The New Yorker: Science & Technology

"Richard Powers, prophet of the Earth...."

Views expressed in this science and technology update are those of the reporters and correspondents.  Accessed on 14 September 2024, 1446 UTC.

Content and Source:  https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/science-technology

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 

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In today’s newsletter, among the Great Smoky Mountains with “the tree guy,” and then: • How people stopped being principled • The scourge of social media • Germany’s feline lockdown Richard Powers on What We Do to the Earth and What It Does to Us “Playground,” Powers’s new novel, aims to do for the oceans what “The Overstory” did for trees, shaking us out of our human exceptionalism. By Hua Hsu Photograph by Bryan Schutmaat for The New Yorker “Can you smell the negative ions?” The novelist Richard Powers and I were sitting on the banks of a river in the Great Smoky Mountains, and I could scarcely hear him above the water crashing against the rocks. The sound was both violent and serene, like being trapped inside a white-noise machine. These collisions, he said, release negative air ions, electrically charged particles with beneficial health effects. Sometimes he liked to wade into the river and sit among the rocks, letting the cold water pound his body. I took a deep breath, and the air did, indeed, smell fresher. Was I experiencing a surge in my serotonin levels, or am I just impressionable? Before I could decide, Powers was on to the next wonder. “Do you know your trees?” he asked. Keep reading Editor’s Picks  Annals of Inquiry Are Your Morals Too Good to Be True? Scientists have shattered our self-image as principled beings, motivated by moral truths. Some wonder whether our ideals can survive the blow to our vanity. By Manvir Singh Extraterrestrial Dept. To the Moon and Back, and Then Into Filing Cabinets NASA’s lunar-sample curator gives a tour of the vault where the agency will house the material it brings back from its manned moon mission in 2026. By Matthew Hutson Kyle Chayka Illustration by Ariel Davis When a new month begins, photo-dump mania can be expected to arrive in one’s social-media feed—and Kyle Chayka does not approve. “Today’s Instagrammer no longer chooses one representative photo at a time, creating a grid of images just so,” he writes. “Instead, users, especially those belonging to Gen Z, are putting up faux-messy but actually carefully selected compendia showcasing the detritus of their lives.” Read more » More from Our Columnists Open Questions How Should We Create Things? In a new documentary, the musician Brian Eno shows that playfulness can substitute for inspiration. By Joshua Rothman If you know someone who would enjoy Science & Technology, please share it. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up. Nine Lives Dept.  Elements The Strange Story of a Cat Lockdown From 2023: Feline residents of Walldorf, Germany, can’t go outside when certain birds are breeding. Is it cruelty or conservation? By Ben Crair Annals of Technology Are Cats Domesticated? From 2015: Recent genetic and archeological studies suggest that house cats are wilder than we think. By Ferris Jabr Cartoon by Avi Steinberg More from The New Yorker  A Reporter at Large Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic For years, Russia has been using the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, which borders its nuclear stronghold, as a laboratory, testing intelligence operations there before replicating them across Europe. By Ben Taub  Books An Anatomist of Pleasure Gives Voice to the Body in Pain Garth Greenwell has been lauded for his depiction of sex. His latest novel, “Small Rain,” unfurls within the consciousness of a patient hospitalized with a rare vascular condition. By Parul Sehgal P.S. Have you ever wondered why animals don’t get lost? Or how they are able to find their homes over miles and months away? In 2023, Kathryn Schulz investigated these questions. “Cats, bats, elephant seals, red-tailed hawks, wildebeests, gypsy moths, cuttlefish, slime mold, emperor penguins: to one degree or another, every animal on earth knows how to navigate,” she writes. “And, to one degree or another, scientists remain perplexed by how they do so.” 🦇🦭🐈‍⬛

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The New Yorker: Science & Technology

"Thinking like a geologist, The A.I.-cheating panic, Why 'educability' matters more than intelligence."

Views expressed in this science and technology update are those of the reporters and correspondents.  Accessed on 31 August 2024, 1537 UTC.

Content and Source:  https://www.newyorker.com

Please check link or scroll down to read your selections. Thanks for joining us today.

Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 

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In today’s newsletter, The New Yorker’s ideas editor, Joshua Rothman, on how period blood is changing medicine. And then: • Thinking like a geologist • The A.I.-cheating panic • Why “educability” matters more than intelligence Joshua Rothman Ideas editor Illustration by Hélène Blanc “Holy mackerel, look at this treasure chest I opened up,” a researcher recalls thinking, in Rachel E. Gross’s fascinating new piece about the diagnostic promise of menstrual blood. Each year, millions of women suffer from reproductive diseases that are impossible to definitively diagnose without surgery; they endure not just illness but uncertainty. Now, Gross writes, a new wave of startups hopes to change that by analyzing menstrual blood. It contains “hundreds of unique proteins” that can’t be found in an ordinary blood test. Until very recently, period blood was profoundly overlooked as a subject of study. So Gross’s piece actually tracks two kinds of progress. On a scientific level, researchers are understanding more and more about the reproductive system; on a social level, they’re breaking a taboo. How do you get from a tampon or pad to a reliable diagnosis? You need to analyze proteins—and you need to uncover the value in something that’s usually thrown away. Read “What Can We Learn from Menstrual Blood?” Editor’s Pick  Books Studying Stones Can Rock Your World To think like a geologist is to contemplate timescales that stagger the imagination—and lay bare the planetary forces behind our earthly existence. By Kathryn Schulz Our Columnists  Open Questions What Does It Really Mean to Learn? A leading computer scientist says it’s “educability,” not intelligence, that matters most. By Joshua Rothman  Fault Lines Does A.I. Really Encourage Cheating in Schools? New technologies are raising suspicions about students’ work, but the controversy—like so many others swirling around American classrooms—misses the point of what we want our kids to learn. By Jay Caspian Kang  Infinite Scroll “Emily in Paris” in the Late Streaming Era Over four seasons, the Netflix series has hollowed out along with the streaming industry that spawned it. By Kyle Chayka Cartoon by Avi Steinberg More from The New Yorker  Annals of Disaster Real-Estate Shopping for the Apocalypse Thirty-nine per cent of Americans believe that we’re living in end times, and the market for underground hideouts is heating up. By Patricia Marx  Books The Forgotten History of Sex in America Today’s battles over issues like gender nonconformity and reproductive rights have antecedents that have been lost or suppressed. What can we learn from them? By Rebecca Mead P.S. The dam-removal project to restore the Klamath River, on the California-Oregon border, is nearly complete. Soon, salmon will be able to reach their spawning grounds for the first time in a hundred years and local tribes, such as the Yurok people, will regain access to the fish as a food source. In 2018, Carolyn Kormann wrote about how, after the Yurok’s way of life had been decimated by the dams, they created a carbon-offset project, which helped the tribe buy back nearly sixty thousand acres of their former land.

Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the Science & Technology newsletter from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2024. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.