Alongside humans, leafcutter ants form some of nature’s vastest, most sophisticated societies — a single mature colony can contain as many ants as there are people on Earth, living with a great deal more social harmony and consonance of purpose than we do.
They are also one of our planet’s most dazzling testaments to evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis’s insistence that “we abide in a symbiotic world”: For 50 million years, leafcutter ants have been practicing a form of agriculture in their mutualist relationship with a fungus they cultivate as a food source, growing it in fungus gardens and feeding it plant matter, which the fungus converts into nutrients the ants can feed on in turn.
In fact, leafcutter ants evolved their sharp mandibles and deft prehensile legs precisely in order to cut and manipulate leaf fragments, which they then carry to their fungal garden. A single ant can carry twenty times its bodyweight — the equivalent of me carrying three grand pianos. In less than a day, a colony can clear entire trees. Emblems of emergence, they do all this as complexity theory incarnate, not a single individual aware of the big-picture goal of the labor.
In her mesmerizing film Antworks, artist Catherine Chalmers captures the strange beauty of this communal consciousness as a leafcutter ant colony dismantles a kaleidoscopic plant in the jungles of Costa Rica, then carries the fragments — “tiny Abstract Expressionist paintings” she calls them — to their secret garden.
JANUARY 26, 2023, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: OTIS ALEXANDER Valerae Olive Lewis, a leader in Orthopedic Oncology, was born in 1966 in White Plains, New York, to Carl Norman Lewis, a physician from Harlem with roots in Antigua, and Dorothe Williams Lewis. Valerae had two sisters, Stephanie Lewis, and Carole Lewis. Lewis received a Bachelor of Science degree […]
They fear being judged by those they care about for failing. They give others the power to influence their decisions. They only see the failure, not the lesson. They fail once and never try again. They don’t learn how to discipline themselves. They care more about the end result not the process. They don’t believe […]
In June, astronomers reported a disappointing discovery: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) failed to find a thick atmosphere around the rocky planet TRAPPIST-1 C, an exoplanet in one of the most tantalizing planetary systems in the search for alien life.
The finding follows similar news regarding neighboring planet TRAPPIST-1 B, another planet in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Its dim, red star hosts seven rocky worlds, a few of which are in the habitable zone—at a distance from their star at which liquid water could exist on their surfaces and otherworldly life might thrive.
What it would take to detect that life, if it exists, isn’t a new question. But thanks to the JWST, it’s finally becoming a practical one. In the next few years, the telescope could glimpse the atmospheres of several promising planets orbiting distant stars. Hidden away in the chemistry of those atmospheres may be the first hints of life beyond our solar system. This presents a sticky problem: What qualifies as a true chemical signature of life?
“You’re trying to take very little information about a planet and make a conclusion that is potentially quite profound—changing our view of the whole universe,” says planetary scientist Joshua Krissansen-Totton of the University of Washington.
To detect such a biosignature, scientists must find clever ways to work with the limited information they can glean by observing exoplanets.
Chemicals in context
Even the most powerful telescopes, including the JWST, almost never “see” exoplanets—by and large, astronomers know these distant worlds only by the flickering of their stars.
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The James Webb Space Telescope will help scientists look for signs on life on other planets. Adapted from NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, T. Pyle (IPAC)
Such a question might seem whimsical. Though humans have lived alongside mice for at least 15,000 years, few of us have ever heard mice sing, because they do so in frequencies beyond the range detectable by human hearing. As pups, their high-pitched songs alert their mothers to their whereabouts; as adults, they sing in ultrasound to woo one another. For decades, researchers considered mouse songs instinctual, the fixed tunes of a windup music box, rather than the mutable expressions of individual minds.
But no one had tested whether that was really true. In 2012, a team of neurobiologists at Duke University, led by Erich Jarvis, a neuroscientist who studies vocal learning, designed an experiment to find out. The team surgically deafened five mice and recorded their songs in a mouse-size sound studio, tricked out with infrared cameras and microphones. They then compared sonograms of the songs of deafened mice with those of hearing mice. If the mouse songs were innate, as long presumed, the surgical alteration would make no difference at all.
Jarvis and his researchers slowed down the tempo and shifted the pitch of the recordings so that they could hear the songs with their own ears. Those of the intact mice sounded “remarkably similar to some bird songs,” Jarvis wrote in a 2013 paper that described the experiment, with whistlelike syllables similar to those in the songs of canaries and the trills of dolphins. Not so the songs of the deafened mice: Deprived of auditory feedback, their songs became degraded, rendering them nearly unrecognizable. They sounded, the scientists noted, like “squawks and screams.” Not only did the tunes of a mouse depend on its ability to hear itself and others, but also, as the team found in another experiment, a male mouse could alter the pitch of its song to compete with other male mice for female attention.
MARY KENNER (1912-2006) POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 27, 2020BY CONTRIBUTED BY: ALEX RYE Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner is an inventor of numerous products we use today and has the most patents of any African American woman. Kenner was born on May 17, 1912, in Monroe, North Carolina. Her father was inventor Sidney Nathaniel Davidson, and her mother is unknown […]
My interest in capitalism began with an observation. I worked as an economics reporter for six years, from 2013 to 2019, for some of the biggest radio shows in the US. In that time, I never once used the word “capitalism” on air.
Then, in the summer of 2017, during a zeitgeisty taping of The Nod podcast, a panel discussion turned to the economic message embedded in Jay-Z’s new record, 4:44. Vinson Cunningham, a writer for the New Yorker, asserted that “capitalism is not the answer for Black people.”
It hit me: Economics reporters like myself weren’t talking about capitalism. Everyone else was. I reported this observation to skeptical econ-colleagues, who chalked it up to youthful nonsense — but I spent years thinking about what had happened and why.
Now, years later, some of those thoughts have crystallized in a new Today, Explained series, “Blame Capitalism.” In the four-part series, which is airing on Fridays in September, we talk to economists, thinkers, and regular Americans about what happened to change our attitudes about our economic system. Why did we lose faith? Can we get it back? And should we try?
The best way to understand capitalism is to live it. We have no choice. The second best way to understand it is to read about it. Below are five new-ish books, and one very old one, that I read while reporting the series.
You can listen to “Blame Capitalism” and Today, Explained on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.
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A first edition of Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith’s book The Wealth Of Nations is displayed at the Dutch House of Representatives library in The Hague on May 31, 2018. Bart Maat/AFP via Getty Images
As the smallest living units, cells are key to understanding disease—and yet so much about them remains unknown. We do not know, for example, how billions of biomolecules—like DNA, proteins, and lipids—come together to act as one cell. Nor do we know how our many types of cells interact within our bodies. We have limited understanding of how cells, tissues, and organs become diseased and what it takes for them to be healthy.
AI can help us answer these questions and apply that knowledge to improve health and well-being worldwide—if researchers can access and harness these powerful new technologies.
Imagine if we had a way to represent every cell state and cell type using AI models. A “virtual cell” could simulate the appearance and known characteristics of any cell type in our body—from the rods and cones that detect light in our retinas to the cardiomyocytes that keep our hearts beating.
Scientists could use such a simulator to predict how cells might respond to specific conditions and stimuli: how an immune cell responds to an infection, what happens at the cellular level when a child is born with a rare disease, or even how a patient’s body will respond to a new medication. Scientific discovery, patient diagnosis, and treatment decisions would all become faster, safer, and more efficient.
Back on the Strip is a comedy directed and co-written by Chris Spencer in his feature film directorial debut. It was also produced by Snipes and Haddish with Luminosity Entertainment. This movie was about a wanna-be magician turned stripper. I was able to keep a half-hearted smile on my face the whole time I watched […]
Gran Turismo is a biographical sports drama directed by Neill Blomkamp from a screenplay by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin. Produced by Columbia Pictures, PlayStation Productions, and 2.0 Entertainment, it is based on the racing simulation video game series of the same name developed by Polyphony Digital. Gran Turismo tells the true story of Jann […]
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Artworks
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The James Webb Space Telescope will help scientists look for signs on life on other planets. 
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