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According to a new study published in Nature Geoscience, the use of fertilizers and pesticides on farmland are now the most important source of sulfur for the environment.

This source thus replaces what was previously the largest source of reactive sulfur: coal-fired power plants.

Acid rain

Reactive sulfur is a component of acid rain, for the biosphere. It can react quickly and, as decades of acid rain research has shown, affect ecosystem health and the cycling of toxic metals that pose a danger to wildlife and people.

In Xataka Science

How agriculture made us shorter than we were

As explained Eve-Lyn Hinckley, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, in the United States and lead author of the study:

It seemed that the sulfur story was over. But our analysis shows that sulfur applications on croplands in the United States and other countries are often ten times higher than the maximum sulfur load in acid rain. No one has comprehensively analyzed the environmental and human health consequences of these additions.

Researchers predict that increasing trends will continue in many farmlands around the world, in places like China and India that They are still working to regulate fossil fuel emissions.

Sulfur in agriculture is not going away. However, there is an opportunity to bring science and practice together to create viable solutions that protect long-term environmental, economic and human health goals.

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The news

The largest source of sulfur for the environment is no longer coal-fired power plants but agriculture

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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Currently, it is normal to distinguish between natural and supernatural events: the former are governed by laws that we know, the latter seem to escape them. However, this distinction is relatively recent, and when it occurred it constituted an intellectual revolution.

This revolution took place because the realm of what was between the natural and the supernatural was abolished, the realm of the preternatural: ghosts, witches and monsters.

The advent of science and experiments

With the intention of transforming strange facts into vulgar facts, more and more philosophers of the 17th century insisted that any rare or unusual fact could be reproduced, and then find its causes, its explanation, removing the cloak of mysticism. In this way, the supposedly supernatural was becoming something natural.

In Xataka Science

Atheism is incompatible with the scientific method, according to this Templeton Prize-winning physicist

Galileo, thus, insisted that the mountains on the Moon were the same as the mountains on Earth. Or that Jupiter's moons were the same as our moons. Or that the phases of Venus were the same as the phases of our moon. As it explains David Wootton in his book The invention of science: "At every step he took the strangest facts and made them as vulgar as possible." The difficulty lay, then, in knowing how and when to distinguish between natural philosophy and theology:

The Logic of Port-Royal outlines what could go wrong when describing people who are overly gullible when it comes to miracles. They swallow, he says, a strange fact, and when they encounter objections to it they change their story to accommodate them; The strange fact can survive only if it is made more natural, which in this case means, to begin with, moving further and further away from any truth that may have existed in it.

Simon Stevin, a Dutch mathematician, military and hydraulic engineer, builder of mills and fortifications, semiotician, accountant and mayor abounds in this, in the mid-1600s, in his motto "The wonder is not a wonder":

In philosophy, we must always proceed from wonder to non-wonder, that is, we must continue the research carried out until what was thought strange no longer seems strange to us; But in theology, we must proceed from non-wonder to wonder, that is, we must study the Scriptures until what does not seem strange to us seems so to us, and everything is wonderful.

For the first time, then, some thinkers begin to face phenomena carefully, trusting more in experiments, evidence, tests, He knows how to explain the concatenation of events that produce a phenomenon, rather than subjectively, in revelation, the fallacy of authority or ad hominem. Above all, it consists of a disenchantment of the world: the assumption that everything can be explained, no matter how complex it may be, and that one should not simply add empty words to describe the world such as "magic," "god," or "supernatural."

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The day when the natural began to be distinguished from the supernatural

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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We have recently witnessed attempts to destroy the reputations of celebrities and intellectuals simply for their ideas (one of the recent cases we discussed It was Steven Pinker's), in addition to the fact that this strategy is ineffective and counterproductive (basically for three reasons).

However, how to know we're getting a legitimate review instead of a cancellation. The following 6 signs They can give you a clue, depending on Jonathan Rauch:

six signs

1. Punitiveness. Cancellation seeks to punish and not correct, and often for a single error and not a trajectory. For example, forcing you to resign from your job.
2. Censorship. If they try to censor you, prevent you from publishing a work, boycott you and not allow your freedom of expression to give talks or attend conferences.
3. Organization. If critics are organized and have objectives, if they recruit others and harass you at work or in the media.
4. Secondary boycotts. If there are implicit or explicit threats that those who support you will suffer the same punishment as you,
5. Moral Posture. If the tone against you is ad hominem, accusatory, of indignation and moral demonization. Cancellers do not seek to convince but rather use the attacked to elevate their social status.
6. Veracity. If they spread things about you that are not true, if they do not care about truthfulness, if they distort your words, ignore your corrections and make false accusations.

In Xataka Science

Three reasons why cancel culture is ineffective (and three that prove it is counterproductive)

These are the warning signs. If you spot one or two, they may be canceling you. If there are 5 or 6, then that is surely what is happening. Another thing is that you convince yourself of those signs, or you exaggerate them to victimize yourself and obtain some social or economic benefit, which is, along with cancel culture, the other great social scourge of the 21st century.

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The news

If you notice these signs, they are not criticizing you, but they are canceling you

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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People who identify as more attractive are more likely to also identify as conservative. On the contrary, those who are perceived as less attractive tend to be on the other side of the political spectrum.

This is at least what the next study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois.

Reasons

In the study cited, measures of attractiveness were used through multiple surveys, and The relationship between attractiveness and political beliefs was examined. Controlling for socioeconomic status, more attractive individuals were found to be more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican.

These findings suggest an additional mechanism for political socialization that has further implications for understanding how the body is intertwined with the social nature of politics.

In Xataka Science

Attractive people have better salaries, but less than those who are very unattractive

Naturally, we are facing a correlation, and also in the face of self-perceived issues such as physical beauty or political orientation. However, we can launch some hypotheses that someone who is more attractive tends to be more conservative or Republican and someone who is less attractive tends to be more progressive or Democrat. For example, if you are physically more attractive you also have more self-confidence. More confidence means more self-sufficiency and more desire to follow the people in power.

Previous research shows that good-looking people are generally treated better, They achieve a higher social status and earn more money, which influences them to perceive the world as a fairer place than the ugly ones.. Social psychologists refer to this as the halo effect, or when positive traits influence a person's overall opinion of a person.

In Xataka Science

This is how makeup affects women's perception of age

This blind spot prevents attractive people from seeing the need for government intervention, a central element of left-wing politics. According to one of the authors of the study, Peterson:

The best way to describe our results is that, if you take two individuals who share similar characteristics such as age, income, and education, but who differ in attractiveness, our results show that higher attractiveness correlates with being more effective and more conservative than the similar individual who is less attractive. This is not deterministic; all attractive people are not conservative and all unattractive people are not liberal.

Peterson and Palmer took data from the 1972, 1974, and 1976 American National Studies surveys that asked people to evaluate the appearance of others. These results were compared to the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study which focused on the physical characteristics of more than 10,000 high school students who were rated by others on their level of attractiveness. Given the greater social influence of attractive people, Peterson has noted that his findings could have deeper implications. Better-looking people 'may have political influence over others in their social networks, regardless of their actual levels of effective political knowledge.'

The opposite, Peterson said, is that 'those who are not blessed with good looks will be less likely to feel empowered, to participate in politics, to seek redress for grievances, or to exercise their political rights.'

If conservatives are more attractive than their liberal or left-wing opponents, Right-wing parties may end up with an advantage at election time.

Recent research suggests that conservative-leaning candidates in the United States and Europe are, in fact, objectively more physically attractive on average than their left-wing counterparts, which under some conditions leads to an electoral advantage.

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The news

The ugliest people tend to be progressive, the most beautiful people tend to be conservative.

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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Marcelo Gleiser has become the first Latin American to win the Templeton Prize, which is awarded for 'contribution to the affirmation of the spiritual dimension of life'.

In an interview about the award, this Dartmouth College physics professor argued that atheism is 'inconsistent with the scientific method.'

What is atheism?

Literally, Gleiser argued this way:

I believe that atheism is incompatible with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It is a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in disbelief. 'I don't believe, although I have no evidence for or against, I just don't believe.' Spot. It's a statement. But in science we don't really make statements. We say, 'Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.' And then an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence of God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim god? What god is that?). On the other hand, an agnostic would recognize no right to make a final statement about something he does not know.

In Xataka Science

Violent acts increase when the level of religiosity decreases (but there is an important nuance that prevents this from happening)

Gleiser reminds us that we are on an 'island of knowledge' in the middle of an 'ocean of the unknown.' As knowledge advances, we become more aware of what we do not know.

Given all the times that scientists have said something was already certain and then it has been discovered that it was not so, it may well turn out that the statement 'there is no God' could end up being similar to saying, 'No balloon or airplane can fly in the future' a century ago. Similarly, skepticism of the statement 'X does not exist' is also important in science since 'X' might appear one day.

Atheism must be defined

Gleiser is right. But it does because it is defining skepticism and, by extension, atheism in a very restricted way.. Surely there are atheists and skeptics who reason that way, but atheism is also defined as "I don't think about this hypothesis because it doesn't help me solve the problems I face." That is to say, one is an atheist regarding God in the same way that one does not believe that one lives on a television set and is continually being deceived, or that one lives in a dream, or that a magician has put a spell on one and one knows nothing about the real world, or that even everything that appears in the movies is true but the government hides it.

In Xataka Science

New law allowing test answers to be scientifically incorrect if based on religious beliefs

To be agnostic would be to affirm that everything is possible. And that's obvious. Everything is possible. But admitting that everything is possible is not the same as introducing all possibilities (each and every one of them, to infinity) when reflecting on how the world works. Simply, trying to climb the mountain of knowledge step by step, proposing humble hypotheses that we can progressively verify. Proposing the hypothesis of God is simply looking at the summit, at the highest possible level of knowledge, and proposing a total explanation for everything. So, is there any greater display of audacity and ineffectiveness than proposing a hypothesis that explains everything?

Or put another way: atheists are also agnostics: of course they do not know with absolute certainty that God does not exist, just as they do not know anything absolutely. What atheism proposes is that it is a hypothesis that is too vague and daring, as well as impractical, asking if God exists, if there are four thousand parallel dimensions, or if in reality we are in an extraterrestrial circus entertaining the masses without being aware of it.

All of this is possible, but do we waste time solving it? No. First, we must falsify many other hypotheses that are much more plausible and, above all, accessible to our narrow space of knowledge.

In Xataka Science

Ten important advantages for your life of being an atheist

Bertrand Russell He explained it very well with his famous teapot. While it remains true that humility can be a good thing, that we do not know what we do not know, and that it is impossible to prove the negative claim that 'God does not exist', Bertrand Russell reminds us that we can be rational in saying that we do not believe in something we cannot refute the existence of:

I must call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I don't think the existence of the Christian God is any more likely than the existence of the gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another example: no one can prove that there is not between Earth and Mars a porcelain teapot rotating in an elliptical orbit, but no one believes that this is probable enough to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God is equally improbable.

What Russell is saying is that the fact that a point asserted without evidence cannot be refuted does not mean that it is unreasonable to think that it is not true. Furthermore, Russell places the burden of proof on the person making the positive claim (God/the teapot exists) and not on the person who questions that statement.

In Xataka Science

Religious people vote more often than those who are not

The astronomer Carl Sagan He proposed a similar argument about the existence of a dragon in his garage in his book The World and Its Demons:

Suppose I seriously make such a statement to you. You'll probably want to check it out, see it for yourself. There have been countless stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity! 'Show me,' you say. I'll take you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle, but no dragon. Where is the dragon? you ask. 'Oh, she's here,' I reply, waving vaguely. 'I forgot to mention that she is an invisible dragon.' You propose spreading flour on the garage floor to capture the dragon's footprints. 'Good idea,' I say, 'but this dragon floats in the air.' Then, you will use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. 'Good idea, but invisible fire has no heat either.' You will spray paint the dragon and make it visible. 'Good idea, but it's a disembodied dragon and the paint doesn't stick.' And so. Counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

What's the difference between a floating, disembodied, invisible dragon that breathes fire without heat and no dragon at all? If there is no way to refute my argument, no conceivable experiment that counts against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? The inability to invalidate a hypothesis is not at all the same as proving it true. Claims that cannot be proven, claims immune to refutation, are truly useless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or exciting our sense of wonder.

Sagan, like Russell, holds that the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim. Since there is no evidence of the dragon, it is not unscientific to say that one does not believe the dragon is there.

Is it going too far to say that God does not exist? That depends on where you want to place the burden of proof and how much evidence (or lack thereof) is needed to make such a claim. Since we're talking about God (the most mind-blowingly supernatural thing we know of), perhaps we should ask for, at the very least, millions and millions of proofs and hundredweights of evidence. More than anything else we have been able to discover in the entire history of humanity. Because stating that God exists is as daring as saying that the parody exists Flying Spaghetti Monster Monster.

Or put another way: even award-winning physicists should study a little more epistemology.

Corollary proposed in the following video: don't believe in anything that hasn't been proven, and propose hypotheses that can be falsified (god is not one of them because we don't even know what he is, it's just a human word to refer to the unknowable):

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The news

Atheism is incompatible with the scientific method, according to this Templeton Prize-winning physicist

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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A group of economists from Yale University they have not found evidence about what The $600 weekly unemployment benefits that the US Congress authorized in March have reduced employment.

The study results directly challenge a claim frequently made by Republican lawmakers and members of the Trump administration that additional unemployment payments decrease people's desire to return to work.

CARES Act

The expanded CARES Act benefits, a $2.2 trillion stimulus package passed in March, will expire on July 31. And it's not causing a wave of laziness, as many think.

In Xataka Science

Overpaying executives: a bad idea

The findings of the cited study suggested that, taken together, the expanded benefits 'neither encouraged layoffs during the onset of the pandemic nor deterred people from returning to work once businesses began to reopen.'

The researchers noted that workers who received larger increases in their unemployment benefits relative to their wages did not experience larger declines in employment. after the enactment of the CARES Act.

In Xataka Science

Attractive people have better salaries, but less than those who are very unattractive

The researchers used weekly data from Homebase, a company that provides scheduling and scheduling software to small businesses in the United States. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found a similar trend, according to MarketWatch.

'Those currently receiving benefits search more than twice as hard as those who have exhausted their benefits,' said the study, which was published in June.

The Chicago Fed study also noted that unemployment benefits generally last six months and that people They are paid around 35% of their weekly salary on average.

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The news

The $600 unemployment benefits have not made people work less in the United States

was originally published in

Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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Researchers have defined Christian nationalism as 'an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture.'

The results of a recent study showed that Christian nationalism was the main predictor of Americans behaving recklessly in the face of COVID-19, being reluctant to wear masks or establish social distancing.

The psychological reasons

Results have suggested that religious Americans, particularly white evangelicals, are less likely to practice precautionary measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing. But Looking at general religious attitudes only gives part of the picture.

Christian nationalism is generally characterized by being fundamentalist and supportive of ultra-conservative ideals, according to researchers. The ideology includes several key components:

• Skepticism towards science and scientists
• The belief that Americans are God's chosen and protected people
• Distrust of the media
• Commitment to President Donald Trump

The logical conclusion of this kind of thinking is: America can save itself not through precautionary measures, such as wearing masks, but through devotion to God. Furthermore, it is logical that Christian nationalists trust the media and scientists less, since these sources are generally not concerned with promoting a conservative, religious worldview.

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The news

American Christian Nationalists Least Want to Wear Masks and Social Distancing

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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Chemical researchers at Scripps Research, Hans Renata and Alexander Adibekian, They have discovered a way to efficiently create a synthetic version of a valuable natural compound called cepafungin I, which has shown promise as an anticancer agent.

This bacterial secretion can block a piece of molecular machinery known as proteasome, a strategy that many existing anticancer drugs use to destroy tumor cells. The point is that cepafungin I binds to not one but two sites on the proteasome, offering much more promising results.

The complex molecular structure of cepafungin

The cepafungin I It first intrigued researchers for its usefulness as an antifungal substance and then as a promising anticancer agent. It kills cells by acting on the proteasome, which is responsible for cleaning the 'garbage' produced by cells. When the function of the proteasome is blocked, cells are affected by its waste and die. As explained Hans Renata:

Because cepafungin I is able to engage the proteasome in two ways, it allows amplification of its effect. We demonstrate that this compound elicits many downstream biological responses similar to those of the FDA-approved chemotherapy bortezomib, while also having certain qualities that may translate into fewer unwanted side effects for patients.

In Xataka Science

If pigeons are as good as humans at diagnosing cancer, we need algorithms

Due to the complex molecular structure of cepafungin, however, manufacturing enough of it efficiently is a challenge. The Scripps research team has done it and can synthesize the compound in just nine steps. For comparison, a related compound known as glidobactin A was synthesized in 21 steps in 1992, which was considered a milestone at the time.

The team was able to speed up the process by using certain enzymes that allowed the construction of one of the key building blocks of the compound, an amino acid. They then developed other methods to simplify the construction of other parts of the molecule, including a portion of branched lipids that were later found to contributed to the potent activity of the compound.

In Xataka Science

Artificial Intelligence now allows breast cancer to be detected up to five years in advance

After creating the compound, chemists discovered that, in addition to being exceptionally selective in targeting two sites on the proteasome, it did not show any unwanted cross-reactions with other proteins in cells, a characteristic that could make it a better drug candidate.

The FDA has already approved three proteasome inhibitors (bortezomib, carfilzomib, and ixazomib) for the treatment of multiple myeloma. "But those drugs have some potentially serious side effects and cancer cells can develop resistance to them over time," says co-author Adibekian, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research. 'There is a need for alternative and more specific proteasome inhibitors.'

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The news

It is possible to efficiently create the synthetic version of a very promising compound as an anti-cancer agent

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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According to an investigation conducted by Melissa Hubisz and Amy Williams, from Cornell University, and Adam Siepel, from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which has been published in the journal PLOS Genetics, some humans have DNA from an unidentified ancient ancestor.

The researchers developed an algorithm to analyze genomes that can identify segments of DNA that come from other species.

Genomic algorithm

This new algorithm solves the problem of identifying small remnants of gene flow that occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago, when only a handful of ancient genomes are available.

In Xataka Science

The extinction of the Neanderthals could have been due to a simple stroke of bad luck

In the study, an algorithm was used to look at the genomes of two Neanderthals, a Denisovan, and two African humans. The researchers found evidence that the 3 % of the Neanderthal genome came from ancient humans, and they estimate that the crossing occurred between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago.

In Xataka Science

Human diseases influenced the extinction of Neanderthals

Furthermore, 1 % in the Denisovan genome probably came from an unknown and more distant relative, possibly Homo erectus, and approximately 15% of these 'super-archaic' regions may have been transmitted to present-day modern humans. As one of the authors, Adam Siepel, explains:

What I think is exciting about this work is that it demonstrates what can be learned about deep human history by jointly reconstructing the entire evolutionary history of a collection of sequences from modern humans and archaic hominids. This new algorithm Melissa has developed, 'ARGweaver-D', can go further back in time than any other computational method I have seen. It appears to be especially powerful in detecting ancient introgression.

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The news

Some modern humans carry DNA from an archaic and unknown ancestor

was originally published in

Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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According to a new study published by chemical researchers in the journal Chem, by formulating positively charged fluorescent dyes in a new class of materials called small molecule ion isolation lattices (SMILES), the glow of a compound can be transferred seamlessly to a solid, crystalline state.

The breakthrough overcomes a barrier to the development of fluorescent solids, resulting in the brightest materials known to date.

Fluorescent solids

Although there are currently more than 100,000 different fluorescent dyes available, almost none of these can be mixed and combined in a predictable way to create solid optical materials. Dyes tend to 'go out' when they enter a solid state because of how they behave when packed closely together, decreasing the intensity of their fluorescence to produce a dimmer glow.

To overcome this problem, a colored dye has been mixed with a colorless solution of cyanostar, a star-shaped macrocycle molecule that prevents fluorescent molecules from interacting as the mixture solidifies, keeping its optical properties intact.

As the mixture became a solid, SMILES were formed, which the researchers then turned into crystals, precipitated into dry powders, and finally spun into a thin film or incorporated directly into polymers. Since cyanostar macrocycles form building blocks that generate a checkerboard lattice, researchers could simply plug a dye into the lattice and, without further adjustment, the structure would take on its color and appearance.

According to Amar Flood, a chemist at Indiana University and co-lead author of the study, along with Bo Laursen, from the University of Copenhagen:

These materials have potential applications in any technology that requires bright fluorescence or requires engineered optical properties, including solar energy harvesting, bioimaging, and lasers.

Beyond these, there are interesting applications including upconversion of light to capture more of the solar spectrum in solar cells, light switching materials used for information storage and photochromic glass, and circularly polarized luminescence that can be use in 3-D visualization technology.

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The news

These are the brightest fluorescent materials ever devised.

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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