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The scientific evidence for microaggressions is weak and we should drop the term, argues review author

Alex Fradera
British Psychological Society
Mon, 20 Mar 2017 15:27 UTC
Hasidm walking past swastikas

Items filed as microassaults – supposedly one form of microaggression – include racial slurs and swastika graffiti.
Racism and prejudice are sometimes blatant, but often manifest in subtle ways. The current emblem of these subtle slights is the "microaggression", a concept that has generated a large programme of research and launched itself into the popular consciousness - prompting last month's decision by Merriam-Webster to add it to their dictionary. However, a new review in Perspectives on Psychological Science by Scott Lilienfeld of Emory University argues that core empirical and conceptual questions about microaggressions remain unaddressed, meaning the struggle against them takes place on a confusing battlefield, one where it's hard to tell between friend and foe.

So what exactly is a microaggression? First coined in the 1970s but rejuvenated in 2007 in a paper in the American Psychologist by Derald Wing Sue and colleagues, it originally referred only to racism but has expanded to a range of commonplace slights or hostility towards an oppressed group. The definition includes microinvalidations, such as being told that a negative interaction couldn't have been due to racist motives, and microinsults, such as a teacher avoiding calling on you in class due to your gender, as well as a third class of microassaults. The prototypical microaggression hides the offence within apparently innocent words or actions, which places those on the receiving end into a catch-22: swallow the indignity, or respond and risk being accused of overreaction?

Comment:
Questioning the consensus: Maybe we can't really measure "implicit bias"

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Blue Planet

Researchers have found 4.2bn-year-old remnants of Earth's original crust in Canada


RT
Mon, 20 Mar 2017 14:20 UTC
ancient crust found along the eastern shores of the Hudson Bay
© Rick Carlson, DTM.
The ancient crust found along the eastern shores of the Hudson Bay.
A team of US and Canadian researchers has found traces of Earth's original crust dating back at least 4.2 billion years which could help explain a huge gap in our planet's geological evolution.

The Earth's crust is a 10-40km (6-25 miles) deep solid layer which sits on top of the viscous mantle and molten core. The current crust - on which all of our cities, countries, continents and oceans rest - isn't the planet's first.

Billions of years ago, when Earth was in its infancy, a more ancient crust covered the planet. That crust melted back into the planet's interior long ago due to plate tectonics, or was transformed into new rocks.

The oldest portions of the current crust have been dated as 2.7 billion years old. Given that scientists believe the Earth is more than 4.5 billion years old, this leaves a huge gap between the birth of the planet and the formation of its cover.
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Brain

Understanding the connection between synesthesia and absolute pitch

Catherine Offord
The Scientist
Wed, 01 Mar 2017 21:09 UTC
Researchers investigate the unusual association of musical sounds with tastes or colors through the lens of another perceptual quirk.

piano cartoon
© Andrzej Krauze
A few years ago, UK composer and technology reporter LJ Rich participated in a music technology competition as part of a project with the BBC. The 24-hour event brought together various musicians, and entailed staying awake into the wee hours trying to solve technical problems related to music. Late into the night, during a break from work, Rich thought of a way to keep people's spirits up.

"At about four in the morning, I remember playing different tastes to people on a piano in the room we were working in," she says. For instance, "to great amusement, during breakfast I played people the taste of eggs."

Comment: Tasty letters? Sensory connections spill over in synesthesia

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Bug

Mini-nukes, insect-bot weapons and the future of warfare

Jeff Daniels
CNBC
Fri, 17 Mar 2017 14:27 UTC
lab research
© Morsa Images | Getty Images
Several countries are developing nanoweapons that could unleash attacks using mini-nuclear bombs and insect-like lethal robots.

While it may be the stuff of science fiction today, the advancement of nanotechnology in the coming years will make it a bigger threat to humanity than conventional nuclear weapons, according to an expert. The U.S., Russia and China are believed to be investing billions on nanoweapons research.

"Nanobots are the real concern about wiping out humanity because they can be weapons of mass destruction," said Louis Del Monte, a Minnesota-based physicist and futurist. He's the author of a just released book entitled "Nanoweapons: A Growing Threat To Humanity."

One unsettling prediction Del Monte's made is that terrorists could get their hands on nanoweapons as early as the late 2020s through black market sources.
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Monkey Wrench

Rewriting life: New techniques being used to produce our food or shape the environment raise serious regulatory questions

Emily Mullin
technologyreview.com
Fri, 17 Mar 2017 14:01 UTC
CRISPR
© Nature.com
Lab-made meat. Hornless cattle. Designer bacteria. Dozens of futuristic-sounding products are being developed using new tools like CRISPR and synthetic biology. As companies seek to commercialize more of these products, one big question lingers: Who will regulate them?

A new report issued by the National Academy of Sciences says U.S. regulatory agencies need to prepare for new plants, animals, and microbes that will be hitting the market in the next five to 10 years. The new products, the report says, could overwhelm regulatory agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration.

"All of these products have the potential to be beneficial, but the question to me is, how do they compare to the alternative?" says Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee that prepared the report.

Comment: God's red pencil? CRISPR and the myths of precise genome editing
Why is this discussion of precision important? Because for the last seventy years all chemical and biological technologies, from genetic engineering to pesticides, have been built on a myth of precision and specificity. They have all been adopted under the pretense that they would function without side effects or unexpected complications. Yet the extraordinary disasters and repercussions of DDT, leaded paint, agent orange, atrazine, C8, asbestos, chlordane, PCBs, and so on, when all is said and done, have been stories of the steady unraveling of a founding myth of precision and specificity.

Nevertheless, with the help of industry propagandists, their friends in the media, even the United Nations, we are once again being preached the gospel of precision. But no matter how you look at it, precision is a fable and should be treated as such.

The issues of CRISPR and other related new "genome editing" biotechnologies are the subject of intense activity behind the scenes. The US Department of Agriculture has just explained that it will not be regulating organisms whose genomes have been edited since it doesn't consider them to be GMOs at all. The EU was about to call them GMOs but the US has caused them to blink, meanwhile the US is in the process of revisiting its GMO regulatory environment entirely. Will future safety regulations of GMOs be based on a schoolboy version of genetics and an interpretation of genome editing crafted in a corporate public relations department? If history is any guide it will.


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Chalkboard

Battle lasers! US, Russia, and China develop brighter beams for blasting enemies


Sputnik
Sun, 19 Mar 2017 12:53 UTC
US laser weapon
© REUTERS/ John Williams/U.S. Navy
2017 has already seen a spate of bold statements by Russia and US officials about the development and testing of laser weapons in their countries; earlier this week, the US announced that it is preparing to test a new high-powered laser weapon which can be mounted on army trucks.2017 has already seen a spate of bold statements by Russia and US officials about the development and testing of laser weapons in their countries; earlier this week, the US announced that it is preparing to test a new high-powered laser weapon which can be mounted on army trucks.

On March 16, Lockheed Martin said that its new solid-state fiber laser can slice through targets with a record-breaking 58 kilowatts of direct power, and that in a matter of months it will deliver its High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck (HELMTT) to the US Army for testing.
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Archaeology

Excavation of 14,000-yo mammoth reveals new information on ancient humans


RT
Sun, 19 Mar 2017 12:26 UTC
excavation of an enormous wooly mammoth
© INAH TV / YouTube
The excavation of an enormous wooly mammoth, which lived between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago, may provide evidence that ancient humans lived in Mexico at the time.

Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology (INAH) say the bones of the prehistoric mammoth were discovered by chance in December 2015, during construction work near the town of Tultepec, approximately 40km north of Mexico City.

Since the discovery, archaeologists have been painstakingly preserving the fossilized bones. Crucially, the mammoth was found cut up into pieces, which may indicate that prehistoric humans lived in Mexico 14,000 years ago.
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Galaxy

Thunderbolts Space News: Another "Impossible" Neutron Star

Thunderbolts Project
YouTube
Sat, 18 Mar 2017 07:13 UTC
Another 'impossible' neutron star
© YouTube/Thunderbolts Project (screen capture)
What is a so-called neutron star? Scientists tell us that the material left over from a supernova explosion of a massive star collapses gravitationally, forming an incredibly small yet massively dense star mostly composed of tightly packed neutrons. A rotating neutron star is said to emit regular pulses of radio waves and other sources of radiation, called pulsars.

But the hypothesis of the neutron star was not a predictive theory that was composed and then verified through observation — rather, it was invented in the 1960's, after the completely unexpected discovery of radio pulses from the constellation Vulpecula. Today, we report on the latest in a string of "baffling" discoveries that in effect falsify the neutron star hypothesis, and we explore theoretical alternatives in the Electric Universe and plasma cosmology.

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2 + 2 = 4

Birth may not be a major microbe delivery event for babies

Laura Sanders
Science News
Wed, 15 Feb 2017 19:47 UTC
Study finds no big differences in microbiomes of babies born vaginally or by C-section

newborn baby
© PHDG/istockphoto
Whether a baby is born vaginally or by C-section may not be a major determinant for babies’ microbiomes, a new study suggests.
Babies are born germy, and that's a good thing. Our microbiomes — the microbes that live on and in us — are gaining cred as tiny but powerful keepers of our health.

As microbes gain scientific stature, some scientists are trying to answer questions about how and when those germs first show up on babies. Birth itself may be an important microbe-delivery event, some researchers suspect. A trip through the birth canal can coat a baby with bacteria from his mother. A C-section, some evidence suggests, might introduce different bacteria, at least right after birth.
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Mars

NASA unveils incredible high-def image of layered Martian crater


RT
Sat, 18 Mar 2017 18:56 UTC
Martian valley
© NASA
NASA has released an incredible high-definition image of the intricate layers of a Martian valley, providing further evidence of a once-flooded red planet.

Uzboi Vallis is situated in the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle (MC-19) region on Mars, believed to have been formed by water that once existed on the planet.

The dramatic layers of rust-hued rock likely formed when the valley's drainage was blocked by a large impact that hollowed out the planet's Holden Crater.
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