COSMOS-AzTEC-1 is almost 13 billion years old highly organized but unstable and could shed light on galaxy evolution



Artist’s rendering of COSMOS-AzTEC-1. (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan)

By Jason Daley
smithsonian.com
3 hours ago

SMARTNEWS Keeping you current
Monster Galaxy Churns Out 1,000 Times As Many Stars As Our Own
COSMOS-AzTEC-1 is almost 13 billion years old highly organized but unstable and could shed light on galaxy evolution
image: https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/Jn-AQuFEH2_3TzE-RYzvWV6nVs0=/800x600/filters:no_upscale()/

Aztec Galaxy
Artist’s rendering of COSMOS-AzTEC-1. (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan)
By Jason Daley
SMITHSONIAN.COM
3 HOURS AGO
12500036
About 10 years ago, astronomers catalogued a galaxy 12.4 billion light years away called COSMOS-AzTEC-1, a giant “monster galaxy” believed to be an ancestor of massive modern galaxies like ours. Galaxies go through an evolutionary process, changing from disordered masses of gasses to star-filled stunners like our own beautiful Milky Way. Because researchers are viewing AzTEC-1 at the early stages of its existence, they expected that it would still be a little chaotic. But Sarah Lewin at Space.com reports the galaxy might be ahead of the curve: the monster galaxy is producing 1,000 times as many stars as the Milky Way.

Researchers got a closer look at what’s going on in this galaxy far, far, away using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, a telescope that has 10 times greater resolution of previous telescope models. Essentially, AzTEC-1 looks more mature than it is, but looks can be deceiving. Lewin reports that while the galaxy is certainly more productive than expected for its age, it isn’t exactly a well-oiled, steady star-making machine. And while it’s not a total mess like they’d predicted either, it might not remain sustainable for very long.

“A real surprise is that this galaxy seen almost 13 billion years ago has a massive, ordered gas disk that is in regular rotation instead of what we had expected, which would have been some kind of a disordered train wreck that most theoretical studies had predicted,” study co-author Min Yun of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says in a statement.

In most galaxies, there is one dense cluster of star-forming gas in the center. AzTEC-1, however, has two off-center clouds thousands of light years from its galactic center that are also dense enough to produce stars, the team reports this week in the journal Nature.


Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/monster-galaxy-churns-out-1000-times-many-stars-our-own-180970171/#wHbu4b5wtUUm1hEv.99

Turns out plans for Facebook fakes aren't limited to just Russia and Iran.
CASEY MICHEL
AUG 30, 2018, 4:41 PM

Earlier this month, Facebook unveiled something of a watershed moment when it came to social media interference operations. As Facebook revealed, hundreds of fake accounts — including those pushing Scottish secession — had been traced back to Iran, including some tying directly to Iran’s main propaganda organ, Press TV.

With the revelation, it was clear that Facebook fakery — and fake accounts on other platforms, from Instagram to Twitter — was no longer the limited to Russia alone. Other actors had watched Russia’s success, and were looking to follow suit.

And now, another government has been outed as planning to push inauthentic Facebook accounts to spread mixtures of news and opinion to unwitting audiences: the United States.

As the Miami New Times revealed last week, the U.S. had “put together its own plans to use Facebook to foment dissent clandestinely[.]” The target? Cuba.

More:
https://thinkprogress.org/the-u-s-planned-to-get-into-the-fake-facebook-game-in-cuba-b80848761819/

Source: The Hill

Overnight Energy: EPA tells Supreme Court to not take up an appeal on earth warming chemicals| EPA head says new coal plan will ‘level the playing field| Pentagon warns against EPA’s transparency in science rule
BY MIRANDA GREEN AND TIMOTHY CAMA - 08/28/18 05:27 PM EDT

EPA TELLS SCOTUS NOT TO TAKE UP CASE OVER OBAMA RULE: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn’t want the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a court ruling that overturned the agency’s limits on certain Earth-warming chemicals used in air conditioners.

Trump administration attorneys told the high court in a Tuesday brief that the EPA is no longer pursuing the type of regulation that the lower appeals court overturned, so the appeal by companies wishing to reinstate the rule is unnecessary.

The case concerns a 2015 rule under which the Obama administration sought to limit the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). The chemicals have been used in recent years to replace ozone-depleting chemicals, but HFCs are potent greenhouse gases, so the EPA sought to stop their use as well.

The Trump administration defended the HFC restrictions before the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but lost. Now EPA officials are exploring other ways to regulate HFCs.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/overnights/404068-overnight-energy-epa-tells-supreme-court-to-not-take-up

Raj Patel
As the alt-right obsesses over white South African farmers, indigenous activists are murdered in ever greater numbers

Sun 26 Aug 2018 22.24 EDT

The first time Donald Trump tweeted about Africa, he agonised over white people. After watching Fox News’ coverage of the South African land debate last week, the President of the United States instructed his secretary of state to look into the “large scale killing of farmers”. Followers of Peter Dutton’s nine months tenure at Australia’s home affairs ministry will recognise the lie, peddled by the “alt-right”, that black South Africans are targeting white farmers. As the Guardian reported in June, farmer and farmworker murders are at a 20-year low.

But for white people living in every settler state, there’s an awkward question that translates from the Americas to Australia to South Africa to Canada and beyond. How did land become private property, and is that property legitimate? Land struggles, it turns out, might be a way of teaching racists a bit of history and geography.

For as long as the modern state and corporation have existed, indigenous people have faced annihilation as they defend their land. According to Global Witness, last year saw a record 207 indigenous activists killed from India to Honduras while resisting mining and, above all, agribusiness industries. In order for the supplies of palm oil to continue uninterrupted, the indigenous people who live in suitable forest find themselves an impediment to profit.

The perpetrators wash the blood from their hands certain that governments won’t trouble them. In Brazil, for instance, the butchering of the Gamela indigenous people by farmers and security forces has yet to be prosecuted. Violence against activists has been met by the government of Michel Temer with a rollback of legislation protecting indigenous people and further support to agribusiness. Agribusiness returned the favour, protecting Temer from prosecution for corruption.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/27/trump-tweets-about-white-farmers-while-indigenous-peoples-face-annihilation

Source: Colombia Reports


by Adriaan Alsema August 26, 2018

Colombia’s private sector is using death squads to assassinate social leaders who seek the return of stolen land, according to the country’s prosecution.

Authorities have long claimed that drug traffickers and ELN guerrillas were behind the killings, but top officials told President Ivan Duque on Thursday that businessmen are behind many of the killings to prevent the restitution of land they stole during the war.

According to Deputy Prosecutor General Maria Paulina Riveros, the private sector’s ties to organized crime and paramilitary groups are particularly problematic in the Antioquia province and the Uraba region.

At least 39 palm oil companies have been convicted for using paramilitary death squads to steal land between 1997 and 2005 in the Uraba region alone, Rivera said. Her office is also investigating ranchers.

Read more: https://colombiareports.com/private-sector-behind-mass-killing-of-social-leaders-prosecution/

POSTED BY DONNIE LEDERER ON AUGUST 25, 2018

It’s very easy to get aggravated with Neil deGrasse Tyson when he spends his Twitter time seemingly obsessed with the scientific inaccuracies of some of our favorite films like Star Wars (we know he’s just playing around, but still). Having said that, it’s also easy to be enthralled by him. Not many people are as passionate about something as he is about science. Watching him talk about it can suck you right in. Now, once you add an adorable dog into the mix, it makes it even easier. Add a SUPER SMART dog, and it becomes something wonderful.

In a video from PBS’ Nova, which we first saw over on Laughing Squid, Neil is shown interviewing the late professor John Pilley from Wofford College. His border collie, Chaser, is one of the smartest dogs we’ve ever seen. We’re talking Benji smart (Not sure if she was Krypto smart. They never really talked about how she is affected by Earth’s yellow sun). John had trained Chaser to remember the images and names of over 1000 different dolls. The typically skeptical Neil decided to put Chaser’s memory to the test, having her bring back random dolls of his choosing. He then took the experiment one step further by adding in a doll that Chaser had never seen or heard of before.



What you will witness in the above video is something amazing, as Chaser was able to find every single item that Neil called out for. Now, if we only knew how to train our own dogs (or cats) to find the remote, car keys, or anything that we lose on a daily basis.

You can check out more videos from NOVA on their YouTube channel here.

More:
https://nerdist.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-super-smart-dog/

Tests stating staff suffered brain damage were ‘misinterpreted’ and ruled out other explanations such as mass psychogenic illness

Ian Sample Science editor
@iansample
Tue 14 Aug 2018 11.00 EDT

Claims that US diplomats suffered mysterious brain injuries after being targeted with a secret weapon in Cuba have been challenged by neurologists and other brain specialists.

A medical report commissioned by the US government, published in March, found that staff at the US embassy in Havana suffered concussion-like brain damage after hearing strange noises in homes and hotels, but doctors from the US, the UK and Germany have contested the conclusions.

In four separate letters to the Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the original medical study, groups of doctors specialising in neurology, neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology described what they believed were major flaws in the study.

Among the criticisms, published on Tuesday, are that the University of Pennsylvania team which assessed the diplomats misinterpreted test results, overlooked common disorders that might have made the workers feel sick, or dismissed psychological explanations for their symptoms. Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania defended their report in a formal response in the journal, but the specialists told the Guardian they stood by their criticisms.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/14/cuban-acoustic-attack-report-on-us-diplomats-flawed-say-neurologists

If The US Thinks Cuba Is Too Dangerous For Diplomats, Why Did It Just Ease Its Travel Advisory For The Island?
The State Department eased the level of its travel advisory to Cuba from “3” to “2,” putting it in the same category as France, Germany, and Spain.

Emily Tamkin
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From
Washington, DC

Posted on August 24, 2018, at 5:33 p.m. ET

The US State Department this week revised its advisory for travel to Cuba from Level 3 — reconsider travel — to Level 2 — exercise increased caution, raising a question: If the state of things in Cuba is good enough for Americans to travel there, why is it still bad enough to warrant a diplomatic rollback?

The change in the advisory, issued Thursday, is a partial reversal of last year’s warning to Americans not to travel to Cuba, and some involved in tourism hope it will reverse a decline in American visitors too — the Cuban Tourism Ministry’s commercial director, Michel Bernal, said in April that the number of US visitors in 2018 is only 56.6% of what it was in 2017.

But the change does nothing to bolster the US diplomatic presence in Cuba. President Donald Trump froze what had been warming relations under Barack Obama after diplomats were struck en masse by a still-unexplained illness initially blamed on “sonic attacks.” The US slashed its staff in Havana by around two-thirds, forbade US diplomatic families from moving there, and kicked 17 Cuban diplomats out of the United States. The president also banned US citizens from doing business with entities linked to the Cuban military and intelligence and security services.

But the allegation of “sonic attacks” was contentious, with many scientists scoffing at the idea. Earlier this month, 10 scientists published letters in the Journal of the American Medical Association criticizing the first medical review of the affected US diplomats in Cuba.

More:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilytamkin/the-us-is-no-longer-telling-americans-not-to-travel-to-cuba

VICTORIA SNITSAR - UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS •AUGUST 24, 2018

My jaw dropped recently as I read the nine-page syllabus for an online history class I enrolled in for the fall semester at the University of Kansas. Two full pages of the document include arguments against the Second Amendment and chides students who support the university’s concealed carry policy or take advantage of it.

To be clear, this class is on the history of the Japanese Samurai and has nothing to do with U.S. history or the Second Amendment.

What’s more, Professor Eric Rath of the History and East Asian Studies departments also informs students in the syllabus: “With guns allowed on campus, I no longer feel safe having visitors in my office; so instead of in person office hours, I am available for consultation via email or Skype on the hours indicated above and by appointment. Should you wish to meet in person, the appointment will be at a secure or public location of my choosing, but not my office. Please read the statement about concealed weapons at the end of the syllabus.”

. . .

The two-page statement includes data that aims to paint the use of guns in a negative light, details provisos of the policy at KU that allows students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus, and states “I request that you not bring firearms to class or wherever I am present.”

More:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/48223/

At least there's one person with a conscience left in Kansas.

Mauricio Savarese, Associated Press
Updated 4:59 pm CDT, Thursday, August 23, 2018

SAO PAULO (AP) — A leading right-wing presidential candidate in Brazil appeared to backtrack Thursday on his initial decision to skip all seven remaining debates before the Oct. 7 election, saying that he may participate in three.

Earlier, an attorney for Congressman Jair Bolsonaro said the candidate would not attend the remaining debates because they did not add to the race.

But after a campaign event in Sao Paulo state, the congressman later said he could not "lose contact with the people."

"I can't be in a studio, there are 40 days to the election," Bolsonaro told journalists. He said he wouldn't attend all the debates, but his "idea" was to make an appearance at some.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Brazilian-presidential-candidate-considers-13177721.php








You may remember this hate-fueled, racist, misogynist, openly pro-dictatorship fascist P.O.S., Congressman Jair Bolsonaro.