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At UN meeting, there’s a new climate watchdog
As a part of COP28, the 28th annual United Nations climate conference, wealthy countries are wrapping up the first “global stocktake”—a bookkeeping exercise to show the reality of their greenhouse gas emissions compared to where they need to be to meet the terms of the Paris Agreement. However, the countries serve as their own accountants, and many of the largest emitters, including China, aren’t yet required to submit inventories.

An independent accounting of emissions is desperately needed—a role Climate Trace aims to fill. The coalition of nonprofits and academics backed by former Vice President Al Gore calculates greenhouse gas emissions by starting with many of the same statistics used for national inventories. However, it also uses visual satellite imagery, often interpreted through AI, to spot the activity that creates emissions—such as cooling-tower plumes, cattle ranches, and illicit landfills. Since 2020, it has grown increasingly comprehensive; its new version, released yesterday, covers 352 million sources.

The new release has a bevy of insights: Russia systematically underestimates its pollution from oil and gas operations, for example, and the United Arab Emirates—which is hosting this week’s conference—also seems to have large gaps in its accounting. But more broadly, Gore hopes Climate Trace can step in to help many developing countries get an accurate accounting of their emissions at a low cost to them, information which can then inform how they manage and reduce their pollution.

https://www.science.org/content/article/deeply-troubling-indian-scientists-slam-teaching-materials-moon-mission?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_content=alert&utm_campaign=WeeklyLatestNews&et_rid=298688510&et_cid=4979400

‘Deeply troubling.’ Indian scientists slam teaching materials on Moon mission School guides on Chandrayaan-3 mission promote pseudoscientific claims rooted in religion, critics say

Small and mighty: The hypothalamus

By MATTIA MAROSO AND PETER STERN

If you pause for a second and think about the activities that occupy most of your day, presumably sleeping, eating, and engaging in social interactions are among the first that come to your mind. Perhaps surprisingly, a small area buried deep inside the brain, called the hypothalamus, is responsible for coordinating neuronal signals related to these activities. By controlling the homeostasis of the neuroendocrine, limbic, and autonomic nervous systems, the hypothalamus is a key brain region for many physiological and pathological processes. Despite its small size, the hypothalamus has a complex cellular organization and circuitry that determine its structural and functional organization. It is composed of 11 nuclei grouped by their location and has vast, mostly bidirectional connections with many neuronal and endocrine systems.
In this special issue, we highlight the main role that the hypothalamus plays in integrating the many body functions required for the maintenance of homeostasis. If that wasn’t enough, it also modulates social interactions, including affective, sexual, and aggressive behaviors. Yet another still not completely understood function of the hypothalamus is the way it controls sleep. Finally, to avoid missing the forest for the trees, we have to take a broader view of the neural circuits that mediate motivated behaviors and their interactions with the dopaminergic system to reinforce ongoing or planned actions to fulfill motivational demands.
The hypothalamus may be small, but it has a colossal impact on a wide range of behaviors. Once again, the power of David over Goliath resides in organization and action, not size.

Courtesy: Science Vol. 382 No.6669, 2023