Month: January 2024

In Brazil, the unabated use of dangerous pesticides reminds the world of the harm done by denying reality. Here, as with everywhere else, synthetic pesticides play a crucial role in agriculture by controlling pests and protecting crops. But because of their high biological activity and persistence in the environment, these substances can harm human health and the ecosystem. All too often, they do just that.

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, who, many times, criticized COVID vaccines by claiming that they were too untested, set records in the approval of pesticides in the country, including substances banned in other countries because of safety concerns. The approvals ignored both the environmental impact of these pesticides, which themselves harmed farms, and their economic fallout, with possible export boycotts coming from other countries because of the risks of indiscriminate use.

The overuse of dangerous pesticides in Brazil both threatens public health there and serves as a worldwide warning about science denial. During the COVID pandemic, science denial threatened COVID treatments and vaccinations in Brazil while relegating important issues such as pesticide regulation to the background. Pesticides and pandemics may seem like separate issues, but warnings about the toxicity and risks of pesticides, just like calls for vaccinations, come from scientists. If there is no trust in science, warnings about both will be ignored.

Undoubtedly, the widespread introduction of pesticides after World War II increased food production on a large scale, but it also created environmental and public health problems, as well as dependencies on pesticide use in agriculture. Many developing countries, especially those in the tropical and equatorial zones, have become major food exporters crucial to global food security thanks to pesticides. Some of these substances lack secure regulations to monitor their precautionary use, however.

India best illustrates this paradox: the world’s most populous country faces the growing challenge of feeding its population and increasing food production. As one of the leading global agricultural societies, India’s farmers rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, seeds of high-yielding varieties and mechanization. Synthetic pesticides significantly increase agricultural productivity, but they also threaten Indians’ health and their country’s delicate and unique ecosystem.

It’s not only developing countries that face this challenge. California, with some of the world’s strictest pesticide laws, records hundreds of worker poisonings a year. Most poisonings are not known and recorded, demonstrating how difficult it is to control the use of these substances. Even Europe, rigorous in agricultural product import safety, faces growing problems with the use of pesticides and herbicides in urban and rural areas.

The intense use of pesticides is more pronounced in major producers of agricultural commodities. In recent years the consumption of pesticides in Brazil has surpassed 300 thousand tons annually, which represents a 700 percent increase in the last 40 years.

During the Bolsonaro years, pesticide registration dramatically increased, reaching 1,629 authorizations for new pesticides by February 2022. Bolsonaro’s government promoted flexibilization policies allowing for the accelerated approval of pesticides associated with diseases such as cancer. This approach resulted in the authorization of 550 new pesticides in 2021 and another 26 in 2022. This policy generated concerns about the risks to public health and the environment, especially considering that 37 of these new pesticides are banned in the U.S. and the European Union because of their toxicity. These statistics echo Brazil’s former minister of the environment, Ricardo Salles, who called for relaxing environmental laws amid the distraction caused by the pandemic.

Pioneering such indiscriminate practices is alarming for the entire world: the International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that  385 million acute poisonings and 11,000 deaths from pesticides occur annually in developing countries.

Brazil’s field workers were the first to be affected by these uncaring policies. The main dangers were acute and chronic poisoning, which can cause convulsions, fainting, coma and even death. In addition, workers can develop serious long-term problems such as paralysis, brain and liver damage, tumors and behavioral changes.

But, of course, the entire Brazilian population is affected, too. Foods with a high pesticide load present high health risks, which can result in chronic poisoning and lead to heart problems, neurological disorders, liver damage, carcinogenic effects, hormonal changes and damage to the immune system. Pregnant people face the additional risk of miscarriage and fetal congenital malformations.

Indiscriminate pesticide use contaminates soil, water, and air, compromising biodiversity and harming fauna and flora. In addition, pesticides can reduce water quality (negatively affecting agriculture itself), impacting aquatic ecosystems and harming aquatic life. Pesticides persist in the environment, causing lasting damage to ecosystems, and pose a threat to environmental sustainability.

The new Brazilian government, led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, must reevaluate and reverse this situation. The start of da Silva’s administration raises concerns about the granting of authorizations for pesticides, however. In a period of slightly more than 11 months in 2023, da Silva’s government nearly matched the Bolsonaro’s government’s rate of authorization of these substances. During the 48 months of Bolsonaro’s administration, 2,030 pesticides were authorized, resulting in a monthly average of 42.29. In the first 11 months of the new government, however, 431 pesticides were authorized, with a monthly average of 39.18.

Consider the dangers faced by rural workers, especially the most vulnerable ones, such as farmhands and smallholders, who have limited resources and knowledge to protect themselves from the adverse effects of both mistaken policies regarding pesticides and lies about vaccines. Food safety and public health must be treated as national priorities that demand rigorous and careful measures, and it is essential to adopt more sustainable agricultural practices that reduce the use of pesticides and promote environmental preservation. The effects of the undermining of science are therefore evident in Brazil, where we see two major forms of poisoning: the use of unapproved drugs against SARS-CoV-2 and exposure to pesticides of dubious safety, some of which have been proven to be dangerous.

Globally, Brazil can be a positive or negative demonstration of the benefits of a more harmonious relationship between science, the environment and the growing demand for food. Everyone stands to gain from control of pesticides, and we need to change the perspective on pesticide use. The world’s food security cannot do without the health security of consumers and concern for the environment—nor can public health be assured amid the denial of science. All are intrinsic and aligned issues for the future of humanity.

NASA’s supersonic experimental plane—the linchpin of the agency’s Quesst mission—is set to roll out of its warehouse in the California desert next week. We’re gassed for the big reveal: the X-59 has been in development for six years, and, if successful, it will demonstrate supersonic flight without sonic booms.

The 99-foot-long (30-meter) plane is just 14 feet (4.27 meters) tall, making it look needle-like from the side. The single-engine jet will have a cruise altitude of 55,000 feet (16,764 meters) and will be capable of speeds up to 925 mph (1,489 kmph), or Mach 1.4. But here’s the kicker: The plane will only create a perceived sound of 75 PLdB, or about as loud as a car door closing, according to Lockheed Martin, whose Skunk Works team collaborated with NASA to develop the experimental aircraft.

Loud sonic booms occur when an object travels faster than the soundwaves it produces. While the booms cannot be heard by those aboard the speeding object—as they are traveling faster than sound—on the ground, the shock waves can damage buildings, panic animals, and generally be a nuisance for anyone within earshot.

With the X-59, NASA seeks to demonstrate supersonic flight with a muffled boom—a “sonic thump,” as they call it. The experimental plane was originally expected to make its first flight in 2023. But in aeronautics, nothing slips like a schedule, and more time was needed to integrate some of the aircraft’s systems and fix some recurring issues in its computers, according to a NASA release. The plane also underwent structural testing and ground tests.

Though the X-59 research aircraft is a bright mint green, the aircraft to be revealed next week will be red, white, and blue. Besides the patriotic aesthetic, the new paint job will protect the plane from moisture and corrosion. NASA has put out invitations, printable decorations, and some themed food ideas for anyone wanting to celebrate the roll-out, which you can watch on the agency’s website at 4 p.m. EST on Friday, January 12.

When we talk about supersonic aircraft, it is hard not to mention the Concorde, the supersonic commercial jet that made its final flight in 2003. Years before that—and indeed, before the fatal crash in 2000 that killed 113 people—the costs of supersonic travel were rising, according to the Museum of Flight. Their sonic booms meant the planes could only go supersonic over the ocean, as the powerful shockwaves could shatter glass on the ground. Cities issued noise complaints over (or rather, under) the Concorde’s earsplitting schlepps, and today we commercial travelers all fly slower than sound.

Now we’re inching very close to the aircraft’s first flight, slated for sometime this year. That will only mark the beginning of the X-59’s Phase 1. In Phase 2, the X-59’s quiet supersonic technology and the aircraft’s actual performance will be tested out in the air. Then, starting in 2026, the X-59’s third and final phase will involve flying the plane over several U.S. cities and surveying residents to determine the invasiveness of the aircraft’s supersonic presence. The entire mission is expected to run through 2027.

Currently, the Federal Aviation Administration does not allow civil aircraft to travel over speeds exceeding Mach 1. But in the next several years, the Quesst mission—vis-a-vis the elegant X-59—will test out the disruptiveness of sonic thumps. NASA will provide the data it collects to regulators, which could cause the rules around commercial supersonic flight over land to change.

More: 12 of the Weirdest X-Plane Designs

If you’re waiting for the hubbub over generative AI to die down, maybe pull up a chair. The buzz around artificial intelligence shows no signs of quieting—a fact that will become all too obvious at this year’s CES.

CES, the consumer electronics industry’s largest annual gathering in the US, is returning to Las Vegas on January 9. It is a massive, four-day-long bustling bazaar of tech, with expo halls filled to the brim with new gadgets, hopeful startups, and prototypes that reach for the stars. CES is a trade show where sales and distribution deals are inked, where concept cars roll through crowded streets, and where tech journalists and showgoers alike wander the floors looking for the standout new products. And this year, many of the products debuting are going to be garnished with heaping globs of AI.

For years, generative AI technology bubbled beneath the surface of public consciousness. It finally burst into the limelight in November 2022, when OpenAI released the first iteration of ChaptGPT. The arrival of the shiny new chatbot kicked off an AI arms race. Since the reverberant waves of this eruption hadn’t yet fully saturated the tech industry by the time last year’s CES took place, there wasn’t really a whole lot of GenAI talk in Las Vegas last January. As a result, CES 2023 looks almost primitive in hindsight, arriving a scant six weeks behind the greatest technological revolution since the mobile phone.

That won’t be the case in 2024. “We didn’t get the full CES fire hose of AI announcements last year like we’re going to have,” says Anshel Sag, a principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “If you thought it was a wave last year, it’s going to be a tsunami this year.”

Expect to see AI everywhere at CES: in cars, scooters, headphones, cameras, speakers, and televisions. In some cases, these products will simply include another way to access a ChatGPT-style question-and-response service to handle spoken commands. But in other cases, the advances could feel more impactful. Companies like Intel, Qualcomm, and AMD are expected to announce chips that support AI services on the devices that carry them. These chips would process AI tasks locally, without having to send a request to a server in the cloud and then wait for a response, making things like computer vision, voice-to-text services, and generative computing feel snappier.

CES is where the narrative around industry trends is shaped. Sag says that’s what’s likely to happen with the abundance of AI this CES. “AI is just going to overwhelm everything,” Sag says. “It will be so prevalent and so dominant that some people will just be sick of it.”

Plasma could be wrangled to collide photons and yield matter, according to physicists who ran simulations to explore the practical applications of a world-famous equation.

The equation at work here is Einstein’s E = mc^2, which establishes a relationship between energy and mass; specifically, the equation holds that energy and mass are equivalent when the latter is multiplied by the speed of light, squared.

A team led by scientists at Osaka University and UC San Diego recently simulated the collisions of photons using lasers; their results suggest that the collisions would yield pairs of electrons and positrons. The positrons—the antiparticle of the electron—could then be accelerated by the laser’s electric field to produce a positron beam. Their results are published in Physical Review Letters.

“We feel that our proposal is experimentally feasible, and we look forward to real-world implementation,” said Alexey Arefiev, a physicist at UC San Diego and co-author of the paper, in a University of Osaka release.

The experimental set-up is possible, the release added, at laser intensities that currently exist. The researchers used simulations to test potential experimental set-ups and found a compelling one. The photon-photon collider uses the Breit-Wheeler process to produce matter, meaning it annihilates gamma-rays to produce electron-positron pairs.

Some extreme physics—places where stars are born and die, and where time stands still—exist in the distant reaches of the cosmos. In 2021, a different team of researchers suggested that the cores of neutron stars, extremely dense end-stages of stellar life, could be a venue for a similar dynamic, by which dark matter particles could convert into photons.

Spinning neutron stars are called pulsars, and their high-energy environment is where matter may be generated from light. Pulsars can spin thousands of times per second, emit gamma-rays, and have some of the strongest-known magnetic fields, according to NASA.

Pulsars are also useful tools for measuring gravitational waves in space. Earlier this year, five different pulsar timing array collaborations found what they suspect is the first look at the gravitational wave background—basically, the continuous murmurs of gravitational waves that ripple spacetime on a nearly imperceptible level.

Though it is difficult to observe the ins-and-outs of pulsars from afar, physicists can attempt to simulate them.

“This research shows a potential way to explore the mysteries of the universe in a laboratory setting,” said Vyacheslav Lukin, a program director at the National Science Foundation, which supported the recent research. “The future possibilities at today’s and tomorrow’s high-power laser facilities just became even more intriguing.”

The experiment could provide a way to peer into the universe’s composition, by bringing some far-out physics much closer to home. But for that to happen, an experiment will actually need to be built.

More: This Dark Matter Radio Could Tune Into New Physics

Mickey Mouse is finally in the hands of the public, to do whatever they want with him. Well, in part. After Disney infamously helped delay the moment, today is the day Steamboat Willie, the first Disney animated short to star Mickey and Minnie Mouse, become public domain. But what does that mean? Simultaneously a lot and not much.

Why Is Steamboat Willie Entering Public Domain?

Legal copyright doesn’t last forever—and was never meant to. Copyright law is meant to balance a fine line between creators being able to have a legal stake in (and ability to financially profit from) their works for the duration of their lives, and the larger public good of having those works enter the public forum, where anyone can remix and reuse them, and develop new iterations, but also crucially archivists can safely collect and copy historical work for safekeeping without threat of legal reprisal.

The public domain is a living archive of cultural media history that anyone can access and use, and the end-goal of every piece of copyrighted work. Although different countries have different rules about just how long something can remain copyright before entering it (Steamboat Willie is entering public domain today specifically in regards to U.S. law), today’s additions mark a significant milestone for copyright law and the age of Hollywood studio dominance, because Mickey himself has spent decades being the face of the fight between the onerous grip of capitalism and the public domain.

Why Did It Take So Long for Steamboat Willie to Enter Public Domain?

The version of Mickey and Minnie that enter public domain today were created in 1928, and while they’re not the first significant characters to enter public domain in recent history—both Sherlock Holmes and Winnie the Pooh are notable recent ones—their arrival is so important because Disney has spent years fighting to stave off this moment. In 1998, citing attempts to protect the U.S. entertainment industry at large and also bring the country into line with European copyright laws, Congress signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which added a 20 year extension to the terms previously laid out in the Copyright Act of 1976.

Instead of copyrighted works expiring 50 years after the death of the author or after 75 years for work of corporate authorship (as is the case with Disney material like Steamboat Willie), it became 70 and 95 years, respectively. The act was derisively known, however, as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act,” given that Disney was a major force in lobbying for the extension in the hopes that it could keep Mickey Mouse in any form out of public hands for as long as it could. Although the Copyright Term Extension act wasn’t retroactive for already expired copyright cases, it retroactively applied to anything remaining under copyright at the time of passing, in effect closing the door on works entering the public domain from 1998 all the way until 2019, a huge blow for it as a source of archivable media history.

What Can People Do With Steamboat Willie Now?

Anything they want! Within limits. In the case of Mickey and Minnie specifically, the version that is now in the public domain is very specifically the designs that appeared in Steamboat Willie and the silent film Plane Crazy. Over the last near-century Disney has iterated on Mickey’s design, bringing him into color, changing elements (such as adding his trademark white gloves in 1929), and evolving his general features, perhaps most notably the shape and design of his eyes. For the most part, the things that make the modern Mickey Mickey—and form the basis for Disney’s current ownership of the rest of the character’s history—were first introduced in 1940 with the anthology film Fantasia (itself, ironically, a product that heavily utilized public domain music, and Mickey’s starring role in the “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence was inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poetic ballad of the same name).

Creators can add elements perhaps evocative of latter Mickeys and Minnies to the Steamboat designs—voices that they didn’t have in the 1928 material, colorized elements, general character traits like their affable nature—as these are elements that don’t actually reach the pretty low standards for copyrightable expression. They can also add entirely different interpretations and additions to those designs that are original elements unrelated to anything Disney has done with Mickey in the years since. What they can’t do is use either any of those still-copyrighted elements like the ones added for Fantasia and beyond, nor can they willingly mislead audiences into thinking their Mickey material is either sponsored by Disney or actually produced by the studio—that’s still protected by the trademarks owned by Disney, and operates under a different legal space. Most notably, unlike copyright, trademarks don’t expire after a certain date.

What Will Disney Do?

Nothing—and it doesn’t really need to. “Ever since Mickey Mouse’s first appearance in the 1928 short film Steamboat Willie, people have associated the character with Disney’s stories, experiences, and authentic products,” Disney said in a statement to the Associated Press in the run up to Steamboat Willie entering public domain. “That will not change when the copyright in the Steamboat Willie film expires.”

That might have some “please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad” energy, but while the short’s arrival in the public domain is a major milestone in copyright law, in terms of its overall impact on Disney it’s still relatively minor in the grand scheme of all things House of Mouse. As previously mentioned, Disney still has copyrighted ownership over the design elements of Mickey that for the most part are what the public thinks of when they think of the character—and they also have trademarks on Mickey as a brand identifier that will make a lot of public domain use of the character an intimidating challenge for some creators, especially considering Disney has trademarks on the Mickey and Minnie Mouse names. The company even still has some trademark elements for Steamboat Willie itself: in 2022, Disney updated its trademark on the Walt Disney Animation Studios logo, which, 15 years prior in 2007, had been updated to include a snippet of Mickey steering the paddle steamer as he does in the short film.

Just because someone can now make Steamboat Willie into a horror story, as is seemingly the common thing to do with newly-public-domain works if Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is anything to go by, doesn’t mean that Disney’s media empire crumbles overnight. People will still go ride Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disneyland, they’ll still buy Mickey and Minnie plushes and t-shirts and kitchenware and anything under the sun those mice faces can be slapped on by the company. Mickey will continue to star in Disney material, because, well, for the most part Disney still owns him. There’s a reason Disney didn’t lobby for even further extensions on copyright yet in the run up to Steamboat Willie’s expiration date—it’s lost the battle, but it’s far from lost the war, so to speak.

What Else Is Entering Public Domain Today?

Steamboat Willie is the big one in terms of works entering public domain today, but it’s not the only notable arrival. Thousands of works from 1928 (and audio recordings from five years earlier, 1923) entered public domain today, including the original German version of All’s Quiet on the Western Front, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and even The Man Who Laughs, the 1928 Paul Leni film known in part for inspiring the design of Batman’s legendary foil, the Joker. Following on from 2002’s arrival of Winnie the Pooh, 2024 sees the arrival of A.A. Milne’s story House at Pooh Corner, bringing Tigger into the public domain for the first time.

Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which has celebrated Public Domain Day every January 1 since the extensions brought on by the Copyright Term Extension Act began winding down in 2019, has a great roundup of some of the more significant entries into public domain this year that you can find here, as well as an important explainer about Mickey Mouse’s own debut.

What’s Next?

What happens now is anyone’s guess—Disney may attempt to legally tussle over just exactly what people can do with Steamboat Willie’s public domain status with regards to how it intersects with Mickey’s own trademark law protections. But for the most part today is a victory decades in the making in copyright law, the first steps in handing over the character that became an infamous face of draconian corporate influence on copyright to anyone who wishes to use them.

But hey, remember what we said about horror being the first port of call recently for people exploiting fresh arrivals into the public domain? January 1 2024 isn’t even over yet, and we already have a trailer for Infestation 88, a game by Nightmare Forge Games that turns Steamboat Willie into a twisted version of itself:

Nobody said those new works have to be particularly creative, to say the least.

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Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

The Korea Institute of Fusion Energy has installed a new diverter in the KSTAR tokamak, allowing the artificial sun to sustain high-ion temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius for longer.

KSTAR—called an artificial sun because it does nuclear fusion, the same reaction that powers our star—was completed in 2007 and achieved its first plasma in 2008. It is about one-third the size of ITER, the massive experimental reactor being built in France. Both reactors are tokamaks: doughnut-shaped devices that do nuclear fusion with plasmas, or electrically charged gases brought to super-high temperatures and pressures.

KSTAR uses a diverter, which sits at the bottom of the tokamak and manages waste gas exhaust and impurities from the reactor. The diverter is a plasma-facing component, meaning it sits within the tokamak and bears the full brunt of the internal surface heat. Currently, KSTAR is capable of plasma operations for about 30 seconds; scientists hope that the new diverter will allow plasma operations for 300-second periods by the end of 2026.

KSTAR originally had a carbon diverter, but in 2018 scientists began working on a tungsten diverter for the tokamak. Tungsten has a higher melting point than carbon and improves the heat flux limit of the reactor two-fold, according to a recent release from Korea’s National Research Council of Science and Technology. A prototype of the new diverter was completed in 2021, and installation was finished last year.

“In KSTAR, we have implemented a diverter with tungsten material which is also the choice made in ITER,” said KFE president Suk Jae Yoo in the release. “We will strive to contribute our best efforts in obtaining the necessary data for ITER through KSTAR experiments.”

Research into nuclear fusion has may slow but significant strides; in 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory managed net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time. We’re still very (read: very) far from the vaunted goal of a reliable, zero-carbon energy source, and the achievement came with caveats, but it nonetheless showed that the field is plodding forward.

ITER’s first plasma is expected in 2025, and first fusion is slated for 2035. But the reactor’s timelines have slipped while its costs have ballooned, from about €5 billion in 2006 to over €20 billion, according to Scientific American, so we may be waiting even longer than that.

Still, these are heady times for tokamak reactors. Last month, the six-story JT-60SA reactor in Japan was inaugurated; researchers affiliated with the project estimate it will take two years for the reactor to develop plasmas needed for experiments. There are more than 50 tokamaks operating around the world, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Plasma experiments with KSTAR’s new tungsten diverter will continue through February, according to the National Research Council of Science and Technology, as the tokamak scientists make sure the environment is stable for experiments and that the 100-million-degree plasma can be reproduced in it.

More: Will Nuclear Fusion Ever Power the World?