Science

Prenatal screening for neurological conditions has progressed in leaps and bounds over the past couple of decades. Technology including genetic analysis, neuroimaging, and high-resolution foetal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are allowing doctors to peer into the nervous systems of developing foetuses and already diagnose them – earlier and more frequently – with any life-altering conditions they'll experience once born. But throughout this advancement, there hasn't been much doctors could do about those diagnoses until the child emerged from the womb. And a significant portion of crucial brain development happens long before a child is born.

Now, a new wave of pioneering in-utero neuroscience therapies are helping to change that. Several seminal trials are underway to test both surgical and medical treatments allowing doctors to reverse conditions in babies before they are born. And the field is "right on the precipice" of a whole new dimension of therapies, says Jeffrey Russ, a pediatric neurologist at Duke University who recently wrote an academic essay describing in-utero treatment as the "next frontier" in neurology.

Archived version

- The shocking revelation is documented in a collection of several dozen anonymous, in-depth interviews. Chinese researchers felt compelled, and even encouraged, to engage in misconduct to protect their jobs.

- The pressure came from a Chinese programme to create globally recognized universities. The programme prompted some Chinese institutions to set ambitious publishing targets. Anotber problem is a lack of transparency and of systems to detect and deter misconduct in China, experts say.

- Some experts say tbe study's findings could be biased as those Chinese scientists who accepted the interview might have strong feelings and might not represent the opinions of those who declined to be interviewed.

Anonymous interviewees say they engaged in unethical behaviour to protect their jobs — although others say study presents an overly negative view.

"I had no choice but to commit [research] misconduct,” admits a researcher at an elite Chinese university. The shocking revelation is documented in a collection of several dozen anonymous, in-depth interviews offering rare, first-hand accounts of researchers who engaged in unethical behaviour — and describing what tipped them over the edge. An article based on the interviews was published in April in the journal Research Ethics1.

The interviewer, sociologist Zhang Xinqu, and his colleague Wang Peng, a criminologist, both at the University of Hong Kong, suggest that researchers felt compelled, and even encouraged, to engage in misconduct to protect their jobs. This pressure, they conclude, ultimately came from a Chinese programme to create globally recognized universities. The programme prompted some Chinese institutions to set ambitious publishing targets, they say.

The article offers “a glimpse of the pain and guilt that researchers felt” when they engaged in unethical behaviour, says Elisabeth Bik, a scientific-image sleuth and consultant in San Francisco, California.

But other researchers say the findings paint an overly negative picture of the Chinese programme. Zheng Wenwen, who is responsible for research integrity at the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, under the Ministry of Science and Technology, in Beijing, says that the sample size is too small to draw reliable conclusions. The study is based on interviews with staff at just three elite institutes — even though more than 140 institutions are now part of the programme to create internationally competitive universities and research disciplines.

Rankings a game

In 2015, the Chinese government introduced the Double First-Class Initiative to establish “world-class” universities and disciplines. Universities selected for inclusion in the programme receive extra funding, whereas those that perform poorly risk being delisted, says Wang.

Between May 2021 and April 2022, Zhang conducted anonymous virtual interviews with 30 faculty members and 5 students in the natural sciences at three of these elite universities. The interviewees included a president, deans and department heads. The researchers also analysed internal university documents.

The university decision-makers who were interviewed at all three institutes said they understood it to be their responsibility to interpret the goals of the Double First-Class scheme. They determined that, to remain on the programme, their universities needed to increase their standing in international rankings — and that, for that to happen, their researchers needed to publish more articles in international journals indexed in databases such as the Science Citation Index.

Some universities treated world university rankings as a “game” to win, says Wang.

As the directive moved down the institutional hierarchy, pressure to perform at those institutes increased. University departments set specific and hard-to-reach publishing criteria for academics to gain promotion and tenure.

Some researchers admitted to engaging in unethical research practices for fear of losing their jobs. In one interview, a faculty head said: “If anyone cannot meet the criteria [concerning publications], I suggest that they leave as soon as possible.”

Zhang and Wang describe researchers using services to write their papers for them, falsifying data, plagiarizing, exploiting students without offering authorship and bribing journal editors.

One interviewee admitted to paying for access to a data set. “I bought access to an official archive and altered the data to support my hypotheses.”

An associate dean emphasized the primacy of the publishing goal. “We should not be overly stringent in identifying and punishing research misconduct, as it hinders our scholars’ research efficiency.”

Not the whole picture

The authors “hit the nail on the head” in describing the relationship between institutional pressure and research misconduct, says Wang Fei, who studies research-integrity policy at Dalian University of Technology.

But she says it’s not the whole picture. Incentives to publish high-quality research are part of broader reforms to the higher-education system that “have been largely positive”. “The article focuses almost exclusively on the negative aspects, potentially misleading readers into thinking that Chinese higher education reforms are severely flawed and accelerating research misconduct.”

Tang Li, a science- and innovation-policy researcher at Fudan University in Shanghai, agrees. The first-hand accounts are valuable, but the findings could be biased, she says, because those who accepted the interview might have strong feelings and might not represent the opinions of those who declined to be interviewed.

Zheng disagrees with the study’s conclusions. In 2020, the government issued a directive for Double First-Class institutes. This states specifically that evaluations should be comprehensive, and not just focus on numbers of papers, she says. Research misconduct is a result not of the Double First-Class initiative, but of an “insufficient emphasis on research integrity education”, says Zheng. Punishing misconduct

The larger problem, says Xiaotian Chen, a library and information scientist at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, is a lack of transparency and of systems to detect and deter misconduct in China. Most people do the right thing, despite the pressure to publish, says Chen, who has studied research misconduct in China. The pressure described in the paper could just be “an excuse to cheat”.

The Chinese government has introduced several measures to crack down on misconduct, including defining what constitutes violations and specifying appropriate penalties. They have also banned cash rewards for publishing in high-impact journals.

Wang Peng says that government policies need to be more specific about how they define and punish different types of misconduct.

But Zheng says that, compared with those that apply in other countries, “the measures currently taken by the Chinese government to punish research misconduct are already very stringent”.

The authors also ignore recent government guidance for elite Chinese institutions to break with the tendency of evaluating faculty members solely on the basis of their publications and academic titles, says Zheng.

Tang points out that the road to achieving integrity in research is long. “Cultivating research integrity takes time and requires orchestrated efforts from all stakeholders,” she says.

And the pressure to publish more papers to drive up university rankings “is not unique to China”, says Bik. “Whenever and wherever incentives and requirements are set up to make people produce more, there will be people ‘gaming the metrics’.”

I found the portion about studying people with this disorder leading to better understanding of visual processing in general pretty fascinating. Especially the part about the left/right processing and stitching.

An Asian elephant in central Thailand has given birth to a rare set of twins, in what caretakers have described as a miracle.

The mother, 36-year-old Chamchuri, was not expected to deliver twins and when she gave birth to a male calf last Friday, staff at the Ayutthaya Elephant Palace and Royal Kraal, had thought the delivery was done.

But while cleaning up the first calf and helping it stand on its feet, they heard a loud thud and realised that Chamchuri had given birth to a second calf, a female.

The second birth sent the mother into a panic and caretakers had to restrain her to prevent her from stepping on the female calf. One caretaker was hurt in the melee.

Dramatic footage on social media showed a crowd of caretakers - known locally as mahouts - frantically separating the female calf from the mother, with blood from the birth still visible on her hind legs.

Twins occur in only one percent of elephant births and male-female are even more rare, according to Save the Elephants, a research organisation.

"Once we pulled the second baby elephant out, away from the mother, the baby stood up. We were all cheering because it’s a miracle," veterinarian Lardthongtare Meepan told the BBC.

"We’ve always wanted to see elephant twins but not everyone can see this because it doesn’t happen a lot," said Ms Meepan, who grew up at the elephant park, and is herself a mother of twins.

Charin Somwang, a 31-year-old mahout, broke his leg while restraining the mother.

"I was so happy, I couldn’t feel the pain," he told the BBC, adding he felt the extent of the injuries only when he was brought to the hospital.

"It’s normal that the new mother will always try to kick or push the baby... I was afraid that she might break the baby elephant, so I put myself forward and tried to block the mother from the smaller one," said Mr Somwang, who has been working at the park for 15 years.

Elephants are considered sacred in Thailand, where a majority of the population is Buddhist. They are also a national symbol.

Since the birth, the Ayutthaya Elephant Palace and Royal Kraal has featured the twins in live streams on social media.

Park visitors, including children, are also allowed to see the twins, but only after disinfecting their footwear and their hands.

A sign near the nursery reads: "Please don't touch the elephant babies".

They will be named seven days after birth in accordance with Thai custom.

At 55kg (121lb) the female calf is slightly smaller than usual and has to step on a stool during feeding with her mother. Her brother is heavier at 60kg.

The park claims its elephants were rescued from begging on the streets. In 1989, Thailand banned logging in natural forests, leaving mahouts who worked in that industry jobless.

This forced them to make elephants perform tricks for tourists in exchange for money. This practice was outlawed in 2010 - though there are still rare cases of this happening.

In Ayutthaya, Thailand's former capital, some elephants carry tourists on their backs to temples and historic ruins.

Conservationists oppose elephant riding as they say this stresses the animals out and amounts to abuse.

An earlier report by the World Animal Protection (WAP) says that harsh methods are used to get a wild elephant to carry a human on its back. The process starts soon after it is captured. It is often referred to as "breaking-in" or "crush".

Aside from Ayutthaya, elephants have also become tourist draws in highland villages in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai in the north, where tourists can feed them with bananas, go walking with them and bathe them with mud.

The Asian elephant is an endangered species due to poaching, illegal trade and habitat loss, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

More elephants are used for tourism in Thailand - over 3,000 - than anywhere else. Unlike other countries with captive populations, those in Thailand are nearly all privately owned.

Compared to their African counterparts, Asian elephants have smaller ears round and hunched backs.

Meanwhile, visitors continue to flock to the park in Ayutthaya to see the twin babies, as they await their names.

They walk in a small pen covered with hay as they roll their trunks on their mother's leg.

"I am always happy when I see elephant gives birth," said Mr Somwang, their mahout who is recovering from injury.

"It doesn’t need to be twins. Elephant babies always bring joy," he said.

Using isotope geochemistry, scientists have uncovered new information about the Barmaz necropolis in Valais (Switzerland): 14% of the people buried 6,000 years ago at this site were not locals. What's more, the study suggests that this Middle Neolithic agropastoral society -- one of the oldest known in the western part of Switzerland -- was relatively egalitarian.

The isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur contained in the bones reveal that all members of the community, including people from elsewhere, had access to the same food resources.

Neolithic times marked the beginning of animal husbandry and agriculture. In Switzerland, this period spans between 5500 and 2200 BC. The first agropastoral communities gradually moved from a predatory economy -- in which hunting and gathering provided the nutrients essential for survival -- to a production economy. This radically changed the dietary habits and functioning dynamics of Neolithic populations. The bones and teeth of individuals retain chemical traces that scientists are now able to detect and interpret.

The aim of the study carried out by Déborah Rosselet-Christ, a doctoral student at the Laboratory of Archaeology of Africa and Anthropolgy in the UNIGE Faculty of Science, is to apply isotope analysis to human remains dating from the Neolithic period to learn more about their diet and mobility. The levels of certain isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and strontium depend on the environment in which each individual lives and eats. Isotopes are atoms that have the same number of electrons and protons but a different number of neutrons. This very precise and delicate technique is being applied for the first time to alpine agropastoral populations from the Middle Neolithic period in the western part of Switzerland.

Mobility according to the second molar

Excavated in the 1950s and 1990s, the Barmaz site at Collombey-Muraz in the Chablais region of Valais is one of the oldest remains of agropastoral societies in the western part of Switzerland to have preserved human remains. It comprises two necropolises containing the bones of around seventy individuals. For her master degree, Déborah Rosselet-Christ, the study's first author, selected 49 of them (as many women as men) from whom she systematically took samples of collagen from certain bones, as well as fragments of enamel from their second molars.

''The second molar is a tooth whose crown forms between the ages of three and eight,'' explains the researcher. ''Once formed, tooth enamel is not renewed for the rest of its life. Its chemical composition therefore reflects the environment in which its owner lived during childhood. Strontium (Sr) is a good marker of mobility. The ratio of abundance between two of its isotopes -- i.e. their proportion -- varies greatly depending on the age of the surrounding rocks. These chemical elements end up in the enamel via the food chain, leaving an indelible signature that is specific to each environment.''

Analysis of the strontium isotope ratios in the 49 individuals from Barmaz reveals a high degree of homogeneity in most of them and markedly different values in only 14% of the samples, indicating a different origin. ''The technique makes it possible to determine that these are individuals who did not live the first years of their lives in the place where they were buried, but it is more difficult to determine where they come from'', moderates Jocelyne Desideri, senior lecturer at the Laboratory of Archaeology of Africa and Anthropolgy in the UNIGE Faculty of Science, last author of the article. ''Our results show that people were on the move at that time. This comes as no surprise, as several studies have highlighted the same phenomenon in other places and at other times during the Neolithic period.''

Diet recorded in collagen

Collagen is used to determine the ratios of isotopes of carbon (δ13C), nitrogen (δ15N) and sulphur (δ34S). Each measurement provides information on specific aspects of the diet, such as the categories of plants according to the type of photosynthesis they use, the amount of animal protein or the intake of aquatic animals. As bones are constantly being renewed, the results only concern the last few years of an individual's life. That said, the scientists were able to deduce that these former residents of the region of Barmaz had a diet based on terrestrial (rather than aquatic) resources, with a very high consumption of animal protein.

''What's more interesting is that we didn't measure any differences between men and women,'' notes Déborah Rosselet-Christ. ''Nor even between locals and non-locals. These results therefore suggest equal access to food resources between the different members of the group, whatever their origin or sex. However, this is not always the case. There are, for example, dietary differences between the sexes in Neolithic populations in the south of France.''

A clearer picture of agropastoral societies

However, the scientists were able to show that non-local people were only buried in one of the necropolises (Barmaz I) and that higher levels of the nitrogen isotope were measured in the other (Barmaz II). Given that the two necropolises were contemporaneous (and only 150 metres apart), the latter observation raises the question of whether there was a difference in social status between the two groups of deceased.

''Our isotope measurements are an interesting complement to other approaches used in archaeology,'' says Jocelyne Desideri. ''They help to clarify the picture we are trying to paint of the life of these early Alpine agropastoral societies, the relationships between individuals and their mobility.''

Déborah Rosselet-Christ is currently pursuing this work as part of her doctoral thesis, funded by the ALPproject of the Swiss National Science Foundation and co-directed by Jocelyne Desideri and Massimo Chiaradia (senior lecturer, Department of Earth sciences). Working alongside a multidisciplinary team specialising in genetics, palae-opathology, dental calculus and morphology, she is broadening her field of study by including other sites in Valais and the Val d'Aosta in Italy, covering a wider Neolithic period and using other isotopes, such as neodymium, which are potentially interesting in a prehistoric archaeological context.

Pretty neat article, wanted to share.

Nelson was credited as a science advisor and fully supported the film, as well as its 1978 sequel, Jaws 2. But over the next two decades, as Nelson’s research career took off, he would flip the script about sharks, bringing them out of the dark realm of fevered imagination into the clear light of science. By researching shark behavior up close for the first time, and making countless documentaries that allowed people on their couches into the underwater world he loved, he began to change people’s minds. A deadly, despised predator with a face full of teeth began to seem vulnerable, even elegant, a critical choreographer of the ocean ecosystem. By the time Nelson died in 1997, sharks had become the focus of conservation programs across the planet.

Run trials with an astounding number of easily avoidable flaws, win stupid prizes. It would be a shame for this to turn into an overall setback for psychedelic therapy.

Sure, the FDA could go against the recommendation, but that's a political nonstarter given the problems included sexual assault. We need studies that are unassailable on the data collection such that the psychoactive (qualitative) effects are just an outlier in the list of quantitative results.

The comments section on this article is illuminating beyond the story itself (as is frequently the case on Ars) and worth a look.

Anecdotal experience alert!

I've been dealing with treatment-resistant major depression since before the term existed. Presumably, this stems from events when I was 7 and younger which unfortunately informed preferences and decisions starting in college and to some extent continue to this day. My parents were also quite detached, adding in the need to find in adulthood the sort of safety and connection one is supposed to grow up having already felt and thus able to recognize abusive analogs in partners with better than 0% accuracy.

Net result has been a lifetime of self-medication, sometimes with the hope of improvement, but far more frequently some way to just kick the can down the road to avoid feeling those things right now.

My introduction to MDMA came unsurprisingly from the rave scene in 1999. On balance, that period of heavy use (within a year, I'd sometimes roll three times a week, which no one is going to suggest is a good idea) was a net negative, with the silver lining that I did get to feel fleeting connections, but that transitory nature made the reality in between seem that much comparatively worse.

Any amount of research into psilocybin will lead to the phrase "set and setting." The first is short for mindset, the second obviously physical surroundings, including people. What I didn't know back in college was this concept itself, let alone that it applies to any psychoactive substance. At the time, I liked to say that E was a mood enhancer because if I was already feeling low, it was a shovel. And boy, howdy, did I find bottom with a cocktail one night that started with E at a party and then led to intentional contraindicated choices once home.

After a long period away from MDMA, I first rolled again in 2016, this time with my newish girlfriend at my house with chill music and climate control. Wildly different experience. This led to the same sort of experience in 2019 and again in 2021.

By mid-2022, the double whammy of pandemic loneliness and the abysmal job market had led to hospitalizations and detox trips as I hit the point of having a 30-pack of beer delivered to my apartment almost daily. The final detox led to a job, finally, after meeting the owner of a company there, which in turn led to my first year-plus of sobriety by choice.

At which point I was ready to finally tackle some of my longstanding issues instead of brushing them under the rug. Soon after, I heard about Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind miniseries on Netflix, leading to learning to grow shrooms while doing a fuckton of further research into intentionality and realistic expectations.

My first trip removed the rumination -- that constant background voice questioning every choice I made and even every thought -- I'd been dealing with for decades. It was a difficult trip emotionally, though I was never afraid through ineffable reassurance that everything would be fine. On the other side, I was able to take the first step to being present in the moment.

Over several more months, well-spaced trips diminished the frequency and urgency of unwanted memories surfacing, culminating in acceptance that I had to let go to move forward. The final trip of that series also revealed where I wanted to go, and I blew up my life, buying, building out and moving into a van, followed by leaving the soul-crushing job of sending out bills.

After a circuitous path, I've landed. Absolutely no medical professional would suggest what I did, but there's no accessible psychedelic-assisted therapy path I could have instead chosen, which is frankly intentional withholding of treatment. "SSRI's not working? We have no alternative, so you get to suffer!"

Last weekend, I did MDMA in a party setting again for the first time since college. It wasn't planned, but strange things happen in a gift economy with amazing people and music. After eating some shrooms the first night, I finally found my flow state, which I seem to have lost somewhere back in the '80s, allowing full presence.

Other than the inevitable serotonin crash Wednesday, I've felt amazing. Not manic, just happy with who I am and where I'm at and confident about my ability to continue finding my path forward.

After losing decades of my life, I don't want to see anyone else go through that, so I keep tabs (no pun intended) on psychedelic studies, and these MAPS trials seem to be going backward for wider experiments I know can benefit millions. It is so frustrating to have experimental malfeasance from an organization seemingly wanting to move forward but unable to avoid things like sexual assault and other cultlike behaviour from the fucking researchers.

Hopefully, these will lead to further studies with far more ethical guardrails instead of closing the door again.

Archived link

On 21 May, a St. Petersburg court sentenced 77-year-old scientist Anatoly Maslov to 14 years in prison for treason. A leading global specialist on hypersonic physics with an illustrious career, Maslov had already spent two years in an FSB isolation unit while prosecutors prepared the case against him for allegedly sharing details of Russia’s hypersonic weapons programme with a foreign government. Maslov has always maintained that the charges against him are baseless. Should he live to see the end of his sentence he will be 90 years old.

Several of Maslov’s colleagues at Novosibirsk’s Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics have also been arrested. In 2021, the FSB detained 73-year-old scientist Alexander Kuranov for sharing state secrets with foreign intelligence services at a Russian-American research symposium in St. Petersburg. Kuranov admitted guilt, was sentenced to seven years in a maximum-security penal colony, and is believed to have testified against Maslov.

In 2022, 56-year-old Alexander Shiplyuk was detained and transferred to a detention facility in Moscow for allegedly sharing classified hypersonic research at a conference in China, while Valery Zvegintsev, a 79-year-old hypersonic aerodynamic specialist, was detained by the FSB and placed under house arrest in 2023 for an article he wrote for an Iranian science journal. Both are currently awaiting trial.--

The summer of 2022 saw three leading Russian scientists arrested one after the other. Perhaps the most dramatic case was that of Dmitry Kolker, a laser physicist who was arrested while battling stage four pancreatic cancer in hospital. Forcibly removed from his bed and flown to Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, Kolker died two days later.

Maslov himself was detained that July in the city of Novosibirsk, where he worked as chief researcher at the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, part of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Maslov’s research focus was gas dynamics, and his discoveries were instrumental in the development of hypersonic weapons — weapons which travel many times faster than the speed of sound.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had reason to believe that Maslov had passed secret hypersonic weapons research to German intelligence in 2014. While very little is known about the case, it appears that the FSB found out about the alleged transfer of classified documents eight years after it occurred. Due to the state secrets involved, his trial was conducted behind closed doors.

State prosecutors requested Maslov be given a 17-year sentence in a high-security prison colony, something Maslov’s defence team baulked at, given that the 77-year-old had already suffered a heart attack during his two-year stint in pretrial detention, and argued that their client would be unable to serve a sentence of even half that duration.

Given Vladimir Putin’s pride that Russia’s hypersonic weapons are currently the best in the world, it’s perhaps unsurprising that researchers working in the field have borne the brunt of his paranoia.

Maslov’s defence lawyer argued a crime could not possibly have taken place, as even if Maslov had passed on the information he was charged with sharing, it wasn’t classified — a fact the FSB appears simply to have ignored. In a prepared statement, Maslov stressed that he had dedicated his entire life to his family and to the national science programme and categorically denied any wrongdoing.

Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer for First Department, a legal advocacy group that specialises in closed trials, described the sentence as part of the “trend towards harsher punishments” in the Russian judicial system since the war in Ukraine began. He said that the 14 years Maslov had received was “perhaps a record” for a sentence given to a scientist and added that “the worsening trend in cases brought against scientists accused of treason is in line with the general trend for anyone charged with threatening national security”.

Asked about Maslov’s chances of surviving a prison sentence of such a length, Smirnov struck a surprisingly practical tone. “In this case, you know, everything depends very much on the person, on the support they receive, and on the penal colony they end up in. I don’t know where Maslov will serve his sentence; he will only be transferred after his appeal,” Smirnov continued. “But again, he’s 77 years old, and he has spent two years behind bars. According to his lawyers, his health has deteriorated during that time. And a sentence of 14 years, I’m afraid, may become a life sentence, just taking into account average life expectancy in Russia and the medicine available to prisoners.”

While Smirnov acknowledged that Maslov’s case had gone on for so long because the defence team hadn’t given up hope, he also said that treason charges were very rarely overturned.

But Maslov is not the only scientist in his field to have been prosecuted. Eleven Russian specialists in hypersonic technology have been convicted of treason since 2015. Given Vladimir Putin’s pride that Russia’s hypersonic weapons are currently the best in the world, it’s perhaps unsurprising that researchers working in the field — three of whom have died while awaiting trial — have borne the brunt of his paranoia.

Indeed, several of the Russian hypersonic researchers responsible for the country’s global preeminence in the field are now languishing in prison or are awaiting their fate in pretrial detention. Many were involved in Transhyberian, an officially sanctioned collaborative research project with the EU, according to scientific journal T-Invariant.

“We are not only afraid for the fate of our colleagues. We simply don’t know how to continue doing our job.”

Moscow State Technical University professor, Vladimir Lapygin, 74, was the first to be arrested and charged with passing state secrets to China. Though Lapygin insisted he was innocent, he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in a high-security penal colony in 2016, and was recognised as a political prisoner by Russian human rights organisation Memorial, which described him as a victim of “spy-mania designed to support the image of ‘a Russia encircled by enemies’ created by state propaganda”.

In 2018, 75-year-old scientist Viktor Kudryavtsev was arrested for allegedly passing classified information to the Belgian Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, where the Transhyberian project was based. A year later, the FSB arrested Roman Kovalyov, also for allegedly passing classified Russian hypersonic research to the Von Karman Institute. While Kudryavtsev maintained his innocence, Kovalyov pleaded guilty and testified against Kudryavtsev after allegedly being pressured by FSB investigator Alexander Chaban. However, in a tragic turn, the two scientists were subsequently diagnosed with cancer and both died shortly after being released for treatment.

In 2020, scientist Anatoly Gubanov was imprisoned for allegedly sharing reports containing Russian state secrets to his supervisor on another international hypersonics project HEXAFLY-INT. According to his lawyer, Gubanov was subjected to intense psychological pressure by investigators in the run up to his admission of guilt and his eventual decision to make a plea deal.

Six months after Gubanov’s arrest, it was the turn of Russia’s leading hypersonic aircraft specialist Valery Golubkin to be prosecuted. The charges he faced also related to HEXAFLY-INT, though Golubkin maintained his innocence and was sentenced to 12 years in a maximum security penal colony, where he is currently awaiting his appeal hearing. In an unexpected turn of events, however, Gubanov ultimately broke the terms of his deal and refused to give evidence against Golubkin in court, meaning that he too was then sentenced to 12 years in a high-security penal colony.

In 2021, the FSB detained 73-year-old scientist Alexander Kuranov for sharing state secrets with foreign intelligence services at a Russian-American research symposium in St. Petersburg. Kuranov admitted guilt, was sentenced to seven years in a maximum-security penal colony, and is believed to have testified against Maslov.

And still the arrests continue. In December, Vladislav Galkin, an associate professor on hypersonic technologies at Tomsk Polytechnic University was detained in Novosibirsk and is currently awaiting trial.

Several more of Maslov’s erstwhile colleagues at Novosibirsk’s Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics have also been arrested. In 2022, 56-year-old Alexander Shiplyuk was detained and transferred to a detention facility in Moscow for allegedly sharing classified hypersonic research at a conference in China, while Valery Zvegintsev, a 79-year-old hypersonic aerodynamic specialist, was detained by the FSB and placed under house arrest in 2023 for an article he wrote for an Iranian science journal. Both are currently awaiting trial.

In 2023, after yet another arrest, researchers at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics published an open letter to the Russian authorities in which they stressed the patriotism of Maslov, Shiplyuk and Zvegintsev. The letter also suggested that the men had been prosecuted for sharing research with the wider international community, which they said was considered “an obligatory component of conscientious and high-quality scientific activity”.

The authors of the letter, which is no longer available online and to which the authorities have not replied, went on to say that: “We are not only afraid for the fate of our colleagues. We simply don’t know how to continue doing our job.”

The silence from the wider Russian scientific community has been deafening, however, with no other institutes or organisations making public statements of support for the scientists implicated in the Novosibirsk treason cases. Indeed, for now, the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics appears to be the sole body unafraid to speak up for its persecuted colleagues.

By Debbie Passey, Digital Health Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Algorithms have become integral to our lives. From social media apps to Netflix, algorithms learn your preferences and prioritise the content you are shown. Google Maps and artificial intelligence are nothing without algorithms.

So, we’ve all heard of them, but where does the word “algorithm” even come from?

Over 1,000 years before the internet and smartphone apps, Persian scientist and polymath Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī invented the concept of algorithms.

In fact, the word itself comes from the Latinised version of his name, “algorithmi”. And, as you might suspect, it’s also related to algebra.

Largely lost to time

Al-Khwārizmī lived from 780 to 850 CE, during the Islamic Golden Age. He is considered the “father of algebra”, and for some, the “grandfather of computer science”.

Yet, few details are known about his life. Many of his original works in Arabic have been lost to time.

It is believed al-Khwārizmī was born in the Khwarazm region south of the Aral Sea in present-day Uzbekistan. He lived during the Abbasid Caliphate, which was a time of remarkable scientific progress in the Islamic Empire.

Al-Khwārizmī made important contributions to mathematics, geography, astronomy and trigonometry. To help provide a more accurate world map, he corrected Alexandrian polymath Ptolemy’s classic cartography book, Geographia.

He produced calculations for tracking the movement of the Sun, Moon and planets. He also wrote about trigonometric functions and produced the first table of tangents.

Al-Khwārizmī was a scholar in the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah) in Baghdad. At this intellectual hub, scholars were translating knowledge from around the world into Arabic, synthesising it to make meaningful progress in a range of disciplines. This included mathematics, a field deeply connected to Islam.

The ‘father of algebra’

Al-Khwārizmī was a polymath and a religious man. His scientific writings started with dedications to Allah and the Prophet Muhammad. And one of the major projects Islamic mathematicians undertook at the House of Wisdom was to develop algebra.

Around 830 CE, Caliph al-Ma’mun encouraged al-Khwārizmī to write a treatise on algebra, Al-Jabr (or The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). This became his most important work.

At this point, “algebra” had been around for hundreds of years, but al-Khwārizmī was the first to write a definitive book on it. His work was meant to be a practical teaching tool. Its Latin translation was the basis for algebra textbooks in European universities until the 16th century.

In the first part, he introduced the concepts and rules of algebra, and methods for calculating the volumes and areas of shapes. In the second part he provided real-life problems and worked out solutions, such as inheritance cases, the partition of land and calculations for trade.

Al-Khwārizmī didn’t use modern-day mathematical notation with numbers and symbols. Instead, he wrote in simple prose and employed geometric diagrams:

Four roots are equal to twenty, then one root is equal to five, and the square to be formed of it is twenty-five.

In modern-day notation we’d write that like so:

4x = 20, x = 5, x2 = 25

Grandfather of computer science

Al-Khwārizmī’s mathematical writings introduced the Hindu-Arabic numerals to Western mathematicians. These are the ten symbols we all use today: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0.

The Hindu-Arabic numerals are important to the history of computing because they use the number zero and a base-ten decimal system. Importantly, this is the numeral system that underpins modern computing technology.

Al-Khwārizmī’s art of calculating mathematical problems laid the foundation for the concept of algorithms. He provided the first detailed explanations for using decimal notation to perform the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and computing fractions.

This was a more efficient computation method than using the abacus. To solve a mathematical equation, al-Khwārizmī systematically moved through a sequence of steps to find the answer. This is the underlying concept of an algorithm.

Algorism, a Medieval Latin term named after al-Khwārizmī, refers to the rules for performing arithmetic using the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Translated to Latin, al-Khwārizmī’s book on Hindu numerals was titled Algorithmi de Numero Indorum.

In the early 20th century, the word algorithm came into its current definition and usage: “a procedure for solving a mathematical problem in a finite number of steps; a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem”.

Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī played a central role in the development of mathematics and computer science as we know them today.

The next time you use any digital technology – from your social media feed to your online bank account to your Spotify app – remember that none of it would be possible without the pioneering work of an ancient Persian polymath.

As researchers increasingly face many kinds of attack over their work, there is debate about how to support and protect them.

As a vocal advocate of vaccinations for public health, Peter Hotez was no stranger to online harassment and threats. But then the abuse showed up on his doorstep.

It was a Sunday during a brutal Texas heatwave in June 2023 when a man turned up at Hotez’s home, filming himself as he shouted questions at the scientist, who is a paediatrician and virologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Because of the long-running online and real-life abuse he has faced, Hotez now has the Texas Medical Center Police, Houston Police Department and Harris County Sheriff’s Office on speed dial, an agent tasked to him from the FBI and extra security whenever he speaks publicly.

“This is a very powerful adversarial force that is seeking to undermine science, and now it’s not only going after the science. It’s going after the scientists,” he says.

Hotez is an especially well-known scientist, but his experience is far from unique. Every day around the world, scientists are being abused and harassed online. They are being attacked on social media and by e-mail, telephone, letter and in person. And their reputations are being smeared with baseless accusations of misconduct. Sometimes, this escalates to real-world confrontations and attacks.

Such threats to scientists aren’t new; those researching climate change and gun control, for example, have endured abuse for decades. However, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an unprecedented escalation in the intensity and frequency of attacks, and the range of targets, say researchers. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the most high-profile infectious-diseases specialists during the pandemic, was subject not just to online trolling, but to two credible attempts on his life that prompted the arrests of two people. Virologist Marc Van Ranst at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and his family were moved to a safe house after a far-right soldier hunted them.

It’s not just scientists with a public profile in the crosshairs; those targeted include mathematical disease modellers, pharmacologists, physicists and fluid-dynamics researchers, who have never previously had any media attention.

"You don’t even necessarily have to be someone who’s active on social media,” says Sarah Sobieraj, a sociologist researching digital abuse and harassment at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “The visibility that brings attention to you could come from any number of sources that are not of your own doing.” Scientists have been attacked for private lectures and conference presentations that are shared online, studies published in journals, research work done for government agencies and even private Facebook posts shared publicly without their consent.

Researchers say that the surge in abuse is showing no signs of slowing down, even as the pandemic itself slips from the headlines. “All the data that we do have points to it increasing rather than decreasing; it’s certainly getting quite prolific,” says Lyndal Byford, director of news and partnerships at the Australian Science Media Centre in Adelaide. “I’m hearing a lot from universities and research organizations that they’re seeing it as an increasing problem.”

However, universities and research institutions are often slow to respond to this fast-moving threat, and the support they offer can frequently fall short, say many researchers who have experienced harassment. “Too often, we’re off on our own, not getting the backing of the institutions,” says Hotez.

This issue has led to a court case in New Zealand, in which microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles is suing her employer, the University of Auckland, over the way it has responded to the ongoing harassment she has experienced since early 2020, which included online attacks and people confronting her in public. Wiles’s lawsuit alleges that the university “failed in their duty to keep her safe in her employment”. (The university says that it took numerous steps to ensure Wiles’s safety.)

The lawsuit and other high-profile cases have prompted a broader discussion among researchers, universities and other organizations about how best to respond to this kind of harassment. There is a growing recognition that online abuse and other types of attack can cause serious harm to individual scholars and to universities and research institutions. If researchers can’t communicate openly without facing abuse, “then really one of our core missions is being quite substantially damaged”, says Emma Johnston, a marine ecologist and deputy vice-chancellor of research at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Supporting scientists

Public-health researcher Tara Kirk Sell at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, became a target for online harassment and abuse after she started appearing on conservative television networks at the start of the pandemic in 2020 to talk about COVID-19. She and her colleague Beth Resnick, also a public-health researcher, decided to look into how many other people at Bloomberg were experiencing harassment; Sell was far from alone.

“We’re lucky,” says Sell, about the supportive leadership at their institution. The researchers were asked if they had any ideas about how to tackle the issue. So they put together a working group of people from across the university, and interviewed people who had experienced abuse to find out what could help.

“The most important thing really is that people feel like their institution supports them,” Sell says. The challenge is getting that support to them quickly and easily, with as few barriers to access as possible.

The approach they chose was to set up a dedicated e-mail address that staff can forward messages to if they receive abusive communications or posts on social media. That triggers an automatic alert to the campus security team as well as to Sell and Resnick. The staff member gets an immediate automated response with information about institutional support they can access, including counselling, the communications team and emergency-contact details for the security team.

Security will automatically get in touch with the affected person in two business days. Sell and Resnick also personally contact the staff member to make sure they’re all right.

That ‘one-stop shop’ approach is crucial for dealing with online abuse and harassment, says Byford, because otherwise people facing these problems are at risk of falling between the cracks of organizational structures. “Everybody sees that it’s a big issue, but it’s not always clear who within that university structure is the right person to take control,” she says.

A multi-disciplinary team approach is key for handling harassment, says Bram van der Meer, a threat-assessment specialist at Dantes Psychology Services in Voorburg, the Netherlands, which works with organizations to manage problematic workplace situations. Van der Meer calls these groups ‘social-safety expert teams’ and says they should include people from various departments such as security, human resources, legal and university leadership. Such teams would have expertise and training in swiftly triaging threats and deciding on the best course of action, while also supporting an individual who is on the receiving end of the abuse.

But social-safety expert teams are no use if people don’t know about them or are hesitant to report to them. “There has to be a lot of advertisement about the existence of this group,” van der Meer says. He suggests that the university have an ambassador for the programme, who can help to raise the profile of the support service and encourage staff to make use of it.

Often people delay reporting harassment — or don’t report at all — until a situation escalates. Van der Meer says one of the most common reasons for this is that individuals are worried about the professional consequences of raising an issue, such as what their colleagues will think. They also worry that they are overstating or exaggerating the problem.

Sobieraj says women are often wary of reporting abuse and harassment, because they don’t want to be perceived as being ‘whiny’. The material itself can also be embarrassing to talk about. “If somebody has sent you a doctored image of yourself that’s pornographic or the commentary is talking about your presumed sexual behaviour, this is kind of embarrassing to talk about, or humiliating,” she says.

But under-reporting can hamper an institution’s ability to build a true picture of the problem and understand how serious or widespread it is. “I only see when one person e-mails me,” says Sell about receiving a harassing message. ”But I don’t know if that person’s e-mailing 50 other people in the department.”

Knowing about shared experiences also has its benefits. Johnston says the University of Sydney has found that being able to speak to others who have gone through the same thing can help those who are experiencing abuse. “They know that they’re not alone, and they form their own support network, they can share best responses and resilience tricks,” she says.

Online abuse and harassment is isolating, and can lead to serious psychological and professional harm, particularly for individuals who are already vulnerable or at a systemic disadvantage, says Alice Marwick, a communications researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “People who are first-generation academics, or people of colour, or queer folks or women, these are already people who are bearing enormous burdens.”

Marwick thinks that abuse is discouraging researchers from working on certain subjects that might attract unwanted attention. “I think that there’s a lot of people who are interested in studying controversial topics who don’t want to study them because they’re worried about this kind of backlash,” she says. She and her colleagues have published a guide to help researchers and academic institutions deal with harassment.

Tailored strategies

The stereotype of an Internet troll has long been of a lone individual hiding behind anonymity. But as Hotez’s experience has shown, the harassment can come from all levels of society. Sometimes it comes from other academics, even at the same institution. Sometimes it can come in the form of spurious complaints of research misconduct made through official channels.

Such attacks warrant different strategies that might include a public statement of support from the scientist’s institution. “We put out statements in support about academics’ right to present their work, free from harassment, and the right to present their expertise,” says Johnston, although she adds that the university doesn’t take a political stance or position on the topic at issue.

And releasing a statement of support can be complicated if the attacks come from the political sphere, because universities, funding bodies and other scientific institutions are expected to remain politically neutral. During the pandemic, scientists in the United States often came under criticism from right-leaning politicians, which led to cases of harassment.

In the United States, says Hotez, “the aggression against science and scientists is coming from one political party, and the extreme element of one political party”. So when scientific institutions remain neutral, that policy “favours the tormentors”, says Hotez. “More often than not, the scientists are kind of hung out to dry.”

Politically motivated harassment has happened in other countries, too. For example, supporters of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro tried to sue microbiologist and science communicator Natalia Pasternak for her criticisms of the Bolsonaro government’s response to COVID-19. In New Zealand, far-right activists opposed the government’s actions during the pandemic, and scientists involved in COVID-19 research. “We saw coordinated, targeted, networked abuse,” says Natalia D’Souza, a consultant on cyberbullying and cyberabuse, and board member of Netsafe, a non-profit organization focused on online safety in Auckland, New Zealand. “What comes to mind is particularly alt-right groups, who co-opt research either to serve their own agenda or to attack and discredit research and academics themselves.”

Spurious complaints of misconduct are another challenge for scientific institutions to manage. Johnston says the University of Sydney takes all complaints seriously and will follow standard policies and procedures in the first instance. But if there are repeated complaints by or against the same individual, and no new material is provided, the university will ask the complainant to cease and desist. “We can also send messages to key people who have received this information, that we’ve done a full investigation and we have found no substance to their complaints,” she says. “That’s a proactive measure to help protect their reputation.”

It can be particularly difficult to deal with harassment that comes from, or is prompted by the comments of, another academic. “Some of the most impactful abuse and harassment comes from peers and colleagues,” Byford says. It’s also been a source of frustration for Hotez, seeing his equally respected peers spreading what he sees as disinformation.

Geneticist Jack Heinemann at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, who was an expert witness for Wiles’s case, says that academic freedom does allow people to be wrong, as long as they don’t use defamatory language or promote violence when criticizing others’ work. “The most appropriate way to deal with somebody who is squarely within their academic freedom is to use your academic freedom to confront them.”

But Heinemann argues that university researchers who are communicating about their field of expertise should be supported and protected while doing so, rather than being cloistered or advised to limit their communications. “Otherwise, what you do is, you pit a harm against an activity,” he says. “You put yourself into the position where you’re constantly trading off academic freedom for safety.”

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Understanding hate as an emotional response can help you recognize your feelings about something or someone and be curious about where those feelings are coming from. This awareness will give you time to gather more information and imagine the other person’s perspective.

So what is hate and why do people hate? There are many answers to these questions.

Google scientists have modelled a fragment of the human brain at nanoscale resolution, revealing cells with previously undiscovered features.

Opal Sandy from Oxfordshire in the UK is the first patient treated in a global gene therapy trial, which shows “mind-blowing” results. She is the first British patient in the world and the youngest child to receive this type of treatment.

Opal was born completely deaf because of a rare genetic condition, auditory neuropathy, caused by the disruption of nerve impulses travelling from the inner ear to the brain.

Within four weeks of having the gene therapy infusion to her right ear, Opal responded to sound, even with the cochlear implant in her left ear switched off.

Clinicians noticed continuous improvement in Opal’s hearing in the weeks afterwards and at 24 weeks confirmed close to normal hearing levels for soft sounds, such as whispering, in her treated ear.

Now 18 months old, Opal can respond to her parents’ voices and can communicate words such as “Dada” and “bye-bye.”

"These results are spectacular and better than I expected. Gene therapy has been the future in otology and audiology for many years and I’m so excited that it is now finally here," says Professor Manohar Bance, an ear surgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and chief investigator of the trial.

Professor Bance hopes that this is the start of a new era for gene therapies for the inner ear and many types of hearing loss.