December 8, 2023 2 min read Increasingly frequent thunderstorms caused insurers to pay $60 billion in claims in 2023 By Thomas Frank & E&E News Lightning strikes over Albuquerque, New Mexico. CLIMATEWIRE | Despite a small number of weather catastrophes this year, property insurers are facing huge losses and weak finances, partly from climate change, according… Continue reading Thunderstorm Damage Keeps Rising
With Higher Education on Trial, Policy Changes May Be the Only Path to a Winning Case
In the court of public opinion, higher education is on trial. Enrollment has been declining for a decade, and the trend cannot be explained entirely by demographic shifts. More than half of Americans now say they don’t believe college is worth the cost. People from disadvantaged backgrounds are growing especially skeptical, with just 45 percent of students from low-income,… Continue reading With Higher Education on Trial, Policy Changes May Be the Only Path to a Winning Case
New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material
All the magnets you have ever interacted with, such as the tchotchkes stuck to your refrigerator door, are magnetic for the same reason. But what if there were another, stranger way to make a material magnetic? In 1966, the Japanese physicist Yosuke Nagaoka conceived of a type of magnetism produced by a seemingly unnatural dance… Continue reading New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material
AI Can Now Read Your Cat’s Pain
Sophie Bushwick: Can you tell what a cat is thinking, just from looking at it? Tulika Bose: Probably not! Cats evolved to be solitary hunters stalking their prey, not social animals like us humans. Bushwick: And that poker face might be handy while you’re out stalking prey, but it’s a real problem if humans are… Continue reading AI Can Now Read Your Cat’s Pain
The Theorist Who Sees Math in Art, Music and Writing
After a while, my set of pictures started to look like a particular set of graphs that were listed in a book about Coxeter groups that was in my office, and I began to hope that it was this exact set of graphs. If it was, then that would fill in the hole in my… Continue reading The Theorist Who Sees Math in Art, Music and Writing
Celebrating Korean Culture This Korean American Day
Saturday marks Korean American Day, which honors the arrival of the first Korean migrants to the United States on January 13, 1903, and celebrates the contributions of our Korean American community. As we recognize Korean American Day, I reflect on the sacrifices my family made in the aftermath of the Korean War to come the… Continue reading Celebrating Korean Culture This Korean American Day
The Holy Fire? (Miracle, Jerusalem, Hagion Phos)
Podcast: Download MYS293: Each Holy Saturday, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem emerges from the tomb of Christ with the Holy Fire that goes out around the world. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli ask if the fire is lit by God or does it have a natural source and what we can learn about this historic… Continue reading The Holy Fire? (Miracle, Jerusalem, Hagion Phos)
Evolution: Fast or Slow? Lizards Help Resolve a Paradox.
Over time, however, that variability averaged out into stasis. Even if traits wobbled off their optimal, moderate peak from one generation to the next, there was a net effect of stabilization — ultimately leading to little change over the multiple generations. Experts who reviewed Stroud and his team’s data were impressed by its thoroughness and… Continue reading Evolution: Fast or Slow? Lizards Help Resolve a Paradox.
The Wisdom of Our Ancestors
Liberalism and progressivism, in their most radical and aggressive forms, increasingly identify freedom with self-will and with the comprehensive repudiation of classical and Christian wisdom and the larger moral inheritance of the Western world. In The Wisdom of Our Ancestors: Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition, just published by the University of Notre Dame Press,… Continue reading The Wisdom of Our Ancestors
FDA Approves First CRISPR Gene Editing Treatment for Sickle Cell Disease
CRISPR, the gene-editing technology that has revolutionized biological research, is finally available as a medical treatment with regulatory approval. On December 8 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first CRISPR treatment for sickle cell disease. The treatment, called exa-cel and made by the companies Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics, edits a gene involved in… Continue reading FDA Approves First CRISPR Gene Editing Treatment for Sickle Cell Disease