Category: Government

Starting a Veterinary Clinic

A guest post.

This post, and the next one, are submitted by Penny Martin.

ooOOoo

Image: Freepik

Vision to Reality: Building a Profitable Vet Clinic

Launching a veterinary clinic is a significant endeavor that requires meticulous planning and strategic decision-making. This venture combines a passion for animal care with the intricacies of managing a successful business. Aspiring clinic owners must navigate several critical steps to lay a strong foundation and ensure operational excellence. Starting your own clinic promises not only to fulfill a dream of helping animals but also to establish a thriving enterprise in the community.

Build a Strong Foundation with an Effective Marketing Strategy

A robust marketing strategy is essential to attract potential clients in the digital era. Establishing a professional online presence through a user-friendly website that details your services, team, and location builds trust among pet owners. Engage actively on social media with regular updates and client testimonials to showcase your expertise and commitment to animal care. Forge partnerships with local pet-related businesses to increase visibility and drive traffic to your clinic, enhancing both your and your partners’ customer bases.

Craft a Clear and Detailed Business Plan

A well-constructed business plan acts as your clinic’s roadmap, detailing your mission, services offered, and the specific target market. Identify your niche early—whether it’s specializing in certain animals or treatments—to attract the appropriate clientele. Include comprehensive financial projections and a marketing budget in your plan to ensure financial preparedness and support your clinic’s promotional activities.

Enhance Your Business Knowledge by Pursuing an MBA

Running a veterinary clinic demands a blend of clinical and business expertise. Pursuing a master’s of business administration online can boost your proficiency in key business areas such as strategy, management, and finance. An MBA not only deepens your understanding of business operations but also enhances leadership skills and self-assessment capabilities. These competencies are essential for balancing the medical and business demands of your clinic, ensuring its long-term success.

Safeguard Your Business with Proper Insurance

Operating a veterinary clinic comes with inherent risks, making comprehensive insurance coverage essential. Essential policies include malpractice insurance to handle legal issues and general liability insurance for accidents on your premises. Property insurance is crucial to protect your clinic’s infrastructure and equipment against unexpected events. Consulting with an insurance expert can ensure that you have thorough coverage to protect against potential financial setbacks.

Invest in High-Quality Veterinary Equipment

Providing top-tier care necessitates investing in high-quality veterinary equipment. Essential tools like X-ray machines, surgical instruments, and lab equipment should be of the highest standard to ensure accurate diagnoses and treatments. Modern technologies, such as digital imaging systems, not only enhance patient care but also improve operational efficiency. While the initial cost may be higher, investing in quality equipment pays off in the long run by boosting efficiency and minimizing errors.

Secure the Necessary Funding for Your Clinic

Securing sufficient funding is critical when starting a veterinary clinic. Estimate your startup costs accurately to understand your financial needs, including equipment, premises, staffing, and marketing. Explore diverse financing options, such as bank loans, private investors, and specialty medical practice loans that might offer favorable terms. Adequate initial funding prevents cash flow problems and supports your clinic’s growth trajectory.

Choose the Right Location for Your Clinic

The location of your clinic is pivotal to its success, necessitating a spot with a high demand for veterinary services. Conduct thorough market research to choose a community rich in pet owners who need your services. Select a location that is accessible, visible, and has ample parking to ensure convenience for your clients. Proximity to complementary services like pet groomers or dog trainers can further enhance client traffic and provide expansion opportunities.

Opening a veterinary clinic is both challenging and rewarding, demanding a careful blend of dedication and strategic foresight. Success in this field not only enhances the well-being of pets but also contributes positively to the local community. It requires ongoing commitment to adapt and grow in a dynamic environment. Ultimately, the fulfillment of running a successful veterinary clinic comes from both the impact on animal health and the achievement of entrepreneurial goals.

Discover the timeless wisdom that dogs offer at Learning from Dogs, where integrity and living in the present are celebrated. Dive into our content and embrace the lessons from our four-legged friends.

ooOOoo

Opening a vet clinic is well beyond me even though many years ago I was an entrepreneur.

However, one hopes that somewhere a person or two find this very useful.

Improving equality

An extremely powerful new essay from George Monbiot.

While this post from G. Monbiot is about politics, I think it goes far beyond that. Hence my reason for republishing this essay, with George Monbiot’s permission. When I will die is not known but surely I will in the next ten years or so. I really want to leave this world seeing everything improving, from the lessening of the change in our climate, to a reduction in world fighting, to a greater equality for all.

Please, please be wrong, Mr. Monbiot.

ooOOoo

The Urge to Destroy

Posted on14th April 2025

It’s a cast-iron relationship: the more unequal a society becomes, the better the far right does. Here’s why. 

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  13th April 2025

“He’s really gone and done it this time. Now everyone can see what a disaster he is.” How many times have we heard this about Donald Trump? And how many times has it been proved wrong? Well, maybe this time he really has overstepped. After all, his clowning around with tariffs, sparking trade wars, then suddenly reversing his position, could provoke a global recession, perhaps even a depression. Surely his supporters will disown him? But I’m not banking on it, and this is why.

Already, Trump has waged war on everything that builds prosperity and wellbeing: democracy, healthy ecosystems, education, healthcare, science, the arts. Yet, amid the wreckage, and despite some slippage, his approval ratings still hold between 43 and 48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why? I believe part of the answer lies in a fundamental aspect of our humanity: the urge to destroy that from which you feel excluded.

This urge, I think, is crucial to understanding politics. Yet hardly anyone seems to recognise it. Hardly anyone, that is, except the far right, who see it all too well.

In many parts of the world, and the US in particular, inequality has risen sharply since the late 1970s. (The UK tracks this trend.) The world’s billionaires became $2tn richer last year, while the number of people living below the global poverty line is more or less unchanged since 1990.

There is strong evidence of a causal association between growing inequality and the rise of populist authoritarian movements. A paper in the Journal of European Public Policy found that a one-unit rise in the Gini coefficient (a standard measure of inequality) increases support for demagogues by 1%.

Why might this be? There are various, related explanations: feelings of marginalisation, status anxiety and social threat, insecurity triggering an authoritarian reflex and a loss of trust in other social groups. At the root of some of these explanations, I feel, is something deeply embedded in the human psyche: if you can’t get even, get mean.

In the US, a high proportion of the population is excluded from many of the benefits I’ve listed. Science might lead to medical breakthroughs, but not, perhaps, for people who can’t afford health insurance. A university education might open doors, but only if you’re prepared to carry tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Art and theatre and music improve our lives: good for those who can buy the tickets. So do national parks, but only if you can afford to visit them.

Democracy, we are told, allows people a voice in politics. But only, it seems, if they have a few million to give to a political party. As the political scientist Prof Martin Gilens notes in his book Affluence and Influence: “Under most circumstances, the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt.” GDP growth was strong under Joe Biden, but as the economics professor Jason Furman points out: “From 2019 to 2023, inflation-adjusted household income fell, and the poverty rate rose.” GDP and social improvement are no longer connected.

All those good things? Sorry, they’re not for you. If you feel an urge to tear it all down, to burn the whole stinking, hypocritical, exclusive system to the ground, Trump is your man. Or so he claims. In reality his entire performance is both a distraction from and an accelerant of spiralling inequality. He can hardly lose: the more he exacerbates inequality, the more he triggers an urge for revenge against his scapegoats: immigrants, trans people, scientists, teachers, China.

But such killer clowns can’t pull this off by themselves. Their most effective recruiters are centrist parties paralysed in the face of economic power. In hock to rich funders, terrified of the billionaire media, for decades they have been unable even to name the problem, let alone address it. Hence the spectacular uselessness of the Democrats’ response to Trump. As the US journalist Hamilton Nolan remarks: “One party is out to kill, and the other is waiting for its leaders to die.”

In the UK, Labour, like the Democrats, has long assured itself that it doesn’t matter how wide economic disparities are, as long as the poorest are raised up. Now it has abandoned even that caveat: we can cut benefits, so long as GDP grows. But it does matter. It matters very much. A vast array of evidence, brought together in 2009 in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and updated in 2024, shows that inequality exerts a massive influence on social, economic, environmental and political outcomes, regardless of people’s absolute positions.

If there is a such a thing as Starmerism, it collapses in the face of a paper published by the political scientists Leonardo Baccini and Thomas Sattler last year, which finds that austerity increases support for the radical right in economically vulnerable regions. (My emboldening. PH) Austerity, they found, is the key variable: without it, less-educated people are no more likely to vote for rightwing demagogues than highly educated people are. In other words, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are busily handing their core constituencies to Nigel Farage.

Of course, they deny they’re imposing austerity, using a technical definition that means nothing to those on the sharp end. Austerity is what the poor experience, while they must watch the rich and upper middle classes, under a Labour government, enjoy ever greater abundance.

Starmer and his minions suggest there’s nothing they can do: wealthy people are already taxed to the max. As private jets and helicopters cross the skies, anyone can see this is nonsense. Of all the remarkable things I stumbled across while researching this column, the following is perhaps the most jaw-dropping. On the most recent (2022) figures, once benefits have been paid, the Gini coefficient for gross income in the UK scarcely differs from the Gini coefficient for post-tax income. In other words, the gap between the rich and the poor is rougly the same after taxes are levied, suggesting that taxation has no further significant effect on income distribution. How could this possibly be true, when the rich pay higher rates of income tax? It’s because the poor surrender a much higher proportion of their income in sales taxes, such as VAT. So much for no further options. So much for Labour “realism”.

The one thing that can stop the rise of the far right is the one thing mainstream parties are currently not prepared to deliver: greater equality. The rich should be taxed more, and the revenue used to improve the lives of the poor. However frantically centrist parties avoid the issue, there is no other way.

www.monbiot.com

ooOOoo

George writes about Britain but my judgement is that this issue is not limited to that country; I suspect it is a far wider problem. Did you know that Finland is the world’s happiest country?

An extract of that article: “Finland has been ranked as the world’s happiest country for the eighth successive year, with experts citing access to nature and a strong welfare system as factors.

It came ahead of three other Nordic countries in this year’s UN-sponsored World Happiness Report, while Latin America’s Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time.

Both the UK and the US slipped down the list to 23rd and 24th respectively – the lowest-ever position for the latter.”

The US decline in butterflies

The natural world is quite remarkable!

This article was published in The Conversation last Thursday, the 6th March, 2025.

Where we live in rural Southern Oregon is glorious and photos of our locale have been published before. However, I wanted to share this article with you all.

ooOOoo

Butterflies declined by 22% in just 2 decades across the US – there are ways you can help save them

The endangered Karner blue butterfly has struggled with habitat loss. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Eliza Grames, Binghamton University, State University of New York

If the joy of seeing butterflies seems increasingly rare these days, it isn’t your imagination.

From 2000 to 2020, the number of butterflies fell by 22% across the continental United States. That’s 1 in 5 butterflies lost. The findings are from an analysis just published in the journal Science by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Powell Center Status of Butterflies of the United States Working Group, which I am involved in.

We found declines in just about every region of the continental U.S. and across almost all butterfly species.

Overall, nearly one-third of the 342 butterfly species we were able to study declined by more than half. Twenty-two species fell by more than 90%. Only nine actually increased in numbers.

An orange butterfly with black webbing and spots sits on a purple flower.
West Coast lady butterflies range across the western U.S., but their numbers have dropped by 80% in two decades. Renee Las Vegas/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Some species’ numbers are dropping faster than others. The West Coast lady, a fairly widespread species across the western U.S., dropped by 80% in 20 years. Given everything we know about its biology, it should be doing fine – it has a wide range and feeds on a variety of plants. Yet, its numbers are absolutely tanking across its range.

Why care about butterflies?

Butterflies are beautiful. They inspire people, from art to literature and poetry. They deserve to exist simply for the sake of existing. They are also important for ecosystem function.

Butterflies are pollinators, picking up pollen on their legs and bodies as they feed on nectar from one flower and carrying it to the next. In their caterpillar stage, they also play an important role as herbivores, keeping plant growth in check.

A closeup of a caterpillar eating a leaf.
A pipevine swallowtail caterpillar munches on leaves at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md. Herbivores help keep plant growth in check. Judy Gallagher/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Butterflies can also serve as an indicator species that can warn of threats and trends in other insects. Because humans are fond of butterflies, it’s easy to get volunteers to participate in surveys to count them.

The annual North American Butterfly Association Fourth of July Count is an example and one we used in the analysis. The same kind of nationwide monitoring by amateur naturalists doesn’t exist for less charismatic insects such as walking sticks.

What’s causing butterflies to decline?

Butterfly populations can decline for a number of reasons. Habitat loss, insecticides, rising temperatures and drying landscapes can all harm these fragile insects.

A study published in 2024 found that a change in insecticide use was a major factor in driving butterfly declines in the Midwest over 17 years. The authors, many of whom were also part of the current study, noted that the drop coincided with a shift to using seeds with prophylactic insecticides, rather than only spraying crops after an infestation.

The Southwest saw the greatest drops in butterfly abundance of any region. As that region heats up and dries out, the changing climate may be driving some of the butterfly decline there. Butterflies have a high surface-to-volume ratio – they don’t hold much moisture – so they can easily become desiccated in dry conditions. Drought can also harm the plants that butterflies rely on.

Only the Pacific Northwest didn’t lose butterfly population on average. This trend was largely driven by an irruptive species, meaning one with extremely high abundance in some years – the California tortoiseshell. When this species was excluded from the analyses, trends in the Pacific Northwest were similar to other regions.

A butterfly on a leaf
The California tortoiseshell butterfly can look like wood when its wings are closed, but they’re a soft orange on the other side. Walter Siegmund/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

When we looked at each species by its historical range, we found something else interesting.

Many species suffered their highest losses at the southern ends of their ranges, while the northern losses generally weren’t as severe. While we could not link drivers to trends directly, the reason for this pattern might involve climate change, or greater exposure to agriculture with insecticides in southern areas, or it may be a combination of many stressors.

There is hope for populations to recover

Some butterfly species can have multiple generations per year, and depending on the environmental conditions, the number of generations can vary between years.

This gives me a bit of hope when it comes to butterfly conservation. Because they have such short generation times, even small conservation steps can make a big difference and we can see populations bounce back.

The Karner blue is an example. It’s a small, endangered butterfly that depends on oak savannas and pine barren ecosystems. These habitats are uncommon and require management, especially prescribed burning, to maintain. With restoration efforts, one Karner blue population in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in New York rebounded from a few hundred individuals in the early 1990s to thousands of butterflies.

Similar management and restoration efforts could help other rare and declining butterflies to recover.

What you can do to help butterflies recover

The magnitude and rate of biodiversity loss in the world right now can make one feel helpless. But while national and international efforts are needed to address the crisis, you can also take small actions that can have quick benefits, starting in your own backyard.

Butterflies love wildflowers, and planting native wildflowers can benefit many butterfly species. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has guides recommending which native species are best to plant in which parts of the country. Letting grass grow can help, even if it’s just a strip of grass and wildflowers a couple of feet wide at the back of the yard.

Butterflies on wildflowers in a small garden.
A patch of wildflowers and grasses can become a butterfly garden, like this one in Townsend, Tenn. Chris Light, CC BY-SA

Supporting policies that benefit conservation can also help. In some states, insects aren’t considered wildlife, so state wildlife agencies have their hands tied when it comes to working on butterfly conservation. But those laws could be changed.

The federal Endangered Species Act can also help. The law mandates that the government maintain habitat for listed species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2024 recommended listing the monarch butterfly as a threatened species. With the new study, we now have population trends for more than half of all U.S. butterfly species, including many that likely should be considered for listing.

With so many species needing help, it can be difficult to know where to start. But the new data can help concentrate conservation efforts on those species at the highest risk.

I believe this study should be a wake-up call about the need to better protect butterflies and other insects – “the little things that run the world.”

Eliza Grames, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Binghamton University, State University of New York

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

ooOOoo

Thank you, Eliza, for promoting this article.

If only one person is inspired to make the changes Eliza recommends then republishing this article has been a success.

Scamming

It is becoming very large!

Early on last Wednesday, February 26th, the BBC Radio 4 programme World at One, had a major item on scamming. Here are the details of that programme:

Released On: 26 Feb 2025

Back in September we revealed the knitted cardigan scam. Millions have been taken in by social media ads of expensive looking knitwear for a reasonable price. Victims hear nothing until something cheap and nasty arrives in the post months later. But it’s more than a simple con. Shari Vahl reveals what its really about. Sales of stout show no sign of stopping as more young women are turning to it. Guinness blames increased demand with supply chain issues for a recent shortage. Its rivals in the dark beer world are jumping on the opportunity with some success. Will it work? Finally, a listener tells us how his energy company gave his mobile number to a criminal who went on to steal £40,000. We find out how you can prevent this happening to you. Presenter: Shari Vahl Producer: Kevin Mousle.

Then later on that morning, I watched the video below, produced by the American Social Administration

Then there was this list of scams and frauds produced by the USA Government

Read it – that link is here: https://www.usa.gov/scams-and-fraud

Be carefully everybody!

My stray into British politics

A riveting talk by Sir John Major.

(Images may be subject to copyright. If I am emailed that I am infringing the copyright of the New Statesman this photograph will be removed.)

Wikipedia speak of Sir John as follows:

Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British retired politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He previously held Cabinet positions under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his last as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1989 to 1990. Major was Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001. Since stepping down as an MP in 2001, Major has focused on writing and his business, sporting, and charity work, and has occasionally commented on political developments in the role of an elder statesman.

(More of the Wikipedia article is here.)

On yesterday’s World This Weekend the programme was entirely devoted to a speech that John Major gave on February 16th. His theme was: “We are moving into a more dangerous world“

BBC Sounds have a recording of that speech that will stay available for 29 days. That link is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00282l8

I sincerely hope you can listen to it, for I found the talk riveting!

Nutrition advice

An article on educating us on avoiding misinformation.

Many articles on nutrition are full of errors and for the lay person there’s no easy way to understand what is correct, or not.

That’s why a recent article appealed to me and I thought it worth sharing.

ooOOoo

Nutrition advice is rife with misinformation − a medical education specialist explains how to tell valid health information from pseudoscience

If a health claim about a dietary intervention sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Mizina/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Aimee Pugh Bernard, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated a vast landscape of misinformation about many topics, science and health chief among them.

Since then, information overload continues unabated, and many people are rightfully confused by an onslaught of conflicting health information. Even expert advice is often contradictory.

On top of that, people sometimes deliberately distort research findings to promote a certain agenda. For example, trisodium phosphate is a common food additive in cakes and cookies that is used to improve texture and prevent spoilage, but wellness influencers exploit the fact that a similarly named substance is used in paint and cleaning products to suggest it’s dangerous to your health.

Such claims can proliferate quickly, creating widespread misconceptions and undermining trust in legitimate scientific research and medical advice. Social media’s rise as a news and information source further fuels the spread of pseudoscientific views.

Misinformation is rampant in the realm of health and nutrition. Findings from nutrition research is rarely clear-cut because diet is just one of many behaviors and lifestyle factors affecting health, but the simplicity of using food and supplements as a cure-all is especially seductive.

I am an assistant professor specializing in medical education and science communication. I also train scientists and future health care professionals how to communicate their science to the general public.

In my view, countering the voices of social media influencers and health activists promoting pseudoscientific health claims requires leaning into the science of disease prevention. Extensive research has produced a body of evidence-based practices and public health measures that have consistently been shown to improve the health of millions of people around the world. Evaluating popular health claims against the yardstick of this work can help distinguish which ones are based on sound science.

A white person's hands holding a smartphone with screen showing a health app, next to a cup of coffee.
To parse pseudoscientific claims from sound advice about health and nutrition, it’s crucial to evaluate the information’s source. tadamichi/Getty Images

Navigating the terrain of tangled information

Conflicting information can be found on just about everything we eat and drink.

That’s because a food or beverage is rarely just good or bad. Instead, its health effects can depend on everything from the quantity a person consumes to their genetic makeup. Hundreds of scientific studies describe coffee’s health benefits and, on the flip side, its health risks. A bird’s-eye view can point in one direction or another, but news articles and social media posts often make claims based on a single study.

Things can get even more confusing with dietary supplements because people who promote them often make big claims about their health benefits. Take apple cider vinegar, for example – or ACV, if you’re in the know.

Apple cider vinegar has been touted as an all-natural remedy for a variety of ailments, including digestive issues, urinary health and weight management. Indeed, some studies have shown that it might help lower cholesterol, in addition to having other health benefits, but overall those studies have small sample sizes and are inconclusive.

Advocates of this substance often claim that one particular component of it – the cloudy sediment at the bottom of the bottle termed “the mother” – is especially beneficial because of the bacteria and yeast it contains. But there is no research that backs the claim that it offers any health benefits.

One good rule of thumb is that health hacks that promise quick fixes are almost always too good to be true. And even when supplements do offer some health benefits under specific circumstances, it’s important to remember that they are largely exempt from Food and Drug Administration regulations. That means the ingredients on their labels might contain more or less of the ingredients promised or other ingredients not listed, which can potentially cause harms such as liver toxicity.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the global dietary supplements industry is worth more than US$150 billion per year, so companies – and wellness influencers – selling supplements have a financial stake in convincing the public of their value.

Misinformation about nutrition is nothing new, but that doesn’t make it any less confusing.

How nutrition science gets twisted

There’s no doubt that good nutrition is fundamental for your health. Studies consistently show that a balanced diet containing a variety of essential nutrients can help prevent chronic diseases and promote overall well-being.

For instance, minerals such as calcium and iron support bone health and oxygen circulation in the blood, respectively. Proteins are essential for muscle repair and growth, and healthy fats, like those found in avocados and nuts, are vital for brain health.

However, pseudoscientific claims often twist such basic facts to promote the idea that specific diets or supplements can prevent or treat illness. For example, vitamin C is known to play a role in supporting the immune system and can help reduce the duration and severity of colds.

But despite assertions to the contrary, consuming large quantities of vitamin C does not prevent colds. In fact, the body needs only a certain amount of vitamin C to function properly, and any excess is simply excreted.

Companies sometimes claim their supplement is “scientifically proven” to cure illness or boost brain function, with no credible research to back it up.

Some companies overstate the benefits while underplaying the hazards.

For example, wellness influencers have promoted raw milk over pasteurized milk as a more natural and nutritious choice, but consuming it is risky. Unpasteurized milk can contain harmful bacteria that leads to gastrointestinal illness and, in some cases, much more serious and potentially life-threatening diseases such as avian influenza, or bird flu.

Such dietary myths aren’t harmless. Reliance on nutrition alone can lead to neglecting other critical aspects of health, such as regular medical checkups and lifesaving vaccinations.

The lure of dietary myths has led people with cancer to replace proven science-backed treatments, such as chemotherapy or radiation, with unproven and misleading nutrition programs.

How to spot less-than-solid science

Pseudoscience exploits your insecurities and emotions, taking advantage of your desire to live the healthiest life possible.

While the world around you may be uncertain and out of your control, you want to believe that at the very least, you have control over your own health. This is where the wellness industry steps in.

What makes pseudoscientific claims so confusing is that they use just enough scientific jargon to sound believable. Supplements or powders that claim to “boost immunity” often list ingredients such as adaptogens and superfoods. While these words sound real and convincing, they actually don’t mean anything in science. They are terms created by the wellness industry to sell products.

I’ve researched and written about reliable ways to distinguish science facts from false health claims. To stay alert and find credible information, I’d suggest you follow a few key steps.

First, check your emotions – strong emotional reactions, such as fear and anger, can be a red flag.

Next, check that the author has experience or expertise in the field of the topic. If they’re not an expert, they might not know what they are talking about. It’s always a good idea to make sure the source is reputable – ask yourself, would this source be trusted by scientists?

Finally, search for references that back up the information. If very little or nothing else exists in the science world to back up the claims, you may want to put your trust in a different source.

Following these steps will separate the facts from fake news and empower you to make evidence-based decisions.

Aimee Pugh Bernard, Assistant Professor of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

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

ooOOoo

Sound advice for the majority of us!

The Edwin Hubble Great Debate

The following is more than fascinating; it is an example of how far science has reached; both figuratively and literally.

ooOOoo

One large Milky Way galaxy or many galaxies? 100 years ago, a young Edwin Hubble settled astronomy’s ‘Great Debate’

The Andromeda galaxy helped Edwin Hubble settle a great debate in astronomy. Stocktrek Images via Getty Images

Chris Impey, University of Arizona

A hundred years ago, astronomer Edwin Hubble dramatically expanded the size of the known universe. At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 1925, a paper read by one of his colleagues on his behalf reported that the Andromeda nebula, also called M31, was nearly a million light years away – too remote to be a part of the Milky Way.

Hubble’s work opened the door to the study of the universe beyond our galaxy. In the century since Hubble’s pioneering work, astronomers like me have learned that the universe is vast and contains trillions of galaxies.

Nature of the nebulae

In 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei used the newly invented telescope to show that the Milky Way was composed of a huge number of faint stars. For the next 300 years, astronomers assumed that the Milky Way was the entire universe.

As astronomers scanned the night sky with larger telescopes, they were intrigued by fuzzy patches of light called nebulae. Toward the end of the 18th century, astronomer William Herschel used star counts to map out the Milky Way. He cataloged a thousand new nebulae and clusters of stars. He believed that the nebulae were objects within the Milky Way.

Charles Messier also produced a catalog of over 100 prominent nebulae in 1781. Messier was interested in comets, so his list was a set of fuzzy objects that might be mistaken for comets. He intended for comet hunters to avoid them since they did not move across the sky.

As more data piled up, 19th century astronomers started to see that the nebulae were a mixed bag. Some were gaseous, star-forming regions, such as the Orion nebula, or M42 – the 42nd object in Messier’s catalog – while others were star clusters such as the Pleiades, or M45.

A third category – nebulae with spiral structure – particularly intrigued astronomers. The Andromeda nebula, M31, was a prominent example. It’s visible to the naked eye from a dark site.

The Andromeda galaxy, then known as the Andromeda nebula, is a bright spot in the sky that intrigued early astronomers.

Astronomers as far back as the mid-18th century had speculated that some nebulae might be remote systems of stars or “island universes,” but there was no data to support this hypothesis. Island universes referred to the idea that there could be enormous stellar systems outside the Milky Way – but astronomers now just call these systems galaxies.

In 1920, astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis held a Great Debate. Shapley argued that the spiral nebulae were small and in the Milky Way, while Curtis took a more radical position that they were independent galaxies, extremely large and distant.

At the time, the debate was inconclusive. Astronomers now know that galaxies are isolated systems of stars, much smaller than the space between them.

Hubble makes his mark

Edwin Hubble was young and ambitious. At the of age 30, he arrived at Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California just in time to use the new Hooker 100-inch telescope, at the time the largest in the world.

A black and white photo of a man looking through the lens of a large telescope.
Edwin Hubble uses the telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Hulton Archives via Getty Images

He began taking photographic plates of the spiral nebulae. These glass plates recorded images of the night sky using a light-sensitive emulsion covering their surface. The telescope’s size let it make images of very faint objects, and its high-quality mirror allowed it to distinguish individual stars in some of the nebulae.

Estimating distances in astronomy is challenging. Think of how hard it is to estimate the distance of someone pointing a flashlight at you on a dark night. Galaxies come in a very wide range of sizes and masses. Measuring a galaxy’s brightness or apparent size is not a good guide to its distance.

Hubble leveraged a discovery made by Henrietta Swan Leavitt 10 years earlier. She worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a “human computer,” laboriously measuring the positions and brightness of thousands of stars on photographic plates.

She was particularly interested in Cepheid variables, which are stars whose brightness pulses regularly, so they get brighter and dimmer with a particular period. She found a relationship between their variation period, or pulse, and their intrinsic brightness or luminosity.

Once you measure a Cepheid’s period, you can calculate its distance from how bright it appears using the inverse square law. The more distant the star is, the fainter it appears.

Hubble worked hard, taking images of spiral nebulae every clear night and looking for the telltale variations of Cepheid variables. By the end of 1924, he had found 12 Cepheids in M31. He calculated M31’s distance as a prodigious 900,000 light years away, though he underestimated its true distance – about 2.5 million light years – by not realizing there were two different types of Cepheid variables.

His measurements marked the end of the Great Debate about the Milky Way’s size and the nature of the nebulae. Hubble wrote about his discovery to Harlow Shapley, who had argued that the Milky Way encompassed the entire universe.

“Here is the letter that destroyed my universe,” Shapley remarked.

Always eager for publicity, Hubble leaked his discovery to The New York Times five weeks before a colleague presented his paper at the astronomers’ annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

An expanding universe of galaxies

But Hubble wasn’t done. His second major discovery also transformed astronomers’ understanding of the universe. As he dispersed the light from dozens of galaxies into a spectrum, which recorded the amount of light at each wavelength, he noticed that the light was always shifted to longer or redder wavelengths.

Light from the galaxy passes through a prism or reflects off a diffraction grating in a telescope, which captures the intensity of light from blue to red.

Astronomers call a shift to longer wavelengths a redshift.

It seemed that these redshifted galaxies were all moving away from the Milky Way.

Hubble’s results suggested the farther away a galaxy was, the faster it was moving away from Earth. Hubble got the lion’s share of the credit for this discovery, but Lowell Observatory astronomer Vesto Slipher, who noticed the same phenomenon but didn’t publish his data, also anticipated that result.

Hubble referred to galaxies having recession velocities, or speeds of moving away from the Earth, but he never figured out that they were moving away from Earth because the universe is getting bigger.

Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre made that connection by realizing that the theory of general relativity described an expanding universe. He recognized that space expanding in between the galaxies could cause the redshifts, making it seem like they were moving farther away from each other and from Earth.

Lemaitre was the first to argue that the expansion must have begun during the big bang.

The Hubble telescope, which looks like a metal cylinder, floating in space.
Edwin Hubble is the namesake for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which has spent decades observing faraway galaxies. NASA via AP

NASA named its flagship space observatory after Hubble, and it has been used to study galaxies for 35 years. Astronomers routinely observe galaxies that are thousands of times fainter and more distant than galaxies observed in the 1920s. The James Webb Space Telescope has pushed the envelope even farther.

The current record holder is a galaxy a staggering 34 billion light years away, seen just 200 million years after the big bang, when the universe was 20 times smaller than it is now. Edwin Hubble would be amazed to see such progress.

Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

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

ooOOoo

So wonderful that in this modern era we can read articles from distinguished scientists in the comfort of our own homes.

Rillette, a wild boar, saved!

Saw this on the BBC and wanted to share it!

Here is a part of the BBC story:

Animal rights campaigners in France are celebrating after a wild boar facing the threat of death was allowed to stay with its owner.

The boar, named Rillette, was found in 2023 as a piglet by Elodie Cappé on her horse-breeding smallholding in Chaource, central France, after apparently being abandoned by its mother.

An accident

Blogging will come to a halt for a while!

I had a blackout while driving back from the shops last Saturday week, the 17th, swerved and hit an oak tree. Jean and I were both taken to hospital but I was discharged at the end of the day; Jean is still in hospital, the Asante Regional at Medford. Plus the DMV cancelled my driver’s license and the car was declared written off.

Jean is getting better all the time but until she is back home and we can put our heads together about a variety of things I shall not be blogging.

I’m very sorry but that is the way it is at the moment.

The summer of 2024 in the Northern Hemisphere.

Once more, an article on the changing climate.

Recently, the BBC News reported that:

Global efforts to tackle climate change are wildly off track, says the UN, as new data shows that warming gases are accumulating faster than at any time in human existence.

Current national plans to limit carbon emissions would barely cut pollution by 2030, the UN analysis shows, leaving efforts to keep warming under 1.5C this century in tatters.

The update comes as a separate report shows that greenhouse gases have risen by over 11% in the last two decades, with atmospheric concentrations surging in 2023.

ooOOoo

What the jet stream and climate change had to do with the hottest summer on record − remember all those heat domes?

Shuang-Ye Wu, University of Dayton

Summer 2024 was officially the Northern Hemisphere’s hottest on record. In the United States, fierce heat waves seemed to hit somewhere almost every day.

Phoenix reached 100 degrees for more than 100 days straight. The 2024 Olympic Games started in the midst of a long-running heat wave in Europe that included the three hottest days on record globally, July 21-23. August was Earth’s hottest month in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 175-year record.

Overall, the global average temperature was 2.74 degrees Fahrenheit (1.52 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average.

That might seem small, but temperature increases associated with human-induced climate change do not manifest as small, even increases everywhere on the planet. Rather, they result in more frequent and severe episodes of heat waves, as the world saw in 2024.

The most severe and persistent heat waves are often associated with an atmospheric pattern called a heat dome. As an atmospheric scientist, I study weather patterns and the changing climate. Here’s how heat domes, the jet stream and climate change influence summer heat waves and the record-hot summer of 2024.

What the jet stream has to do with heat domes

If you listened to weather forecasts during the summer of 2024, you probably heard the term “heat dome” a lot.

A heat dome is a persistent high-pressure system over a large area. A high-pressure system is created by sinking air. As air sinks, it warms up, decreasing relative humidity and leaving sunny weather. The high pressure also serves as a lid that keeps hot air on the surface from rising and dissipating. The resulting heat dome can persist for days or even weeks.

The longer a heat dome lingers, the more heat will build up, creating sweltering conditions for the people on the ground.

A 3D image of the US showing a heat dome above it.
High pressure in the middle layers of the atmosphere acts as a dome or cap, allowing heat to build up at the Earth’s surface. NOAA

How long these heat domes stick around has a lot to do with the jet stream.

The jet stream is a narrow band of strong winds in the upper atmosphere, about 30,000 feet above sea level. It moves from west to east due to the Earth’s rotation. The strong winds are a result of the sharp temperature difference where the warm tropical air meets the cold polar air from the north in the mid-latitudes.

The jet stream does not flow along a straight path. Rather, it meanders to the north and south in a wavy pattern. These giant meanders are known as the Rossby waves, and they have a major influence on weather.

An illustration shows how ridges create high pressure to the south of them and troughs create low pressure to the north of them.
Ridges and troughs created as the jet stream meanders through the mid-latitudes create high (H) and low (L) pressure systems. Reds indicate the fastest winds. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Where the jet stream arcs northward, forming a ridge, it creates a high-pressure system south of the wave. Where the jet stream dips southward, forming a trough, it creates a low-pressure system north of the jet stream. A low-pressure system contains rising air in the center, which cools and tends to generate precipitation and storms.

Most of our weather is modulated by the position and characteristics of the jet stream.

How climate change affects the jet stream

The jet stream, or any wind, is the result of differences in surface temperature.

In simple terms, warm air rises, creating low pressure, and cold air sinks, creating high pressure. Wind is the movement of the air from high to low pressure. Greater differences in temperature produce stronger winds.

For the Earth as a whole, warm air rises near the equator, and cold air sinks near the poles. The temperature difference between the equator and the pole determines the strength of the jet stream in each hemisphere.

However, that temperature difference has been changing, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. The Arctic region has been warming about three times faster than the global average. This phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, is largely caused by the melting of Arctic sea ice, which allows the exposed dark water to absorb more of the Sun’s radiation and heat up faster.

Because the Arctic is warming faster than the tropics, the temperature difference between the two regions is lessened. And that slows the jet stream.

As the jet stream slows, it tends to meander more, causing bigger waves. The bigger waves create larger high-pressure systems. These can often be blocked by the deep low-pressure systems on both sides, causing the high-pressure system to sit over a large area for a long period of time.

A stagnant polar jet stream can trapped heat over parts of North America, Europe and Asia at the same time. This example happened in July 2023. UK Met Office

Typically, waves in the jet stream pass through the continental United States in around three to five days. When blocking occurs, however, the high-pressure system could stagnate for days to weeks. This allows the heat to build up underneath, leading to blistering heat waves.

Since the jet stream circles around the globe, stagnating waves could occur in multiple places, leading to simultaneous heat waves at the mid-latitude around the world. That happened in 2024, with long-lasting heat waves in Europe, North America, Central Asia and China.

Jet stream behavior affects winter, too

The same meandering behavior of the jet stream also plays a role in extreme winter weather. That includes the southward intrusion of frigid polar air from the polar vortex and conditions for severe winter storms.

Many of these atmospheric changes, driven by human-caused global warming, have significant impacts on people’s health, property and ecosystems around the world.

Shuang-Ye Wu, Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton

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

ooOOoo

I maybe approaching my own end of life but millions of others are younger than me. When I see a woman with a young baby in her arms I cannot stop myself from wondering what that generation is going to do.