Green Humanist

End of NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Mission

In 2021, the helicopter-like drone known as Ingenuity landed on Mars’ surface. This NASA-built helicopter became the first vehicle to engage in powered flight on another world. Last week, however, NASA announced that Ingenuity had sustained damaged to its rotor blades and can no longer fly.

Ingenuity was launched on the same craft that brought the rover Perseverance to Mars. The helicopter came folded in a protective box, and unfolded itself once the box dropped to the surface of Mars. The purpose of the helicopter was to see how such a craft could take flight in the thin Mars atmosphere. The craft was designed in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, weighs 1.8 kilograms, and has reached heights of up to 12 meters.

Successful flights would mean that helicopters could be used as reconnaissance vehicles for rovers, spotting obstacles and risks for the vehicles on the ground and help avoid driving a rover off a cliff. Because of the distance between Mars and Earth, remote control of Ingenuity is impossible. Therefore, the craft used pre-programmed paths on its flight missions.

During Ingenuity’s first test flight in 2021, it climbed three meters into the air and took a picture of Perseverance. Although Ingenuity was only expected to do a few flights in the first 30 days of the mission, it ended up going on 72 flights with a total of 2 hours of flight time. Scientists used the helicopter to make 3D elevation maps of the near area and look for places where useful scientific observations could be made.

On 19 January of this year, NASA briefly lost contact with Ingenuity during a flight and the craft sustained enough damage during the fall to ground it permanently. But the mission did not end in failure.

In fact, Ingenuity demonstrated the ability to autonomously choose safe landing sites and clean the dust in the Martian air off itself. Furthermore, it demonstrated that the speed of sound in Mars’ atmosphere is dependent on pitch, unlike in Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists believe that this discrepancy is caused by Mars’ low-pressure CO₂-rich atmosphere.

This image gallery shows a combination of images and artist’s conceptions of Ingenuity:

Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

Although Ingenuity is no longer in operation, the Perseverance rover continues its mission. The rover is intended to look for signs of ancient life on Mars and collect rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth. Perseverance analyzes Mars’ atmosphere for oxygen production to better understand how to prepare for potential human arrival on the red planet.

Iowa Orphans and the Nature of Intelligence

The nature versus nurture debate on the nature of human intelligence and many other traits is nothing new. Yet in the early decades of the 20^th century, the scale was tipped largely in favor of the nature side. Most psychologists believed that intelligence was entirely heritable and that environment did not matter. A child born to parents of low intelligence was destined to low achievement and had an innate inability to learn.

This era was also one where eugenics beliefs were present among many scientists and many states had official eugenics boards that discussed strategies to increase genetically fit members of the populace. These beliefs translated into law. In 1907, Indiana became the first state in the US to have compulsory sterilization law.

In the landmark Supreme Court case Bell v. Buck (1927), the Court upheld the legality of compulsory sterilization for those deemed mentally inferior. Such violation of individual rights was considered a small price to pay for removing “bad” genes from the population, considered a service to the entire country. Fitter family and better baby competitions were held around the country to showcase individuals or families that were supposedly optimal specimens.

It was in this environment that Psychologists Harold Skeels and Marie Skodak conducted the studies that would challenge the ideas of intelligence being completely heritable. Skeels worked at the Child Welfare Research Station in Iowa, and Skodak was a PhD student at the University of Iowa who worked for him.

During the Great Depression, orphanages were filled to capacity with children that parents could not afford to care for, and Skeels and Skodak conducted their research on this population of children. Skodak already worked to psychologically evaluate orphanage children and place them with appropriate families so was familiar with the standards for pediatric psychological evaluation of her time. During these evaluations that she conducted, she noticed something odd. Orphanage children were often evaluated to be mentally deficient, and yet after being evaluated a year into living with their adoptive parents, their intelligence tested in the normal range. This puzzled Skodak, who initially accepted the dominant view that intelligence was fixed and a product only of genes.

Working with Skeels to conduct a study on the intelligence of children in institutions, Skodak recorded data on two groups of 12 babies given to an Iowa orphanage. One group was designated as developmentally delayed, and the other were designated a normal. The group classified as developmentally delayed was put in a ward of adults who had severe mental deficiencies. These adults were institutionalized because they were unable to care for themselves.

However, the adults were also involved in caring for the mentally deficient babies. They interacted with them and played with them all the time. The babies placed in this ward demonstrated dramatic improvements in intelligence and were placed with adoptive families. These children grew up to be normal, educated adults.

This was not the case with the originally “normal” children. These babies were left in the orphanage. In an overcrowded environment with overtaxed staff, the infants seldom received any interaction beyond the bare minimum needed to keep a human alive. As a result, their intelligence dropped below normal as they got older and they were never able to live independently.

Skeels and Skodak demonstrated the importance of the early childhood environment in determining a person’s life trajectory. The babies thought to have developmental disabilities turned out to be normal when they were placed in a stimulating environment where adults gave them plenty of attention. In contrast, the normal babies suffered irreversibly when put in a sterile environment without play or being talked to.

This work of Skeels and Skodak was considered so revolutionary at the time that people refused to believe it. There was great resistance to believing that hereditary was not the only factor that determined a child’s intelligence. Because of the great influence that eugenics had in shaping the field’s thinking, the suggestion that there were other causes of mental deficiency or general developmental problems beyond bad genes was heresy.

Although these new ideas were not accepted immediately by the professionals in psychology and related fields, over time, these studies would be important in revealing the critical importance of providing all children with a caring and stimulating early life. Furthermore, the study was important to challenging widely held beliefs in eugenics.

Naturally, the debate over the degree to which intelligence is inherited continues today. Although many scientists agree that there are many genes that act together to determine intelligence, few would argue today that intelligence is a product of genes alone.

Almost A Year since the East Palestine, Ohio Disaster

On 5 February 2023, fifty cars of a train derailed in East Palestine, an Ohio town near the border of Pennsylvania. The train cars contained, among other things, vinyl chloride, a substance that raises the risk of developing several types of cancers. The derailment caused an enormous fire that required the evacuation of a three-square mile area surrounding the crash.

Residents were told that they could safely return to their houses once railroad safety crews burned off the rest of the toxic chemicals from the derailment. The toxins from the cars also spilled into the nearby Ohio River, and although Ohio Governor Mike DeWine originally said that people should not be concerned about the resulting pollution from the derailment, he later added at a press conference that those who used private wells close to the spill should only use bottled water.

Understandably, those living close to the chemical spill were concerned about the poisons that were released into their town’s air and water. People in East Palestine have complained about headaches and irritated eyes when walking outside. The vinyl chloride spill killed thousands of fish in the Ohio River, and in the initial weeks after the burn, people reported livestock, wildlife, and pets to be sick or dying.

In the year that has passed since the derailment and chemical burnoff, the residents of the community have been treated with indifference and disrespect by legislators and agency officials. Some of this indifference certainly comes from the fact that East Palestine is not a wealthy community. The median household income is $46,436, compared to the US average of $67,521.

Residents have experienced outright denial from EPA officials that there is any contamination of their homes. Despite strong chemicals smells that still linger in some of the houses, the EPA has refused to conduct indoor testing of homes beyond the 630 homes it tested in the few weeks after the spill in February of 2023. Mark Durno, who holds the title of homeland security coordinator for the EPA’s region of concern in East Palestine, has given the bizarre excuse for the lack of testing that if the EPA continues to perform tests, then the results will indicate “lifestyle chemicals” already naturally present in the house instead of chemicals connected to the derailment.

Some individuals have been unable to return home because of lingering strong chemical smells in their residences, and others have become sick upon returning home. The EPA has continued outdoor testing and claimed that the air outdoors is safe, but residents are frustrated with how their complaints of the continuing chemicals smells and medical symptoms such as nausea and respiratory issues. Norfolk Southern subpoenaed an independent scientist, Scott Smith, for conducting independent tests that showed elevated levels of toxic in the community, contrary to the government’s and Norfolk Southern’s narrative. Residents have received noted that Facebook has censored many of their posts about the situation in East Palestine, which has led to the Government Accountability Project, a non-profit focused on whistleblower protection, to file a FOIA request for communications between EPA officials involved in East Palestine and Facebook.

Similar to the people of Flint, Michigan and Lahaina, Hawaii, the residents of East Palestine, Ohio have experienced both cruel indifference from their government and suppression of information regarding the respective disasters that occurred. I commend the efforts of the dedicated reporters and activists who continue to fight to let these community’s stories be heard.

Lampreys and Spinal Healing

The lamprey is a type of jawless fish that has been on Earth for a long time. The oldest lamprey fossils are dated to 360 million years ago. There are 38 known species of lamprey worldwide, and many of these are carnivorous animals that feed by burrowing into the flesh of larger animals.

Adult lampreys resemble eels and the largest varieties can reach up to 1.2 metres (3.9 feet) in length. In addition, they are the only living vertebrate with four eyes.

These eellike ocean dwellers may be the key to advances in human medicine. Scientists have discovered that lampreys have a remarkable ability to heal from spinal injuries. Recovery from grievous spinal injuries is seldom found in animals, especially if the spine is severed.

Yet an experiment at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts has demonstrated this unusual ability of the lamprey. The lamprey is able to completely regenerate its spinal cord if the spine is severed. Within three months of the injury, the lamprey is swimming and moving about as if nothing has ever happened.

In addition, the spine is just as strong as before. If the spine is severed in the same place, the recovery will be just as swift and complete for the animal.

Scientists believe that studying how the lamprey can make a complete recovery from a spinal severing may eventually help humans with spine injuries.

Researchers have discovered that many of the genes that repair damage to the peripheral nervous system (nerves and ganglia lying outside the brain and spinal cord) in mammals work to repair the spines of lampreys. Although the last common ancestor of humans and lampreys existed 550 million years ago, some researchers believe that the genes responsible for spine reparation in lampreys may be harnessed to repair similar damage in human spines.

The genes responsible have been identified along with several pathways that influence the lamprey’s recovery process. Although human applications are far in the future, this research may represent a first step in understanding how to repair damaged spines in people.

Tenth Year of Veganuary

Veganuary is a global challenge that takes place during the 31 days of January and challenges individuals to eat only vegan during this time period. This event began back in 2014, initiated by a couple from New Yor City. One year later signups for the challenge numbered 12,800. In 2023, over 700,000 individuals around the world officially signed up on the Veganuary site.

Billie Eilish contributed to the boost of 2023 Veganuary participants by encouraging her own fans to sign up. A little celebrity power never hurts a campaign. The hashtag Veganuary was also viewed millions of times thanks to media platforms like TikTok.

January of 2023 also functioned as a major time of launch for new vegan products at restaurants and supermarkets.

Although based on 2023 data, only 23% of Veganuary participants went fully vegan after the month was over, 85% of individuals surveyed said that they had reduced their consumption of animal products. Even though this data likely suffers from social desirability bias, the challenge still has the power to inspire dietary changes in thousands of people worldwide.

As part of signing up on the Vegaanuary website for the campaign, individuals receive daily messages with support, recipes, and health tips to encourage them to stick with the diet for the entire month.

Yet getting a large number of individuals to convert to veganism has been difficult. Inconsistent survey results suggest that the US has a rate of veganism between 2-5%. Around 4% of the UK population is vegan.

Sales of plant-based meats have also stagnated or fallen in many countries in recent years, although sales of tofu have been increasing. There might be several reasons for these numbers. First, many non-vegans may have tried plant-based meats as a fad before returning to their usual diet. Second, there is constant misinformation about the health of plant-based meats on account of their processed nature. Such articles that present comparisons do not talk about the cholesterol, endotoxins, or carcinogenic protein only found in real meat and leave the impression that plant-based meats are much worse for an individual than meat from animals. And it can also be very difficult to maintain being vegan when your entire social circle is not.

These challenges aside, Veganuary will likely attract even more participants this year, as the number of participants has grown steadily since its beginning ten years ago. This January will be an opportunity for thousands of people worldwide to discover the benefits of being vegan.

Date Set for Julian Assange’s Final Appeal

For the past four and a half years, Julian Assange has been held in Belmarsh prison in the UK. The US has prosecuted him under the 1917 Espionage Act, a law used to target peace activists during WWI. Between 20-21 February of 2024, the High Court will hear Assange’s final appeal to avoid his extradition of the United States.

Assange, an Australian citizen, is the founder of WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization that publishes censored political documents. The organization has uncovered US war crimes in Iraq (where the US Department of Justice reluctantly realized they couldn’t prosecute Assange for the leak without also prosecuting the NYT and other papers that published the information), the extent of the CIA’s abilities to spy on Americans through smartphones and other devices, the US admitting to using the IMF as a tool for economic warfare on other countries, and the operating manual to Guantanamo Bay Prison.

Assange is the first journalist in US history to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, and he is not even an American citizen. In 2010, the publication of Chelsea Manning’s documentation of US war crimes made Assange the target of powerful actors around the world. At first, he stayed in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but in mid-2019, the Ecuadorian government withdrew asylum and Assange was taken into custody by UK police. I’m sure the IMF’s $4.2 billion loan to Ecuador doled out at this time had nothing to do with the country’s sudden change of heart about Assange.

Since his arrest, Assange’s health has been on the decline from the stress of being pursued by powerful international actors, and suffered a stroke during an appeal hearing in October of 2021.

Further news related to Assange has occurred in December of 2023, when a US District Court judge decided a lawsuit filed on behalf of four visitors of Assange whose privacy rights were violated when visiting him in the Ecuadorian embassy. The company UC Global unlawfully photographed the mobile passwords and contents of these individuals’ devices during this time. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs presented sufficient evidence that the CIA had collaborated with the owner of UC Global to spy on Assange’s visitors.

Assange’s imprisonment in abysmal conditions for the past four and a half years is a travesty and shows just how much the US and UK government actually care about human rights and freedom of the press. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have failed to put an end to this politically driven prosecution of a journalist.

When the appeal finally arrives in February, we cannot expect that the UK court will give a fair hearing. The governments of the UK and the US desperately want extradition as the outcome and are only using this appeal as procedural theatre.

Although certain Australian MPs have called for the charges against Assange to be dropped, the overall Australian government has done next to nothing as other countries slowly kill one of their citizens.

In the US, a bipartisan coalition of legislators has introduced a resolution saying that Julian Assange’s journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and therefore the US should drop charges against him. The resolution was introduced in mid-December 2023 by Republican Representative Paul Gosar, and was co-sponsored by Republicans Thomas Massie; Marjorie Taylor Greene; Anna Paulina Luna; Eric Burlison; Jeff Duncan; Clay Higgins; and Democrats James McGovern and Ilhan Omar.

These representatives should be given credit for their action, but they are faced with the monumental task of stopping a government determined to prosecute Assange.

Where are all the journalists who love to talk about their profession being under attack in the Assange case? They love to talk about times when they received mean tweets online, but when a real journalist is jailed for publishing information that is embarrassing to the powerful institutions journalists supposedly should be skeptical of, there is silence. The prosecution of Assange is also a statement about the quality and character of today’s “journalists.”

Perhaps the legislators mentioned above will be vocal about their support of Assange as his final appeal approaches. They have power to make some impact, but whether they will use that power and whether it will be enough to change the outcome remains to be seen.

Yosemite National Park to Require Reservations in 2024

For years, visitors to Yosemite National Park have experienced severe traffic jams when driving into the park. Those wishing to see this treasure of the US can often expect to wait for multiple hours to get to a parking spot.

According to the National Park Service, Yosemite receives over 4 million visitors a year, and 75% of these visitors come during the 6 busiest months of the season, May through October.

In order to contend with traffic congestion and offer a better experience for visitors, the National Park Service will start requiring reservations for Yosemite National Park in 2024. Starting on 13 April through 27 October of 2024, any vehicle driving through or parking in the national park will need a reservation.

The reservations will usually be for vehicles entering the park after 5 AM or before 4 PM. The reservation fee will be $2 and separate from the regular park entrance fee of $35 per private vehicle. The park will offer a mix of full-day and afternoon reservations. Reservations will be valid for any day on or three days after the initial reservation date.

The reservation system is being piloted for this year, and park officials will see whether it improves visitor experience. The National Park Service’s website for Yosemite already mentions that many parking lots are full by 8 or 9 AM, and that although there are free shuttles throughout the Yosemite Valley area, they may be full on the busiest days. In fact, one of their travel recommendations is not to visit the park itself but the greater area surrounding it.

Yosemite National Park is not the only park in the US that suffers from severe congestion. Glacier National Park, located in Montana, has parking lots that can fill up by 5 AM. Yes, as in five in the morning. One of the travel recommendations on the website for this park is to choose another park to travel to.

Certain national parks in the United States already require reservations in some capacity. Acadia National Park, found on an island off the coast of Maine, requires timed entry for the drive up to the summit of its tallest mountain. Arches National Park has a timed entry system from 1 April to 31 October for crowd control. Glacier National Park has implemented its own reservation to try to solve the issue of extremely congested parking lots.

National park infrastructure currently cannot keep up with the number of individuals who want to see what is in the parks. Although reservations are often irritating to prospective visitors, they may become a necessary part of more park visits in the future.

Some have suggested the solution of switching to public transportation in the national parks in lieu of private vehicles. Zion National Park in Utah has a shuttle that drives visitors to trailheads. Yet the fact that visitors sometimes wait several hours for a shuttle that is not full shows that public transportation will not eliminate all visitor frustrations. Scaling back car access to national park roads may be necessary as a crowd control measure in the parks, but will certainly be unpopular among many visitors.

It is still possible to find solitude in national parks, as long as a person is willing and able to get away from the crowded and developed places such as Old Faithful in Yellowstone. On the more rugged backcountry trails, there are far fewer individuals and long stretches of isolation. In Acadia National Park, for example, places like Sand Beach and Jordan Pond are hubs for tourists, but the mountains surrounding these areas receive only a fraction of the visitation.

Reservations can be a great annoyance to national park visitors, but will likely become more common as severe traffic on park roads lowers the quality of experience for everyone.

Hydrogen Trains: India and Elsewhere

Hydrogen trains are those that use the element hydrogen as their source of fuel. The hydrogen generates electrical energy in a fuel cell when oxygen is added, and steam containing water vapor is the only output. Electrolysis, or the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, is the process used to obtain the hydrogen for this type of vehicle.

Hydrogen trains can be particularly useful on rural lines where the cost of rail electrification cannot be justified, and also provide more efficient energy output than diesel trains.

Indian Railways is planning to introduce 35 hydrogen trains on seven different railways. The hydrogen trains will be based on models built by Germany and China. Although initial estimates suggested that the trains would be operational by the end of 2023, that timeline was a little too ambitious.

Nevertheless, the company GreenH Electrolysis has secured a contract to build a hydrogen production and refueling station in the city of Jind, location in northern India north of New Delhi. The 1 MW-production station will produce around 420 kg of hydrogen each day and have a storage capacity of 3,000 kg hydrogen. The trains are supposed to be refueled daily from the station.

The storage of hydrogen remains a challenge of using this type of fuel for any purpose, but particularly transportation. The expenses of these trains outpace those of trains using conventional fuel, which provides another challenge to their deployment.

Germany has previously ventured into the realm of hydrogen powered trains. German company Alstorm first began to develop the hydrogen-powered Coradia iLint model in 2013, and now two of the trains have been in service in Germany since 2018. Sweden and Austria have also run recent tests of this particular train model. The only emission from this train, of course, is water vapour. In addition, it emits minimal noise and can reach a top speed of 86 mph (140 kph), and has a range of 1000 km (621 miles). In August of 2022, a rail line with only hydrogen-powered trains opened in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Nevertheless, in October of 2022, the German government ran a study that showed that hydrogen-powered trains were 80% more expensive than electric trains. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether hydrogen trains can provide the power necessary to pull freight trains, which are a huge fraction of rail traffic.

Although electric trains still have their own technical challenges such as energy storage in batteries, hydrogen powered trains continue to have obstacles preventing their spread to more lines in more countries. The promise of using hydrogen from water for fuel, however, is not one we should give up on. Governments should continue to invest in the development of hydrogen fuel cell technology.

Student Who Criticized Dairy Milk in School Wins Lawsuit

Earlier this year, a high school senior in a LA school district was told that she was not allowed to hand out leaflets about the negative impacts of dairy on health if she did not also distribute pro-dairy literature. This requirement was despite the fact that the school already displays pro-dairy posters throughout the cafeteria and has milk ads in its morning announcements.

Because US schools participate in US Department of Agriculture’s National School Lunch Program (NSLP), they are subject to many USDA regulations. One such rule is that school officials “shall not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk products by the school (or by a person approved by the school) at any time or any place (i) on the school premises; or (ii) at any school-sponsored event.”

As part of this rule, schools cannot promote water as a beverage choice at lunch, or any other drink besides dairy milk. Furthermore, if students want a plant-based milk instead of a dairy milk, they must have a doctor’s note explaining why they cannot medically drink dairy milk.

Marielle Williamson, the student who was barred from passing out fliers critical of dairy, worked with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) to file a lawsuit against the USDA and the LA school district for violating her First Amendment rights.

The LA school district settled the lawsuit and now agrees that students’ ability to criticize dairy products at school is protected by the First Amendment. The requirement that Williamson pass out literature that was against her own views was also found to be a violation of her free speech.

Although the dairy industry still has a tight grip around school meal regulations, the result of this lawsuit is an important victory in being able to challenge this industry power.

Over a lifetime of consumption, dairy increases the risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer, infertility, and autoimmune diseases in adults, issues that I have touched on in my previous posts. Yet children are not unaffected by the consumption of this product. Children’s blood concentrations of estrogen increase as a result of drinking milk, and consumption of dairy puts girls at risk of early puberty. As a highly inflammatory food, dairy also promotes acne, a fact which few teenagers are aware of. In addition, many children are lactose intolerant and experience digestive troubles when they drink dairy products.

I hope that students like Williamson continue to challenge their school’s attempts to force this unhealthy product on students.

GM’s $10 Billion Stock Buyback Plan

In the US, stock buybacks – where a corporation purchases its own stock to inflate prices – were illegal throughout much of the 20^th century. This practice was banned in the US because it was considered an underhanded way to manipulate the stock market.

Enter the 1980s. Amidst a wave of privatization and elimination of regulations, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) created a rule that established a legal way for companies to do stock buybacks. At this time, economists were espousing the theory that the greatest social responsibility of a company was to make profits for its shareholders, and the SEC’s decision aligned with this theory.

The company General Motors has recently announced a $10 billion stock buyback plan. Executives have been discouraged with the automaker’s share price after a recent United Auto Workers (UAW) strike resulted in better wages and benefits for GM’s workers.

On 14 September of this year, UAW leadership called a strike when the deadline to make a deal with automotive industry leadership passed. 13,000 auto workers initially walked out on the job from companies GM, Ford, and Stellantis, and at the height of the strike 46,000 workers in 40 facilities in the US and Canada were on strike. One of the items won by striking workers was 25% raises by 2028. One of the major issues with striking workers were wage tiers, and Ford and GM ended the most egregious wage tiers as part of the deal.

GM says that the benefits for workers will cost the company $9.3 million from the US and Canadian union contracts from now until 2028. In addition, GM also said that it lost $1.1 billion from the 95,000 vehicles it could not make during the strike, although admits that this money will be made up in an expected $2 billion in efficiency gains and cost reductions by the end of the year.

GM has also pulled funding on electric and autonomous car research and development, a questionable move considering that the Tesla Model Y has become one of the world’s bestselling cars. Yet the decreased costs of R&D and the increased share price through stock buybacks have mollified GM’s shareholders even if these decisions aren’t in the best long-term interest of the company.

Although in the case of GM, the UAW won a better contract for the workers of the company, the common outcome of stock buybacks is ever-growing benefits for the CEO and board of directors. Meanwhile, wages for the average worker at the company stay stagnant. This process fuels income equality around the nation, and reinitiating the ban on stock buybacks would be in the interest of the US. But given who donates to Congressional members, it is extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon.