Category: Education

The history of Merlin, Part Two

A continuation of yesterday’s Part One.

Again, a fascinationg account.

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Merlin Oregon,
Gateway To The Wild & Scenic Rogue River
 
The little hamlet of Merlin is located northwest of Grants Pass and is the home base for many outfitters and fishing guides. This and the fact that Merlin is close to the 84-mile segment of the Rogue River set aside by Congress under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, is why Merlin is known as the “Gateway To The Wild & Scenic Rogue River.”

Located nearby is the famous Hellgate Canyon (on Galice Hwy.) where Rooster Cogburn with John Wayne and many other Westerns were filmed. Above Merlin is Grave Creek, the starting point for the 32 mile “wild” section of the Rogue River.

Great Fishing and rafting on the white waters are but some of the activities available in the Merlin area. One of the best hiking trails around is the famous Rogue River Wild and Scenic Trail which starts at Grave Creek above Merlin and runs downstream 40 miles through the Wild and Scenic section of the Rogue River to Foster Bar. 

Located in Merlin Oregon, (PH: picture of tree on Sunday) this tree is Oregon’s 2nd oldest apple tree. It was planted by the Haines family in the either 1852 or 1854 (accounts vary), the tree stood throughout the Indian wars. The fighting began in 1855 when white vigilantes attacked a group of peaceful Indians-mostly women, children and elderly men-(at present day Eagle Point). Under the direction of a man who titled himself Major James A. Lupton, a group of ” hair brained enthusiast and professed ruffians” butchered the Indians, according to A.G. Walling’s story “A History Of Southern Oregon,” published in 1884.

The Indians in the area struck back, working their way down the Rogue River and attacking white homesteads. Their thirst for vengeance had not been quenched by the time they reached Merlin, according to the recently published “An Arrow In The Earth”: General Joe Palmer and the Indians of Oregon.”

Although Haines tried to fight off the Indians, they were one family against a band of angry warriors. When volunteers arrived to help, according to contemporary accounts, they found Mr. Haines and his young son murdered at the home site. The Indians took Mrs. Haines and her daughter captive, presumed to have been thrown into Hellgate Canyon on the Rogue River. Taking in account that white accounts of Indian atrocities were nearly always exaggerated.

The tree was reported to have died in August, 1973, a few months after Josephine County Commissioners held a ceremony celebrating its antiquity. But three years later, branches of the old three were still alive, and the State Forestry Department declared it a historic site.

A special thanks to Marilyn Luttrell, who over the years has looked after and help raise money to protect this historical tree and site.” We thank you Marilyn”

Life


Peters’s father, known as Umpqua Joe, was a member of the Grave Creek band of the Umpqua people who was known for warning settlers and miners in the Grants Pass area of an impending attack from local Indians in 1855.

Peters’s father was reportedly allowed to stay on his land after the end of the Rogue River Wars rather than be removed to a reservation. Mary Peters, popularly known as “Indian Mary” – not to be confused with a different Native American woman also living in Oregon during the same period (Kalliah Tumulth, a WatlalaChinook) and also known as “Indian Mary”– lived on the land where her father had operated a ferry to transport miners and supplies in Southern Oregon until his death on November 13, 1886. After his death, Peters applied for a claim for the land under the Dawes Act, also known as the “Indian Homestead Act.” Eight years later, she received a little more than 72 acres.

Her 25-year land deed has often been described as the smallest Indian reservation in the United States. In 1958, the land was converted by Josephine County to Indian Mary Park, named after Peters.

She continued to operate her father’s ferry business after his death. In 1894 she leased the ferry to William Massie and moved with her two surviving daughters to Grants Pass. She moved to Salem in 1920 to be near her daughters. Peters died in 1921 and is buried in Salem‘s City View Cemetery.

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I hope you will view the photographs this Sunday.

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A further insight into the human brain

A recent article in The Conversation prompted this post.

The human brain is quite amazing. Actually I would extend that statement to include the brains of all ‘smart’ animals.

As more and more research is undertaken, the discoveries learned about the human brain are incredible. Take this story:

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Your brain can be trained, much like your muscles – a neurologist explains how to boost your brain health

Research shows that the brain can be exercised, much like our muscles. RapidEye/E+ via Getty Images

Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse, University of Pittsburgh

If you have ever lifted a weight, you know the routine: challenge the muscle, give it rest, feed it and repeat. Over time, it grows stronger.

Of course, muscles only grow when the challenge increases over time. Continually lifting the same weight the same way stops working.

It might come as a surprise to learn that the brain responds to training in much the same way as our muscles, even though most of us never think about it that way. Clear thinking, focus, creativity and good judgment are built through challenge, when the brain is asked to stretch beyond routine rather than run on autopilot. That slight mental discomfort is often the sign that the brain is actually being trained, a lot like that good workout burn in your muscles.

Think about walking the same loop through a local park every day. At first, your senses are alert. You notice the hills, the trees, the changing light. But after a few loops, your brain checks out. You start planning dinner, replaying emails or running through your to-do list. The walk still feels good, but your brain is no longer being challenged.

Routine feels comfortable, but comfort and familiarity alone do not build new brain connections.

As a neurologist who studies brain activity, I use electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to record the brain’s electrical patterns.

Research in humans shows that these rhythms are remarkably dynamic. When someone learns a new skill, EEG rhythms often become more organized and coordinated. This reflects the brain’s attempt to strengthen pathways needed for that skill.

Your brain trains in zones too

For decades, scientists believed that the brain’s ability to grow and reorganize, called neuroplasticity, was largely limited to childhood. Once the brain matured, its wiring was thought to be largely fixed.

But that idea has been overturned. Decades of research show that adult brains can form new connections and reorganize existing networks, under the right conditions, throughout life.

Some of the most influential work in this field comes from enriched environment studies in animals. Rats housed in stimulating environments filled with toys, running wheels and social interaction developed larger, more complex brains than rats kept in standard cages. Their brains adapted because they were regularly exposed to novelty and challenge.

Human studies find similar results. Adults who take on genuinely new challenges, such as learning a language, dancing or practicing a musical instrument, show measurable increases in brain volume and connectivity on MRI scans.

The takeaway is simple: Repetition keeps the brain running, but novelty pushes the brain to adapt, forcing it to pay attention, learn and problem-solve in new ways. Neuroplasticity thrives when the brain is nudged just beyond its comfort zone.

Older women knitting together and socializing in a community space.
Tasks that stretch your brain just beyond its comfort zone, such as knitting and crocheting, can improve cognitive abilities over your lifespan – and doing them in a group setting brings an additional bonus for overall health. Dougal Waters/DigitalVision via Getty Images

The reality of neural fatigue

Just like muscles, the brain has limits. It does not get stronger from endless strain. Real growth comes from the right balance of challenge and recovery.

When the brain is pushed for too long without a break – whether that means long work hours, staying locked onto the same task or making nonstop decisions under pressure – performance starts to slip. Focus fades. Mistakes increase. To keep you going, the brain shifts how different regions work together, asking some areas to carry more of the load. But that extra effort can still make the whole network run less smoothly.

Neural fatigue is more than feeling tired. Brain imaging studies show that during prolonged mental work, the networks responsible for attention and decision-making begin to slow down, while regions that promote rest and reward-seeking take over. This shift helps explain why mental exhaustion often comes with stronger cravings for quick rewards, like sugary snacks, comfort foods or mindless scrolling. The result is familiar: slower thinking, more mistakes, irritability and mental fog.

This is where the muscle analogy becomes especially useful. You wouldn’t do squats for six hours straight, because your leg muscles would eventually give out. As they work, they build up byproducts that make each contraction a little less effective until you finally have to stop. Your brain behaves in a similar way.

Likewise, in the brain, when the same cognitive circuits are overused, chemical signals build up, communication slows and learning stalls.

But rest allows those strained circuits to reset and function more smoothly over time. And taking breaks from a taxing activity does not interrupt learning. In fact, breaks are critical for efficient learning.

Middle-aged woman sitting near her computer, rubbing her neck.
Overdoing any task, whether it be weight training or sitting at the computer for too long, can overtax the muscles as well as the brain. Halfpoint Images/Moment via Getty Images

The crucial importance of rest

Among all forms of rest, sleep is the most powerful.

Sleep is the brain’s night shift. While you rest, the brain takes out the trash through a special cleanup system called the glymphatic system that clears away waste and harmful proteins. Sleep also restores glycogen, a critical fuel source for brain cells.

And importantly, sleep is when essential repair work happens. Growth hormone surges during deep sleep, supporting tissue repair. Immune cells regroup and strengthen their activity.

During REM sleep, the stage of sleep linked to dreaming, the brain replays patterns from the day to consolidate memories. This process is critical not only for cognitive skills like learning an instrument but also for physical skills like mastering a move in sports.

On the other hand, chronic sleep deprivation impairs attention, disrupts decision-making and alters the hormones that regulate appetite and metabolism. This is why fatigue drives sugar cravings and late-night snacking.

Sleep is not an optional wellness practice. It is a biological requirement for brain performance.

Exercise feeds the brain too

Exercise strengthens the brain as well as the body.

Physical activity increases levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, a protein that acts like fertilizer for neurons. It promotes the growth of new connections, increases blood flow, reduces inflammation and helps the brain remain adaptable across one’s lifespan.

This is why exercise is one of the strongest lifestyle tools for protecting cognitive health.

Train, recover, repeat

The most important lesson from this science is simple. Your brain is not passively wearing down with age. It is constantly remodeling itself in response to how you use it. Every new challenge and skill you try, every real break, every good night of sleep sends a signal that growth is still expected.

You do not need expensive brain training programs or radical lifestyle changes. Small, consistent habits matter more. Try something unfamiliar. Vary your routines. Take breaks before exhaustion sets in. Move your body. Treat sleep as nonnegotiable.

So the next time you lace up your shoes for a familiar walk, consider taking a different path. The scenery may change only slightly, but your brain will notice. That small detour is often all it takes to turn routine into training.

The brain stays adaptable throughout life. Cognitive resilience is not fixed at birth or locked in early adulthood. It is something you can shape.

If you want a sharper, more creative, more resilient brain, you do not need to wait for a breakthrough drug or a perfect moment. You can start now, with choices that tell your brain that growth is still the plan.

Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse, Associate Professor of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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That last section of the article is most powerful. I’m speaking of the section that is headed Train, recover, repeat.

The human brain notices when even small changes to our normal routine occur. Also that exercise strengthens the brain plus our brains stay adaptable throughout our lives. Amazing!

Diet and its effect on the body and mind.

Your dinner may not be the best!

I subscribe to a number of services and one of them is Super Age. Part of their story is shown here:

“Super Age is a new media brand at the intersection of longevity science, culture, and the power of mindset to redefine what’s possible in this one extraordinary life, because thriving is about living well, living longer, and living boldly with intention.”

Jean and I certainly agree with that, as do many, many senior folk. I trust Super Age will not mind if I reproduce in full a recent article that they published.

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You already know not to scroll before bed or down a latte at 4 p.m., but did you know your dinner plate might be sabotaging your sleep?

Emerging research shows that what we eat directly influences how well we sleep, from how fast we fall asleep to how long we stay in deep, restorative sleep. Certain nutrients act as natural sleep aids, while others disrupt your body’s circadian rhythms or blood sugar balance. The good news? A few strategic shifts can help your body rest better, night after night.

5 Sleep-Friendly Nutrients to Add to Your Diet

What you eat in the hours leading up to bedtime can either support your body’s natural sleep cycles or short-circuit them. Specific nutrients work behind the scenes to regulate hormones, calm the nervous system, and stabilize your blood sugar while you rest. Here are five research-backed nutritional strategies to help you fall asleep faster, sleep more deeply, and wake up feeling restored.

1. Magnesium for Muscle Relaxation and Deeper Sleep

Magnesium helps quiet the nervous system, supports slow-wave (deep) sleep, and significantly increases sleep time while decreasing early morning awakening.

THE FOODS:

Add leafy greens (spinach, Swiss chard, collard greens), almonds, cashews, avocado, chickpeas, lentils and pumpkin, flax, and chia seeds like pumpkin to your daily meals.

2. Tryptophan to Increase Sleep Time

Tryptophan is an amino acid that helps the brain produce serotonin, which is then converted into melatonin, the hormone that signals it’s time to sleep. Research shows that tryptophan increases total sleep time, reduces waking time, and number of awakenings.

THE FOODS:

Kidney beans, chickpeas, red lentils, chicken, turkey, rice, eggs, oats, pumpkin seeds, and even tofu are natural sources.

3. Omega-3 Fatty Acids Essential fats to Support Circadian Health

EPA and DHA support melatonin production and help regulate the body’s internal clock. Some studies have found a correlation between Omega-3 levels and sleep quality, as well as improved sleep in people with type 2 diabetes.

THE FOODS: 

Sardines, anchovies, wild salmon, flaxseeds, walnuts, hempseeds.

4. Fiber-Rich Carbohydrates Stabilize Blood Sugar Overnight

These support overnight glucose stability, which leads to deeper sleep by promoting slow-wave sleep and reducing REM-related arousals.

THE FOODS: 

Lentils, steel-cut or rolled oats, barley, sweet potatoes, quinoa, berries, 

5. Melatonin to Improve Sleep Onset and Quality

Melatonin is a hormone naturally produced by the body to signal that it’s time to sleep. Levels rise in the evening and fall in the morning, helping to regulate your circadian rhythm. Your body’s internal clock that regulates sleep and wake cycles. Eating foods that contain small amounts of melatonin may help support this cycle and improve sleep onset and quality, especially when consumed in the evening.

THE FOODS:

Tart cherries, kiwi, walnuts, pistachios, (Eggs, salmon, yogurt and oats, provide tryptophan, B6, magnesium, and zinc. A mineral important for immune function and wound healing which your brain needs to make melatonin).

Bonus: Your Gut, Your Sleep: Why Microbiome Health Matters.

Your gut and brain are in constant communication via the gut-brain axis and the two-way communication between your digestive system and brain plays a key role in sleep regulation. A healthy gut microbiome supports the production of sleep-promoting neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA,modulates inflammation and influences circadian rhythm through microbial metabolites such as short-chain fatty acids.

A 2025 review in the Journal of Food Science highlights how prebiotics, probiotics and fermented foods can enhance sleep by improving microbiome composition and supporting these neurochemical pathways. Though more large-scale human trials are needed, the emerging science is promising. Here’s how you should load your plates with during the day to support your microbiome:

  • Fiber-rich foods like leafy greens, berries, garlic, oats, and whole grains to nourish beneficial gut bacteria.
  • Fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and sauerkraut to introduce sleep-supportive probiotics.

By feeding your body the nutrients it needs to regulate melatonin, balance blood sugar, and calm the nervous system, you create the perfect internal environment for consistent, rejuvenating rest. Think of it as a nightly investment in longevity, cognition, and metabolic health—served with a side of quinoa.

Check out our Super Age Sleep Guide for more tips on improving the quality of your sleep.

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I wonder how many people are affected by a poor diet, and, more importantly, want to amend what they eat especially for their dinner.

Super Age in general publish sensible articles and this is down to an impressive group of scientific advisors. More details here!

As is said: “We are what we eat.”

Our human need to matter

Our survival isn’t enough.

I make no apologies for providing little of my own words and just going straight to this video and the accompanying text.

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What if the deepest human drive isn’t happiness, survival, or even love, but the need to matter?

Philosopher and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Newberger Goldstein joins Michael Shermer to discuss The Mattering Instinct, her argument that the desire to feel significant lies at the core of human behavior. That drive helps explain our greatest achievements, from creativity and moral courage to scientific and artistic excellence. It also helps explain some of our darkest outcomes, including extremism, violence, and ideological fanaticism.

Goldstein examines why people will give up comfort, status, and sometimes even their own lives to feel that they matter. She questions why meaning cannot be captured by happiness metrics or self-help formulas, and why the same psychological force can produce saints, scientists, athletes, cult leaders, and terrorists. The conversation moves through free will, entropy, morality without God, fame, narcissism, and the crucial difference between ways of mattering that create order and those that leave damage behind.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an award-winning philosopher, writer, and public intellectual. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University and has taught at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth, and Harvard. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, her work has been supported by the MacArthur “Genius” grant and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Whiting Institute, Radcliffe Institute, and the National Science Foundation. She is the author of ten books of acclaimed fiction and non-fiction. Her latest book is The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us.

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So, please watch this video!

Other stars, other worlds.

The science of looking at other worlds is amazing.

With so much going wrong, primarily politically, in the world, I just love turning to news about distant places; and by distant I mean hugely so. That is why I am republishing this item from The Conversation about other stars.

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NASA’s Pandora telescope will study stars in detail to learn about the exoplanets orbiting them

A new NASA mission will study exoplanets around distant stars. European Space Agency, CC BY-SA

Daniel Apai, University of Arizona

On Jan. 11, 2026, I watched anxiously at the tightly controlled Vandenberg Space Force Base in California as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA’s new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit.

Exoplanets are worlds that orbit other stars. They are very difficult to observe because – seen from Earth – they appear as extremely faint dots right next to their host stars, which are millions to billions of times brighter and drown out the light reflected by the planets. The Pandora telescope will join and complement NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in studying these faraway planets and the stars they orbit.

I am an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona who specializes in studies of planets around other stars and astrobiology. I am a co-investigator of Pandora and leading its exoplanet science working group. We built Pandora to shatter a barrier – to understand and remove a source of noise in the data – that limits our ability to study small exoplanets in detail and search for life on them.

Observing exoplanets

Astronomers have a trick to study exoplanet atmospheres. By observing the planets as they orbit in front of their host stars, we can study starlight that filters through their atmospheres.

These planetary transit observations are similar to holding a glass of red wine up to a candle: The light filtering through will show fine details that reveal the quality of the wine. By analyzing starlight filtered through the planets’ atmospheres, astronomers can find evidence for water vapor, hydrogen, clouds and even search for evidence of life. Researchers improved transit observations in 2002, opening an exciting window to new worlds.

When a planet passes in front of its star, astronomers can measure the dip in brightness, and see how the light filtering through the planet’s atmosphere changes.

For a while, it seemed to work perfectly. But, starting from 2007, astronomers noted that starspots – cooler, active regions on the stars – may disturb the transit measurements.

In 2018 and 2019, then-Ph.D. student Benjamin V. Rackham, astrophysicist Mark Giampapa and I published a series of studies showing how darker starspots and brighter, magnetically active stellar regions can seriously mislead exoplanets measurements. We dubbed this problem “the transit light source effect.”

Most stars are spotted, active and change continuously. Ben, Mark and I showed that these changes alter the signals from exoplanets. To make things worse, some stars also have water vapor in their upper layers – often more prominent in starspots than outside of them. That and other gases can confuse astronomers, who may think that they found water vapor in the planet.

In our papers – published three years before the 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope – we predicted that the Webb cannot reach its full potential. We sounded the alarm bell. Astronomers realized that we were trying to judge our wine in light of flickering, unstable candles.

The birth of Pandora

For me, Pandora began with an intriguing email from NASA in 2018. Two prominent scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Elisa Quintana and Tom Barclay, asked to chat. They had an unusual plan: They wanted to build a space telescope very quickly to help tackle stellar contamination – in time to assist Webb. This was an exciting idea, but also very challenging. Space telescopes are very complex, and not something that you would normally want to put together in a rush.

The Pandora spacecraft with an exoplanet and two stars in the background
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Pandora Space Telescope. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab, CC BY

Pandora breaks with NASA’s conventional model. We proposed and built Pandora faster and at a significantly lower cost than is typical for NASA missions. Our approach meant keeping the mission simple and accepting somewhat higher risks.

What makes Pandora special?

Pandora is smaller and cannot collect as much light as its bigger brother Webb. But Pandora will do what Webb cannot: It will be able to patiently observe stars to understand how their complex atmospheres change.

By staring at a star for 24 hours with visible and infrared cameras, it will measure subtle changes in the star’s brightness and colors. When active regions in the star rotate in and out of view, and starspots form, evolve and dissipate, Pandora will record them. While Webb very rarely returns to the same planet in the same instrument configuration and almost never monitors their host stars, Pandora will revisit its target stars 10 times over a year, spending over 200 hours on each of them. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Inxe5Bgarj0?wmode=transparent&start=0 NASA’s Pandora mission will revolutionize the study of exoplanet atmospheres.

With that information, our Pandora team will be able to figure out how the changes in the stars affect the observed planetary transits. Like Webb, Pandora will observe the planetary transit events, too. By combining data from Pandora and Webb, our team will be able to understand what exoplanet atmospheres are made of in more detail than ever before.

After the successful launch, Pandora is now circling Earth about every 90 minutes. Pandora’s systems and functions are now being tested thoroughly by Blue Canyon Technologies, Pandora’s primary builder.

About a week after launch, control of the spacecraft will transition to the University of Arizona’s Multi-Mission Operation Center in Tucson, Arizona. Then the work of our science teams begins in earnest and we will begin capturing starlight filtered through the atmospheres of other worlds – and see them with a new, steady eye.

Daniel Apai, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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It may not be for everyone but for me I find this news from NASA incredible. Well done The Conversation for publishing this article.

The downside of technology

A recent article in The Conversation prompted today’s post.

More and more I get concerned at some of the ways we are going.

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Deepfakes leveled up in 2025 – here’s what’s coming next

AI image and video generators now produce fully lifelike content. AI-generated image by Siwei Lyu using Google Gemini 3

Siwei Lyu, University at Buffalo

Over the course of 2025, deepfakes improved dramatically. AI-generated faces, voices and full-body performances that mimic real people increased in quality far beyond what even many experts expected would be the case just a few years ago. They were also increasingly used to deceive people.

For many everyday scenarios — especially low-resolution video calls and media shared on social media platforms — their realism is now high enough to reliably fool nonexpert viewers. In practical terms, synthetic media have become indistinguishable from authentic recordings for ordinary people and, in some cases, even for institutions.

And this surge is not limited to quality. The volume of deepfakes has grown explosively: Cybersecurity firm DeepStrike estimates an increase from roughly 500,000 online deepfakes in 2023 to about 8 million in 2025, with annual growth nearing 900%.

I’m a computer scientist who researches deepfakes and other synthetic media. From my vantage point, I see that the situation is likely to get worse in 2026 as deepfakes become synthetic performers capable of reacting to people in real time.

Dramatic improvements

Several technical shifts underlie this dramatic escalation. First, video realism made a significant leap thanks to video generation models designed specifically to maintain temporal consistency. These models produce videos that have coherent motion, consistent identities of the people portrayed, and content that makes sense from one frame to the next. The models disentangle the information related to representing a person’s identity from the information about motion so that the same motion can be mapped to different identities, or the same identity can have multiple types of motions.

These models produce stable, coherent faces without the flicker, warping or structural distortions around the eyes and jawline that once served as reliable forensic evidence of deepfakes.

Second, voice cloning has crossed what I would call the “indistinguishable threshold.” A few seconds of audio now suffice to generate a convincing clone – complete with natural intonation, rhythm, emphasis, emotion, pauses and breathing noise. This capability is already fueling large-scale fraud. Some major retailers report receiving over 1,000 AI-generated scam calls per day. The perceptual tells that once gave away synthetic voices have largely disappeared.

Third, consumer tools have pushed the technical barrier almost to zero. Upgrades from OpenAI’s Sora 2 and Google’s Veo 3 and a wave of startups mean that anyone can describe an idea, let a large language model such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini draft a script, and generate polished audio-visual media in minutes. AI agents can automate the entire process. The capacity to generate coherent, storyline-driven deepfakes at a large scale has effectively been democratized.

This combination of surging quantity and personas that are nearly indistinguishable from real humans creates serious challenges for detecting deepfakes, especially in a media environment where people’s attention is fragmented and content moves faster than it can be verified. There has already been real-world harm – from misinformation to targeted harassment and financial scams – enabled by deepfakes that spread before people have a chance to realize what’s happening. https://www.youtube.com/embed/syNN38cu3Vw?wmode=transparent&start=0 AI researcher Hany Farid explains how deepfakes work and how good they’re getting.

The future is real time

Looking forward, the trajectory for next year is clear: Deepfakes are moving toward real-time synthesis that can produce videos that closely resemble the nuances of a human’s appearance, making it easier for them to evade detection systems. The frontier is shifting from static visual realism to temporal and behavioral coherence: models that generate live or near-live content rather than pre-rendered clips.

Identity modeling is converging into unified systems that capture not just how a person looks, but how they move, sound and speak across contexts. The result goes beyond “this resembles person X,” to “this behaves like person X over time.” I expect entire video-call participants to be synthesized in real time; interactive AI-driven actors whose faces, voices and mannerisms adapt instantly to a prompt; and scammers deploying responsive avatars rather than fixed videos.

As these capabilities mature, the perceptual gap between synthetic and authentic human media will continue to narrow. The meaningful line of defense will shift away from human judgment. Instead, it will depend on infrastructure-level protections. These include secure provenance such as media signed cryptographically, and AI content tools that use the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity specifications. It will also depend on multimodal forensic tools such as my lab’s Deepfake-o-Meter.

Simply looking harder at pixels will no longer be adequate.

Siwei Lyu, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering; Director, UB Media Forensic Lab, University at Buffalo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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I hope with all my heart that lines of defense will rise to the challenge.

A Resolution for 2026

Meditation.

I saw this article towards the end of December and wanted to share it with you. It was on The Conversation.

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What loving-kindness meditation is and how to practice it in the new year

Loving-kindness, the feeling cultivated in metta meditation, is very different from romantic love. Anna Sunderland Engels

Jeremy David Engels, Penn State

A popular New Year’s resolution is to take up meditation – specifically mindfulness meditation. This is a healthy choice.

Regular mindfulness practice has been linked to many positive health benefits, including reduced stress and anxiety, better sleep and quicker healing after injury and illness. Mindfulness can help us to be present in a distracted world and to feel more at home in our bodies, and in our lives.

There are many different types of meditation. Some mindfulness practices ask meditators simply to sit with whatever thoughts, sensations or emotions arise without immediately reacting to them. Such meditations cultivate focus, while granting more freedom in how we respond to whatever events life throws at us.

Other meditations ask practitioners to deliberately focus on one emotion – for example, gratitude or love – to deepen the experience of that emotion. The purpose behind this type of meditation is to bring more gratitude, or more love, into one’s life. The more people meditate on love, the easier it is to experience this emotion even when not meditating.

One such meditation is known as “metta,” or loving-kindness. As a scholar of communication and mindfulness, as well as a longtime meditation teacher, I have both studied and practiced metta. Here is what loving-kindness means and how to try it out for yourself:

Unbounded, universal love

Loving-kindness, or metta, is the type of love which is practiced by Buddhists around the world. Like many forms of meditation today, there are both secular and religious forms of the practice. One does not need to be a Buddhist to practice loving-kindness. It is for anyone and everyone who wants to live more lovingly.

Loving-kindness, the feeling cultivated in metta meditation, is very different from romantic love. In the ancient Pali language, the word “metta” has two root meanings: The first is “gentle,” in the sense of a gentle spring rain that falls on young plants, nourishing them without discrimination. The second is “friend.”

Metta is limitless and unbounded love; it is gentle presence and universal friendliness. Metta practice is meant to grow people’s ability to be present for themselves and others without fail. https://www.youtube.com/embed/FyKKvCO_vSA?wmode=transparent&start=0 A guided loving-kindness meditation practice.

Metta is not reciprocal or conditional. It does not discriminate between us and them, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, popular or unpopular, worthy and unworthy. To practice metta is to give what I describe in my research as “the rarest and most precious gift” – a gift of love offered without any expectation of it being returned.

How to practice loving-kindness meditation

In the fifth century, a Sri Lankan monk, Buddhaghosa, composed an influential meditation text called the “Visuddhimagga,” or “The Path of Purification.” In this text, Buddhaghosa provides instructions for how to practice loving-kindness meditation. Contemporary teachers tend to adapt and modify his instructions.

The practice of loving-kindness often involves quietly reciting to oneself several traditional phrases designed to evoke metta, and visualizing the beings who will receive that loving-kindness.

Traditionally, the practice begins by sending loving kindness to ourselves. It is typical during this meditation to say:

May I be filled by loving-kindness
May I be safe from inner and outer dangers
May I be well in body and mind
May I be at ease and happy

After speaking these phrases, and feeling the emotions they evoke, next it’s common to direct loving-kindness toward someone – or something – else: It can be a beloved person, a dear friend, a pet, an animal, a favorite tree. The phrases become:

May you be filled by loving-kindness
May you be safe from inner and outer dangers
May you be well in body and mind
May you be at ease and happy

Next, this loving-kindness is directed to a wider circle of friends and loved ones: “May they …”

The final step is to gradually expand the circle of well wishes: including the people in our community and town, people everywhere, animals and all living beings, and the whole Earth. This last round of recitation begins: “May we …”

In this way, loving-kindness meditation practice opens the heart further and further into life, beginning with the meditator themselves.

Loving-kindness and mindful democracy

Clinical research shows that loving-kindness meditation has a positive effect on mental health, including lessening anxiety and depression, increasing life satisfaction and improving self-acceptance while reducing self-criticism. There is also evidence that loving-kindness meditation increases a sense of connection with other people.

The benefits of loving-kindness meditation are not just for the individual. In my research, I show that there are also tremendous benefits for society as a whole. Indeed, the practice of democracy requires us to work together with friends, strangers and even purported “opponents.” This is difficult to do if our hearts are full of hatred and resentment.

Each time meditators open their hearts in metta meditation, they prepare themselves to live more loving lives: for their own selves, and for all living beings.

Jeremy David Engels, Liberal Arts Endowed Professor of Communication, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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This is terrific and Jeremy Engels offers a very professional view of loving-kindness meditation. Personally I was not aware of the meaning of Metta.

The challenge is to adjust one’s daily routine to enable meditation to become part of our daily experience.

Communities and the Fire Circle

A very ancient event that is still important today.

BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting this week a series of programmes under the title of ‘An Almanac for Anxiety: In Search of a Calmer Mind’. The first episode was Fire.

The history of fire circles spans ancient human gathering traditions, modern pagan rituals, and even fire performance art, evolving from basic survival and community building around fire to intentional spiritual circles for healing, transformation, or entertainment, with practices rooted in ancient fire veneration and a recent resurgence of shamanic/Pagan practices in Western culture, notes 4qf.org and Patheos.

The above was copied, in part, from a Google ‘AI’ article.

Photo by Peter Schulz on Unsplash

Here is a YouTube video on how to participate in a Fire Circle:

A Very Happy New Year!

Found on Easter Island

Amazing what science can find out.

But while the science is brilliant the social implications are not so good. Read on!

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A billion-dollar drug was found in Easter Island soil – what scientists and companies owe the Indigenous people they studied

The Rapa Nui people are mostly invisible in the origin story of rapamycin. Posnov/Moment via Getty Images

Ted Powers, University of California, Davis

An antibiotic discovered on Easter Island in 1964 sparked a billion-dollar pharmaceutical success story. Yet the history told about this “miracle drug” has completely left out the people and politics that made its discovery possible.

Named after the island’s Indigenous name, Rapa Nui, the drug rapamycin was initially developed as an immunosuppressant to prevent organ transplant rejection and to improve the efficacy of stents to treat coronary artery disease. Its use has since expanded to treat various types of cancer, and researchers are currently exploring its potential to treat diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and even aging. Indeed, studies raising rapamycin’s promise to extend lifespan or combat age-related diseases seem to be published almost daily. A PubMed search reveals over 59,000 journal articles that mention rapamycin, making it one of the most talked-about drugs in medicine.

Connected hexagonal structures
Chemical structure of rapamycin. Fvasconcellos/Wikimedia Commons

At the heart of rapamycin’s power lies its ability to inhibit a protein called the target of rapamycin kinase, or TOR. This protein acts as a master regulator of cell growth and metabolism. Together with other partner proteins, TOR controls how cells respond to nutrients, stress and environmental signals, thereby influencing major processes such as protein synthesis and immune function. Given its central role in these fundamental cellular activities, it is not surprising that cancer, metabolic disorders and age-related diseases are linked to the malfunction of TOR.

Despite being so ubiquitous in science and medicine, how rapamycin was discovered has remained largely unknown to the public. Many in the field are aware that scientists from the pharmaceutical company Ayerst Research Laboratories isolated the molecule from a soil sample containing the bacterium Streptomyces hydroscopicus in the mid-1970s. What is less well known is that this soil sample was collected as part of a Canadian-led mission to Rapa Nui in 1964, called the Medical Expedition to Easter Island, or METEI.

As a scientist who built my career around the effects of rapamycin on cells, I felt compelled to understand and share the human story underlying its origin. Learning about historian Jacalyn Duffin’s work on METEI completely changed how I and many of my colleagues view our own field.

Unearthing rapamycin’s complex legacy raises important questions about systemic bias in biomedical research and what pharmaceutical companies owe to the Indigenous lands from which they mine their blockbuster discoveries.

History of METEI

The Medical Expedition to Easter Island was the brainchild of a Canadian team comprised of surgeon Stanley Skoryna and bacteriologist Georges Nogrady. Their goal was to study how an isolated population adapted to environmental stress, and they believed the planned construction of an international airport on Easter Island offered a unique opportunity. They presumed that the airport would result in increased outside contact with the island’s population, resulting in changes in their health and wellness.

With funding from the World Health Organization and logistical support from the Royal Canadian Navy, METEI arrived in Rapa Nui in December 1964. Over the course of three months, the team conducted medical examinations on nearly all 1,000 island inhabitants, collecting biological samples and systematically surveying the island’s flora and fauna.

It was as part of these efforts that Nogrady gathered over 200 soil samples, one of which ended up containing the rapamycin-producing Streptomyces strain of bacteria.

Poster of the word METEI written vertically between the back of two moai heads, with the inscription '1964-1965 RAPA NUI INA KA HOA (Don't give up the ship)'
METEI logo. Georges Nogrady, CC BY-NC-ND

It’s important to realize that the expedition’s primary objective was to study the Rapa Nui people as a sort of living laboratory. They encouraged participation through bribery by offering gifts, food and supplies, and through coercion by enlisting a long-serving Franciscan priest on the island to aid in recruitment. While the researchers’ intentions may have been honorable, it is nevertheless an example of scientific colonialism, where a team of white investigators choose to study a group of predominantly nonwhite subjects without their input, resulting in a power imbalance.

There was an inherent bias in the inception of METEI. For one, the researchers assumed the Rapa Nui had been relatively isolated from the rest of the world when there was in fact a long history of interactions with countries outside the island, beginning with reports from the early 1700s through the late 1800s.

METEI also assumed that the Rapa Nui were genetically homogeneous, ignoring the island’s complex history of migration, slavery and disease. For example, the modern population of Rapa Nui are mixed race, from both Polynesian and South American ancestors. The population also included survivors of the African slave trade who were returned to the island and brought with them diseases, including smallpox.

This miscalculation undermined one of METEI’s key research goals: to assess how genetics affect disease risk. While the team published a number of studies describing the different fauna associated with the Rapa Nui, their inability to develop a baseline is likely one reason why there was no follow-up study following the completion of the airport on Easter Island in 1967.

Giving credit where it is due

Omissions in the origin stories of rapamycin reflect common ethical blind spots in how scientific discoveries are remembered.

Georges Nogrady carried soil samples back from Rapa Nui, one of which eventually reached Ayerst Research Laboratories. There, Surendra Sehgal and his team isolated what was named rapamycin, ultimately bringing it to market in the late 1990s as the immunosuppressant Rapamune. While Sehgal’s persistence was key in keeping the project alive through corporate upheavals – going as far as to stash a culture at home – neither Nogrady nor the METEI was ever credited in his landmark publications.

Although rapamycin has generated billions of dollars in revenue, the Rapa Nui people have received no financial benefit to date. This raises questions about Indigenous rights and biopiracy, which is the commercialization of Indigenous knowledge.

Agreements like the United Nations’s 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity and the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples aim to protect Indigenous claims to biological resources by encouraging countries to obtain consent and input from Indigenous people and provide redress for potential harms before starting projects. However, these principles were not in place during METEI’s time.

Close-up headshots of row of people wearing floral headdresses in a dim room
The Rapa Nui have received little to no acknowledgment for their role in the discovery of rapamycin. Esteban Felix/AP Photo

Some argue that because the bacteria that produces rapamycin has since been found in other locations, Easter Island’s soil was not uniquely essential to the drug’s discovery. Moreover, because the islanders did not use rapamycin or even know about its presence on the island, some have countered that it is not a resource that can be “stolen.”

However, the discovery of rapamycin on Rapa Nui set the foundation for all subsequent research and commercialization around the molecule, and this only happened because the people were the subjects of study. Formally recognizing and educating the public about the essential role the Rapa Nui played in the eventual discovery of rapamycin is key to compensating them for their contributions.

In recent years, the broader pharmaceutical industry has begun to recognize the importance of fair compensation for Indigenous contributions. Some companies have pledged to reinvest in communities where valuable natural products are sourced. However, for the Rapa Nui, pharmaceutical companies that have directly profited from rapamycin have not yet made such an acknowledgment.

Ultimately, METEI is a story of both scientific triumph and social ambiguities. While the discovery of rapamycin has transformed medicine, the expedition’s impact on the Rapa Nui people is more complicated. I believe issues of biomedical consent, scientific colonialism and overlooked contributions highlight the need for a more critical examination and awareness of the legacy of breakthrough scientific discoveries.

Ted Powers, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Ted Powers explains in the last paragraph: “Ultimately, METEI is a story of both scientific triumph and social ambiguities.” Then goes on to say: “I believe issues of biomedical consent, scientific colonialism and overlooked contributions highlight the need for a more critical examination and awareness of the legacy of breakthrough scientific discoveries.”

If only it was simple!

Another lucky aspect of living in Oregon

We have not lost our wolves.

Here is a partial list of the wolf situation in Oregon:

  • Return & Recovery: Wolves reappeared in Oregon around 2008, descendants of wolves reintroduced in Idaho, growing to many packs across the state.
  • Management: The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) manages wolves under the Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan.
  • Zones: Management differs between eastern and western Oregon, with federal listing status changing, affecting management authority.
  • Conservation Efforts: Organizations like Oregon Wild advocate for strong wolf protections, habitat connectivity, and non-lethal conflict deterrence.

However, in eastern North America things are not so good; as this article from The Coversation explains:

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With wolves absent from most of eastern North America, can coyotes replace them?

Coyotes have expanded across the United States. Davis Huber/500px via Getty Images

Alex Jensen, North Carolina State University

Imagine a healthy forest, home to a variety of species: Birds are flitting between tree branches, salamanders are sliding through leaf litter, and wolves are tracking the scent of deer through the understory. Each of these animals has a role in the forest, and most ecologists would argue that losing any one of these species would be bad for the ecosystem as a whole.

Unfortunately – whether due to habitat loss, overhunting or introduced species – humans have made some species disappear. At the same time, other species have adapted to us and spread more widely.

As an ecologist, I’m curious about what these changes mean for ecosystems – can these newly arrived species functionally replace the species that used to be there? I studied this process in eastern North America, where some top predators have disappeared and a new predator has arrived.

A primer on predators

Wolves used to roam across every state east of the Mississippi River. But as the land was developed, many people viewed wolves as threats and wiped most of them out. These days, a mix of gray wolves and eastern wolves persist in Canada and around the Great Lakes, which I collectively refer to as northeastern wolves. There’s also a small population of red wolves – a distinct and smaller species of wolf – on the coast of North Carolina.

The disappearance of wolves may have given coyotes the opportunity they needed. Starting around 1900, coyotes began expanding their range east and have now colonized nearly all of eastern North America.

A map of central to eastern North America. Parts of southern Canada are marked as 'current northeast wolf range,' the northeast US is marked 'current coyote and historical wolf range,' the rest of the southern and eastern US is marked 'red wolf range' and to the west is marked 'coyote range ~1900.'
Coyotes colonized most of eastern North America in the wake of wolf extirpation. Jensen 2025, CC BY

So are coyotes the new wolf? Can they fill the same ecological role that wolves used to? These are the questions I set out to answer in my paper published in August 2025 in the Stacks Journal. I focused on their role as predators – what they eat and how often they kill big herbivores, such as deer and moose.

What’s on the menu?

I started by reviewing every paper I could find on wolf or coyote diets, recording what percent of scat or stomach samples contained common food items such as deer, rabbits, small rodents or fruit. I compared northeastern wolf diets to northeastern coyote diets and red wolf diets to southeastern coyote diets.

I found two striking differences between wolf and coyote diets. First, wolves ate more medium-sized herbivores. In particular, they ate more beavers in the northeast and more nutria in the southeast. Both of these species are large aquatic rodents that influence ecosystems – beaver dam building changes how water moves, sometimes undesirably for land owners, while nutria are non-native and damaging to wetlands.

Second, wolves have narrower diets overall. They eat less fruit and fewer omnivores such as birds, raccoons and foxes, compared to coyotes. This means that coyotes are likely performing some ecological roles that wolves never did, such as dispersing fruit seeds in their poop and suppressing populations of smaller predators.

A diagram showing the diets of wolves and coyotes
Grouping food items by size and trophic level revealed some clear differences between wolf and coyote diets. Percents are the percent of samples containing each level, and stars indicate a statistically significant difference. Alex Jensen, CC BY

Killing deer and moose

But diet studies alone cannot tell the whole story – it’s usually impossible to tell whether coyotes killed or scavenged the deer they ate, for example. So I also reviewed every study I could find on ungulate mortality – these are studies that tag deer or moose, track their survival, and attribute a cause of death if they die.

These studies revealed other important differences between wolves and coyotes. For example, wolves were responsible for a substantial percentage of moose deaths – 19% of adults and 40% of calves – while none of the studies documented coyotes killing moose. This means that all, or nearly all, of moose in coyote diets is scavenged.

Coyotes are adept predators of deer, however. In the northeast, they killed more white-tailed deer fawns than wolves did, 28% compared to 15%, and a similar percentage of adult deer, 18% compared to 22%. In the southeast, coyotes killed 40% of fawns but only 6% of adults.

Rarely killing adult deer in the southeast could have implications for other members of the ecological community. For example, after killing an adult ungulate, many large predators leave some of the carcass behind, which can be an important source of food for scavengers. Although there is no data on how often red wolves kill adult deer, it is likely that coyotes are not supplying food to scavengers to the same extent that red wolves do.

Two wolves walking through the grass. One is sniffing a dead deer on the ground.
Wolves and coyotes both kill a substantial proportion of deer, but they focus on different age classes. imageBROKER/Raimund Linke via Getty Images

Are coyotes the new wolves?

So what does this all mean? It means that although coyotes eat some of the same foods, they cannot fully replace wolves. Differences between wolves and coyotes were particularly pronounced in the northeast, where coyotes rarely killed moose or beavers. Coyotes in the southeast were more similar to red wolves, but coyotes likely killed fewer nutria and adult deer.

The return of wolves could be a natural solution for regions where wildlife managers desire a reduction in moose, beaver, nutria or deer populations.

Yet even with the aid of reintroductions, wolves will likely never fully recover their former range in eastern North America – there are too many people. Coyotes, on the other hand, do quite well around people. So even if wolves never fully recover, at least coyotes will be in those places partially filling the role that wolves once had.

Indeed, humans have changed the world so much that it may be impossible to return to the way things were before people substantially changed the planet. While some restoration will certainly be possible, researchers can continue to evaluate the extent to which new species can functionally replace missing species.

Alex Jensen, Postdoctoral Associate – Wildlife Ecology, North Carolina State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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So there is a big difference between the Eastern seaboard and the Western States of the USA. We live in the forested part of Southern Oregon but I have never seen a wolf despite Alex Jensen writing that they inhabit this area.

The wolf is a magnificent animal, the forerunner of the dog. I would love to see a wolf!