"I recently explored the optimal fuel burn schedule to land as gently as possible and with maximum remaining fuel. Surprisingly, the theoretical best strategy didn’t work. The game falsely thinks the lander doesn’t touch down on the surface when in fact it does. Digging in, I was amazed by the sophisticated physics and numerical computing in the game. Eventually I found a bug: a missing “divide by two” that had seemingly gone unnoticed for nearly 55 years."

• Bird flu: https://bit.ly/3VcvnsY & https://bit.ly/3VfS7bn
• Io photos: https://bit.ly/3KALs6K
• China's lunar lander: https://bit.ly/3Vmik8q
• Largest genome: https://bit.ly/4c7VFmS
• First rains: https://bit.ly/4aV0Llw
• Chocolate: https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-a-new-way-to-make-chocolate-thats-healthier-and-less-wasteful

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/14096418

A link from @[email protected] to a 1972 talk by Grothendieck (including a recording; I don't think I'd ever actually heard his voice before!). It's interesting how complaints that seem very modern have existed for so long.

I’ve been taking every opportunity to meet scientists, whether in public discussions like this one or in private, and raise these questions. In particular: “Why do we do scientific research?” [...] The extraordinary thing is to see how incapable my colleagues are of answering this question. In fact, for most of them, the question is simply so strange, so extraordinary, that they refuse even to contemplate it. In any case, they are extremely reluctant to give any kind of answer.

I’ve come to realize that in fact this satisfaction that scientists are supposed to derive from exercising their cherished profession, is a pleasure… which is not a pleasure for everyone! [...] Once you’ve got your job, it’s an imperative to move up the ladder. Once you’ve moved up the ladder, even assuming you’ve made it to the top, it’s an imperative to be considered in the running. You’re expected to produce. Scientific production—like any other kind of production in the ambient civilization—is considered an imperative in itself. The remarkable thing about all this is that in the end, the content of research becomes a second thought. It’s all about producing a certain number of “papers”. In extreme cases, a scientist’s productivity is measured by the number of pages they publish. Under these conditions, for a large number of scientists—certainly for the overwhelming majority, with the real exception of a few who are fortunate enough to have an exceptional gift or to be in a social position and disposition that enables them to free themselves from these feelings of constraint—for most, scientific research is a real constraint that kills the pleasure one can have in carrying it out.

Full articles:

• Apex predator: https://bit.ly/3KnI6Uu
• Brains & autism: https://bit.ly/3KpXW0R
• First galaxies: https://bit.ly/3VpeigA
• Ancient cancer treatment: https://bit.ly/454VxCo
• Protein & microbiome: https://bit.ly/3KmVqsp
• Misinformation:https://www.sciencealert.com/one-action-has-made-a-significant-impact-on-how-misinformation-spreads-online

Some very cool stuff buried in the article:

Gazing at the turbulent, rain-swollen river, Esculier highlights what he sees as a curious paradox: as a society, we are spending energy on treating our nitrogen-rich wastewater and destroying reactive nitrogen, while also, spending energy on making synthetic nitrogen fertiliser (whose production and use account for around 2% to 5% of greenhouse gas emissions). Treatment facilities capture around 10% of nitrogen from our sewage to be spread on crops, while 50% goes into the air, he says - and the remainder, into the river. Given a greater Paris population of 10 million people, this means "nitrogen from four million people goes into the Seine every day".

If we used all the urine from greater Paris to fertilise wheat instead, it would be enough to produce more than 25 million baguettes a day," Esculier calculates.

Over the past decade, Esculier has tried to put some of those findings into practice, trialling ways to collect urine and use it as fertiliser. In its simplest form, he was familiar with this from his own family history: "One of my grandmothers used to tell her children to go and pee on the rhubarb," he says, which gave the plant a boost of natural fertiliser.

Under a research programme called Ocapi, which Esculier leads, he and his team have organised various pilot projects aimed at collecting urine in cities which is then used by farmers to fertilise their crops. In one project, 20 volunteers collect their own urine and bring it to a drop-off point, where a farmer then collects it, stores it and uses it as fertiliser.

Esculier hands me a packet of biscuits produced as part of the Ocapi project. As the label proudly states, the Biscodor (or "Golden Biscuits") are made with flour from "wheat cultivated with a fertiliser based on human urine". I put them in my bag, curious to see what my colleagues in London would think of them.

The idea of separating urine at source is attracting interest on a larger scale.

Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, a planned new neighbourhood in Paris in the grounds of an old hospital, will feature urine-separating toilets as part of a recycling pilot programme by the City of Paris.

"It's fairly rare in Paris to have a new neighbourhood, given that the city is essentially already built, so we don't have many opportunities to test these kinds of things," says Antoine Guillou, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of waste management, recycling and sanitation. He adds: "The idea is to test the separation of urine, and to see if it can be collected and used as fertiliser."

The new neighbourhood in Paris' 14th arrondissement will comprise around 600 households, "which is quite a considerable size for an experiment but is small compared to the whole of Paris", Guillou points out.

Moose populations have been dwindling for years across the country due to many contributing factors, but new research at Washington State University has found the impact of Eleaophora schneideri, also known as the arterial worm, has likely been underestimated.

Researchers examined recently deceased Shiras moose in Idaho between March 2020 and July 2022. While the parasitic roundworm E. schneideri was not detected in any of the animals found in north Idaho, it was present in 10 of the 20 adult moose studied in the southeastern portion of the state. Nine of the infected not only had adult worms in their major arteries but their brains were littered with microfilariae, the microscopic early life stage of the worm.

"The microfilaria are just scattered throughout their brains, and even though the damage from each is miniscule, they're basically shot-gunning the whole brain," said Kyle Taylor, a pathologist at WSU's Washington Animal Disease Diagnostics Laboratory. "We hypothesize the cumulative effects of large numbers of microfilariae in the brain may be associated with increased morbidity or chance of mortality, with mortality more likely in cases with larger numbers of worms."

A woman in her 40s was meticulously arranged in a gully and her left hand curled beneath her head when she was laid to rest in a cave in Iraqi Kurdist

An interesting read. "A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness." https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/

Super cool science but I absolutely hate the name