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NASA’s PUNCH Spacecraft Capture Cosmic Rainbow in Zodiacal Light (Maria)
The author writes, “NASA’s newest spacecraft aimed at studying the sun have captured a colorful ‘rainbow’ in the warm glow of zodiacal light observed above Earth. The PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which launched on March 11, consists of four small satellites working in unison. … The mission delivered its first set of images, including a vivid, rainbow-colored view of the sky.”
Trump Is Trying to Take Control of Congress Through Its Library (Dana)
From Rolling Stone: “Donald Trump’s administration is attempting a hostile takeover of the Library of Congress — an agency that is part of the legislative branch and functions as its research arm in addition to maintaining the world’s largest collection of books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and recordings. While the takeover has been framed as part of Trump’s broader purge of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) content, it is the latest effort by the president and his team to subsume the role of Congress and ensure it cannot do its job.”
White House Correspondents Protest Lack of Wire Reporters on Air Force One (Reader Steve)
From the AP: “The group representing White House journalists said Monday it was disturbed that the Trump administration barred any wire service news reporters from traveling with the president on Air Force One to the Middle East. No reporters from The Associated Press, Bloomberg, or Reuters were on the plane, where presidents often take questions from traveling members of the press. ‘Their reports are distributed quickly to thousands of news outlets and millions of readers throughout the world every day, so all have equal access to coverage of the presidency,’ the White House Correspondents’ Association said in a statement. ‘This change is a disservice to every American who deserves to know what their highest elected leader is up to, as quickly as possible.’”
The FCC Must Reject Efforts to Lock Up Public Airwaves (DonkeyHotey)
The authors write, “President Trump’s attack on public broadcasting has attracted plenty of deserved attention, but there’s a far more technical, far more insidious policy change in the offing—one that will take away Americans’ right to unencumbered access to our publicly owned airwaves. The FCC is quietly contemplating a fundamental restructuring of all broadcasting in the United States, via a new DRM-based standard for digital television equipment, enforced by a private ‘security authority’ with control over licensing, encryption, and compliance.”
Intelligence on Earth Evolved Independently at Least Twice (Sean)
From Wired: “Humans tend to put our own intelligence on a pedestal. Our brains can do math, employ logic, explore abstractions, and think critically. But we can’t claim a monopoly on thought. Among a variety of nonhuman species known to display intelligent behavior, birds have been shown time and again to have advanced cognitive abilities. Ravens plan for the future, crows count and use tools, cockatoos open and pillage booby-trapped garbage cans, and chickadees keep track of tens of thousands of seeds cached across a landscape. Notably, birds achieve such feats with brains that look completely different from ours: They’re smaller and lack the highly organized structures that scientists associate with mammalian intelligence.”
Chimpanzee Groups Drum With Distinct Rhythms (Mili)
The author writes, “New research from a team of cognitive scientists and evolutionary biologists finds that chimpanzees drum rhythmically, using regular spacing between drum hits. Their results show that eastern and western chimpanzees — two distinct subspecies — drum with distinguishable rhythms. The researchers say these findings suggest that the building blocks of human musicality arose in a common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.”
