#October 2022 Science News

[thesquidkid]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Max Evans/Liz Ortecho Characters: Max Evans, Liz Ortecho Additional Tags: Fluff, Science, (too much science for what this fic is supposed to be), Valentine's Day, (tho if you blink you'll miss it), Established Relationship, Post-Canon, Science Experiments, on animals (rats in particular) Series: Part 2 of shiny happy people holding hands Summary:

if I could just see you tonight

Valentine's Day. Liz is in Roswell, while Max is on Oasis. Supposedly.

(Or, the one where Max crosses the universe to be home on Valentine's Day.)

[reasonsforhope]

We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of global warming.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Say it with me. We're going to get there.

[feminist-space]

"Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world.

Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and elevate its value past $150 billion.

The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue OpenAI in the past year.

In an interview with the New York Times published Oct. 23, Balaji argued OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were used to train ChatGPT.

“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”

Balaji grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study computer science. It was then he became a believer in the potential benefits that artificial intelligence could offer society, including its ability to cure diseases and stop aging, the Times reported. “I thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve them,” he told the newspaper.

But his outlook began to sour in 2022, two years after joining OpenAI as a researcher. He grew particularly concerned about his assignment of gathering data from the internet for the company’s GPT-4 program, which analyzed text from nearly the entire internet to train its artificial intelligence program, the news outlet reported.

The practice, he told the Times, ran afoul of the country’s “fair use” laws governing how people can use previously published work. In late October, he posted an analysis on his personal website arguing that point.

No known factors “seem to weigh in favor of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data,” Balaji wrote. “That being said, none of the arguments here are fundamentally specific to ChatGPT either, and similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains.”

Reached by this news agency, Balaji’s mother requested privacy while grieving the death of her son.

In a Nov. 18 letter filed in federal court, attorneys for The New York Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support their case against OpenAI. He was among at least 12 people — many of them past or present OpenAI employees — the newspaper had named in court filings as having material helpful to their case, ahead of depositions."

[ectoberhaunt]

Ectoberhaunt 2023: Science VS Magic

Dear Phandom new and old, sorry for the delay but this here is our 2023 theme and prompt list! Once again we've changed it up a little to make it a little easier on all of us, and to invite fun and mayhem Phandom wide! Prompts are once again Monday-Friday, with Friday being singular prompts, and weekends being (mostly) free as catch up days. The only real change is our new 'isekai weekend' on the 21st and 22nd, with two different sub prompts for the days. Isekai is a subgenre of anime in which a character ends up in a different place or world all together. It literally translates to 'otherworld'! The two prompts for this weekend are 'past prompt', where we want to see the Phandom use a prompt from either of our previous calendars. The other is 'portal shenanigans'. We highly encourage you to create crossover content and AUs you've wanted to play with. As always, our last prompt day is October 24th to make way for the Ectober Week event. This means our free days are the 1st, 7th, 8th, 14th, 15th, with the 25th-31st being @ectoberweekofficial's time to shine. Please tag all prompt fills as "Ectoberhaunt23", and follow the additional posting guidelines below!

Posting for this event begins October 2nd!

Down below are our written out calendar prompts (for accessibility) AND our posting guidelines. Check 'em out!

The Prompts

Below are the listed prompts in date order, if it's blank it's a catch up day. First prompt is Science, second is Magic!

-

Tecnomancy vs Botonamancy

Black Cat vs White Crow

Aliens vs Zombies

Hunt vs Haunt

Tabletop

-

-

Robots vs Dragons

Pseudoscience vs Occultism

Dread vs Calm

Obsession vs Repression

Horror Flick

-

-

Revenant vs Death Echo

Blood vs Flesh

Unravel vs Intertwine

Claws vs Horns

Danse Macabre

Isekai: Past Prompts (2021 | 2022)

Isekai: Portal Shenanigans

Technus vs Magic

Science vs Dora Ectober Week!

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

Post Guidelines

The following are the posting guidelines. Please follow them so we can reblog and share your posts without issue. We will also have this as a post available on our blog separately.

Tag all posts with “Ectoberhaunt23” so we can find it. If you do not use this tag, we may not find you.

Tag which calendar you're pulling from (“EH Science” or “EH Magic”), which day the prompt is for ("Day X"), and which prompt(s) you completed ("Eyes" "Teeth"). Example: #ectoberhaunt23 #EH science #day 5 #hunt Single day prompts, such as the ones on Friday, do not need a tag for which calendar it's for.

Put your fics under a readmore. Add a summary before the cut with a short preview, content warnings, and which prompts were used. Then, add a readmore no more than 150 words or 10 lines/groups of text under your summary. If you're using mobile, type :readmore: and hit enter to make a readmore. If you do not do this, we will NOT reblog your post.

Make sure to tag all common content warnings (blood, gore, death, drugs, body horror, existentialism, & vermin)

We will try to reblog every prompt we can. Feel free to @ us in the post too or send us a DM with the post!!

Feel free to shoot us an ask about rules/clarifications and any queries on prompts. Our discord is open as are our messages.

Here is a spreadsheet you can use to track your progress made by the talented @ajitated

Title graphic by @kawaiijohn | Calendar graphics by @ajitated

[evidence-based-activism]

"Research into trans medicine has been manipulated"

The Sources

A recent Economist* article has described how the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has manipulated research into trans medicine. The article is reproduced here in full by the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM). The SEGM also discusses the topic in their discussion on how "WPATH Influence Undermines WHO’s Transgender Guidelines"

*For those who care: The Economist is rated as "least biased" and "highly factual" by Media Bias/Fact Check. While it has varied over time, they currently tend to be preferred by a left-leaning audience.

The Situation

Essentially, unsealed court documents have shown WPATH first commissioned research into trans medicine from Johns Hopkins University (for the "development" of their guidelines) and then prevented the researchers from publishing this research. (Among other ethical violations including undue influence over manuscript contents and requiring researchers to (illegitimately) claim independence from WPATH.)

Presumably their suppression and manipulation of the research occurred because the conclusions reached by the researchers did not meet advance their desired opinions.

This is extraordinarily unethical from a scientific, medical, and political perspective. Strong objections from the researchers involved were documented, but ultimately failed to prevent the limitation of academic freedom and maintenance of scientific integrity. Aside from this, their actions have deprived their own community (trans individuals) from potentially vital information about their medical treatments.

So, the next time someone asks for "proof" that the current standards of trans medicine are not evidence based and may, in fact, be harmful: reply with these sources documenting the unscientific, unethical suppression of such proof. (And, while you're at it, remind them that the burden of proof is on intervention, not the lack of intervention.)

Choice Quotes from the Sources

From the reproduced Economist article:

From early on in the contract negotiations, WPATH expressed a desire to control the results of the Hopkins team’s work.

Ms Robinson [the research director] saw this as an attempt to exert undue influence over what was supposed to be an independent process.

But an email in October 2020 from WPATH figures, including its incoming president at the time, ... made clear what sort of science WPATH did (and did not) want published. Research must be “thoroughly scrutinised and reviewed to ensure that publication does not negatively affect the provision of transgender health care in the broadest sense,” it stated.

[The WPATH president has] been named to a World Health Organisation advisory board tasked with developing best practices for transgender medicine

Another document recently unsealed shows that Rachel Levine, a trans woman who is assistant secretary for health, succeeded in pressing wpath to remove minimum ages for the treatment of children from its 2022 standards of care.

From the extended discussion by the SEGM:

The court documents reveal that WPATH leadership was "caught on the wrong foot" when two systematic reviews of evidence regarding endocrine interventions, ... did not provide the kind of support that WPATH was hoping to see. Consequently, WPATH leadership, ... took action to prevent the evidence evaluation team from making public the offending systematic reviews.

The court documents also reveal that WPATH subsequently instituted a new approval policy to ensure that only favorable evidence reviews could be published by researchers engaged in evaluating the evidence: (... WPATH had to approve the conclusions. ... WPATH had ongoing content control over the content of the planned publication. ... WPATH had the final document control.)

The authors were also required to insert into the article a statement that asserted its independence from WPATH, effectively denying that WPATH interference had taken place. [Imagine a drug company exerting this much influence over research into their a drug, and then demanding the researchers lie about this influence.]

[The Baker 2012 review] was the only review to survive WPATH’s approval process, despite "dozens" of reviews being completed by the Johns Hopkins team, as the court documents reveal. [Meaning dozens were suppressed, presumably for unfavorable conclusions.]

The Baker review has an alarming number of irregularities, which bear the marks of WPATH interference, and which deserve a separate spotlight. Here, we will only note that the review's conclusions ... are explicitly contradicted by the actual systematic review findings, which found only "low" and "insufficient" evidence.

The suppressed evidence regarding hormones interventions for all age groups raises questions about what basis WHO is using for its presumption that hormones should be widely available to all adults who seek them [This is of particular concern since several influential members of WPATH - including its president - have been appointed to the WHO board developing clinical guidelines]

[mindblowingscience]

In October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT—the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a feature never seen before. "A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention," said lead researcher Maria Edvige Ravasio at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and affiliated with Brera Observatory, part of INAF (the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics) in Merate, Italy. "When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps. Our analysis since then shows it to be the first high-confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs." A paper about the discovery appears in the journal Science.

Continue Reading.

[pers-books]

Lesbians in Space: The Anthology (Where No Man Has Gone Before)

Booktopia 2024 📚#Fantasy#Indie#Sci-Fi

Following Project

Share

You've asked for it, so Space Wizard provides. Here is the long-anticipated Lesbians In Space Anthology!

Space Wizard Science Fantasy!

Space Wizard Science Fantasy is a queer science fiction and fantasy indie publishing company which opened its doors in 2021 to publishing outside authors. - In 2022, the Space Wizard Science Fantasy Year 1 campaign raised nearly $18,000 to pay authors top rates, create amazing book covers, fund an audiobook recording, and publish 12 books between June 2022 and June 2023. - In 2023, Year 2 raised over $18,000 for 12 more books released from June 2023 to June 2024 with more excellent covers, custom illustrations, and pro rates for our anthology writers! This year we added exclusive collector's hardbacks! - In 2024, Year 3 just concluded in July with another $17,250 raised for for 13 books, one omnibus, and 2 TTRPGs!

We're back again this September for one more anthology, this time with a bunch of incredible authors participating in Booktopia. Lesbians in Space has a stellar (ha!) lineup of writers already on board, including (in order of confirmation):

- Seanan McGuire, multiple Hugo Award-winning author of the Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, and the Incryptid series!

- Travis Baldree, author of Legends and Lattes, shortlisted for the Hugo Award for best novel in 2023, as well as exceptional audiobook narrator!

- Emma Newman, Hugo Award-winning podcaster and author of the Planetfall series, which was shortlisted for the Best Series Hugo Award in 2020!

- Mary Robinette Kowal. Hugo Award-winner Mary Robinette Kowal has written: The Spare Man, The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, the Lady Astronaut Universe, and many short stories.

Also see our "writers" section below for our current roster, and for how you can submit your story!

Lesbians in Space: Where No Man Has Gone Before

Peanut butter and chocolate. Cheese and wine. Sex and rock n’ roll. History is full of great pairings.

Get ready for the next great one: Lesbians and Space! Join a host of intrepid explorers heading to the outer reaches of the galaxy, exploring planets, space stations, strange new worlds and interesting aliens. Focusing on lesbian / sapphic protagonists, this anthology will contain works from numerous established, award-winning, and lesfic authors, and a few new faces as well.

We have an amazing cover already created by Serene Chia, and we have a bunch of great addons and gifts for you as well! This anthology is going to be packed with fully-inclusive, sapphic stories about space, space opera, science fiction, exploration, adventure, and of course, romance. The stories will have representation of all sorts, including cis, trans, bi, sapphic, non-binary, ace, aro, and many other types. There's lots of room for Lesbians in Space!

We have our invited group of writers already working on stories for the anthology, but we're opening up to any and all submissions as well! So if you're a writer, polish off your best story about Lesbians in Space, and send it in!

Are you a writer? Do you like Lesbians in Space? We will be holding juried selections for more stories for the Lesbians in Space anthology. To enter, simply polish off your writing skills and craft a story of around 2000-4500 words, but definitely not over 6000.

This anthology will focus on lesbian relationships of all types, including cis, bi/pan, ace, non-binary, intersex, trans, and others that fall under the ‘sapphic’ banner as long as the primary pairing is lesbian. Give us your best story featuring sapphic protagonists at least partially located in space. This could be on a spaceship, with magic, on a planet or asteroid, in another dimension or realm, or any other connected idea. Surprise us!

Stories will be juried and final selections will be made (hopefully) by end of January 2025. Projected publish date is June 2025. Selected authors will be compensated at semi-pro rates or higher. Send your completed story in by midnight EST, December 31st, 2024 using the instructions at https://www.spacewizardsciencefantasy.com/submissions We are hoping to publish Lesbians in Space around June 2025.

-- I've just backed this as it looks absolutely fabulous!

[covid-safer-hotties]

As COVID Surges, the High Price of Viral Denial - Published Sept 3, 2024

COVID is surging once again and, if you live in British Columbia, you probably already know someone sick with fever, chills and a sore throat.

As of mid-August, about one in every 19 British Columbians were enduring an infection, with or without symptoms.

Although the media routinely dismisses all COVID infections as an inconsequential nuisance, that’s not what the science says. The virus remains deadlier than the flu and repeated infections can radically change your health.

An important new Nature study, for example, has now proven that the spike protein of the virus can bind with a blood protein, fibrin, setting off a chain of blood clots resulting in chronic inflammation and brain damage. Fibrin can actually form a mesh impeding blood flow in arteries to multiple organs in the body.

The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada Repeated studies show in the bluntest terms that the initial acute infection is only the tip of the iceberg. Even a mild bout of COVID can leave a legacy of blood clots, heart failure, diabetes, decreased brain function (see sidebar), long COVID (now affecting 400 million people worldwide) and immune damage that increasingly makes people more vulnerable to a plethora of infectious diseases and possibly cancers.

These problems can erupt three years after an infection and are especially prevalent in patients who’ve been hospitalized by COVID.

Which is why the U.S. immunologist and COVID specialist Dr. David Putrino emphasizes, “There is no such thing as a SARS-CoV-2 infection that does NOT have prolonged consequences.”

And yet the estimated daily level of infection in Canada now hovers around the highest points reached during the Omicron variant’s peaks in January 2022 and October 2023.

That’s the finding of University of Toronto infectious disease expert Tara Moriarty, whose team bases the latest COVID-19 Hazard Index on a combination of wastewater data and modelling. In a discursive and highly valuable X posting Moriarty adds “there’s not a fresh vaccine in sight.” In fact, they are weeks away.

That means about one million infections are occurring every week and that this “severe” level of infection translates like clockwork into more than 1,000 deaths per week from COVID-19 in Canada based on five-week average trends. Ultimately these infections will result in more cases of long COVID in both younger and older populations.

There is more bad news: on an annual basis COVID infections still account for 20 times more deaths than influenza.

The data is not complete but this death toll likely made COVID the second or leading cause of death in the country last month.

According to Moriarty’s data, the number of COVID deaths per infection remain highest in Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan because they have older populations often compromised by serious medical conditions. They are also served by shrinking health resources.

Alberta, whose population is Canada’s youngest on average, claims the lowest infection fatality rate yet has already reported more than 700 COVID deaths this year. B.C. ranks somewhere in the middle.

These grim trends mirror COVID’s permutations south of the border. In the United States COVID infections hospitalized nearly five out of 100,000 Americans during the week of Aug. 4 to 10.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, one of North America’s leading COVID researchers, notes that, “This crucial, yet lagging indicator hasn’t been this high since February 2024.” In addition, spotty U.S. data indicates that COVID has hospitalized twice as many people than the flu since October last year.

Rocking the system

Meanwhile Canada’s hospital emergency rooms, many already stretched before the pandemic, continue to open and close with troubling frequency across the country due to chronic staff shortages and sick workers.

With little surge capacity, the continued presence of highly infectious COVID variants continues to leave many health-care systems in shambles year after year.

According to Moriaty’s data, Canadian hospitals are now spending about $37 million dollars a day on COVID hospitalizations, which averaged more than 1,500 people a day two weeks ago.

Here’s some more damning math: “On average, since the beginning of Omicron, people needing hospitalization for COVID-19 account for 14 per cent of hospital bed capacity (seven per cent if you admit only half of people needing hospitalization).”

The resulting bed shortage has created a circular crisis, says Moriarity. “A constant annual seven-per-cent increase in hospital beds required for COVID-19, in a very low surge capacity environment with a serious health-care workforce labour shortage, can have profound upstream and downstream effects on health care and health.”

The evidence is everywhere. Five Interior B.C. emergency rooms closed over the long weekend. In the last week five rural hospitals temporarily closed in Alberta, including facilities in Swan Hills, Fairview and Rocky Mountain House. In Ontario some rural citizens refer to ER closures as an “epidemic.”

Dr. Alan Drummond, a Quebec rural physician, adds that the disruption of “emergency medicine delivery in Canada continues unabated as our political leaders fail to recognize and declare the obvious crisis that it is. They do nothing, they pray for divine intervention, they obfuscate, they lie through their teeth.”

‘A recipe for forever burn’

The subject of how to respond to a slow burn pandemic remains taboo because most public health officials have already declared the emergency over. They’ve also stopped collecting critical data. COVID-19 deaths in Canada are not reported in a readily publicly accessible fashion. And most of the media pretends that an immune-destabilizing virus that can harm the functioning of your organs including your brain has little more import than a benign cold.

As a consequence, authorities can’t now turn around and admit to the breadth of their mistake, let alone acknowledge the growing disorder in public health. Nor do they dare collect critical data documenting the scale of their errors including the relentless march of long COVID.

Meanwhile the virus continues to out-evolve our response and vaccines. Two months ago, when new COVID cases exceeded 100,000 a day in Japan, the research scientist Hiroshi Yasuda imagined the following discussion in a hospital.

Nurse: COVID hospitalizations are increasing again. Doctor: I know. N: Are we fighting an endless, losing battle against SARS-CoV-2? D: No, you are wrong. N: Oh, you have different ideas, doctor? D: We are not even fighting. N: [Nods in agreement.]

Richard Corsi, the noted Texas indoor environmental engineer and creator of the Corsi-Rosenthal box, has summed up this predicament as a profound public health failure. “The general response to COVID-19 remains reactionary over precautionary. Wait until the fire gets hot and starts to burn rather than taking very simple steps to not fuel the fire in the first place. This is a recipe for forever non-containment, forever burn.”

He then points out: “The solution’s been with us since day one of the pandemic. We’ve [generalized] just lacked the will, determination and grace to make it end. Reduce inhalation dose of virus-laden respiratory aerosol particles. It’ll never end if we continue to run in the opposite direction, folks.”

The problem with running in the opposite direction, however, is that we increase the chances of landing in the arms of another COVID infection. And the reasons for avoiding such viral encounters just grow stronger by the sheer weight of evidence.

Why infection prevention still matters

Nobody sane really wants to play Russian roulette, but that’s how we should view every COVID infection. Although most people will get away with just an unpleasant biological disruption of daily life, others will take a bullet to their heart, brain, gut or immune system for reasons not fully understood.

No COVID infection is completely benign because each infection plays a role in deregulating the immune system. Even a mild infection, as one recent study noted, can increase “autoantibodies associated with rheumatic autoimmune diseases and diabetes in most individuals, regardless of vaccination status prior to infection.”

According to an increasing number of researchers, immune deregulation triggered by COVID probably plays a significant role in the dramatic global upticks in infectious diseases. The suspects include RSV, a variety of herpes viruses, whooping cough (now burning up the charts in Canada and England), scarlet fever, dengue fever, fungal infections and tuberculosis. Forty-four countries have now reported a 10-fold increase in the incidence of at least one of 13 infectious diseases compared to trends prior to the pandemic.

Although vaccine hesitancy, climate change and permissive travel have also played a role in this microbial wave, researchers strongly suspect that COVID’s disruption of the immune system has made it harder for many people to fight other infections.

Putrino, a COVID specialist at New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, recently explained the situation this way. “For the longest time we’ve told people that if you get an illness and you recover, it just makes you stronger. What we’re seeing over and over again is that’s not the case with COVID. Every time you get a COVID infection, your immune system seems to suffer.

“It’s kind of like a boxer, every fight takes a little bit more out of them. And they’re not getting stronger with every fight, they’re not getting stronger with every hit that they take. Every single time there’s an increased chance that something bad is going to happen to the immune system and I think that this influx of illness that we’re seeing is related to that.”

Another significant risk posed by playing Russian roulette with COVID infections is that each one could result in long COVID, which has sidelined 400 million people around the world at a cost of a trillion dollars. Some manifestations of long COVID include heart disease, diabetes, myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome, and a raft of autoimmune diseases that may last a lifetime.

The risk increases with the severity of acute infection but the majority of long COVID sufferers have had a mild infection. The more times one is infected, the likelier the next infection will trigger a bout of long COVID. “Cumulatively, two infections yield a higher risk of long COVID than one infection and three infections yield a higher risk than two infections, explain researchers published in the journal Nature.

Here, then, is where we’ve arrived. We’ve entered a vicious cycle where more infections generate more COVID variants. The new variants have become more immune evasive. At the same time society has generally abandoned masks, testing and basic public health messages.

We could slow and suppress the cycle by facing the challenge squarely. For example, by cleaning dirty air the way we once tackled the disease-ridden spectre of cholera-infested water.

But public health officials are afraid to talk about clean air let alone the obvious: avoiding infection.

Beating back COVID requires hard work, communal wisdom and clear policies that markedly reduce the level of infection in society.

To date we have chosen viral denial, dirty air and a triumphant reign for long COVID. [Tyee]

[rupalic]

Growth Strategies Adopted by Major Players in Turf Protection Market

In the dynamic landscape of the turf protection industry, key players like Syngenta Crop Protection AG (Switzerland), UPL Limited (India), Corteva Agriscience (US), Nufarm (US), Bayer AG (Germany), and BASF SE (Germany) are at the forefront of innovation and market expansion. These industry leaders are driving growth through strategic initiatives such as partnerships, acquisitions, and cutting-edge product developments, solidifying their positions as influential forces in shaping the future of the turf protection industry. Their efforts not only enhance their global presence but also set new benchmarks for industry standards and customer expectations. The global turf protection market size is estimated to reach $8.1 billion by 2028, growing at a 4.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). The market size was valued $6.4 billion in 2023.

Top Global Turf Protection Leaders to Watch in 2024

· Syngenta Crop Protection AG (Switzerland)

· UPL Limited (India)

· Corteva Agriscience (US)

· Nufarm (US)

· Bayer AG (Germany)

· BASF SE (Germany)

· SDS Biotech K.K. (Japan)

· AMVAC Chemical Corporation (US)

· Bioceres Crop Solutions (Argentina)

· Colin Campbell (Chemicals) Pty Ltd (Australia)

· ICL Group Ltd. (US)

Investments and Innovations: Key Strategies of Top Turf Protection Companies

🌱 Syngenta Crop Protection AG: Leading the Way in Integrated Pest Management

Syngenta Crop Protection AG, a global agribusiness based in Switzerland, operates prominently in the crop protection and seeds markets. The company offers a comprehensive range of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and seed treatments, helping growers worldwide enhance agricultural productivity and food quality. With a presence in over 90 countries, Syngenta’s reach is truly global. In October 2020, Syngenta further strengthened its position by acquiring Valagro, a leading biologicals company. Valagro’s strong presence in Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America complements Syngenta’s existing crop protection chemicals. This acquisition allows Syngenta to offer more integrated pest management strategies that reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals, while Valagro’s expertise in plant nutrition promotes healthier turfgrass growth and improved soil health.

Know about the assumptions considered for the study

🌍 UPL Limited: Innovating Turf Management Solutions Globally

UPL Limited, formerly known as United Phosphorus Limited, is a global agrochemical company based in India, providing a wide range of agricultural solutions, including crop protection products, seeds, and post-harvest solutions. UPL is a key player in turf management, offering innovative solutions for golf courses, sports fields, and other turf areas. Their product portfolio includes herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and plant growth regulators, all designed to enhance turf quality and health while effectively controlling pests and diseases. Operating in over 130 countries across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, UPL has 28 manufacturing sites worldwide, solidifying its position as a leader in the global turf protection market.

🏆 Bayer AG: Streamlining for a Focused Future in Turf Protection

Bayer AG, a multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany, operates across three business segments: Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Health, and Crop Science. The company’s Crop Science division caters to the turf protection market, offering products such as herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. With operations in over 90 countries, including regions like North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, Bayer maintains a strong global presence. In March 2022, Bayer sold its Environmental Science Professional business, which includes turf protection products, to private equity firm Cinven for USD 2.6 billion. This strategic divestment is part of Bayer’s ongoing efforts to streamline its portfolio and concentrate on core businesses, ensuring a more focused approach to its future operations.

[boricuacherry-blog]

Fifteen states have passed laws to regulate them, with many requiring serial numbers and background checks for component parts, and others - including New York - going a step further by requiring ghost guns to be reported to authorities.

In 2022, a Justice Department rule took effect that made weapons parts kits subject to the same regulations as traditional firearms, including requiring commercial sellers to become federally licensed, mark certain parts with serial numbers and run background checks on purchasers.

The rule also aims to regulate some of the ghost guns already in circulation, by requiring federally licensed dealers and gunsmiths to put serial numbers on any guns they take into inventory that don't already have them, before selling them to another customer.

"If you commit a crime [with a] ghost gun, not only are state and local prosecutors going to come after you, but expect federal charges and federal prosecution as well," President Biden said that year.

Kit manufacters and sellers challenged the rule in court, arguing the ATF exceeded its authority. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the rule to remain in place pending litigation and heard the case in October.

It has not yet made a decision, though NPR's Nina Totenberg reported that the justices seemed inclined to side with the Biden administration.

Someone like Mangione, who studied mechanical engineering and computer science, would have likely been exposed to 3D printing.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Smithsonian Magazine:

The birds weigh about as much as a bar of soap.

That’s how Melissa Boyle Acuti describes the northern saw-whet owl, the smallest owl species found in Maryland and one of the smallest in North America. They’re hardly bigger than a fist with a ping pong ball on top, she adds.

During the fall in Edgewater, Maryland, a small group of volunteers helps catch and band these little owls from sunset to midnight. They’re participating in Project Owlnet, an initiative that seeks to learn more about these birds and their migration and that supports an ever-expanding network of migrant owl banding stations.

Boyle Acuti is the banding station manager for Project Owlnet’s site at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Edgewater. She leads the participants through the project’s processes.

The group uses an audio lure to entice the birds, capturing them in mist nets to bring back to the banding station. Once there, they place aluminum bands on the birds—“friendship bracelets for science,” as they’re called within the project. Project participants also measure the owls’ bills, wings and tails.

They use a blacklight to look at the underside of the owls’ wings and see their molt pattern, which helps determine their ages, a difficult task. Old feathers don’t glow as brightly under the light because the pigment has faded, while new feathers have a brighter glow, Boyle Acuti says.

“They nest and summer up in these boreal forests in Canada,” she says. “Those areas, people can’t get to very easily. … So that’s why the fall migration studies are really important to know what’s happening with the population of owls.”

For Christmas bird counts, the owls may be found down in their southern range, possibly showing up at stations in Georgia, Alabama and Oklahoma. “They go pretty far south in small numbers,” she says. “The more that we do with Project Owlnet, the more we learn about their migrations.”

Saw-whet captures have varied widely from year to year at SERC, which became a Project Owlnet banding site in 2017. That year, the team captured eight birds, and the next year, they captured 54. Then in 2019, it was six; the year after, it was 29. And then eight in 2021, 26 in 2022, nine in 2023 and ten in 2024. Notably, one of the birds banded at SERC and identified as a recently hatched owl in 2022 was recaptured nearly 600 miles away in Quebec on October 14, 2024.

Many factors may affect the owl population, Boyle Acuti notes: “You hear about the wildfires in Canada—they’ve been in the news. Even climate change, that could be causing the southern species to move more northerly. The tree species compositions, if those change, that could impact where the owls are nesting and the prey. There’s a lot we don’t know, and that’s why we study them. In order to see trends, you have to have long-term data sets.”

[black-arcana]

LACUNA COIL's CRISTINA SCABBIA On Artificial Intelligence In Music: 'My First Impression Is That I Hate It Deeply'

In a recent interview with Brazil's Sonoridades Inc., singer Cristina Scabbia of Italian goth metal veterans LACUNA COIL weighed in on a debate about people using an A.I. (artificial intelligence) music generator as a tool to create melodies, harmonies and rhymes based on artificial intelligence (A.I.) algorithms and machine learning (M.L.) models. Cristina said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I still have to know more about A.I. My first impression is that I hate it deeply. I think that it could be interesting and useful in many ways. But what humans are capable of, it's never 100 percent good. So I know that it will go downward. I mean, we could use it to explore galaxies, we could use it to get better in medicines and science, but I know that a lot of people will be using it for bad reasons.

"Speaking about music, I am confident that the creativity that a human being with emotions, with a soul can have will not be comparable, hopefully ever, to A.I.," she continued. "I think about songs like — I don't know — the one of THE POLICE, 'De-do-do-do, de-da-da-da, is all I want to say to you.' And A.I. would be scratching the forehead, if it had one, and say, like, 'What is this? What does it mean?' But it sounds good. It's rhythmically good. It works with that voice.

"There are so many things you have to bring together to write music, to [put] emotion [across to] other people, to give the emotion that for A.I., it's difficult to bring this emotion because it doesn't have one — yet," Scabbia added. "But my actual opinion is just, like, I want to continue to write music without A.I. for a long time… Maybe it can be helpful. This is my first opinion because I don't know that much. Maybe I don't want to know that much about A.I. I just want to keep it there, just like, 'Eh. I don't know if I wanna know you.'"

During the same chat, Cristina revealed that she and her LACUNA COIL bandmates have completed the demoing process for their follow-up to 2019's "Black Anima" album. She said: "If everything goes as projected, before the end of the year [the new LP] will be released."

LACUNA COIL has just completed the "Ignite The Fire" U.S. tour with support from NEW YEARS DAY and OCEANS OF SLUMBER.

Last month, LACUNA COIL released another new single, "In The Mean Time", featuring Ash Costello of NEW YEARS DAY. The song's title is a reference to the mean times the world is living in, as well as a reference to the state the band itself is in, between cycles.

Last July, LACUNA COIL released the official lyric video for "Never Dawn". For the track, LACUNA COIL partnered with CMON, the renowned board game publisher behind the popular game "Zombicide".

LACUNA COIL has spent some of the last couple of years promoting "Comalies XX", the "deconstructed" and "transported" version of the band's third album, "Comalies".

"Comalies XX" was made available on October 14, 2022 via Century Media Records.

LACUNA COIL celebrated the 20th anniversary of "Comalies", by performing it in its entirety at a one-night-only concert on October 15, 2022 at Fabrique in Milano.

"Comalies" was originally released on October 29, 2002 through Century Media Records. The LP, which featured the band's breakthrough single "Heaven's A Lie", has reportedly gone on to sell over 300,000 copies in the United States alone.

[reasonsforhope]

The present isn't a dystopia. It's just a complicated, chaotic, sometimes amazing, sometimes brutal world.

The future is, I think, unlikely to become a dystopia in the sense we imagine it. I saw this for two reasons:

1.

First, I say "the sense we imagine it" because dystopias are based on the idea that all hope (for humanity, usually, sometimes all life) has been extinguished forever, and the forces of dystopia shall never be overthrown.

I don't believe that kind of world is possible - a world where there is never more hope. A true end to history. I don't think it's ever possible for all humans to stop fighting, as long as we're here. I have lots of evidence to based this on, much of which is called "all of human history." (And eternal dystopia is especially impossible if you look at deep time - there have been five previous mass extinctions, and life is still here.)

But it will not come to that.

Here's why:

2.

We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of warming.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Say it with me. We're going to get there.

[mariacallous]

In Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel The Dark Forest—part of the popular Three-Body Problem series recently serialized by Netflix—humanity is faced with the prospect of an alien invasion. The extraterrestrials are on their way to conquer Earth but are still light years away; humanity has hundreds of years to prepare for their hostile arrival.

Amid a need to bolster defense spending globally and, crucially, to foster innovation across the entire world, representatives of the global south make a proposal at the United Nations. Developing countries demand a universal waiver of intellectual property protections on inventions relevant to defense to enable them to develop their own technologies and contribute to planetary fortification. In Liu’s story, the global south’s call meets staunch opposition from wealthier states, which veto the proposal. Although set in an imagined future, Liu’s point resonates clearly in our own time.

The most recent parallel is the global vaccine hoarding that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the height of the emergency, rich countries bought up and hoarded COVID-19 vaccine supplies, which left many developing countries unable to obtain sufficient vaccines during 2021-22. Even when they arrived, donations of leftover doses from high-income countries were often too close to their expiration dates for developing countries to actually use them.

Global south states sought to build up their own secure vaccine production capacity but were stymied. Critically, vaccine manufacturers, such as Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, refused to share IP-protected technology with World Health Organization (WHO) initiatives, such as C-TAP and the mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub, that were attempting to create a network of distributed vaccine production. It is estimated that such hoarding cost more than 1 million lives in developing states.

Remarkably, the global south saw this coming. Even before a single COVID-19 vaccine had been administered, developing countries accurately anticipated that they would be left at the back of the line for supplies. Burned by the experience of HIV/AIDS medicine shortages in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the global south predicted similar inequities occurring during the COVID-19 crisis—and they tried to act to prevent this.

In October 2020, this foresight motivated developing countries, led by South Africa and India at the World Trade Organization (WTO), to propose an international waiver of IP protections—known as a TRIPS waiver—on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and other health technologies. Much as in Liu’s story, the global north firmly rejected the proposal, leading to a delayed and watered-down WTO decision in June 2022 that I, and other academic experts, argued was too little, too late.

Crucially, we can observe the same pattern emerging yet again in the current negotiations over the WHO Pandemic Accord. Just like Liu’s vision of humanity preparing for an inevitable alien invasion but unwilling to share technologies globally, the world remains stuck in a doom loop. Another pandemic is foreseeable. A new treaty could provide a way for the international community to learn the lessons of COVID-19 and boost pandemic preparedness. Yet the world is making the same mistakes all over again.

Given the failures of the WTO process, experienced commentators such as Ellen ‘t Hoen anticipated that shifting the debate to WHO could help ensure that similar inequalities do not arise during the next pandemic. Many hoped that WHO, with its overriding focus on global health, would be a more receptive forum to the global south’s equity concerns than the WTO, which prioritizes IP via TRIPS, one of its foundational 1995 agreements.

However, thus far, the negotiations have been hampered by the same issue that blighted the WTO TRIPS waiver process: Rich states are unwilling to agree to any potential pandemic-related limitation of international IP rights or to expand IP flexibilities to include nonvoluntary options such as a mechanism for the compulsory licensing of trade secrets on pharmaceutical manufacturing processes needed for scaling up production of pandemic products.

Broadly speaking, developing countries want terms that would mandate technology transfer of key health technologies, such as vaccines, to the global south. Rich countries decry this suggestion, claiming it could undermine IP rights.

Hence, wealthy nations are balking at the use of progressive language on the compulsory use of IP in Article 11 of the draft accord. Instead, the U.S. government emphasizes supporting voluntary agreements—without acknowledging that the voluntary systems, including COVAX, failed to provide for the needs of citizens in many global south countries during the COVID-19 era.

In these negotiations, several key parties, such as the European Union and the United Kingdom, argue that a WHO treaty cannot deal with IP issues because that would equate to trespassing on rules that the WTO created. This back-and-forth between the WTO and WHO reflects an asymmetric power game that the global south is not well placed to win.

With no movement on IP, developing countries seem less willing to agree on a rare point of leverage, namely, the terms of Article 12, which addresses pathogen access and benefit-sharing. Put simply, developing countries are concerned that if they agree to terms on restriction-free sharing of pathogens with pandemic potential, without reciprocal guarantees of technology-sharing and health product distribution, they will be left at the back of the line again in the next pandemic.

Wealthy countries may be succeeding at reducing this leverage; recent news reports suggest that detailed provisions on pathogen-sharing may be shifted to a separate instrument.

It seems that for rich states, property is sacrosanct; global health is not. Yet, rather than property, it is worth recalling that patents were originally considered to be a form of state-granted privilege. In the 19th century, industrial states viewed IP not as an instrument of free trade but rather as a form of trade protectionism.

This idea of IP as protectionist privilege remains a more accurate description of what global IP law is intended to achieve. Much as in Liu’s novel, the stark reality is that there is no circumstance—not a new pandemic, not even an alien invasion—in which the global north would be willing to give up its protectionist privileges by sharing its technology with the global south.

With the WTO in decline and the WHO multilateral process in trouble, the global south may have to examine alternative options for building up pandemic preparedness. Intriguingly, Netflix’s 3 Body Problem envisages this. Unlike in the book, on TV the U.N. resolution for open technology-sharing is never even proposed.

Instead, a Mexican national who happens to be the chief scientific officer of a cutting-edge nanotech company becomes frustrated by Western corporate-military obstructionism and decides to upload all her London-based employer’s source code and trade secrets to open-source platforms with the aim of assisting developing countries to produce the technology. She even includes a downloadable guide on how to copy the functionality of the technology while avoiding IP infringement.

This fictional feint away from the multilateral forum and toward individual decision-making parallels real-world moves toward open-source biotech. This approach has been pioneered by Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi of Baylor University, who created the patent-free COVID-19 vaccine Corbevax. They successfully transferred the vaccine technology openly to producers in Botswana and India. Meanwhile, the WHO mRNA hub at Afrigen in South Africa led by Petro Terblanche is encouraging open south-south collaboration on new vaccine technologies.

If the Pandemic Accord negotiations falter before the World Health Assembly begins on May 27 or they fail to produce a just treaty, efforts such as these will take on even greater importance. An inequitable Pandemic Accord will signal that Liu was right: The global north will continue to hoard technologies even in the face of looming Armageddon, and south-south collaboration on producing health technologies may be the only way forward for enhancing global pandemic preparedness.

[inklings-challenge]

Team Lewis 2023

Announcing the 2023 Inklings Challenge team assignments!

Members of Team Lewis are challenged to write a science fiction or fantasy story within the Christian worldview that fits into one of these two genres:

Portal Fantasy: Stories where someone from the real world explores a new world

Space Travel: Stories about traveling through space or exploring other planets

These genres are open to interpretation, and creativity is encouraged. You can use either or both of the prompts within your story, or if you’re feeling ambitious, you can write multiple stories.

Members of Team Lewis are also asked to use at least one of the following seven Christian themes to inspire some part of their story.

Feed the hungry

Give drink to the thirsty

Clothe the naked

Shelter the homeless

Visit the sick

Visit the imprisoned

Bury the dead

Writers are challenged to complete and post their story to a tumblr blog by October 21, 2022, though they are encouraged to post earlier if they finish their story before that date. There is no maximum or minimum word limit. Writers who have not completed their stories before the deadline are encouraged to post whatever they have written by October 21st and post the remainder at a later date.

Posting the Stories

All stories will be reblogged and archived on the main Inklings Challenge blog. To assist with organization, writers should tag their posts as follows:

Mention the main Challenge blog @inklings-challenge somewhere within the body of the post (which will hopefully alert the Challenge blog).

Tag the story #inklingschallenge, to ensure it shows up in the Challenge tag, and make it more likely that the Challenge blog will find it.

Tag the team that the author is writing for: #team lewis, #team tolkien, or #team chesterton. 

Tag the genre the story falls under: #genre: portal fantasy, #genre: space travel, #genre: secondary world, #genre: time travel, #genre: intrusive fantasy, #genre: adventure

Tag any themes that were used within the story: #theme: food, #theme: drink, #theme: clothing, #theme: shelter, #theme: visit the sick, #theme: visit the imprisoned, #theme: burial

Tag the completion status of the story: #story: complete or #story: unfinished

Team Members

The writers assigned to Team Lewis are:

@aparticularbandit

@ashknife

@batmantaking-hobbits2gallifrey

@butterflies-and-bumble-bees

@bytes-and-blessings

@casa-anachar

@confetti-cat

@cuppatealove

@cygnascrimbles

@dimsilver

@f1ve-more-minutes

@freenarnian

@glassheadcanon

@heniareth

@incomingalbatross

@kanerallels

@ladygobpire

@ladyphlogiston

@larissa-the-scribe

@lemonduckisnowawake

@lydia-hosek

@madamescarlette

@mademoiseli

@magpie-trove

@mels-library

@mrgartist

@muse-write

@phoebeamorryce

@poetry-vs-depression

@rockinlibrarian

@rosesnvines

@saxifrage-wreath

@secret--psalms--saturn

@secretariatess

@swinging-stars-from-satellites

@thatsastepladder

@thebirdandhersong

@west-toasty

@wildlyironicbee

Writing resources, including the Challenge overview, FAQ, writing prompts, and discussions of the genres are available at the Inklings Challenge Directory. Any writers with further questions can contact the Inklings Challenge blog for guidance.

Welcome to the Inklings Challenge, everyone! Now go forth and create!

[beardedmrbean]

Jan. 3 (UPI) -- A string of announcements about big investments in nuclear energy production signal a revival for the industry that already produces about 20% of U.S. electricity.

Google, Microsoft and Amazon are among the technology companies looking to nuclear power to produce energy with a smaller carbon footprint. Environmental organizations remain skeptical, if not outright opposed to the use of nuclear energy.

Disasters at nuclear plants in Chernobyl in 1986 and the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan in 2011 play a large role in the minds of opponents.

"Anyone who thinks the public perception is overwhelmingly pro-nuclear is probably kidding themselves," Dr. Lane Carasik, assistant professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, told UPI. "A lot of work needs to continue to be done by organizations to make sure the public is appropriately informed about the benefits and dangers of nuclear power. There are both."

The benefits touted by companies making the investments and the U.S. government center around reducing carbon emissions. This goal has been a crucial point of emphasis for the Biden administration in the face of increasingly destructive and frequent extreme weather events around the globe.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced in October it is opening applications for $900 million in funding to build small modular nuclear reactors. The program is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that passed in 2021.

"Revitalizing America's nuclear sector is key to adding more carbon free energy to the grid and meeting the needs of our growing economy -- from A.I. and data centers to manufacturing and healthcare," Jennifer M. Granholm, U.S. secretary of energy, said in a statement.

Earlier in the fall, the Biden administration announced the approval of a $1.52 billion loan to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in Covert Township, Mich. It would be the first restart of a nuclear plant once believed to be permanently out of commission in U.S. history.

Carasik said he is not surprised that the government is playing a role in revitalizing the nuclear energy industry. Along with the need for a diverse slate of energy sources, he said it is imperative that the United States nurture the field of nuclear science or risk losing experts to other countries.

"If we do not train in nuclear science-adjacent fields, we could lose them potentially to other countries and potentially to adversarial countries," Carasik said.

Support for nuclear energy has been burgeoning in Michigan even prior to the announcement.

A bipartisan, bicameral caucus was formed in the state legislature. The state has agreed to put $300 million toward the Palisades restart. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have also called it a positive development.

Holtec International, the company that purchased the Palisades plant in 2022, has agreed to sell a portion of the energy it produces to Hoosier Energy in Indiana.

The plant is capable of producing 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 800,000 homes. More capacity may be coming as Holtec International is developing two small modular reactors to be built near the Palisades plant capable of producing 300 megawatts each.

That additional energy will be needed as Microsoft and telecommunications company Switch eye building new data centers in western Michigan, according to Ed Rivet, executive director of the Michigan Conservative Energy Forum.

Existing data centers consume about 4% of all electricity generated in the United States. That need is expected to more than double by 2030 as more data centers are constructed, according to the Department of Energy.

"It's pretty shattering from a paradigm sense, seeing companies like Google (request for proposal) to the private sector 'Will you build a nuclear plant next to our data center?'" Rivet said.

The investments from the tech industry play a large role in the recent nuclear resurgence. Energy hungry data centers will require a reliable energy source. Rivet's organization calls for an "all of the above" approach to powering the nation's grid, including wind and solar energy. He believes nuclear energy must be part of that equation as well.

Unlike wind and solar, nuclear energy is produced on a constant basis regardless of the elements. Nuclear energy has no carbon footprint and its physical footprint -- the land a nuclear plant sits on -- is drastically smaller than the land covered by solar panels to produce the same amount of energy.

Christopher Ortiz, senior communications specialist with Kairos Power, told UPI that energy density is an attractive feature of nuclear reactor technology.

"Kairos Power's advanced reactor technology offers incredible energy density," Ortiz said. "One golf-ball-sized fuel pebble can produce the same amount of energy as burning four tons of coal."

Google signed an agreement to buy nuclear energy produced by Kairos Power's small modular reactors to support the needs of its artificial intelligence systems.

"This landmark announcement will accelerate the transition to clean energy as Google and Kairos Power look to add 500 (megawatts) of new 24/7 carbon-free power to U.S. electricity grids," Michael Terrell, Google senior director of energy and climate, said in a statement.

The projects in this agreement are slated to be finished and in operation across multiple plants by 2035.

Kairos Power, based in California, was founded in 2016 and employs more than 480 people. The company has hired more than 130 employees at its plant in Albuquerque, N.M., with an average salary of more than $100,000. It will also create more than 55 "high-skilled, high-paying" jobs to build, operate and decommission the Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor near Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Construction on the Hermes reactor began in July. It will be used to develop the company's commercial advanced nuclear reactor technology.

Nuclear energy accounts for about 50% of U.S. clean energy production, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Hermes reactor is projected to be complete in 2027.

The Palisades Nuclear Plant is not the only U.S. plant set to be brought back online. Microsoft agreed to a deal with Constellation, a Baltimore based energy company, to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Londonderry Township, Pa.

The plant will produce 835 megawatts of electricity and create an estimated 3,400 jobs. It was shut down in 2019.

Three Mile Island Unit 2 was the site of a meltdown in 1979, leading to the evacuation of thousands of people. Like Chernobyl and Fukushima, Three Mile Island evokes memories of what can go wrong with nuclear power.

Dr. Arthur Motta of the Ken and Mary Alice Lindquist Department of Nuclear Engineering at Penn State told UPI that the Three Mile Island meltdown brought about positive changes to the industry. Better reporting and sharing of information about malfunctions among plants internationally has increased safety and reliability.

The challenge nuclear energy faces in the realm of public perception is cutting through the fear that has been harnessed in decades of pop culture depictions of nuclear disasters. Godzilla, the Fallout video game series and Homer Simpson bumbling around the Springfield power plant have fed into misconceptions about the industry, Motta said.

"It strikes something in the human psyche that makes people afraid," Motta said. "People evaluate risk based on their familiarity. Nuclear is the unknowable. People don't know about it."

Critics of nuclear energy have raised questions about waste disposal. Nuclear waste looks far different from the barrels filled with glowing green liquid that create three-eyed fish on The Simpsons. Instead, most waste comes in the form of nuclear fuel rods. They are highly radioactive but are not voluminous.

Motta explains that the total volume of the nuclear waste produced in the United States in the last 40 years could be stacked 2 to 3 meters high across one football field. There is about 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear waste in the country, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The Department of Energy is responsible for disposing high-level waste -- like the nuclear fuel rods -- in a yet-to-be-built repository.

In 1987, the government designated the Yucca Mountain in Nevada to be the site of a waste repository. However, the government turned away from nuclear energy through the Obama administration while lawmakers came to an impasse over next steps. The Obama administration also began to explore alternatives to the Yucca Mountain.

Currently nuclear waste remains stored in spent fuel pools -- large, reinforced concrete casks lined with steel. The fuel is submerged in 40 feet of water and cooled for five years or more before being moved to a dry cask to be stored for up to 40 more years.

This method of storage is considered temporary by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The radioactivity of nuclear waste decays over time. After 40 years, the radioactivity of a spent fuel rod is about one-thousandth of what it was when it was first placed in storage, according to the World Nuclear Association.

Motta said the chief concern about storage of waste among skeptics is that radiation will make its way into the water table due to the containment casks corroding and the waste dissolving.

"The water table goes very deep. You bury the waste 5,000 feet and you're still well above the water table," he said. "There is no way for the waste to be released, especially because of the corrosion-resistant canisters and drip shields. Really, it's a question of if you believe the disposal proceeding can be done safely and I think it can."