Latest news with #Dore
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘We are getting cut off at the knees': Trump's cuts hit US archaeologists
Here's one hazard the would-be Indiana Joneses of U.S. archaeology probably didn't see coming: Plummeting federal support that's canceled field work, shelved ongoing projects and gutted the agencies that support such efforts. One place it's been the most visible? Last month's annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, a 7,000-member group, whose conclave usually boasts more than 1,000 presentations, according to The New York Times. But a 'considerable number' of government archaeologists skipped the meeting, the newspaper reported, with some putting it down to the fact that the presentations touched on matters concerning diversity, equity and inclusion. The Republican Trump administration has spent its first months trying to purge DEI, as it's known, from the federal bureaucracy. 'It is ironic that on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the United States, we are choosing to sacrifice our history and the nonrenewable archaeological sites that provide that history,' Christopher Dore, the society's president, said of the lost opportunities. Dore told The Times that he fears rollbacks in staffing will hurt efforts to supervise and control public use of federal areas. Looting, visitor damage, and even cattle grazing pose threats to such sensitive sites as tribal lands, he said. 'Archaeological resources are not renewable,' Dore told the Times. 'Unlike some natural resources, they don't grow back. Once destroyed, sites and the information they hold are gone forever.' While the exact total of the cuts has yet to be worked out, experts told The Times they will hurt at a time when "fresh investment and support" are badly needed. "We are getting cut off at the knees,' William Taylor, the curator of archaeology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, told the newspaper. One such example: In January, under the former Biden administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $350,000 grant to Archeaeology Southwest, a nonprofit group in Tuscon, Arizona. Six weeks later, the new Trump administration clawed back the cash earmarked for an effort to document plant and animal species in the Sonoran Desert — especially those that are important to local tribes. The now Trump controlled agency justified the action, arguing that it ''no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities.' It marked the first time in the nonprofit's 35-year history that such an action had taken place, according to The Times. 'The real termination is of trust in the federal government to follow its own laws and regulations,' Steve Nash, the organization's president and chief executive, told The Times. Veterans cemetery in Agawam draws families honoring Memorial Day tradition Attendee bashes 'Walmart steak' served at Trump's dinner for $Trump crypto holders World Affairs Council hosts expert on global trade Betting trends suggest grim political changes for Trump and MAGA in 2028 Mass. Rep. Trahan's 'Les Miz' moment on Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' | Bay State Briefing Read the original article on MassLive.
New York Times
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Lose Yourself in Rich, Evocative New Historical Fiction
The Cannibal Owl In Comanche folklore, the Mupitsi is a terrifying giant bird that swoops through the night, looking for naughty children to devour. But in the powerful novella THE CANNIBAL OWL (Belle Point Press, 66 pp., paperback, $15.95), it becomes a personal totem for Levi English, an 11-year-old boy who runs away from a frontier settlement in the spring of 1828. Adopted by one of the leaders of a Comanche band, he is tolerated, if not totally accepted, as he learns the ways of a world that will soon come in conflict with the white one in which he's known only violence and suffering. Inspired by the early experiences of a prominent 19th-century Texan, Gwyn's starkly poetic storytelling avoids romanticizing tribal life even as it depicts the deep bond that grows between the elderly Indian known as Two Wolf and the young man who's been renamed Goes Softly. So when the inevitable test of his loyalty arises, the series of choices he makes are even more affecting. 'I wanted to find my people,' he moans in the brutal aftermath, then realizes 'he'd spoken in Comanche and they'd just killed everyone who might have understood him.' Floreana The so-called Galápagos Affair piqued the curiosity of Raymond, whose novel FLOREANA (Little A, 271 pp., paperback, $16.99) invents a dramatic explanation for the still-unsolved deaths and disappearances that occurred on this small island in the southern Galápagos in the 1930s. Her tactic is to contrast the contemporary narrative of Mallory, a biologist trying to save the island's endangered penguins, with the testimony of Dore, a German woman who came to the island with her lover between the two world wars, hoping to create their own private paradise. The device that links these two is the anguished journal Mallory discovers hidden in a cave, a document in which Dore charts the arrival of a more conventional pioneer family as well as a sexually voracious baroness and her two attractive male companions. The mounting tension that engulfs the island is mirrored by that of the present-day research camp, where past liaisons and current secrets keep everyone on edge. As the action draws to a close, some of the revelations may strain credulity, but what remains most convincing is Raymond's vivid depiction of the island's flora and fauna. As for the interlopers, let's allow Dore to have the last word: 'Here we are, at the birthplace of Darwin's theory, and yet how little we humans have truly evolved.' Boy BOY (Morrow, 339 pp., $30) takes place in the final years of the Elizabethan age — when, as one of Galland's characters puts it, 'we have an ancient, heirless queen whose court is tearing itself apart.' Not exactly the best time for her title character, the real-life 'boy-player' of female roles in Shakespeare's company, to be aging out of his apprenticeship and seeking an aristocratic patron. Alexander 'Sander' Cooke has been feted for his androgynous beauty, but he knows that his primary asset is 'a whiff of celebrity.' This has brought him to the attention of Francis Bacon, the natural philosopher who advises the queen, as well as Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, a former favorite scheming to regain her favor. But will it also ensnare Sander in political wrangling that threatens to turn deadly? The answer could well depend on Joan Buckler, his childhood friend, who has all the intellectual equipment so obviously lacking in charming but feckless Sander. Insatiably curious, she has befriended London's best apothecaries and amateur botanists, not to mention the most experienced midwives and herbalists in Southwark. 'I don't know how to be a man,' Sander tells her early on. She'll wind up being his tutor in that department, and several others. The Case of the Missing Maid Harriet Morrow is resigned to 'a life of hiding in plain sight.' It's 1898, and while Chicago's Prescott Detective Agency may not be ready for a female junior field operative with certain sexual inclinations, its owner is willing to give a trial run to a maverick 21-year-old sporting sensible shoes and a bowler hat as she zips around on her prized Overman Victoria bicycle. In THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAID (Kensington, 310 pp., $27), Osler debuts a historical mystery series that celebrates both its closeted lesbian sleuth and the town where she hopes to make her career. Harriet's first case could be her last if she takes more than the week she's been given to locate the maid her boss's eccentric neighbor has reported AWOL. What at first seems like a harmless test gradually turns into a more dangerous adventure, taking Harriet from the mansions of the wealthy to gangster-infested pool halls on the Polish side of town and sleazy theaters featuring 'hoochie-coochie dancers,' even to a private club where Harriet feels delightfully at home. Unfortunately, someone may be sabotaging her investigation, a secret enemy who has even more to lose than she does.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Mapping the universe and space weather; 2 NASA satellites launch on big science mission
SPACE (KXAN) — NASA is creating a map of the universe. On Friday, two satellites will launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket: SPHEREx and PUNCH. The pair will help us create a panoramic map of the universe and monitor space weather. 'We started to work on SPHEREx twelve years ago. So it's a long time,' said Dr. Olivier Dore, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. SPHEREx, a.k.a the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, is designed to take a panoramic map of the stars. It captures images in 102 colors, allowing it to get an image in greater detail than previous satellites. 'We do that to get new insight about the origin of the universe, the new insight about origin of galaxies, and also new insight about the origin of life,' Dore said. Finding one of the key building blocks of life is key to SPHEREx's mission. That block: water. 'People might not appreciate the fact that water we have on Earth come from space. So it was acquitted by space, mostly through bombardment of asteroids and comets,' Dore said. SPHEREx will help track this water down. It will scan young solar systems and search for ice, the form water takes in space. It will measure this ice content to generate a universal water cycle. Unlike the James Webb Space Telescope, which can observe the distant corner of the universe in great detail, SPHEREx is designed to take a grand look at the night sky. 'It has less details, less sensitivity, but it has this big picture ability,' Dore said. SPHEREx will perform four mappings over its two-year mission. Each mapping takes six months. The other mission launching on Friday is called PUNCH, a.k.a. the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere. This satellite, made up of four smaller satellites, has the ability to observe our sun. 'PUNCH makes artificial eclipses all the time so that we can see that Corona as it turns into the solar wind and fills our solar system with material,' said Dr. Nicholeen Viall, a PUNCH mission scientist, in an interview released by NASA. By creating this artificial eclipse, the satellite can absorb solar winds in greater detail. This will give us a better understanding of space weather. Solar winds can impact electronics on Earth. They can also impact our magnetosphere, the magnetic barrier around the planet, and pose safety risks to astronauts. This year it is especially important to monitor the sun. Solar activity works in cycles and is currently near one of those peaks. PUNCH will help us monitor this activity more accurately. 'We'll be able to tell if they're coming towards the Earth or going away from the Earth or in some other direction in the solar system,' Viall said. According to Viall, these two missions will give us a better understanding of the 'big picture' of the universe. 'SPHEREx is exploring the big picture of the cosmos, and PUNCH is exploring the big picture of the sun and how it fills our solar system,' she said. SPHEREx and PUNCH will launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on Friday, February 28. The launch window begins at 9:09 p.m. CST. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Ammon
25-02-2025
- Science
- Ammon
NASA's SPHEREx space telescope to explore what happened right after the Big Bang
Ammon News - NASA is preparing to launch a megaphone-shaped observatory on a mission to better understand what happened immediately after the Big Bang that initiated the universe and to search the Milky Way for reservoirs of water, a crucial ingredient for life. The U.S. space agency's SPHEREx space telescope is tentatively scheduled to be launched on Friday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. SPHEREx - short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer - is looking to answer questions about the origin of the universe while mapping the distribution of galaxies. Closer to home - relatively speaking - SPHEREx will look within our galaxy for reservoirs of water frozen on the surface of interstellar dust grains in large clouds of gas and dust that give rise to stars and planets. The observatory during its planned two-year mission will collect data on more than 450 million galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way, as it explores the origins of the universe and the galaxies within it. It will create a three-dimensional map of the cosmos in 102 colors -individual wavelengths of light. The mission is intended to gain insight into a phenomenon called cosmic inflation, the rapid and exponential expansion of the universe from a single point in a fraction of a second after the Big Bang that occurred roughly 13.8 billion years ago. By way of comparison, Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. "We have pretty good evidence that inflation occurred, but the physics driving that event is really uncertain," said cosmologist Olivier Dore of Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a SPHEREx project scientist. "By mapping the distribution of galaxies over the whole sky, we can directly constrain unique properties of inflation. This is why we want to map the whole sky and why we need spectroscopy (studying objects based on color) to make the map 3D. The fact that we can connect these two things - the distribution of galaxies on large scales all the way to the physics of inflation - is very powerful and very mind-boggling and almost magical," Dore added. According to researchers in the U.S. - leaping rodents may hold the key to minimizing health risks while astronauts are on long voyages - like to the moon or Mars. Jim Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, called cosmic inflation "the consensus framework for explaining aspects of the universe that we observe on large scales." "It postulates that the universe expanded by a trillion-trillion-fold in a small fraction of a second after the Big Bang," Fanson said. SPHEREx is set to take pictures in every direction around Earth, splitting the light from billions of cosmic sources such as stars and galaxies into their component wavelengths to determine their composition and distance. Researchers also will measure the collective glow of light from the space between galaxies. In addition, SPHEREx will look for water and molecules including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide frozen on the surface of dust grains in molecular clouds, which are dense regions of gas and dust in interstellar space. Scientists believe that reservoirs of ice bound to dust grains in these clouds are where most of the universe's water forms and dwells. Being launched along with SPHEREx is a constellation of satellites for NASA's PUNCH mission to observe the sun's corona, the outermost layer of its atmosphere. The aim is to better understand the solar wind, the continuous flow of charged particles from the sun. "I think the beauty of astronomy is that every time we look at the sky in a new way or from a different angle, we discover new phenomena," Dore said. "And the fact is SPHEREx will look at the sky in totally new ways."
Reuters
25-02-2025
- Science
- Reuters
NASA's SPHEREx space telescope to explore what happened right after the Big Bang
WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - NASA is preparing to launch a megaphone-shaped observatory on a mission to better understand what happened immediately after the Big Bang that initiated the universe and to search the Milky Way for reservoirs of water, a crucial ingredient for life. The U.S. space agency's SPHEREx space telescope is tentatively scheduled to be launched on Friday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. SPHEREx - short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer - is looking to answer questions about the origin of the universe while mapping the distribution of galaxies. Closer to home - relatively speaking - SPHEREx will look within our galaxy for reservoirs of water frozen on the surface of interstellar dust grains in large clouds of gas and dust that give rise to stars and planets. The observatory during its planned two-year mission will collect data on more than 450 million galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way, as it explores the origins of the universe and the galaxies within it. It will create a three-dimensional map of the cosmos in 102 colors -individual wavelengths of light. The mission is intended to gain insight into a phenomenon called cosmic inflation, the rapid and exponential expansion of the universe from a single point in a fraction of a second after the Big Bang that occurred roughly 13.8 billion years ago. By way of comparison, Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. "We have pretty good evidence that inflation occurred, but the physics driving that event is really uncertain," said cosmologist Olivier Dore of Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a SPHEREx project scientist. "By mapping the distribution of galaxies over the whole sky, we can directly constrain unique properties of inflation. This is why we want to map the whole sky and why we need spectroscopy (studying objects based on color) to make the map 3D. The fact that we can connect these two things - the distribution of galaxies on large scales all the way to the physics of inflation - is very powerful and very mind-boggling and almost magical," Dore added. Jim Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, called cosmic inflation "the consensus framework for explaining aspects of the universe that we observe on large scales." "It postulates that the universe expanded by a trillion-trillion-fold in a small fraction of a second after the Big Bang," Fanson said. SPHEREx is set to take pictures in every direction around Earth, splitting the light from billions of cosmic sources such as stars and galaxies into their component wavelengths to determine their composition and distance. Researchers also will measure the collective glow of light from the space between galaxies. In addition, SPHEREx will look for water and molecules including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide frozen on the surface of dust grains in molecular clouds, which are dense regions of gas and dust in interstellar space. Scientists believe that reservoirs of ice bound to dust grains in these clouds are where most of the universe's water forms and dwells. Being launched along with SPHEREx is a constellation of satellites for NASA's PUNCH mission to observe the sun's corona, the outermost layer of its atmosphere. The aim is to better understand the solar wind, the continuous flow of charged particles from the sun. "I think the beauty of astronomy is that every time we look at the sky in a new way or from a different angle, we discover new phenomena," Dore said. "And the fact is SPHEREx will look at the sky in totally new ways." "It will be an unprecedented dataset to mine," Dore added, "and there is no doubt in my mind we will discover new cosmic phenomena."
