https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/58/11/586.abstract

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"It was outlined above that it is acknowledged that the current economic system is understood to be unsustainable, which is why the shift toward the Green Economy is proposed. However, such a shift means not a shift toward sustainability, but rather the continuation of the current system. As explained, the Green Economy is in line with weak sustainability and thus calls for decoupling. Anyway, decoupling has been one of the driving forces at the origin of the current unsustainable economic system. As was briefly indicated, this decoupling had major drawbacks, and has been partially creating the sustainability problems we are facing now. This idea of the Green Economy follows, therefore, exactly the same evolutionary pathway as our current economy. Hence, it is not as Pearce argued that we did not try this path; we tried it already and it failed. It would be illogic to employ the same mechanisms as solution that created the problem."

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Abstract

Intelligence is correlated with a range of left-wing and liberal political beliefs. This may suggest intelligence directly alters our political views. Alternatively, the association may be confounded or mediated by socioeconomic and environmental factors. We studied the effect of intelligence within a sample of over 300 biological and adoptive families, using both measured IQ and polygenic scores for cognitive performance and educational attainment. We found both IQ and polygenic scores significantly predicted all six of our political scales. Polygenic scores predicted social liberalism and lower authoritarianism, within-families. Intelligence was able to significantly predict social liberalism and lower authoritarianism, within families, even after controlling for socioeconomic variables. Our findings may provide the strongest causal inference to date of intelligence directly affecting political beliefs.

Abstract

Using a sample of Standard and Poor’s 500 firms, we examine determinants and consequences of U.S. firms’ return-to-office (RTO) mandates. Results of our determinant analyses are consistent with managers using RTO mandates to reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat for bad firm performance. Also, our findings do not support the argument that managers impose mandate because they believe RTO increases firm values. Further, our difference in differences tests report significant declines in employees’ job satisfactions mandates but no significant changes in financial performance or firm values after RTO mandates. In summary, our research contributes to the ongoing debate over RTO versus working from home and has important implications for practitioners.

Abstract

Despite the widespread harm caused by cars and automobility, governments, corporations, and individuals continue to facilitate it by expanding roads, manufacturing larger vehicles, and subsidising parking, electric cars, and resource extraction. This literature review synthesises the negative consequences of automobility, or car harm, which we have grouped into four categories: violence, ill health, social injustice, and environmental damage. We find that, since their invention, cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people and injured at least 2 billion. Currently, 1 in 34 deaths are caused by automobility. Cars have exacerbated social inequities and damaged ecosystems in every global region, including in remote car-free places. While some people benefit from automobility, nearly everyone—whether or not they drive—is harmed by it. Slowing automobility's violence and pollution will be impracticable without the replacement of policies that encourage car harm with policies that reduce it. To that end, the paper briefly summarises interventions that are ready for implementation.

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Some Chinese researchers have found a new catalyst for electrochemically reducing CO2. Multiple such catalysts are known, but so far, only copper favours reaction products with a carbon chain of at least 2 carbons (e.g. ethanol).

The new catalyst requires a specific arrangement of tin atoms on tin disulphate substrate, seems to work in a solution of potassium hydrogen carbonate (read: low temperature) and is 80% specific to producing ethanol - a very practical chemical feedstock and fuel.

The new catalyst seems stable enough (97% activity after 100 hours). Reaction rates that I can interpret into "good" or "bad" aren't found - it could be slow to work. The original is paywalled, a more detailed article can be found at:

Carbon-Carbon Coupling on a Metal Non-metal Catalytic Pair

Overall, it's nice to see some research into breaking down CO2 for energy storage, but there is nothing practical (industrial) on that front yet, only lab work.

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To my knowledge, this is the second time a sample is returned from an asteroid to Earth - only preceded by Hayabusa-2 fetching a sample from asteroid Ryugu. The capsule has been found and the sample stabilized with nitrogen. Fetching the sample required 7 years, studying it will require a bit of time too.

It is too early to speculate whether interesting discoveries will follow, but Bennu is considered to be an interesting asteroid - likely not a break-up product, but something that represents the original composition of the solar system.

Bennu is also considered a hazardous space object, ranked high on the Palermo scale of impact risk and kinetic yield, so knowing what it's made of can be practically worthwhile.

More information here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx

Excerpt:

> “We’re the canary in the coal mine, and there’s lots of coal dust in the air,” says Schofield, a biological oceanographer at Rutgers University who first came to Antarctica as a graduate student in the early 1990s. “And just when we need to know even more about what’s happening to the canary, it feels like the United States is in a period of retreat.”

> The inverse vaccine, described in Nature Biomedical Engineering, takes advantage of how the liver naturally marks molecules from broken-down cells with “do not attack” flags to prevent autoimmune reactions to cells that die by natural processes.

> PME researchers coupled an antigen — a molecule being attacked by the immune system— with a molecule resembling a fragment of an aged cell that the liver would recognize as friend, rather than foe. The team showed how the vaccine could successfully stop the autoimmune reaction associated with a multiple-sclerosis-like disease.

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>In February 2020, the families of three cisgender girls filed a federal lawsuit against the Connecticut Association of Schools, the nonprofit Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and several boards of education in the state. The families were upset that transgender girls were competing against the cisgender girls in high school track leagues. They argued that transgender girls have an unfair advantage in high school sports and should be forced to play on boys’ teams. > >Conservatives around the country have jumped on the question. Attorney General Merrick Garland was pressed on the issue during his confirmation hearing last month. State legislators around the country are pushing bills that would force trans girls to compete on boys’ teams. In describing the Connecticut case in the Wall Street Journal, opinion writer Abigail Shrier expressed a representative argument: when transgender girls compete on girls’ sports teams, she wrote, “[cisgender] girls can’t win.” > >The opinion piece left out the fact that two days after the Connecticut lawsuit was filed by the cisgender girls’ families, one of those girls beat one of the transgender girls named in the lawsuit in a Connecticut state championship. It turns out that when transgender girls play on girls’ sports teams, cisgender girls can win. In fact, the vast majority of female athletes are cisgender, as are the vast majority of winners. There is no epidemic of transgender girls dominating female sports. Attempts to force transgender girls to play on the boys’ teams are unconscionable attacks on already marginalized transgender children, and they don’t address a real problem. They’re unscientific, and they would cause serious mental health damage to both cisgender and transgender youth. > >Policies permitting transgender athletes to play on teams that match their gender identity are not new. The Olympics have had trans-inclusive policies since 2004, but a single openly transgender athlete has yet to even qualify. California passed a law in 2013 that allows trans youth to compete on the team that matches their gender identity; there have been no issues. U SPORTS, Canada’s equivalent to the U.S.’s National Collegiate Athletic Association, has allowed transgender athletes to compete with the team that matches their identity for the past two years. > >The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal. As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity. > >Claiming that transgender girls have an unfair advantage in sports also neglects the fact that these kids have the deck stacked against them in nearly every other way imaginable. They suffer from higher rates of bullying, anxiety and depression—all of which make it more difficult for them to train and compete. They also have higher rates of homelessness and poverty because of common experiences of family rejection. This is likely a major driver of why we see so few transgender athletes in collegiate sports and none in the Olympics. > >On top of the notion of transgender athletic advantage being dubious, enforcing these bills would be bizarre and cruel. Idaho’s H.B. 500, which was signed into law but currently has a preliminary injunction against its enforcement, would essentially let people accuse students of lying about their sex. Those students would then need to “prove” their sex through means including an invasive genital exam or genetic testing. And what happens when a kid comes back with XY chromosomes but a vagina (as occurs with people with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome)? Do they play on the boys’ team or the girls’ team? This is just one of several conditions that would make such sex policing impossible. > >It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time people have tried to discredit the success of athletes from marginalized minorities based on half-baked claims of “science.” There is a long history of similarly painting Black athletes as “genetically superior” in an attempt to downplay the effects of their hard work and training. > >Recently, some have even harkened back to eras of “separate but equal,” suggesting that transgender athletes should be forced into their own leagues. In addition to all the reasons why this is unnecessary that I’ve already explained, it is also unjust. As we’ve learned from women’s sports leagues, separate is not equal. Female athletes consistently have to deal with fewer accolades, less press coverage and lower pay. A transgender sports league would undoubtedly be plagued with the same issues. > >Beyond the trauma of sex-verification exams, these bills would cause further emotional damage to transgender youth. While we haven’t seen an epidemic of transgender girls dominating sports leagues, we have seen high rates of anxiety, depression and suicide attempts. Research highlights that a major driver of these mental health problems is rejection of someone’s gender identity. Forcing trans youth to play on sports teams that don’t match their identity will worsen these disparities. It’s a classic form of transgender conversion therapy, a discredited practice of trying to force transgender people to be cisgender and gender-conforming. > >Though this can be hard for cisgender people to understand, imagine someone told you that you were a different gender and then forced you to play on the sports team of that gender throughout all of your school years. You’d likely be miserable and confused. > >As a child psychiatry fellow, I spend a lot of time with kids. They have many worries on their minds: bullying, sexual assault, divorcing parents, concerns they won’t get into college. What they’re not worried about is transgender girls playing on girls’ sports teams. > >Legislators need to work on the issues that truly impact young people and women’s sports—lower pay to female athletes, less media coverage for women’s sports and cultural environments that lead to high dropout rates for diverse athletes—instead of manufacturing problems and “solutions” that hurt the kids we are supposed to be protecting.

This month, more than 1,000 people will gather in London for a meeting of Cochrane, the group known for its gold-standard reviews of evidence in medicine. The conference marks the 30th anniversary of an organization that helped to spark a worldwide movement to base health care on research.

But in the hallways, some attendees will be discussing whether and how the group can survive. In March, 19 of 52 groups that produce Cochrane’s systematic reviews closed after the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) stopped funding them. And in July, Cochrane UK in Oxford — where the group was founded — revealed that it will close next March, after the NIHR ceased its support.

Most people would typically think than smelling a scent (unless it's a powerful poison or medicament) won't change much in a person's health... but apparently, a variation in the scent environment has effect on the human brain, especially if the person is already old and their senses are degrading. It has also been observed that viral infections damaging a person's olfactory nerves result in changes to the brain - with less input, the neural networks involved with scent tend to atrophy. Coinidentally, some neural networks involved with scent recognition are also involved with memory.

Prios studies already support the idea that training one's sense of smell helps older people avoid cognitive deterioration. This study brings highly significant statistical results and adds one bit - wakefulness is not required to benefit. Apparently, the stimulation a person receives from feeling different scents bypasses sleep (or maybe, even improves the quality of sleep).

Superconductivity is a condition of matter where resistance to electrical current disappears.

The first superconductors needed cooling to near the absolute zero. The next generation worked at temperatures of liquid nitrogen. A room-temperature atmospheric-pressure superconductor is a highly sought after material (e.g. it would expand possibilities to hande plasma for fusion research and make MRI machines easier to build).

A substance named LK-99 has recently caused interest in the research community. Its a copper-enriched lead apatite, typically made by reacting lead sulphate with copper phosphide. It is speculated to be superconductive at room temperature.

It is also thought that interesting properties are not inherent to the substance, but a particular kind of crystal lattice which this subtance obtains - if produced in certain ways.

The name LK-99 refers to Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim, and the number refers to 1999, when these Korean researchers first stumbled upon it.

Studies back then were interrupted. They weren't certain of its properties and it was hard to make repeatably. When a researcher named Tong-Shik Choi died in 2017, he requested in his will that research into LK-99 be continued. The resources were found and his request was granted.

Then, other factors intervened, among them COVID. The first article was rejected by Nature because an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof. An article in Arxiv (not peer reviewed) at the end of July 2023 drew international attention, however.

Many persons and teams started attempting to replicate the experimental results. The process is still half way through, but considerable progress has been made.

• Beijing University, school of material science + Beihang university: the experiment was made, but the effect could not be reproduced (they obtained a paramagnetic semiconductor of little interest)

• Huazhong University, center for crystalline materials and micro/nanodevices: they obtained a diamagnetic crystal with interesting properties (repelled by a ferromagnet regardless of orientation, a property which a superconductor must have, but which is also shared by non-superconductive diamagnets)

• National Physics Laboratory of India: failed to replicate the effect

• Professor Sun Yue, South-Eastern University of China: got a weak diamagnetic crystal

• Iris Alexandra (from Russia, plant physiologist): with an alternative production method, obtained a tiny but strongly diamagnetic crystal

• Sinéad Griffin (Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, from the US): published an article, attempting to theoretically explain how superconductivity might arise in the substance, explanatory tweet here

• Junwen Lai (Shenyang National Material Science Laboratory, China): published an article about the electron structure of the substance, without opinion regarding superconductivity, with the opinion that gold doping would be better than copper doping

So, strong evidence is absent until now - we may have much merriness about nothing. There is a bunch of hypothesis and enough material to fit on a fingertip. :)

Background:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99

I noticed that we have a community for talking about applied science and engineering in the form of c/technology, about climate science in the form of c/climate, but there didn't seem to be a field-neutral place to discuss any sort of science.

To fill the absence and introduce a few articles which caught my interest, I created it. I think I should make this thread stick to the top of the community, so meta-discussion could be easily located here.