How consensus can undermine science - Freethink

Saudi Arabia spent months trying to stay out of the U. S.-Israel-Iran war and convince Washington and Tehran to end the conflict. But deadly attacks by Yemen-based Houthis at Saudi airports over the weekend are pushing the kingdom’s normally cautious leadership to take more drastic military action to restore public and investor confidence in Saudi security, according to an analyst and palace insiders. The shift has broad implications for the region, the United States, and the kingdom’s diplomatic efforts to contain the Iran war. And it has left Saudi Arabia ramping up its own conflict in Yemen – with or without requested U. S. assistance. On Tuesday, the Saudi-led coalition intensified airstrikes against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, who control Sanaa, the capital. The turning point came on Saturday, when a Houthi cruise missile hit a passenger terminal at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing 13 travelers and airport workers and wounding more than 300 others, many of whom remain in critical condition. It was the deadliest militant attack in Saudi Arabia since the Islamic State bombing of a mosque in Qatif in 2015.

Scientists have discovered a distinct subtype of cell in the prostate, and it could help solve the mystery of why the gland enlarges with age. This natural phenomenon is called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and it tends to occur in just one region of the prostate. But scientists still don't understand why. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found a possible culprit hiding around the urethra. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, the team has identified a population of prostate cells that are particularly abundant in this region, especially in cases of BPH. The findings are published in The Journal of Pathology. "Although BPH affects millions of men worldwide, scientists still do not fully understand why it develops primarily in a region of the prostate known as the transition zone, while other regions of the gland remain relatively unaffected," explains senior author Vasan Yegnasubramanian. The transition zone is the part of the prostate that surrounds the urethra. If this area enlarges with age, it can constrict the passage, making urination slower and more sporadic.

The night sky over AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia is now under continuous automated watch by instruments designed to catch very brief flashes of light. The SETI Institute and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) have installed and commissioned two LaserSETI stations at AlUla Manara, a milestone that makes AlUla the network’s first and only observing site in Asia and its fifth site worldwide. The new stations join existing installations in California, Hawai’i, Arizona and Puerto Rico, extending a distributed optical observatory that watches large portions of the sky continuously rather than focusing on single targets. According to the announcement, the instruments are fully operational and actively collecting astronomical data, marking the transition from a two-year-old plan to working hardware on the ground. LaserSETI was conceived by the SETI Institute to keep a constant watch on large parts of the sky, searching for very brief flashes of light.

Julia Margaret Cameron, photographic portrait of Charles Darwin, 1868. From the D. Hall Darwin-Wallace Collection. Rare books, documents, letters and images from famous evolutionary biologists are on display this fall at the U of C’s Nickle Galleries.