• Astrophysicists anxiously await the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, slated for December 18. Things can go wrong.
• This spectacular giant will be the most powerful space telescope ever built, opening new windows to nascent galaxies and stars from billions of years ago, as well as to planets circling other stars in our cosmic neighborhood.
• It will help us refine our own story � a story of our origins and how similar and different we are to the rest of the universe.

The history of science could be written as a history of instrumentation. From particle accelerators and microscopes to fMRIs and telescopes, as instruments become more powerful, they act as reality amplifiers: they magnify our view of the very small and the very large, allowing us a glimpse of what is invisible to the human eye.

It is hard to imagine that, up to 1609, all we knew about the skies depended on what we can see with the naked eye. When Galileo Galilei had the insight to aim his telescope at the night sky, he saw what no human had seen before: a new sky, full of surprises and possibility. This new sky would reveal a new world order: out with the Aristotelian view of an Earth-centered cosmos, a frozen sky where celestial objects were perfect and unchangeable, and in with a marvelously imperfect heaven � a moon full of craters and mountains, Jupiter with four orbiting moons (now we know there are about 79 and counting), a Saturn with "ears" (that is, the rings that his telescope could not yet resolve), and a Milky Way made of a countless number of stars. New instruments hold the promise of a worldview transformation: as we look deep into nature, our vision of reality and us in it changes.

It is then no surprise that the astrophysics community is nervously awaiting the launch of a new marvel of instrumentation, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Even if often called the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the JWST is a different kind of machine. The HST is, perhaps, the most successful instrument in astronomical history. Beyond its optical capability that reveals to us parts of the universe we could in principle see with our limited human vision (that is, the colors of the visible spectrum), it has additional infrared and ultraviolet instruments that have revolutionized the way we understand the cosmic history and the stunning wealth of galaxies spread throughout space. But the Hubble was launched in 1990, and it is time for a new instrument to step up and expand upon its groundwork, deepening our understanding of the universe near and far.

Two big missions for James Webb Space Telescope

The JWST is designed to capture mostly infrared light, which is of a longer wavelength than what our eyes can see. The focus on infrared comes from the two main missions for the telescope.

The first is to look into the very young universe by observing very far away objects, nascent galaxies and stars born about 13 billion years ago, which was only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. (In cosmology, the science of our cosmic history, hundreds of millions of years is not a long time.) Contrary to Hubble, which had a near-Earth orbit, the JWST will be stationed far away, at 1.5 million kilometers from Earth at a spot known as a Lagrange point, where the gravitational attractions of sun and Earth cancel out � a peaceful cosmic parking spot.

After taking off inside an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Space Agency, the JWST will continue for another twenty-nine days until it gets to its final destination. The good thing about the Lagrange point is its remoteness and thus distance from interfering infrared sources near Earth. To make the shielding even more effective, the telescope comes with five layered sheets of Kapton foil, a sort of space umbrella to stop radiation interference. At the size of a tennis court, the shields are programmed to open during the telescope's migration to its final position. The bad thing about being stationed so far away from Earth is that if something goes wrong, we cannot go there to fix it, as we had to with the Hubble Space Telescope. Anxiety rises.

The "eyes" of the telescope are made of 18 hexagonal, gold-coated, beryllium mirrors, making up a giant honeycomb the size of a large house. The mirrors will capture and focus light from distant sources that will then be sent off to the telescope's four different instruments. The mirrors must also unfurl in space, another nerve-wracking step before astrophysicists can start to gather data.

The second big mission is to aim its sights on exoplanets, planets orbiting stars in our galactic neighborhood, for signs of life. A little over 20 years ago, astronomers detected the first alien worlds outside our solar system. Since then, the list has grown steadily to over four thousand confirmed exoplanets today. The essential question, of course, is whether some of these worlds may harbor life. We may not be able to travel across interstellar distances to see for ourselves, but our machines can scrutinize these worlds by detecting the chemical composition of their atmospheres in the hope of finding the telltale signs of life: mainly oxygen, water, carbon dioxide, and methane. Thus, JWST aims to map out other worlds that may resemble our own, addressing the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.

An early Christmas present

The current launch date is December 18, a week before Christmas. As with any space launch of a complex instrument, there are many things that could go wrong, although extensive testing has built up confidence that all will go smoothly. Regardless, we only will succeed in stretching the boundaries of knowledge by taking risks. The launch will be a gripping moment for humanity. What will a new window opening to the sky reveal about our story?

Unless you are lost to the power of wonder, a mission like this must capture your imagination. We all want this spectacular mission to succeed, astrophysicists and non-astrophysicists alike. We care about worlds so far away from us because the story this machine will tell is a mirror of our own. As we witness stars and galaxies being born, we learn about our galaxy and how our solar system emerged a little under five billion years ago. We learn about the myriad ways that gravity and chemistry conspired to bake matter into worlds, each different, some potentially thriving with life like our own. And with each discovery, we dive a little deeper into the mystery of who we are and of what makes us both alike and different from what is out there in the universe.

• If there is one thing that Russia scholars can agree on, it is the poor quality of leadership that has plagued the country since its inception.
• Though some could have become the posthumous victims of inflated rumors or political propaganda, others may have been even crueler than we thought.
• People like Anna Ivanovna (Russia's ice queen) and Lavrentiy Beria (Stalin's secret police chief) continue to strike fear in the hearts of modern readers.

A popular joke among American students majoring in Slavic Studies is that you can pretty much sum up the entirety of Russian history by saying things have gone from "bad to worse." It is a gross oversimplification, ignoring important periods of peace and prosperity during which Russian art, culture, and commerce could flourish.

At the same time, there seems to be an underlying truth to this joke that has caused it to stick. As the Russian political scientist Vladimir Gelman put it in a 2019 article he wrote for Riddle, "Practically all analysts and observers of Russia today, regardless of their political leanings, tend to agree about the country's poor quality of governance."

From czars that commanded respect by virtue of their lineage rather than the contents of their character to bloodthirsty Bolsheviks that leveraged communist ideals for personal gain, Russia knows no shortage of leaders that have left the country worse off than they found it. The following list takes a closer look at some of them.

However, take note: when reading about the characters on this list, it is important to look at their stories with a critical eye. Some could have become the subjects of posthumously inflated rumors, others the victims of propaganda campaigns. Others still might have well been even crueler than historians have come to believe. Also, we intentionally did not include Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, whose crimes against humanity are well-known.

Ivan the Terrible: The First Czar (1530-1584)

Like all czars on this list, Ivan was elected ruler of Russia at a young age by a council of politicians who mistakenly thought they would be able to control him. While "The Terrible" turns out to have been an accurate title, the words did not have the same negative connotation when Ivan was alive. Instead, "terrible" meant "formidable" or "awe-inspiring."

That isn't to say he wasn't terrible, though. In 1552, the czar and his armies besieged Kazan. The siege hardly lasted a week, owing in part to Ivan's tactics: he would impale his Tatar prisoners and position them around the city walls so that their comrades could hear their agonizing cries to surrender.

Ivan's wrath was not restricted to the battlefield or even the realm of politics. According to a popular story, he blinded the architect that designed St. Basil's Cathedral so he would never create something as beautiful again. He also killed his unborn grandson by beating the mother until she miscarried and then killed his son when he complained about it.

Last but not least, Ivan is thought to have kept some seriously questionable company in the form of Malyuta Skuratov, a henchman who � according to the 18^th century historian Nikolay Karamzin � was in charge of organizing "rape trips" where he would round up beautiful wives around Moscow and present them to the czar to do with as he pleased.

Anna Ivanovna: The Ice Queen (1693-1740)

While Anna Ivanovna was revered for modernizing (and Europeanizing) Russia, her extreme jealousy and vindictive temper left a dark cloud over her legacy. These two qualities stemmed, in part, from her less than fortunate love life, which took a turn from bad to worse when her sickly husband � the Duke of Courland � died as they were traveling home from their own wedding.

Fancying herself an expert "matchmaker," Anna took an interest in arranging marriages between the members of her court and would become outraged when they did not involve her in their sex lives. When one of her princes, Mikhail Golitsyn, returned from Italy having fallen in love with a Catholic Italian girl, Anna stripped him of his wealth and titles and made him her new fool.

In a series of events typically encountered only in fantasy novels, Ivanovna found Golitsyn a new bride and organized an extravagant wedding to take place inside a life-size palace made entirely of ice hauled from the frozen banks of the river Neva. After a ceremonial parade that was led by an Asian elephant, the couple was chained to their ice-beds.

They would have frozen to death had Golitsyn's wife not managed to trade the pearl necklace she received from the czarina for one of the guard's fur cloaks. Against all odds, the two survived the night and � according to a number of historians � chose to stay together. Ivanovna, however, would die next fall, having spent the preceding summer watching her ice palace melt in the sun.

Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976)

From a distance, Lysenko's life looks like a straightforward success story. Born a poor, uneducated Ukrainian peasant who did not learn to read until he was 13 years old, he died a director of the Institute of Genetics at the Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, where his job was to reinforce the Soviet Union's agricultural policies with the latest in biological research.

What spins this story on its head is the fact that Lysenko did not end up with this prestigious and hugely important position thanks to his skills or knowledge. Instead, he had been randomly selected by the state in an effort to promote "average men" to leadership positions that, in capitalist countries, were reserved only for the trained elite.

Needless to say, this policy ended up backfiring in a catastrophic manner. Not only did Lysenko know nothing about biology, but the scientific concepts he did understand were molded by political ideology rather than impartial research � including the belief that plants, like the Soviet people, could grow bigger and taller if they were exposed to the right stimuli.

This belief ran contrary to the tried-and-true principles of genetics, namely, that the growth of crops could only be manipulated through selective breeding. That is not to say Lysenko was an innocent victim of indoctrination, though; he imprisoned the Mendelian geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, and his biased practices led to the starvation of millions of Russians.

Lavrentiy Beria: Stalin's Himmler (1899-1953)

Lavrentiy Beria, whom Joseph Stalin had reportedly once introduced to Hitler as "our Himmler," was the chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, otherwise known as the NKVD. During World War II, fear of Beria's secret agents kept a country on the brink of destruction from surrendering to Nazi invaders.

For this, Beria paid a price few would be willing to pay. At the front, soldiers who even remotely questioned Stalin's military decisions were shipped off to the gulags. In this string of prison systems, located in the icy outskirts of Siberia and constructed under direction of Vladimir Lenin, they would spend anywhere from five to ten years doing forced labor.

Beria's measures consistently exceeded their political justifications, even by the standards of the Red Terror. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the Soviets � who had signed a non-aggression pact with them one week prior � came in as well. On orders of Beria, the NKVD murdered as many as 22,000 members of the Polish army and bourgeoisie.

Though Beria almost succeeded Stalin after his death, he was ultimately ousted by Nikita Khrushchev. Today, he is not only remembered as a mass murderer but a serial rapist as well. According to bodyguards, he would habitually lure young women into his mansion before giving them a bouquet on the way out. If they accepted, the sex had been consensual. If not, they were arrested.

• Compared to other Big Tech companies, Apple has been the poster child of privacy protection.
• Unfortunately, a recent announcement has breached that trust.
• How much power do we want Big Tech to have? And what sort of society do we want?

Apple has built a reputation as the "least evil" Big Tech giant when it comes to privacy. All these companies � Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon � collect our data and essentially spy on us in a multitude of ways. Apple, however, has cultivated a reputation as by far the least invasive of our mainstream technology options. Their recent dramatic reversal on this issue has caused an uproar. What is going on, and what should we do about it?

I personally use and appreciate Apple products. Their software and hardware blend together, making smartphones and computers simpler, easier, and more enjoyable. More important (to me, anyway), Apple has conspicuously maintained much better privacy policies than other tech giants, who log every place you visit, calculate and sell your religion and politics, and store every single search you have ever made (even the "incognito" ones). Apple's privacy policies are imperfect but less terrifying. The general consensus is that most Apple products and services spy less on you and send much less of your personal data to third parties. That matters to many users and should matter to all of us.

Now, the bad news. All the major cloud storage providers have for some time been quietly scanning everything you upload. That is no conspiracy theory: you agree to it when you accept their privacy policies. They do this for advertising (which is what is meant by the phrase "to help us improve our services" in the user agreement). They also look for and report illegal activity. A big part of monitoring for criminal activity is looking for "CSAM," a polite acronym for something horrific. In August, Apple announced that it would take a drastic step further and push a software update for iPhones that would scan and analyze all of the images on your iPhone, looking not just for known CSAM but for any images that a computer algorithm judges to be CSAM.

There are two enormous red flags here. First, the software does not operate on Apple's cloud servers, where you are free to choose whether to park your data and allow Apple to scan it for various purposes. The scanning is performed on your phone, and it would scan every picture on your phone, looking for content that matches a database of bad images.

Image recognition tech is still bad

Why is this a problem for people who do not keep illegal images on their phones? The second red flag is that the software does not look for a specific file � horrifying_image.jpg � and ignore all of your personal photos. Rather, it uses what Apple calls "NeuralHash," a piece of computer code that looks for features and patterns in images. You can read their own description here.

Computer image recognition is much better than it once was. Despite the hype surrounding it the past few years, however, it is still extremely fallible. There are many ways that computer image recognition can be baffled by tricks that are not sophisticated enough to fool toddlers. This fascinating research paper covers just one of them. It finds that a 99 percent confident (and correct) image identification of a submarine can be made into a 99 percent confident (but wrong) identification of a bonnet by adding a tiny area of static noise to one corner of the image.

Credit: D. Karmon et al., ArXiv, 2018.

Other researchers fooled image recognition by changing a single pixel dot in an image. Hackers know this too. It is extremely easy to add an undetectable pattern to a cute cat picture, triggering algorithms to flag it as something sinister.

Let's imagine for a moment that this algorithm never mistakes baby bath pictures or submarines or cats or dots for illicit material. This could make things worse. How?

The NeuralHash algorithm is trained by scanning examples of the target images it seeks. This collection of training material is secret from the public. We do not know whether all the material in the database is CSAM or if it also includes things such as: political or religious images, geographic locations, anti-government statements, mis-information according to whoever has the power to define it, material potentially embarrassing to politicians, or whistleblowing documents against powerful authorities. There are many things that tech companies, federal agencies, or autocratic regimes around the world would love to know if you have on your phone. The possibilities are chilling.

Reaction to Apple's plan was immediate and overwhelmingly negative. Outcry came from international groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation that specialize in privacy rights all the way down to everyday people in Mac user forums. Apple initially stood its ground and defended the decision. Their weak justifications and reassurances failed to smother the fire. Just last week, the company relented and announced a delay to implementing the program. This is a victory for privacy, but it is not the end of the story.

iSpy with my little eye

It would be very easy for Apple to wait out the uproar and then quietly go ahead with the plan a few months from now. The other tech giants likely would follow suit. But remember that Big Tech already tracks our movements and records our private conversations. If the public does not stay vigilant, Big Tech can keep invading what most of us consider to be our private lives. How much more power over us do we want Big Tech to have? And is this the sort of society that we want?

But humanity is plagued by many respiratory viruses, such as influenza A (IAV) and respiratory syncytial viruses (RSV), which cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. Most of these viruses – apart from influenza and SARS-CoV-2 – have no vaccines or effective treatments.

A recent study from the University of Glasgow has discovered what happens when you get infected with some of these viruses at the same time, and it has implications for how they make us sick and how we protect ourselves from them.

For many reasons, respiratory viruses are often found during winter in the temperate regions of the world, or the rainy season of equatorial regions. During these periods, you'll probably be infected with more than one virus at any one time in a situation called a “co-infection".

Research shows that up to 30% of infections may harbour more than one virus. What this means is that, at some point two different viruses are infecting the cells that line your nose or lungs.

We know that co-infection can be important if we look at a process called “antigenic shift" in influenza viruses, which is basically caused by virus “sex". This sometimes occurs when two different influenza strains meet up inside the same cell and exchange genes, allowing a new variant to emerge.

Co-infection can create a predicament for viruses when you consider that they need to compete for the same resource: you. Some viruses appear to block other viruses, while some viruses seem to like each other. What is driving these positive and negative interactions during co-infections is unknown, but animal studies suggest that it could be critical in determining how sick you get.

The University of Glasgow study investigated what happens when you infect cells in a dish with two human respiratory viruses. For their experiments, they chose IAV and RSV, which are both common and cause lots of disease and death each year. The researchers looked at what happens to each virus using high-resolution imaging techniques, such as cryo-electron microscopy, that their labs have perfected over the years.

They found that some of the human lung cells in the dish contained both viruses. And, by looking closely at those co-infected cells, they found that the viruses that were emerging from the cell had structural characteristics of both IAV and RSV. The new “chimeric" virus particles had proteins of both viruses on their surface and some even contained genes from the other. This is the first evidence of this occurring from co-infection of distinct respiratory viruses.

Follow-up experiments in the same paper showed that these new chimeric viruses were fully functional and could even infect cells that were rendered resistant to influenza, presumably gaining access using the RSV proteins could even get into a broader range of human cells than either virus alone could. Potentially, this could be happening during natural co-infections during the winter.

Why we need to study chimeric viruses

Studying disease-causing pathogens is extremely important and helpful for creating vaccines and treatments, yet safety is still paramount. It's important to point out that the researchers in this study did not perform any genetic engineering between two viruses and only modelled what is already happening in the real world, but using safer laboratory strains of viruses under lab conditions.

We know about the significant role co-infection can play in a virus's life, such as during influenza antigenic shift or the curious case of hepatitis D virus borrowing bits of the other viruses, such as hepatitis B, to spread. Nevertheless, the work by the University of Glasgow researchers has significant implications for our understanding of how other very different respiratory viruses might interact, antagonise and even promote each other's infections in the ecosystem of our nose and lungs. Together, this work shows the complex and often messy interactions between viruses during the winter.

Undoubtedly, future work will explore how this co-infection affects transmission, disease and immunity – things that aren't easy to determine in a dish.

Connor Bamford, Research Fellow, Virology, Queen's University Belfast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

• The Einstein field equations appear very simple, but they encode a tremendous amount of complexity.


• What looks like one compact equation is actually 16 complicated ones, relating the curvature of spacetime to the matter and energy in the universe.


• It showcases how gravity is fundamentally different from all the other forces, and yet in many ways, it is the only one we can wrap our heads around.

Imagine you've just sat down to watch your favorite TV show. You decide to snuggle in with your legs crisscrossed because you find it more comfortable that way.

When the episode ends, you try to stand up and suddenly your right foot isn't working. At first you just can't move it, then it feels like it has pins and needles all over it. For a minute or two it feels uncomfortable and weird, but soon enough you are able to stand up and walk around normally.

What just happened?

I'm an exercise physiologist – a scientist who studies what happens to our bodies when we move and exercise. The goal of much of my research has been to understand how the brain talks to and controls the different parts of our bodies. When your foot falls asleep, there is something wrong with the communication between your brain and the muscles in that area.

Every time you decide to move your body, whether it's standing up, walking around or playing sports, your brain sends signals to your muscles to make sure they move correctly. When the brain is unable to talk with a muscle or groups of muscles, some weird things can happen – including that part of your body getting that weird falling-asleep sensation.

An animation explains how the nervous system works.

It usually starts with a sense of numbness or tingling in that area. This sensation, which people often also call “pins and needles," is technically known as paresthesia.

Some people mistakenly think a lack of blood flow causes this feeling. They imagine the “asleep" feeling happens when your blood, which carries nutrients all over your body, is unable to get to your foot. But that's not right.

When your foot falls asleep, it's actually because the nerves that connect the brain to the foot are getting squished thanks to the position you're sitting in. Remember, it's these nerves that carry messages back and forth to let your brain and your foot communicate with each other. If the nerves have been compressed for a little while, you won't have much feeling in your foot because it can't get its normal messages through to your brain about how it feels or if it's moving.

Once you start to move around again, the pressure on the nerves is released. They “wake up" and you'll start to notice a “pins and needles" feeling. Don't worry, that feeling will only last for a few minutes and then everything will feel normal again.

Now comes the important question: Is this dangerous? Most of the time, when your foot, or any other body part, falls asleep, it is temporary and nothing to worry about. In fact, since it lasts for only a minute or two, you may not even remember it happened by the end of the day.

Even though it's not causing any permanent damage, you might still want to avoid the uncomfortable feeling that comes when your foot falls asleep. Here are a couple of tips that may help:

• Switch your position often.


• Don't cross your legs for very long.


• When you are sitting for a long time, try standing up every so often.

You probably can't 100% prevent your foot from ever falling asleep. So don't worry when it happens every once in a while. It'll go away pretty quickly – and maybe it can remind you of all the important brain messages your nerves are usually transmitting without your even noticing.

Zachary Gillen, Assistant Professor of Exercise Physiology, Mississippi State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

• To prevent the present from erasing the past, non-profit organizations are creating detailed 3D scans of famous monuments.
• Stored online and shared with researchers around the world, these digital copies will endure long after their real counterparts are gone.
• Occasionally, this work is incredibly dangerous.

On the night of May 14, 1940, the German Luftwaffe bombed the Dutch city of Rotterdam. When government administrators entered the streets to tally their losses the next morning, they learned that 900 people had lost their lives. As if this was not bad enough, the Luftwaffe had also destroyed hundreds of historic houses; Rotterdam's city center � one of the oldest in the country and jam-packed with seventeenth century architecture � had been reduced to dust.

In 2001, the Taliban pulverized two statues of Vairocana and Guatama Buddha that had been carved from a cliffside in the Bamyan valley of central Afghanistan. Standing no less than 38 and 55 meters tall, respectively, the statues were two of the tallest Buddhist monuments in the entire world and an important destination for traveling monks. The Buddhas were leveled on orders of Taliban co-founder Mullah Mohammed Omar, who tried to rid his country of any religious tributes that were not aimed at Allah.

During a hot summer evening two years ago, the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris caught fire. The building, whose construction had begun in the twelfth century, was not designed with modern fire safety standards in mind. Though conservators do their best to keep everything in good condition, an accident was bound to happen eventually. While the cathedral's vaulted ceiling kept flames from wreaking havoc on its interior, most of the wooden roof and spire burned to a crisp.

Throughout history, countless artifacts have been caught in the crossfires of war, deliberately targeted by iconoclasts or swallowed up by the indifferent forces of nature and time. As a result, numerous non-profit groups and agencies � most notably, UNESCO � have sprung up to prevent the present from erasing the past. But while even the most well protected monument remains at risk of being physically destroyed, we now have a way to preserve them digitally.

From plaster casts to lasers

In the late 19^th century, a British archaeologist named Alfred Maudsley traveled to Guatemala intent on finding a way to preserve the country's Mayan ruins as best as possible. Rather than record their existence by means of writing or photography, Maudsley decided to cover entire temples in plaster casts. The tens of thousands of true-to-scale "negatives" produced from this endeavor were shipped back to England for research and reproduction.

Like Maudsley, modern-day researchers also rely on highly accurate replicas in order to protect and study ancient artifacts. Fortunately, unlike Maudsley, they can acquire such replicas without actually having to touch the delicate monuments themselves. This is all thanks to advancements in 3D measurement tools which, in recent years, allowed us to store entire heritage sites in a place that no terrorist organization or natural disaster can reach them: the cloud.

There are several companies in the business of scanning monuments, but one has distinguished itself as somewhat of a pack leader. Founded in 2003, CyArk serves as a liaison between cultural ministries and tech companies to create an extensive, open-sourced, fully online library of 3D scanned monuments and heritage sites. In 2016, this library already featured more than 200 entries, including sections from the city of Pompeii, the Tower of London, and even Mount Rushmore.

CyArk's primary measurement tool is a 3D laser scanner, which projects pulsed beams of light that bounce back once they hit a surface, thus sizing up structures or objects down to the millimeter. The interactive models assembled from these individual data sets are then shared with research facilities and universities. As CyArk's field manager Ross Davison said in an interview, this means that a student from Germany could, in theory, visit ruins in South India from the comfort of their living room.

Saving monuments in Iraq

While making monuments more accessible was always on CyArk's agenda, it was not its primary focus. First and foremost, the company had been founded to save artifacts from accidental or deliberate destruction. Case-in-point: a 6.8-magnitude earthquake destroyed a number of ancient temples in Myanmar in 2016. These temples, erected by the Pagan Kingdom, would have been lost were it not for the CyArk employees that managed to scan key structures before the earthquake hit.

Saving monuments from the wrath of Mother Nature is one thing, but protecting them from religious or ideologically motivated iconoclasm is another. For many years, scanning artifacts located in war-torn areas like Iraq or Syria was not only difficult but dangerous. Despite the risks involved, French filmmaker Ivan Erhel traveled to the Middle East � the place where many of our earliest known civilizations originated � to scan as many remnants of Mesopotamian culture as possible.

Erhel can trace his resolve back to 2015. That year, the Islamic State (ISIS) was at the height of its power, occupying large portions of Iraq. During this time, ISIS members destroyed a number of museums, statues, and other artifacts. "In Nimrud, most of the bas relief was totally destroyed," Erhel said. "In Babylon, the Mušḫuššu have lost their colors. Hattra has been occupied by ISIS for several years, and many of the sculptures had their faces erased with hammer or gunshots."

On one occasion when the team was attempting to scan one of the sole surviving statues of Nimrud, Erhel and his team were shot at by Iraqi forces stationed there to protect the site from looters. Still, the risks taken by Erhel's team eventually paid off. A general from Mosul summed it up nicely when he told Erhel: "We're like a tree. When people die, it's like leaves and branches falling off. But if you destroy the roots, then there is no tree."

• Plato wrote profusely, and his ideas are intelligent, well argued, and powerful.
• His works form the backbone of so many subjects: epistemology, aesthetics, metaphysics, politics, and psychology.
• Plato also influenced Christianity, which in turn became a new kind of religion altogether.

Nothing in life can be treated in isolation. Behind every idea, person, discovery, invention, or project is a hidden network of conditions that gave rise to it. This is never truer than in academia. As Isaac Newton famously said, we are all just "standing on the shoulders of Giants."

Philosophy is the same. Almost all its notable thinkers read, debated, and bounced ideas around with their contemporaries. Aristotle was a response to (and taught by) Plato, Chinese legalism was a critique of Confucianism, David Hume and Adam Smith were close friends, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau constantly attacked each other, and Thomas Hobbes was in regular correspondence with René Descartes.

So, it is hard to answer the question: who was the most original philosopher? But that doesn't mean we aren't going to try.

The trunk of the tree

Generally every philosophical issue (in the West, anyway) is prefaced with the line, "It all began with the ancient Greeks." Of these seminal thinkers, Plato is typically considered the foremost. There is an oft-quoted line from A.N. Whitehouse that reads, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato".

No doubt, there is some truth to this. Plato wrote profusely, and in both his dialogues and Republic we find the foundations of political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, and aesthetics. He was a psychologist before the term even existed: his tripartite division of the soul into Eros (desire), Thumos (spirit or passion), and Logos (rationality) tracks almost perfectly onto Freud's Id, Superego, and Ego.

Importantly, he defined the rules of the philosophical game, in which dialogue, debate, dialectic, and rational sparring are the way to do philosophy. Today, we assume that good arguments must be logical, and that most people, most of the time, want to discover the Truth (with a capital T) of the universe. This all comes from Plato. (It is difficult to find a similar sentiment in Eastern traditions.)

Let me write that down

There is only one problem: it is difficult to say how strictly original Plato was and how much was already kicking around in the ideological zeitgeist of the Peloponnese. All of Plato's dialogues contain a fictionalized version of his master and friend, Socrates, who is almost always the wisest character and the winner of debates. Socrates never wrote anything himself down (and in fact seems to have been opposed to this new-fangled "writing" the kids were up to), so we are left guessing at how much of what we call Plato's was actually from his master. It could be all; it could be none.

Additionally, Plato alludes to other long lost philosophers, not least Diotima, who is thought to be the first female philosopher and even the teacher of Socrates. So many of these "pre-Socratics" did write, but their work is largely lost, so we have to rely again on Plato and later sources for what they wrote. (The most important and treasured of these is Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius.)

However, with the dearth of evidence, we are forced to give Plato his due � even if it is just being the first to write stuff down.

How Plato influenced Christianity

If Western philosophy and the manner in which it is done is merely a "footnote to Plato," then it is not a stretch to say that Plato's ideas lurk in the background of nearly every philosopher that we have read. Thinkers like Descartes, Nietzsche, and Freud were either responding or adding to Plato's ideas.

Arguably more important even than this is how far Platonism influenced Christianity, the largest religion on Earth. The early Church Fathers who formulated the theology and official dogma of the Church were steeped in the knowledge of both Jewish tradition and Greek philosophy, the latter being all but dominated by Plato and the descendants of his school, The Academy.

Plato's ideas of a world of forms � which was some perfect and removed ideal from our corrupt, base world � worked its way into formal Christian doctrine. Many ideas about sins of the flesh and weak mortal bodies were influenced by Plato. In his famous allegory of the cave, Plato argued that we ought not to indulge our worldly whims and desires (Eros) but contemplate and philosophize instead (Logos). All of these ideas tracked perfectly onto the fledgling Church. In fact, John's Gospel opens with the verse: "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God."

With us still

In the ways that Plato came to define Christianity we have, again, an entirely new way of doing philosophy � or, in this case, theology. Christianity is an original kind of faith that was half Judea, half Athens.

Plato dominated the Western tradition for centuries, and we still live with his legacy of valuing the intellect and rationality over our earthly lusts. To be called "irrational" is still a bad thing. Even though the likes of Aristotle creep into Christian theology via Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and theologians like Augustine, Irenaeus, and Origen have their own impact, none ever leave the same (unique) depth of mark as the rationalistic and original ideas of Plato.

Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.

• A new study suggests that exomoons are common in multistar systems.
• Thus far, only a few exomoon candidates have been identified.
• Exoplanets with moons may be likelier to host life than those without moons.

Though Earth has only one (very special and precious) moon, the average planet in our solar system has 26 moons. (The range is from zero moons for Mercury and Venus to 82 moons for Saturn.) If the Milky Way has about 100 billion exoplanets, as astrophysicists suppose, then we can expect many more exomoons.

Finding these exomoons is the subject of a new paper recently published in the Astronomical Journal. By using the same techniques to find exoplanets, the researchers hope to show that exomoons are also common � and potentially a harbinger of life.

Hunting for exomoons

How do we know that stars other than our sun host planets? One common method of exoplanet detection is observing stars for slight dimming events that occur regularly � a telltale sign of a planet in transit around the star. This method, in use for about two decades, has proven very effective, and thousands of exoplanets have been identified using it.

Obviously, this is an indirect method of detection. The exoplanet itself is not observed but rather the effects it has on its star. Direct observation of an exoplanet is a bit more difficult � and an exomoon even more difficult. This does not mean it cannot be done, of course. It is just harder, so a lot exomoon candidates probably will end up being false positives.

It is only recently that strong evidence for exomoons has been gathered. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile recently recorded evidence that the exoplanet PDS 70c has a circumplanetary disk of material that could be forming into a moon. That planet, a gas giant twice the size of Jupiter, is one of the first serious contenders for an exoplanet with exomoons around it � or at least ones in formation.

In this new paper, the authors propose a method for making it a little easier to find exomoons around binary star systems, that is, pairs of stars that orbit one another. These systems are not uncommon; roughly 50 percent of stars are in multistar systems, with binary systems being the most common. (Some scientists suppose that the sun might once have been part of a binary pair, but this is unlikely.)

Binary systems change the math for how gravity impacts planets and how the transit method can be used. While a planet's transit times can be impacted by having an exomoon, they are further impacted by other exoplanets as well as by the companion star. The new paper, therefore, demonstrates how a moon would impact the transit times of a planet in a system with two stars. In a certain number of cases, only a moon can explain the observed effects.

The study's lead author, Billy Quarles of the Georgia Institute of Technology, expanded on this idea in a press release:

"The major difference with binary systems is the companion star acts like the tide at the beach, where it periodically comes in and etches away the beachfront. With a more eccentric binary orbit, a larger portion of the stable 'real estate' is removed. This can help out a lot in our search for moons in other star systems."

Additionally, exoplanets too close to their stars are likely to not have moons at all as stellar forces can blow away the material that might combine to form a moon in the first place. (This possibly explains why Mercury and Venus do not have moons.) Indeed, in the PDS 70 star system, the planet closest to its star does not appear to have a moon.

Moons may be essential to life

In a press release, study co-author Siegfried Eggl of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explained further applications of the method in determining the habitability of exoplanets:

"If we can use this method to show there are other moons out there, then there are probably other systems similar to ours. The moon is also likely critical for the evolution of life on our planet, because without the moon the axis tilt of the Earth wouldn't be as stable, the results of which would be detrimental to climate stability. Other peer-reviewed studies have shown the relationship between moons and the possibility of complex life."

Maybe the discovery of exomoons is the first step to finding life elsewhere in the cosmos. Understanding the similarities and dissimilarities with our solar system is a great place to start.

• We assume that physical constants do not change from time to time or location to location.
• Measurements aimed at calculating the fine-structure constant, however, challenge this assumption.
• A big puzzle remains unsolved to this day: why do quasars appear to show small but significant differences in the inferred value of the fine-structure constant?

Whenever we examine the universe in a scientific manner, there are a few assumptions that we take for granted as we go about our investigations. We assume that the measurements that register on our devices correspond to physical properties of the system that we are observing. We assume that the fundamental properties, laws, and constants associated with the material universe do not spontaneously change from moment to moment. And we also assume, for many compelling reasons, that although the environment may vary from location to location, the rules that govern the universe always remain the same.

But every assumption, no matter how well-grounded it may be or how justified we believe we are in making it, has to be subject to challenge and scrutiny. Assuming that atoms behave the same everywhere � at all times and in all places � is reasonable, but unless the universe supports that assumption with convincing, high-precision evidence, we are compelled to question any and all assumptions. If the fundamental constants are identical at all times and places, the universe should show us that atoms behave the same everywhere we look. But do they? Depending on how you ask the question, you might not like the answer. Here is the story behind the fine-structure constant, and why it might not be constant, after all.

A number of fundamental constants, as reported by the Particle Data Group in 1986. Although many advances have occurred in the intervening 35 years, the values of these constants have changed very little, with the largest difference being a slight but significant increase in the precisions of these Credit: Particle Data Group / LBL / DOE / NSF

When most people hear the idea of a fundamental constant, they think about the constants of nature that are inherent to our reality. Things like the speed of light, the gravitational constant, or Planck's constant (the fundamental constant of the quantum universe) are often the first things we think of, along with the masses of the various indivisible particles in the universe. In physics, however, these are what we call "dimensionful" constants, which means that they rely on our definitions of quantities like mass, length, or time.

An alternative way to conceive of these constants is to make them dimensionless instead: so that arbitrary definitions like kilogram, meter, or second make no difference to the constant. In this conception, each quantum interaction has a coupling strength associated with it, and the coupling of the electromagnetic interaction is known as the fine-structure constant and is denoted by the symbol alpha (α). Fascinatingly enough, its effects were detected before quantum physics was even remotely understood, and remained wholly unexplained for nearly 30 years.

The Michelson interferometer (top) showed a negligible shift in light patterns (bottom, solid) as compared with what was expected if Galilean relativity were true (bottom, dotted). The speed of light was the same no matter which direction the interferometer was oriented.Credit: Albert A. Michelson (1881); A.A. Michelson and E. Morley (1887)

In 1887, arguably the greatest null result in the history of physics was obtained, via the Michelson-Morley experiment. The experiment was brilliant in conception, seeking to measure the speed of Earth through the "rest frame" of the universe by:

• sending light beams in perpendicular directions,
• bringing them back together,
• thereby constructing an interference pattern,
• and measuring how that pattern shifted as the experimental apparatus was rotated.

Michelson originally performed a version of this experiment by himself back in 1881, detecting no effect but recognizing the need to improve the experiment's precision.

Six years later, the Michelson-Morley experiment represented an improvement by more than a factor of ten, making it the most precise electromagnetic measuring device at the time. While again, no shift was detected, demonstrating no need for the hypothesized aether, the apparatus they developed was also spectacular for measuring the spectrum of light emitted by various atoms. Puzzlingly, where a single emission line was expected to occur at a specific wavelength, sometimes there was just a single line, but at other times there were a series of narrowly-spaced emission lines, providing empirical evidence (but without a theoretical motivation) for a finer-than-expected structure to atoms.

In the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom, only the orbiting angular momentum of the point-like electron contributes to the energy levels. Adding in relativistic effects and spin effects not only causes a shift in these energy levels, but causes degenerate levels to split into multiple states, revealinCredit: Régis Lachaume and Pieter Kuiper / Public domain

What is actually happening became clearer with the development of modern quantum mechanics. Electrons orbit around the atomic nucleus in fixed, quantized energy levels only, and it is known that they can occupy different orbitals, which correspond to different values of orbital angular momentum. These are required to balance by both relativity and quantum physics. First derived by Arnold Sommerfeld in 1916, it was recognized that these narrowly-spaced lines were an example of splitting due to the fine-structure of atoms, with hyperfine structure from electron/nucleon interactions discovered shortly thereafter.

Today, we understand the fine-structure constant in the context of quantum field theory, where it is the probability of an interacting particle having what we call a radiative correction: emitting or absorbing an electromagnetic quantum (that is, a photon) during an interaction. We typically measure the fine-structure constant, α, at today's negligibly low energies, where it has a value that is equal to 1/137.0359991, with an uncertainty of ~1 in the final digit. It is defined as a dimensionless combination of dimensionful physical constants: the elementary charge squared divided by Planck's constant and the speed of light, and the value we measure today is consistent across all sufficiently precise experiments.

In quantum electrodynamics, higher-order loop diagrams contribute progressively smaller and smaller effects. However, as the energy increases, these higher-order processes become more efficient, and thus the value of the fine-structure constant increases with energy.Credit: American Physical Society, 2012

At high energies in particle physics experiments, however, we notice that the value of α gets stronger at higher energies. As the energy of the interacting particle(s) increases, so does the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. When the universe was very, very hot � such as at energies achieved just ~1 nanosecond after the Big Bang � the value of α was more like 1/128, as particles like the Z-boson, which can only exist virtually at today's low energies, can more easily be physically "real" at higher energies. The interaction strength is expected to scale with energy, an instance where our theoretical predictions and our experimental measurements match up remarkably well.

However, there is an entirely different way to measure the fine-structure constant at today's low energies: by measuring spectral lines, or emission and absorption features, from distant light sources throughout the cosmos. As background light from a source strikes the intervening matter, some portion of that light is absorbed at specific wavelengths. The exact wavelengths that are observed depend on a number of factors, such as the redshift of the source but also on the value of the fine-structure constant.

The light from ultra-distant quasars provide cosmic laboratories for measuring the gas clouds they encounter along the way, with exact properties of those absorption lines revealing the fine structure constant's value.Credit: Ed Janssen / ESO

If there are any variations in α, either over time or directionally in space, a careful examination of spectral features from a wide variety of astrophysical sources, particularly if they span many billions of years in time (or billions of light-years in distance), could reveal those variations. The most straightforward way to look for these variations is through quasar absorption spectroscopy: where the light quasars, the brightest individual sources in the universe, encounter every intervening cloud of matter that exists between the emitter (the quasar itself) and the observer (us, here on Earth).

There are very intricate, precise energy levels that exist for both normal hydrogen (with an electron bound to a proton) and its heavy isotope deuterium (with an electron bound to a deuteron, which contains both a proton and a neutron), and these energy levels are just slightly different from one another. If you can measure the spectra of these different quasars and look for these precise, very-slightly-different fine and hyperfine transitions, you would be able to measure α at the location of the quasar.

Narrow-line absorption spectra allow us to test whether constants vary by looking at variations in line placements. Large numbers of systems investigated for fine and hyperfine splitting can reveal if there's an overall varying effect.Credit: M. T. Murphy, J. K. Webb, V. V. Flambaum, and S. J. Curran

If the laws of physics were the same everywhere throughout the universe, then based on the observed properties of these lines, which includes:

• the same wavelengths and frequencies,
• the same ratios between transitions within atoms,
• and the same sets of absorption features across a wide variety of distances,

you would expect to be able to infer the same value of α everywhere. The only difference you would anticipate would be redshift-dependent, where all the wavelengths for a specific absorber would be systematically shifted by the same redshift-dependent factor.

Yet, that is not what we see. Everywhere we look in the universe � at every quasar and every example of fine or hyperfine structure in the intervening, absorptive gas clouds � we see that there are tiny, minuscule, but non-negligible shifts in those transition ratios. At the level of a few parts-per-million, the value of the fine-structure constant, α, appears to observationally vary. What is remarkable is that this variation was not expected or anticipated but has robustly shown up, over and over again, in quasar absorption studies going all the way back to 1999.

Spatial variations in the fine-structure constant are inferred from quasar absorption data. Unfortunately, these individual variations between systems are significantly larger than any overall variation seen in space or time, casting severe doubt on those conclusions.Credit: J.K. Webb et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 191101 (2011)

Beginning in 1999, a team of astronomers led by Australian astrophysicist John K. Webb started seeing evidence that α was different from different astronomical measurements. Using the Keck telescopes and over 100 quasars, they found that α was smaller in the past and had risen by approximately 6 parts-per-billion over the past ~10 billion years. Other groups were unable to verify this, however, with complementary observations from the Very Large Telescope showing the exact opposite effect: that the fine-structure constant, α, was larger in the past, and has been slowly decreasing ever since.

Subsequently, Webb's team obtained more data with greater numbers of quasars, spanning larger fractions of the sky and cutting across cosmic time. A simple time-variation was no longer consistent with the data, as variations were inconsistent from place-to-place and did not scale directly with either redshift or direction. Overall, there were some places where α appeared larger than average and others where it appeared smaller, but there was no overall pattern. Even with the latest 2021 data, the few-parts-in-a-million variations that are seen are inconclusive.

Variations in the fine-structure constant across a wide variety of quasar systems, sorted by redshift. This latest work leverages four separate systems at high redshift, but sees no net evidence for a time-variation in the constant itself.Credit: M.R. Wilczynska et al., Sci Adv. 2020 Apr; 6(17): eaay9672

It is often said that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," but the uncertainties associated with each of these measurements were at least as large as the suspected signal itself: a few parts-per-million. In 2018, however, a remarkable study � even though it was only of one system � had the right confluence of properties to be able to measure α, at a distance of 3.3 billion light-years away, to a precision of just ~1 part-per-million.

Instead of looking at hydrogen and deuterium, isotopes of the same element with the same nuclear charges but different nuclear masses, researchers using the Arecibo telescope in one of its last major discoveries found two absorption lines of a hydroxyl (OH-) ion: at 1720 and 1612 megahertz in frequency around a rare and peculiar blazar. These absorption lines have different dependencies on the fine-structure constant, α, as well as the proton-to-electron mass ratio, and yet these measurements combine to show a null result: consistent with no variation over the past ~3 billion years. These are, to date, the most stringent constraints on tiny changes in the fine-structure constant's value from astronomy, consistent with no effect at all.

The Arecibo radio telescope as viewed from above. The 1000 foot (305 m) diameter was the largest single-dish telescope from 1963 until 2016, and leaves behind a legacy of tremendous scientific discovery.Credit: H. Schweiker/Wiyn and NOAO/Aura/NSF

The observational techniques that have been pioneered in quasar absorption spectroscopy have allowed us to measure these atomic profiles to unprecedented precision, creating a puzzle that remains unsolved to this day: why do quasars appear to show small but significant differences in the inferred value of the fine-structure constant between them? We know there has been no significant variation over the past ~3 billion years, from not only astronomy but from the Oklo natural nuclear reactor as well. In addition, the value is not changing today to 17 decimal places, as constrained by atomic clocks.

It remains possible that the fundamental constants did actually vary a long time ago, or that they varied differently in different locations in space. To untangle whether that is the case or not, however, we first have to understand what is causing the observed variations in quasar absorption lines, and that remains an unsolved puzzle that could just as easily be due to an unidentified error as it is to a physical cause. Until there is a confluence of evidence, where many disparate observations all come together to point to the same consistent conclusion, the default assumption must remain that the fundamental constants really are constant.

• Researchers observe in a series of photos an unexpected rescue of two young wild boars from a trap.
• The whole rescue took less than half an hour thanks to a clever adult female wild boar.
• Aside from the fact of the rescue, there are signs that the rescuer was exhibiting and acting out of empathy for the captives.

There is a danger in attributing human-like motivations to animal behavior. We have no way, after all, of really knowing what is going on in a non-human's mind. Controlled experiments can sometimes strongly suggest intent, but it is difficult to be sure. Every now and then, though, there is just no escaping the obvious.

One such case is reported in a new study by a team of scientists from the Czech University of Life Sciences at the Voděradské Bučiny National Nature Reserve. The team was actually researching African swine fever protection measures until their motion-triggered camera caught something amazing.

The researchers observed a female adult wild boar coming to the quick rescue of two young boars caught in a trap. The adult boar's response was quick, and it was smart. If its actions were not enough to convince an observer of prosocial behavior, it is difficult to interpret its signs of distress during the rescue as anything but empathy for the terrified captives.

What counts as a rescue?

According to the study, to qualify as a deliberate rescue, four things must be true:

1. The captive has to be in distress.


2. The rescuer must put himself or herself in harm's way to make the rescue.


3. The rescuer's actions must amount to an effective solution, even if unsuccessful.


4. The rescuer derives no immediate benefit "in terms of food rewards, social contact, protection, or mating opportunities."

Credit: Kevin Jackson / Unsplash

The rescue

The rescue occurred just before and after midnight on the morning of January 29, 2020. The camera captured 93 photos.

The box trap had two sides held open by a wire. When the wire is tripped by an animal inside, the walls swing down into place and are held by logs that roll down from the top of the box. Essentially, the box is "locked" shut.

The researchers had set their box trap using corn as bait, and two young wild boars fell for the lure. Two hours and six minutes later, four other boars were seen wandering around the front and back of the trap for about four minutes, after which they left.

A couple of hours later, around 11 pm, a rescue party of at least eight boars led by a female adult appeared in the photos. Once underway, the entire rescue took just 29 minutes, with the first log removed after only six minutes.

The inescapable conclusion, judging by the speed of the jailbreak, is that the rescue team � particularly the lead female � was clever enough to understand what was locking the captives in. The adult female kept charging the logs until they were dislodged. (See the headline image.) Once the logs were removed, the young boars pushed through and out.

Credit: Masilkova, et al., Scientific Reports, 2021. CC 4.0

Prosocial indicators

Aside from the obvious fact of the situation � that the adult boar cared enough about the victims' welfare to effect a rescue, meeting all the requisite criteria above � a physiological clue confirms it.

When wild boars become distressed, they exhibit piloerection. Essentially, the hairs on their manes (that is, the backs of their necks) stand up on edge. The photos reveal that the adult female's mane was clearly showing piloerection, revealing that she was viscerally distressed by the captives' plight.

• Daoism is the philosophy that there is a right way to live life, and it involves finding and following the "Dao", or path, to our life and also the universe.
• Yin-Yang is the symbol that represents difference yet unity in life. It is not a conflict or struggle but shows that nothing in life is solely either this or that.
• When things in life feel wrong, or if you get that gut feeling that you are on the wrong path, Daoism offers advice about how to get things straight.

No person is one thing. The kindest person you know has a tiny recess of cruelty in them. The happiest person you have ever met will have their depressive moments. The gentlest person you can think of can be filled with rage by one particular thing. There is no purity of any kind; life is a messy cocktail of things.

This is the truth behind one of the most famous symbols (and tattoos) in the world: the Yin and Yang.

Well en-Dao-ed wisdom

For such a well known idea, the Yin and Yang only appears in one line of the central Daoist book, Daodejing. And yet, it is essential to Daoism and is, in many ways, interchangeable with the Dao itself.

Lao Tzu is the semi-mythical founder of Daoism (or Taoism � the sound is halfway between a T and a D to the non-Chinese ear). His name means "Old Master,'' and it is unclear if he was a single historical person or a title given to a collection of sages and their works. But what matters is Lao Tzu's influence, not least for the 20 million Daoists worldwide.

The Dao translates as "The Way" and is often compared to the flow of a river. Like a river, the Dao moves and directs all things, and we are like boats floating along its path. To be happy is to let the Dao carry us on. To row against the current is hard, and Daoism is the simple call to "go with the flow" of the universe.

Daoism is to find the harmony in life. This is to let the self mold to the world, like the way water fills a cup. It is to adapt, compromise, and take life as it comes, not as you want to force it. If your life is a forest, the Dao is the wide, paved, and easy path. This is not to say that there are not other paths (such as the "human way"), but why struggle through thorns and thickets when life could be happy and easy? Daodejing is a dense wonder of proverbs, advice, wisdom, and fables to guide the Daoist in finding this path.

Life is like a battery

The Dao of Letting Go (or Not Trying)

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Yin-Yang, then, is a guide to that path. It is a hint and a signpost about what the Dao looks like. In short, Yin-Yang is the idea that there is a duality to everything. But rather than this being some kind of oppositional or destructive conflict between two rivals, the Yin-Yang argues that there is a great harmony to be found in the contrast between things. The symbol does not feature a fully black side set against a fully white side. The white has a bit of black, and the black a bit of white. Contrast, yet harmony.

Yin is associated with darkness, femininity, mystery, passivity, the night sky, or the old. Yang is associated with lightness, energy, activity, clarity, the sun, or youth.

But neither Yin nor Yang are superior in any way. They are both utterly amoral, in that neither is "right" or "wrong." While the Yin is associated with the negative, this does not come attached with a value judgement but is better thought of as the negative terminal of a battery, perhaps. Right living comes not from being either one thing or another but in finding that balance � the Dao not only to our life but to all existence. It is the feeling that we have found our right path.

And to do this, both Yin and Yang are essential. The symbol expresses the idea that balance and harmony are necessary for all things. In the martial arts, for instance, it is important that we be hard, strong, and fit (Yang), but these are nothing without being calm, focused, and adaptable (Yin). In a relationship, we can party and laugh (Yang), but we must also cry and share secrets (Yin).

The tightrope of life

Sometimes, things just feel wrong. It might be a relationship, a career, or even a new book or TV show. It is as if everything is a slog, where you have to put in an inordinate amount of effort just to keep moving. It can feel almost as if obstacles constantly pop up to block you.

It is precisely this feeling that Daoism takes on. This kind of struggle is a sure sign that you have fallen from The Way. Life ought not feel like this. It means something is wrong.

Daoism generally, and the Yin-Yang specifically, is about harmony and balance. Things go wrong when we tip the scales too far one way. Daoists are neither ascetics nor bibulous gluttons, as both involve straying from the middle way. The wisdom of the Yin-Yang is to see how a world without light would be hellish but so too would one of constant day. The symbol has proved so powerful because it is a constant reminder to us that life is all about finding that harmony out of opposition. When things feel wrong, we likely need to find our balance or center again.

Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.

• Anxiety is an inevitable feature of our lives.
• Our brains need stress in order to thrive, but neither too much nor too little.
• By harnessing neuroplasticity � the brain's ability to adapt to new situations � we can use anxiety to improve our lives.

The following is an excerpt from Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion. Copyright (C) 2021 by Wendy Suzuki, PhD. Reprinted with permission from Simon & Schuster.

This idea that anxiety is dynamic and changeable blew me away. Sure, anxiety is an inevitable feature of life, and none of us is immune. But understanding anxiety against this more fulsome backdrop has allowed me to stop struggling against it. Instead of treating my feelings as something I need to avoid, suppress, deny, or wrestle to the ground, I have learned how to use anxiety to improve my life.

What a relief. Like all of us, I will always encounter bouts of anxiety. But now, I know what to do when those negative thoughts move into my mind like an unwanted roommate. I can recognize the signals and make adjustments that will take the edge off, calm my body, or settle my mind so I can once again think clearly and feel centered. What a boon to my life � personally, professionally, and certainly emotionally. I feel more satisfaction and meaning from my work. I have finally achieved a work-life balance, some­ thing that always seemed out of reach. I am also much better able to enjoy myself, find time for different kinds of pleasure, and feel relaxed enough to reflect on what matters most to me. And that's what I desire for you, too.

Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion

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We tend to think about anxiety as negative because we associate it only with negative, uncomfortable feelings that leave us with the sense that we are out of control. But I could see another way of looking at it once we open ourselves to a more objective, accurate, and complete understanding of its underlying neurobiological processes. Yes, there are inherent challenges to taking ownership of patterns of responding that dictate our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors without our even realizing. If you tend to experience anxiety when you even think about speaking in public, your brain­ body will more or less dictate that response � unless you consciously intervene and change that response. But I saw evidence of the opposite: that we can intervene and create positive changes to the anxiety state itself.

This dynamic interaction between stress and anxiety made perfect sense to me because it brought me back to the primary area of my neuroscience research: neuroplasticity. Brain plasticity does not mean that the brain is made of plastic. Instead, it means that the brain can adapt in response to the environment (in either enhancing or detrimental ways). The foundation of my research into the improvement of cognition and mood is based on the fact that the brain is an enormously adaptive organ, which relies on stress to keep it alive. In other words, we need stress. Like a sailboat needs wind in order to move, the brain-body needs an outside force to urge it to grow, adapt, and not die. When there's too much wind, the boat can go dangerously fast, lose its balance, and sink. When a brain-body encounters too much stress, it begins to respond negatively. But when it does not have enough stress, it plateaus and begins to coast. Emotionally, this plateau might feel like boredom or disinterest; physically it can look like a stagnation of growth. When the brain-body has just enough stress, it functions optimally. When it has no stress, it simply lists, like a sailboat with no wind to direct it.

Just like every system in the body, this relationship to stress is all about the organism's drive for homeostasis. When we encounter too much stress, anxiety drives us to make adjustments that bring us back into balance or internal equilibrium. When we have just the right kind or amount of stress in our lives, we feel balanced � this is the quality of well-being we always seek. And it's also how anxiety works in the brain-body: it's a dynamic indication of where we are in relation to the presence or absence of stress in our lives.

When I started making changes to my lifestyle and began to meditate, eat healthy, and exercise regularly, my brain-body adjusted and adapted. The neural pathways associated with anxiety recalibrated and I felt awesome! Did my anxiety go away? No. But it showed up differently because I was responding to stress in more positive ways.

And that is exactly how anxiety can shift from something we try to avoid and get rid of to something that is both informative and beneficial. What I was learning how to do, backed up by my experiments and my deep understanding of neuroscience, was not just engage in new and varied ways to shore up my mental health through exercise, sleep, food, and new mind-body practices but to take a step back from my anxiety and learn how to structure my life to accommodate and even honor those things at the heart of my anxious states. This is exactly how anxiety can be good for us. In my own research experiments at NYU, I have started to identify those interventions (including movement, meditation, naps, social stimuli) that have the biggest impact on not only decreasing anxiety levels per se but also enhancing the emotional and cognitive states most affected by anxiety, including focus, attention, depression, and hostility.

And that realization of how anxiety works, my friends, became the subject � and the promise � of this book: Understanding how anxiety works in the brain and body and then using that knowledge to feel better, think more clearly, be more productive, and perform more optimally. In the pages ahead, you will learn more about how you can use the neurobiological processes underlying anxiety, the worry, and general emotional discomfort to lay down new neural pathways, and set down new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that can change your life.

Our inherent capacity for adaptation offers the power to change and direct our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and interactions with ourselves and others. When you adopt strategies that harness the neural networks of anxiety, you open the door to activating your brain-body at an even deeper, more meaningful level. Instead of feeling at the mercy of anxiety, we can take charge of it in concrete ways. Anxiety becomes a tool to supercharge our brains and bodies in ways that will resound in every dimension of our lives­ � emotionally, cognitively, and physically. This is the domain of what I call anxiety's superpowers. You will shift from living in a moderately functional way to functioning at a higher, more fulfilling level; from living an ordinary life to one that is extraordinary.

My book, GOOD ANXIETY, is about taking everything we know about plasticity to create a personalized strategy of adapting our responses to the stress in our lives and using anxiety as a warning signal and opportunity to redirect that energy for good. Everyone's particular flavor of positive brain plasticity will be a bit different because everyone manifests anxiety in unique ways, but when you learn how you respond, how you manage the discomfort, and how you typically cope and reach for that homeostatic balance, then you will find your own personal superpowers of anxiety. Anxiety can be good... or bad. It turns out that it's really up to you.

This article was originally published on our sister site, Freethink.

Oxford scientists have proposed what they believe is a more sustainable approach to copper mining: digging deep wells under dormant volcanoes to suck out the metal-containing fluids trapped beneath them.

The status quo: Currently, most copper mining is done via open pits. Drills and explosives blast away rock near the surface, which is then transported to a processing facility. There, the rock is crushed so that the tiny portion of copper in it can be extracted.

This extraction process often involves toxic chemicals, and once the copper is removed, the waste rock that remains must be shipped to a disposal site so that it doesn't contaminate the environment.

The challenge: All of the digging, extracting, and transporting involved in copper mining can be energy intensive and environmentally damaging � but the world needs more copper today than ever before.

Electric vehicles contain four times the copper of their fossil fuel-powered counterparts, and the metal is a key component of solar, wind, and hydro generators. That makes copper a key player in the transition to a more sustainable energy system.

The idea: Rather than focusing our copper mining efforts on rock, the Oxford team suggests we look to water � specifically, the hot, salty water trapped beneath dormant volcanoes.

"Volcanoes are an obvious and ubiquitous target."
JON BLUNDY

These brines contain not only copper, but also gold, silver, lithium, and other metals used in electronics � and we might be able to extract them without wreaking havoc on the environment.

"Getting to net zero will place unprecedented demand on natural metal resources, demand that recycling alone cannot meet," lead author Jon Blundy said in a press release.

"We need to be thinking of low-energy, sustainable ways to extract metals from the ground," he continued. "Volcanoes are an obvious and ubiquitous target."

Brine mines: After years of research, the Oxford team has published a study on the mining of metals from dormant volcanoes, and according to that paper, the process has tremendous potential � but it wouldn't be easy.

The wells would need to be more than a mile deep, and there's a small chance the extraction could trigger a volcanic event � something that would need to be assessed in advance of any drilling.

The equipment used for the extraction process would also need to be able to withstand corrosion from the brine and temperatures in excess of 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Worth exploring: If these technical and safety challenges can be overcome, they predict that copper mining at dormant volcanoes would be more cost effective than at open pits.

It would also be less environmentally damaging, as geothermal energy from the volcanoes themselves could be harnessed to power the process.

And because dormant volcanoes are widespread, copper mining wouldn't be limited to just a handful of countries, as is the case currently.

The next steps: The team is now looking for a site to dig an exploratory well, which should help them better understand both potential of tapping into this new source of metal and the challenges involved in the process.

"Green mining is a scientific and engineering challenge which we hope that scientists and governments alike will embrace in the drive to net zero," Blundy said.

• Is there an external reality? Is reality objective? Is the information your senses are feeding you an accurate depiction of reality? Most neuroscientists and scientific leaders believe that we can only comprehend a sliver of what is true reality.
• Although we assume our senses are telling us the truth, they're actually fabricated to us. Considering senses are unique from person to person, and through our unique senses we can only intemperate a fraction of what is real, there is no all-encompassing and true perspective one individual can hold. Because of this, we need to take our perceptions seriously, but not literally.
• Multiple perspectives have to be taken as each new perspective will hold some sliver of truth. Seeing partial truth in multiple perspectives is fundamental to navigating the world and making informed life decisions.