Latest news with #CharlotteCAUSIT
Japan Today
4 days ago
- Science
- Japan Today
Auction of world's largest Mars meteorite sparks ownership debate
By Charlotte CAUSIT The 54-pound Martian meteorite NWA 16788, the largest known piece of Mars ever discovered on Earth, was sold for a record $5.3 million at Sotheby's New York The recent auction of a Martian meteorite -- for a record-grabbing $5.3 million at Sotheby's New York -- has sparked questions over its provenance and renewed debate over who gets to claim rocks fallen from the heavens. The hefty 54-pound (25-kilogram) stone is the largest Martian meteorite ever discovered on Earth, according to its Sotheby's listing, and was found in November 2023 in the vast Saharan desert in Niger. The government of Niger has announced that it will open an investigation following the auction, saying it appears to "have all the characteristics of illicit international trafficking." The government suspended exports of precious stones and meteorites until further notice. Sotheby's has rejected the accusations, insisting that the meteorite was "was exported from Niger and transported in line with all relevant international procedure." In light of the controversy, however, a review of the case is underway, a Sotheby's spokesperson told AFP. "The stone journeyed 140 million miles through space, and hurtled through Earth's atmosphere before crashing in the Sahara Desert," the Sotheby's listing said. Following its discovery, the jagged, ochre-colored stone was then sold to an international dealer, briefly exhibited in Italy, and eventually ended up in the auction catalog in New York. For American paleontologist Paul Sereno, who has worked closely with Niger's authorities for years, all signs suggest that the stone left the country "illicitly." "Everybody's anonymous -- from the person who found it, the dealers, the guy who bought it, everybody's anonymous," he told AFP, making no secret of his frustration. "If they had put on baseball gloves and caught the meteorite as was hurtling towards Earth before it landed in any country, they could claim it... but I'm sorry, it landed there. It belongs to Niger," he said. Laws governing the ownership of meteorites vary based on their point of impact. In the United States, for example, if a rock falls on private land, the property owners have ownership rights. In Niger, however, a law governs "national cultural patrimony," which includes rare mineralogical specimens, according to Matthieu Gounelle, a professor at France's National History Museum, and his father Max Gounelle, a French university professor. Both are specialists in regulations governing the collection and sale of meteorites. "In our opinion, there is no doubt that meteorites should be included among the rare mineralogical specimens" protected by Nigerien law, they told AFP. Beyond the legal battle and the possible involvement of a trafficking network, the sale of the meteorite also raises science ethics questions. The rock, named NWA 16788, has unique scientific research value. Much larger than other Martian meteorites that have been recorded to date, it offers a unique insight into the geological history of the Red Planet. Like other Martian meteorites, it is believed to have been ejected into space when an asteroid slammed into Mars. "This is nature's heritage. In many ways, it's world heritage, and it's telling us things about the cosmos. We should respect it," Sereno said. "It's not something to my mind that should be auctioned up to potentially disappear into someone's mantle." © 2025 AFP
Japan Today
01-07-2025
- Health
- Japan Today
Shock study: Mild electric stimulation boosts math ability
Findings from the study could help make society more intellectually equitable, its authors argue By Charlotte CAUSIT Struggle with math? A gentle jolt to the brain might help. A new study published Tuesday in PLOS Biology suggests that mild electrical stimulation can boost arithmetic performance -- and offers fresh insight into the brain mechanisms behind mathematical ability, along with a potential way to optimize learning. The findings could eventually help narrow cognitive gaps and help build a more intellectually equitable society, the authors argue. "Different people have different brains, and their brains control a lot in their life," said Roi Cohen Kadosh, a neuroscientist at the University of Surrey who led the research. "We think about the environment -- if you go to the right school, if you have the right teacher -- but it's also our biology." Cohen Kadosh and colleagues recruited 72 University of Oxford students, scanning their brains to measure connectivity between three key regions. Participants then tackled math problems that required either calculating answers or recalling memorized solutions. They found that stronger connections between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which governs executive function, and the posterior parietal cortex, involved in memory, predicted better calculation performance. When the researchers applied a painless form of brain stimulation using electrode-fitted caps -- a technique known as transcranial random noise stimulation -- the low performers saw their scores jump by 25–29 percent. The team believes the stimulation works by enhancing the excitability of neurons and interacting with GABA, a brain chemical that inhibits excessive activity -- effectively compensating for weak neural connectivity in some participants. In fact, the stimulation helped underperformers reach or even surpass the scores of peers with naturally stronger brain wiring. But those who already performed well saw no benefit. "Some people struggle with things, and if we can help their brain to fulfill their potential, we open them a lot of opportunities that otherwise would be closed," said Cohen Kadosh, calling it an "exciting time" for the field of brain stimulation research. Still, he flagged a key ethical concern: the risk that such technologies could become more available to those with financial means, widening -- rather than closing -- access gaps. He also urged the public not to try this at home. "Some people struggle with learning, and if our research proves successful beyond the lab, we could help them fulfil their ambitions and unlock opportunities that might otherwise remain out of reach." © 2025 AFP
Japan Today
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
Scientists sound alarm as Trump reshapes U.S. research landscape
By Charlotte CAUSIT A protest against massive cuts in federal research funding takes place on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles on April 8, 2025 From cancer cures to climate change, President Donald Trump's administration has upended the American research landscape, threatening the United States' standing as a global science leader and sowing fear over jobs and funding. Mass layoffs at renowned federal agencies. Billions in research grants slashed. Open threats against universities. Bans on words linked to gender and human-caused global warming — all within the first 100 days. "It's just colossal," Paul Edwards, who leads a department at Stanford University focused on the interaction between society and science, told AFP. "I have not seen anything like this ever in the United States in my 40-year career." The sentiment is widely shared across the scientific and academic community. At the end of March, more than 1,900 leading elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, sounded an SOS in an open statement, warning that using financial threats to control which studies are funded or published amounted to censorship and undermines science's core mission: the quest for truth. "The nation's scientific enterprise is being decimated," they wrote, calling on the administration "to cease its wholesale assault" on U.S .science and urging members of the public to join them. Even during Trump's first term, the scientific community had warned of an impending assault on science, but by all accounts, today's actions are far more sweeping. "This is definitely bigger, more coordinated," said Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who described the administration as operating straight from the Project 2025 playbook. That ultra-conservative blueprint — closely followed by the Republican billionaire since returning to power — calls for restructuring or dismantling key scientific and academic institutions, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which it accuses of promoting "climate alarmism." Trump's officials have echoed these views, including Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has tapped into public distrust of science, amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result, says Sheila Jasanoff, a professor at Harvard, is a breakdown of the tacit contract that once bound the state to the production of knowledge. Harvard, now a primary target in Trump's campaign against academia, has faced frozen grants, threats to its tax-exempt status, and potential limits on enrolling international students —- moves framed as combating antisemitism and "woke" ideology, but widely viewed as political overreach. "The rage against science, to me, is most reminiscent of a fundamentalist religious rage," Jasanoff told AFP. Generational damage Faced with this shift, a growing number of researchers are considering leaving the United States -- a potential brain drain from which other countries hope to benefit by opening the doors of their universities. In France, lawmakers have introduced a bill to create a special status for "scientific refugees." Some will leave, but many may simply give up, warns Daniel Sandweiss, a climate science professor at the University of Maine, who fears the loss of an entire generation of rising talent. "It's the rising students, the superstars who are just beginning to come up," he said, "and we're going to be missing a whole bunch of them." Many US industries — including pharmaceuticals — depend on this talent to drive innovation. But now, said Jones, "there's a real danger they'll fill those gaps with junk science and discredited researchers." One such figure is David Geier, an anti-vaccine activist previously found to have practiced medicine without a license, who has been appointed by Kennedy to study the debunked link between vaccines and autism -- a move critics say guarantees a biased result. "The level of disinformation and confusion this administration is creating will take years — potentially generations — to undo," said Jones. © 2025 AFP
