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13/05/2022

History has been made on Mars: NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter just achieved the first powered and controlled flight on another planet. Ingenuity is a small, lightweight, drone-like helicopter that was carried on the Perseverance rover. They launched from Earth together in July 2020 and landed on Mars on Feb. 19, 2021.

Ingenuity’s sole mission is to demonstrate that flight on another planet is feasible. In the early morning of April 19, Ingenuity spun up its rotors, climbed to a height of three metres where it hovered for about 30 seconds, performing a rotation while doing so, and then safely landed back on the surface of Mars.

A video showing the Ingenuity taking off on Mars.
And just like that, humans can now fly on other planets. This technological demonstration will help scientists create new missions to Mars and other places in the solar system using not just rovers, but helicopters as well.

Atmosphere on Mars
Whether you’re on Earth or Mars, in order to achieve flight, you need to generate lift. An aircraft does this by forcing air to move around its wings or rotors. The amount of lift generated is related to how fast the air is moving over the wings, and how dense the air is. If the air is very dense, it will generate more lift at a given airspeed than if it was less dense; the less atmosphere, the lower the force of lift generated.

On Mars, the atmosphere is just one per cent the pressure of Earth’s, which makes generating lift much more difficult. The surface gravity on Mars is about 40 per cent of Earth’s. These conditions, and more, were painstakingly tested on Earth before launching to Mars.

NASA engineers designed Ingenuity with this in mind. Its rotor blades are 1.2 metres long. That is very large in comparison to its mass, which is just 1.8 kilograms (roughly the weight of a laptop). The rotors also spin much faster than would be required on Earth to lift the same amount of mass.

An illustration of Ingenuity, showing its physical features designed for flight on Mars.
An illustration of Ingenuity, showing its physical features designed for flight on Mars. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Communication lags
At the time of Ingenuity’s groundbreaking flight, Mars was about 290 million kilometres away from Earth. At that distance, it takes light — and thus, communications — about 16 minutes to get to Mars, and another 16 minutes to get back to us. This delay makes it impossible to have a human fly the helicopter live, because any command you give Ingenuity is going to take 16 minutes before it gets there, and by that time, the helicopter could be face down in the dirt.

That means Ingenuity needs to be able to make flight decisions on its own. When Ingenuity spins up its rotors and starts to lift off from the ground, it must react to wind gusts, temperature changes or any other random environmental concern in order to achieve a successful flight.

Software update
Ingenuity was deployed to the surface of Mars by Perseverance on April 3, where it performed its first technological demonstration: surviving the night. The temperature on Mars can plunge to -80C at night; the helicopter needed to prove its on-board battery and heating systems were up to the challenge.

Next, Ingenuity performed a variety of pre-flight tests to evaluate all the systems and ensure flight readiness. However, during a high-speed spin test on April 9, Ingenuity’s computer systems identified a possible problem and shut the helicopter off. Ingenuity sent back data, and NASA engineers determined that a software fix was needed. Shortly thereafter, the helicopter performed and completed the high-speed spin test.

Now that Ingenuity has proven that it can fly, it will be directed to do a few more test flights before its mission ends. In some of these flights, Ingenuity could fly over 300 metres in distance.

Destination: Titan
Achieving flight on another planet means that our approach to planetary exploration will change. When we first started exploring Mars, we used landers that are unable to move after they’ve landed. Then in 1997, the Pathfinder mission deployed the Sojourner rover, a technological demonstration of roving capabilities (and awesomely featured in the feature film The Martian). The success of the Sojourner rover was later seen in the deployment of the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and more recently in Curiosity and Perseverance.

Now, with the success of Ingenuity, what will Mars exploration look like moving forward? Helicopters will be able to study locations that even rovers cannot, like the side of a cliff, up a particularly steep hill, or within a field of really large rocks that the rover cannot navigate. A helicopter will be able to go much farther than the tens of kilometres a rover can.

With helicopter missions, scientists will be able to cover hundreds of kilometres of Martian surface. With that type of capability, our understanding of Mars will grow.

An image of Saturn's moon Titan
This composite image shows an infrared view of Saturn’s moon Titan from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, acquired during the mission’s T-114 flyby on Nov. 13, 2015. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Idaho)
And it’s not just limited to Mars. At this moment, a mission to Saturn’s largest moon Titan is currently being developed. It is called Dragonfly and will launch towards Titan in 2026 or 2027.

Titan has an atmosphere that is about 60 per cent thicker than Earth’s. Using four rotors, Dragonfly will be the first science mission to use flight as its primary mode of transportation. It will fly across Titan learning about its chemistry and possible habitability.

What Ingenuity is doing right now will help inform the engineers of Dragonfly how to build their spacecraft. It’s incredible to see how much technology has changed in just over a century. What will the next century look like?

16/04/2022

First, the importance of perceived worsening agricultural conditions stands out. Respondents’ who perceive worsening agricultural conditions show a greater awareness and perceived risk, more support for stopping climate change, and are more likely to believe in anthropogenic climate change. Indeed, Fig 1E shows that worsening perceptions of agricultural conditions are the main predictor for climate change risk perception. Arguably, the importance of the agriculture sector in terms of employment ―more than 50% of employees across Sub-Saharan Africa work in agriculture― makes agriculture a strong concern to African citizens [59]. Thus, perceiving that the impacts of climate change are bad for agriculture production may reduce the distance between climate change risks acuity and an amplified emotional response to climate-related events. These results suggest that for Africans climate change is not a problem for others across space and time, but rather a phenomenon that is happening here and now and with personal consequences [60]. This implies that policy makers should further highlight the global nature of climate change and its overall negative impacts on agriculture to raise CCBs, impulse individual adaptation, and mobilize public support.

Second, attributing climate change to human activity is linked to higher risk perception, support for mitigation, and self-efficacy (Figs 1 and 2). If climate change is unnatural, it is extraordinary and thus riskier. Also, if climate change is human induced, its impacts can also be mitigated by human action. Besides, believing it is human caused can increase personal responsibility and, therefore, induce corrective responses [4, 61, 62]. This points to the convenience of spreading and highlighting the human origin of climate change to encourage behavioral changes and mitigation strategies in Africa.

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Fig 2. Key predictors of need to stop climate change and self-efficacy.

Top 15 predictors of need to stop climate change (A) (79.5% prediction accuracy) and self-efficacy (C) (74.1% prediction accuracy). (B) Partial dependence plot (PDP) of mean temperature anomalies (temp. anom.), belief in human causation (CC human cause), perceived worsening of agricultural conditions (agric. cond.), and perceived risk from climate change (CC risk percep.) over need to stop climate change. (D) Partial dependence plot of mean temperature anomalies (temp. anom.), belief in human causation (CC human cause), perceived risk from climate change (CC risk percep.) and being favourable to one-man rule (authoritarian) over self-efficacy.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266387.g002

Fig 2 shows that risk perception is positively associated with self-efficacy and the need to stop climate change. While some previous studies in the United States and United Kingdom point to fatalism or climate despair [2, 63, 64] ―where higher perceived risks discourage self-efficacy and action support, the opposite seems to be true for Africa. This could be the result of motivated control ―feeling more empowered in order to feel safe from a greater risk [65], or increased personal concern with climate change [66]. Either way, explaining why climate change is a critical risk for Africa will not discourage the African public, but it might encourage policy support and personal action [4].

As suggested by previous research, access to information and education are good predictors for believing in anthropogenic climate change and being aware of it. However, both variables show a slight negative effect when it comes to more affective dimensions such as risk perception or believing climate change must be stopped. The limited emotional salience of climatic information compared with personal experience or motivated reasoning may account for this divergence [29–31]. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the importance of information is contingent on language (Fig 1D). Not speaking French, English or Portuguese relates to a hindered understanding of climate terminology, which frequently lacks accurate translations to African languages [16]. Greater efforts should be made to translate the nature, causes, and impacts of climate change to African languages.

Local changes in climate conditions are among the most important predictors across all models. Overall, they are more important than access to news, political ideology, or demographics (see Table 1). Previous research finds that perceived changes in local temperatures were the most important predictor of climate risk perception in some African countries [10]. Building upon these findings, this study shows that actual long-term anomalies in temperature, rainfall, and drought at second-order boundaries are key predictors of individual climate change beliefs. Attribute substitution and emotional salience may explain the importance of personal experience with local weather conditions for CCBs [29, 39]. In fact, qualitative evidence suggests that many communities in Africa understand climate change not as a global phenomenon but a local one [16]. Therefore, local weather changes may be used to prime climate change and encourage mitigation and adaptation measures, but the link between those local changes and the global patterns of climate change should be highlighted.

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Table 1. Direction of relation of key predictors to CCBs.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266387.t001

Material conditions had previously been found to influence climate change beliefs [44]. According to the “finite pool of worry" hypothesis, worse material conditions limit CCBs, as they create more urgent and pressing concerns for individuals to worry about. However, across African countries poverty has significant positive links with climate risk perception and the belief climate change must be stopped. In contrast to the finite pool of worry hypothesis, households with fewer resources are the most concerned about the present and future effects of climate change. Climate change is a close and urgent concern for them, as their income and assets are the most vulnerable to climatic risks [60, 67].

Political ideology also has a significant impact on CCBs in Africa. Authoritarian and intolerant individuals show less climate change awareness, risk perception, belief that it must be stopped and self-efficacy. Authoritarian and hierarchical values have been consistent and negatively linked to climate change beliefs in other regions of the world [8], and our results show these links also hold across Africa. Ideology influences what information people access, and how they process and assimilate it [18–21]. Our findings imply that authoritarian individuals are more likely to disregard climate change to justify their support for maintaining the status quo. These findings also suggest that it would be convenient for policy makers to reshape environmental discourses to better engage the authoritarian public. To do so, environmental policy and individual action can be framed as patriotism, innovation, or prosocial behaviour [68], and the focus of risk communication can be on the possible effects of climate change on human security and public order [69].

Like ideology, previous research has suggested that religion prompts motivated reasoning, shaping thus CCBs. Overall, declaring oneself religious is mostly insignificant to predict CCBs. However, we do observe some significant differences across religions in Africa: Catholic and Orthodox Christians are more likely to believe in the anthropogenic nature of climate change and that it must be stopped, while Sunni Muslims shows the opposite trend.

Finally, we find that demographic variables such as gender or race have some importance for predicting CCBs. We find an important gender gap for awareness, as well as slightly negative effects for other dimensions of climate change beliefs. Women are less likely to be aware of climate change, as previous case studies in Africa had suggested [16, 48, 70]. In this case, differences in access to climate information do not explain this gender gap, so further research should address this issue. Besides, we find ethnicity to be related to risk perception and self-efficacy. Overall, Black Africans show more concern and self-efficacy than other ethnic groups, among whom Arab Africans are the less concerned. Therefore, we cannot talk about a “white male” effect [50] because White Africans do not especially neglect risks (in contrast to Arab Africans) nor women show more concern, rather the opposite. Finally, age and agricultural experience are insignificant across all models, contradicting previous findings within the literature [41, 49].Our study has three clear limitations. First, is the correlational nature of our data. Although our results offer relevant insights about the predictors of climate change beliefs in Africa, causality cannot be inferred from the available cross-sectional data. Second, random forest methodology involves a certain degree of stochasticity, which can lead to some level of randomness and uncertainty in the outcome. Finally, some variables in our dataset have less observations given that some questions within the Afrobarometer were only asked as conditioned follow-up questions.

16/04/2022

From when someone takes credit for an idea to when you have to deliver bad news.

13/04/2022

What is a relationship?
Allen (2003: 477) highlighted the complexity of defining young people's s*xual relationships, with her research indicating that young people used fluid categories such as ‘one-night stands’, short term relationships, casual relationships and ‘going out’. In this study, we attempted to understand how young people defined a relationship.

Although the word ‘relationship’ was commonly used by the young people in our study, it was clear that it was a catch-all term that encompassing a variety of meanings. For example, in the following narrative, a young woman begins her story with the use of the word ‘relationship’. When prompted, she begins to question the meaning of the word herself. At first, she attempts to define relationships by a sense of exclusivity, but then finds that this does not really capture what she means:

They will not use condoms since they are in a relationship.

Q: What do you mean by in a relationship?

Being in a relationship means you do not hook up with anyone else, but each other.

I would not really call it a relationship these days. It's more like seeing each other. They hook up every now and then, they have fun and get with someone else and then back to you. (Body map discussion involving four Indigenous women aged 16–25, Darwin)

The question ‘What do you mean by in a relationship?’ was difficult to answer, and was complicated by the fact that young women sometimes expected young men to have different perceptions. The young women also produced narratives in which they developed explanations about the reasons why young men did not want to engage in relationships. These emphasized male involvement in important activities that they did not want to compromise, as in this comment provided by a post-school group of young women in Darwin: ‘The girls might want it to be serious but the boys will probably be like “no I’m not ready, I don't want to be tied down, I’ve got to concentrate on my sports”’ (body map discussion involving three Indigenous women aged 15–18, Darwin).

The legitimacy of relationships was also described on the basis of age. The young women in our study were scornful of the relationships of those people younger than them. For example, young post-school-aged women attending a youth group in Ceduna commented that: ‘Most relationships at 14–16 are one-night stands, and lots of them’ (body map discussion involving five Indigenous women aged 18–25, Ceduna). This was echoed by young women in the post-school category in Darwin, who looked back on their younger experiences from their position of relative maturity: ‘A relationship in school is not about being in love; it is about having s*x’ (body map discussion involving four Indigenous women aged 18–25, Darwin). Young women also commented that youthful relationships may be more about cementing a position within one's peer group: ‘A lot of girls have relationships just because their friends have relationships … they have s*x because they want to be tough, they think they are older than they are’ (body map discussion involving three Indigenous women aged 15–18, Alice Springs). The same group of young women also commented that this group may also be engaging in transactional s*x for drugs, alcohol and money.

As young people move towards more committed relationships, they consider that boys and girls may have very different expectations. Accounts from both males and females were strongly gendered, with the expectations that girls will aspire to a committed relationship and that boys will resist all attempts to tie them down. This difference was clearly articulated by a post-school-aged group of young men in a remote community as part of an extended conversation about the importance of ‘strong men’ having multiple partners: ‘Relationships are different for boys and girls. Boys just want to have s*x’ (body map discussion involving four Indigenous men aged 18–15, Ngukurr). Young women, however, worked to counter the ‘boys just want to have s*x’ idea, by offering examples of when a relationship might be considered ‘more than just s*x’ for a young man. One group commented that if the girl was desirable, or ‘hot’ enough, the boy may be tempted to consider himself ‘in a relationship’: ‘Maybe if she was hot, he’d even ring her the next day. Maybe he’d tell his friends that she was “the love of his life”’ (all laugh perhaps at the irony of this statement) (body map discussion involving three Indigenous women aged 15–18, Darwin). The statement ‘the love of his life’ demonstrates a very rare use of the word love in young people's discourses. The young women who made this statement put it in the context of a seemingly impossible situation: that the young women was ‘so hot’ that the male would be captivated by her. While the idea of love was raised by young people, there were differences in the way in which young men and women depicted love. For young women, love was often discussed in terms of loss and sadness. For men, love was to be avoided, but was an important sign of their desirability. For young men and women, body maps were covered with hearts that had been broken. When love was mentioned, it was in terms of love that had failed, or a person being hurt. Who hurts and who gets hurt was again gendered in the young people's depictions. A group of boys drew Frank, who they described as ‘a player, I reckon he can get any girl that he wants’ (body map discussion involving four Indigenous males aged 15–18, Darwin). He was depicted smiling through a background of broken hearts; he has successfully avoided the trappings of love but is imminently desirable. Tanya, who is trapped in an abusive relationship in the scenario, was nearly always depicted by the young women as having a broken heart. None of the scenarios were ended by any of the groups with the young women being in love and happy. Many of the young men, however, were depicted as being happy with the outcome of the relationship, which paradoxically was the status of ‘not being in a relationship’.

Young women talked about watching for subtle clues to determine the status of their relationships and about social media having an important role in their ongoing research. The young women said that they would watch the ‘boy's page’ to see if he changed his status to ‘in a relationship’. The social prestige associated with a boy publicly changing his status to ‘in a relationship’ appeared to be intense. Other young women talked about other clues, such as one group of school-aged young women in Broome: ‘Interviewer: How do you know if you are in a relationship? Young woman: When he says: “hey babe”’ (body map discussion involving four Indigenous young women aged 18–25, Broome). This particular group went on to try and tease out some parameters of how a relationship could be defined: ‘Young woman: But if they had their lives planned out like they want to have kids themselves, you wouldn't be worried. A relationship is probably like a couple of months. All: Yeah. Young woman: Maybe a month or something’. The change in status from ‘just seeing each other’ to being a publicly acknowledged boyfriend and girlfriend was considered by many of the young women to have important implications for s*xual decision-making, particularly in regards to safe s*x. A common theme that emerged through the narratives was that young women who considered that they were boyfriend and girlfriend would no longer need to use condoms, as described by a post-school group of young women in Darwin: ‘If you are just seeing each other, you might use condoms because you do not know if it will last, but once he is your boyfriend you just stay on the pill and it doesn't matter’ (body map discussion involving four Indigenous women aged 18–25, Darwin). The young women talked about the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship being based on trust and that not using condoms was a sign and acknowledgement of intimacy and trust, rather than being in a relationship defined by casual s*x and unfaithfulness. But the importance they placed on trust as a defining feature of these relationships appeared to be manipulated by the young men to avoid having to use condoms: ‘Boys … they don't like using condoms and when you ask them they say “why don't you trust me?”’ (body map discussion involving three Indigenous women aged 15–18, Alice Springs). Throughout their discussions, the young women talked about exclusivity being the characteristic of adult relationships, but underpinning this discourse is a concern that young men are unlikely to be faithful to them. Young women in Broome commented: ‘They say, “I’m only with you, I love you”, but you know they are out cheating’ (body map discussion involving six Indigenous women aged 15–18, Broome).

13/04/2022

11/04/2022

The flag of Chicago is widely regarded as one of the best city flags in the United States, perhaps in the world. It is certainly one of the most popular. You’ll find the flag of Chicago printed on t-shirts and mugs, tattooed on local musicians, and flying along streets, over rivers, and above doors throughout the city.

The flag has three white bars and two blue stripes. The white areas represent the three main sides of the city: North, West, and South. The blue stripes stand for the north and south branches of the Chicago River flowing into Lake Michigan. In the center of the flag, there are four red stars symbolizing historical events in the city like the Great Chicago Fire.
Vexillology
Vexillology is the scientific study of flags. The flag of Chicago received stellar 9.03 out of 10 rating from the North American Vexillological Association and was ranked 2nd out of 150 city flags by flag experts known as vexillologists.

Let's talk about why vexillology and good flag design can teach us an important lesson about life.

vexillology chicago illinois photos
The American flag and the flag of Chicago fly in front of a building in downtown Chicago.
How to Design a Beautiful Flag
“A 3×5 foot flag on a pole 100 feet away looks about the same size as a 1×1.5 inch rectangle seen about 15 inches from your eye. Try drawing your flag on a rectangle that is 1×1.5 inches. You’ll be surprised at how compelling and simple the design can be when you hold yourself to that limitation.”

-Ted Kaye, vexillonaire

If you wanted to design the best flag possible, then you would want to think creatively. Your first thought might be to give yourself as many possibilities as possible. “Give me a blank slate. I want tons of colors and a huge poster board to design this on. I want space to be creative and let my imagination run wild.”

What you actually need, however, is a 1×1.5 inch piece of paper. Placing this simple constraint on yourself actually makes your design better.

You see, flag designs that often look good on paper fail in the real world. A design that looks good in the pages of a report is often confusing and unrecognizable when it is flapping in the breeze 100 feet away.

What makes the flag of Chicago so compelling is its simplicity. If you were to draw the flag of Chicago on a 1×1.5 inch piece of paper, it would still look like a good design. The same principle can be applied to our everyday lives. We often assume that we need more resources when a carefully constructed constraint would deliver better results.

The Carefully Constrained Life
The power of well-chosen limitations extends far beyond flag design and vexillology. Imposing simple constraints in our own lives can lead to well-designed and more effective lives as well.

Here are a few examples from my own experience:

As an entrepreneur, I saved up $10,000 before I started my first business. This money was my constraint. I had to learn how to create products, market my business, and live off of that money until I became profitable. This constraint forced me to start an online business, reduce overhead, and—after a few years of other projects—build this website.

As a traveler, I pack ultralight and often travel for 2 weeks with just a 19-liter backpack. This tiny bag is my constraint. It still amazes me how little I actually need when I'm on the road. Furthermore, my small backpack required me to find the most useful and effective items for my needs. It didn't just make my travel lighter, it made my travel better.

As a writer, I set a publishing schedule of every Monday and Thursday. This bi-weekly deadline is my constraint. Has it always gone smoothly? No way. Sometimes I don't feel like showing up, but I still do. And because I have religiously kept this publishing schedule, I have some very popular articles to show for it. Genius only reveals itself when you show up enough times to get the average ideas out of the way.

11/04/2022

10/04/2022

Big Project Syndrome
Over time, I have learned how to become better at maintaining habits and reaching short-term goals.

For example…

I publish a new article every Monday and Thursday. I have missed exactly one time since starting on November 12, 2012.
It is the same in the gym. I typically lift every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And because of that consistency I’m squatting 100 pounds more this year than I was last year.
And so on…
Meanwhile, I seem to be very bad at managing larger, long-term projects.

For example, writing a book.

I know that I am capable of writing a book. As I mentioned in my article about systems vs. goals, I published over 120,000 words last year simply by writing two articles per week. So it’s not a question of ability.

I also know that I have many readers who want to read the book. I get emails from kind folks each week who say they are looking forward to buying the book when it’s released. (Thank you for the support!) So it’s not a question of audience size or potential sales.

And because I already write about these topics each week, I already know much of the material that should go into the book.

What could be more frustrating than having the knowledge to create a product, knowing how to create it, having the ability to create it, and having a group of people who want it … and then not doing anything about it? What kind of mental block prevents someone from taking consistent action on the things they are skilled enough to accomplish?

Right now, I’m calling it “Big Project Syndrome.” It’s simply an ex*****on issue. But, of course, ex*****on isn’t always simple.

What Holds Us Back?
I realize that I’m not facing a unique problem. Pretty much every entrepreneur I know has battled this feeling before…

You have an idea. You have a skill set. You’re pretty sure that you can make it happen. And yet, for some weird reason, you don’t execute on the project. It’s incredibly frustrating.

What is it that holds us back from doing what we are capable of?

For me, it seems to be two things.

Wanting my work to be perfect, which causes me to spend more time planning, outlining, and researching, rather than actually writing.
Focusing on how big the project is and how much needs to be done rather than working on one small piece each day.
There’s a bit of irony in all of this.

I write about habits every week and tell people all of the time: “An imperfect start can always be improved, but obsessing over a perfect plan will never take you anywhere on its own.” (More on that here.)

But when it’s my project — when it’s my baby — I want it to be incredible. I’m trying to set a high standard in the work that I do and the ideas that I share. And that is a difficult balance to maintain because sometimes I end up putting the quest to be perfect before the importance of being done.

That said, this is the very reason that I try to offer a blend of scientific research and real-world experiences in my articles. You can have the greatest research and theories in the world, but if you don’t understand the struggle that comes with implementing those ideas, then you’ll never see the full picture.