which the author calls a scientific work, has 856 pages and is accompanied by 1,500 references. The second factor that prevented a confrontation between the Russian imperialist movement and NGOs was the distraction of public attention. That’s why, while still waiting for the confrontation between the Russian imperialist movement and NGOs, the representative of the first should publish his financial reports. In fact, the activity of NGOs compared with that of the Russian imperialist movement that is involved, for example, in the war in Donbas, with the possibility of extension to the Republic of Moldova, lacks nerve and passion.

Persons: Victor Pelin „, Charles Darwin “, Moldova Renato Usatyi, Igor Dodon, ProTV, Vlad Filat, Mark Tcachuk, – Eduard Volcov, – Victor Pelin, Darwin, Victor Pelin Organizations: Izborsk, Moldovan, Civil Society, Priznanie Foundation, Gazprom, intuit Locations: Moldova, Russian, Republic of Moldova, Fălești, Bahamas, Plahotniuc, Donbas

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