James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

As the new moon rises this week, it ushers in a new year on the lunar calendar used by many cultures across East and Southeast Asia. On the Chinese zodiac’s 12-year lunar cycle, 2025 is the Year of the Snake—an animal that symbolizes wisdom and change.

These limbless reptiles can be found on every populated continent, thanks to an evolutionary “big bang” some 125 million years ago. There are more than 3,000 snake species, with incredible variation among them. Some of the animals are smaller than an earthworm, while others are longer than a pickup truck. Some are harmless to humans, whereas others are venomous. And the ecological roles they play as critical pest controllers and nutrient cyclers are often underappreciated. So as we look to the year ahead, let’s give our odd, wriggly friends some appreciation.

Shimmying Serpents

Snakes’ signature move is the slither. But they can also scrunch forward like an inchworm or launch themselves from a coiled position to leap or strike. And a few years ago scientists discovered another, stranger method of snake movement: “lasso locomotion.” Researchers were testing ways to keep brown tree snakes away from birds’ nests in Guam. They put wide metal cylinders at the bottom of poles, expecting this to deter the snakes, which generally need to wrap themselves twice around a pole or tree trunk to climb it with their normal, accordionlike “concertina locomotion.”

Instead, the team found that snakes were literally tying themselves into knots to surpass the barriers. The reptiles would wrap their tail just once around the barrier and then hook the tip around their body. This created a sort of lasso shape that the snakes could use to shimmy up the pole—ever so slowly but effectively.

Thermal Vision

Pythons, boas, pit vipers, and more can hunt in total darkness. They sense prey animals not only by smell but also by the heat their quarry emanates. These snake’s so-called pit organs enable them to “see” this heat; the organs act like a thermal camera that allows the reptiles to home in on a target.

Pit organs are membrane-covered divots near a snake’s nostrils. Infrared radiation emanating from potential prey heats up the membrane, which causes it to thicken and changes the small electric charge that runs across the membrane’s outer surface. That voltage change gets passed to nerve cells, which send the information to the brain.

Open Wide

Snakes generally don’t chew their food. Instead, they swallow prey whole and slowly digest it over the course of days. Burmese pythons, for example, can spend an entire week digesting a single meal. While they normally eat smaller mammals like rodents, these pythons have also been spotted consuming comparatively enormous alligators and deer. They can open their mouth four times wider than their skull.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

The brain is a well-designed machine. If it’s working well—like when it’s reading the words on this page—we don’t notice it at all. At night when we sleep, the brain takes our consciousness offline so it can start its real work: sorting through the day’s information, storing the important parts, and cleaning out the gunk that accumulated.

The brain is so well-designed, in fact, that we hardly even notice when it’s breaking down. 

Like the rest of our organs, the brain undergoes its own aging process. And yet the majority of adults don’t experience major cognitive decline—the kind that severely limits their ability to live independently—over time. 

That’s because the brain is one of the most resilient organs in the body. Yes, dementia affects about 5.6% of the world’s population, a share that includes the devastating burden of Alzheimer’s disease. But in normal aging, even as parts of the brain shrink and neurons lose connection with each other, those changes only have a minor effect on our daily lives. It may be frustrating to forget where you put your keys, but you can still learn that you’re prone to forgetting them, and pick up the habit of writing notes for yourself. 

For adults who remain neurologically healthy into their later years, the brain constantly adapts and even thrives under new conditions. But how it pulls it off is a mystery scientists are still trying to solve. The hope is that if researchers can understand how healthy brains stay resilient, they can identify what’s happening when these systems fail—often, leading to dementia. 

Never Constant

The brain’s incredible resilience comes, at least in part, from its plasticity. The rest of the body’s organs carry out roughly the same job from the moment we’re born—albeit on a larger scale as we grow. The heart pumps blood, the liver and kidneys filter, and the stomach churns food.

Not the brain.

Babies’ brains are equipped with billions of neurons, but they have to be warmed up and molded to be useful. Over as many as 25 years, neurons form hundreds of thousands of connections as we learn and make memories. Some of these connections are cropped as they’re not needed; others grow stronger as we learn to reason in the abstract, mitigate impulsive and risky behavior, and plan ahead for the future. 

Shortly after the brain finishes fully forming, though, it starts to wear down. 

“Aging is a lifelong biological process,” says Kristin Kennedy, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas at Dallas who studies healthy cognitive aging. There’s some disagreement about exactly when the brain starts to show signs of wear and tear. Some of the limited research available suggests it happens around middle age, some suggests our 30s, and some even in our 20s. But the consensus is that some shrinkage is inevitable and normal. Specifically, the prefrontal cortex and medial lobes—areas involved with high-level functions like planning, emotional processing, learning, and memory—get a little smaller, says Elizabeth Zelinski, a neuroscientist and gerontologist at the University of Southern California. 

.

For most, the brain constantly adapts and even thrives under new conditions. Photo by Hokyoung Kim for Quartz

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

CLIMATEWIRE | One week in, the Trump administration is broadening its assault on the functions of government and shifting control of the federal purse strings further away from members of Congress.

President Donald Trump’s budget office Monday ordered a total freeze on “all federal financial assistance” that could be targeted under his previous executive orders pausing funding for a wide range of priorities — from domestic infrastructure and energy projects to diversity-related programs and foreign aid.

In a two-page memo obtained by POLITICO, the Office of Management and Budget announced all federal agencies would be forced to suspend payments — with the exception of Social Security and Medicare.

“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” according to the memo, which three people authenticated.

The new order could affect billions of dollars in grants to state and local governments while causing disruptions to programs that benefit many households. There was also widespread confusion over how the memo would be implemented and whether it would face legal challenges.

While the memo says the funding pause does not include assistance “provided directly to individuals,” for instance, it does not clarify whether that includes money sent first to states or organizations and then provided to households.

The brief memo also does not detail all payments that will be halted. However, it broadly orders federal agencies to “temporarily” stop sending federal financial assistance that could be affected by Trump’s executive actions.

That includes the president’s orders to freeze all funding from the Democrats’ signature climate and spending law — the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure package enacted in 2021. It also imposes a 90-day freeze on foreign aid.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement decried the announcement as an example of “more lawlessness and chaos in America as Donald Trump’s Administration blatantly disobeys the law by holding up virtually all vital funds that support programs in every community across the country.”

The New York Democrat urged the administration to lift the freeze.

“They say this is only temporary, but no one should believe that,” he said. “Donald Trump must direct his Administration to reverse course immediately and the taxpayers’ money should be distributed to the people. Congress approved these investments and they are not optional; they are the law.”

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Being a single parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world, regardless of gender. Research from the Pew Research Center shows that the rate of single-father households has grown significantly since the 1960s, and the world’s perception of a father’s role within the household is evolving.

Society no longer places the sole responsibility of providing for the family entirely on men, and their role as equal caregivers is increasingly recognized. As a result, more fathers are stepping into the role of single parenthood when their co-parent is no longer present or willing to contribute to childcare.

Today, both single moms and dads juggle work, parenting, and personal challenges, often with limited support and endless responsibilities. Yet, society doesn’t always view them through the same lens. Have you ever noticed how single dads are often celebrated as “heroes” for doing what single moms are expected to do every day without the same fanfare?

This difference isn’t just a passing observation—it reflects deeper sociocultural norms and biases that shape how we view parenthood.

Here are three reasons why single dads are often viewed more positively than single moms, according to research.

1. The Intensive Mothering Problem

As much as we’ve come a long way in our view of parenting, there are still some very obvious differences between what is expected from a mother and what is expected from a father, with mothers facing much more scrutiny.

The term “intensive mothering,” coined by Sharon Hays in the 1996 book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, highlights this difference. Intensive mothering is a cultural ideology that emphasizes a child-centered, time-intensive, and emotionally absorbing approach to parenting, where mothers are expected to devote extraordinary amounts of time, energy, and resources to their children’s well-being and development.

It’s the belief that mothers are expected to prioritize their children above all else, often at the expense of their own needs. This belief disproportionately places the burden of child-rearing on women and often implies that “good” mothering requires self-sacrifice and perfection.

Society tends to expect mothers—even single moms juggling two jobs just to make ends meet—to maintain an “intensive mothering” level of parenting without question.

2. Money Helps When It Comes To Parenting

Most parents would agree that raising children tends to be expensive. Research shows that raising a child from birth to the age of 18 can cost roughly $233,610. As kids grow older, their needs and wants often become more expensive, adding extra strain to a household budget.

The challenge is even greater in a country where the gender pay gap remains significant. For single mothers, this means running a single-income household can be far more economically demanding compared to their male counterparts.

Research published in the Journal of Divorce & Remarriage states that “single fathers had better resources than single mothers. Single mothers have less education, less prestigious jobs, lower incomes and more economic strain than other parents.”

.

Being a single parent is undoubtedly hard. However, not all single parents are treated equally. Here … [+]  Getty

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________