science

Link to the paper in Science: Ancestry-inclusive dog genomics challenges popular breed stereotypes.

Environment and socialization remain the largest determining factor.

Unsurprisingly, most stereotypes about dog breeds are pseudoscience that come from the eugenics movement. In particular, “popular knowledge” around pitbulls and bulldogs is just thinly veiled racism.

interview on the study from the verge: https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/28/23043508/dog-breed-behavior-genetics-study-stereotypes

The research did find some genes associated with traits like human sociability and howling frequency. But overall, only around 9 percent of dog behavior was explained by breed.

“Dogs are individuals,” said Marjie Alonso, a study author and executive director of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. “What a dog looks like is not really going to tell you what the dog acts like.”

Edit: modern “purebred” breeding literally came from eugenicists, that’s why this old political cartoon even exists. Documentary on pedigree dogs and their many issues: https://vimeo.com/166015460

Chevron's carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility at its Gorgon LNG plant in Australia underperformed in 2021 with 2.26 million tons of carbon dioxide injected underground, well below its annual capacity of 4 million tons per year of CO2.

For comparison, annual CO2 emissions by Australia is 494.2 million tons per year

Chevron's CCS project has been working well below its annual capacity since it was launched in August 2019, three years after the Gorgon LNG project began operations, as the company grappled with new technology and technical problems.

Sand issues

One of the major issues has been the presence of sand that has clogged parts of the CCS project. This prompted Chevron to significantly reduce the amount of CO2 injected underground.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star in the constellation Orion. It is about 724 lightyears away from Earth, and it has a mass of about 11 times that of the Sun. Despite that, it is about 700 times larger. If it were at the center of our solar system, it would engulf the four inner planets and Jupiter.

It's so big because it is currently reaching the end of its life. Massive stars have dramatically shorter lifespans than stars like the Sun because the rate of nuclear fusion in their cores is accelerated due to the massive gravitational pressures. This accelerated rate of fusion is producing huge outward pressures, puffing the star up to many, many times its original size. Once Betelgeuse runs out of fusible elements, that pressure will suddenly disappear and gravity will cause the star to implode, releasing ridiculous amounts of energy in a supernova.

Betelgeuse only formed about ten million years ago and is already on death's door. Astronomers don't know enough about stellar evolution to predict exactly when Betelgeuse will go supernova. But from what they do know, they're saying it could go off anytime between right now and the next 100,000 years. Since it is 724 lightyears away, we won't know until 724 years after the fact. So if we're lucky, we'll get to see the supernova if it already exploded about that long ago!

The last time a supernova was visible to the naked eye was in 1604. Today it's called Kepler's Supernova, named for Johannes Kepler, one of the astronomers who observed it at the time. The supernova was about 20,000 lightyears away and was bright enough to be visible during the day for three weeks.

Recently, astrophysicists have determined that saying the word Betelgeuse three times may cause it to explode sooner than it would have otherwise.

https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/when-betelgeuse-goes-supernova-what-will-it-look-like-from-earth

40% of U.S. adults believe that God created humans in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years.

Hi Chapos,

We need to talk about science: how it’s made, who it’s made by, who it’s made for, and why capitalism sucks for science. Mods, please pin.

I’d like to start a semi-regular discussion thread about what science is, the institutions in which it takes place, the role of regulatory forces (and lack thereof), and in general the problems capitalism has created for science. I’m doing this to follow up on a few discussion threads from the early days of chapo, which I think are worth continuing, specifically this, this and this recent thread from yesterday.

First some definitions of terms:

Researchers, please note, that for the purposes of communication and to help folks from outside the lab and ivory tower join the conversation, when I say “science”, I mean all forms of professional-level, formal, systematically organized research, meaning I’m including non-scientific research here as well. I’m not making a distinction here, because in my experience, it doesn’t matter what field your is or how “scientific” your research methods may or may not be compared to other fields. There are problems in research which affect us all, it’s often just a matter of degree within field, lab, and our own individual abilities to cope with/avoid certain issues.

Science is an ideal, which we strive for in practice; it shapes our methods, logic, and conclusions. Academia is the deeply corrupt, capitalist institution in which much of science takes place; it shapes our labor and the science we produce. This means, it doesn’t matter what field you’re in - most of these issues are likely apparent in your field, to some degree. That said, some issues will certainly be more apparent than others in different fields in different labs and in different countries.

For those outside research reading along, please note that this means the word “science” is not synonymous with “technology”. For example in this thread the top comment is a debate about nuclear technology. There is a lot more going on in science than nuclear and climate change (and I’m saying that as a scientist who studies the psychology of the energy transition! I know better than most about subjective perceptions of nuclear energy and I'm sorry to say it’s not something you can easily change with posting). If you want to struggle-sesh about a specific technology or solution to a specific problem like climate change, please start a new post and keep your debate contained there.

My goal is to post these semi-regularly in hopes of starting a conversation which often takes place within science on a platform outside our offices and classrooms. Here are some of the topics I thought of, and this list is by no means in complete, so please offer suggestions for more:

• The publication process, peer review, and authorship
• The tenure pipeline: exploitation of grad students, postdocs, and adjunct professors
• How publish or perish hinders scientific progress (e.g., by promoting fragmentation and unreliable findings)
• The reproducibility crisis (started in my own field but now is seen as a problem for all of science)
• Science communication/”public outreach”/”valorization”
• The PhD mental health crisis, low graduation (high drop-out) rates, and burn-out more generally
• Transdisciplinary research (aka research that goes beyond formal disciplines to include practitioners and the public) & citizen science
• Open science: what is it, what’s it trying to do, and how it’s received
• Why some prominent “senior” scientists see Open Science as a conspiracy
• Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, etc in science

I'd also be happy to discuss things like university tuition rates, exploitation of student athletes, but for now, these things seem more to me like symptoms of the larger cause I'd like to discuss.

So chapos, what do you think? Any interest in on-going BTS science conversations? What do you want to talk about in these threads? What do you think you'd get out of them personally? Which topic would you like to talk about first?