Sarah Braasch to participate in “The Call,” a new documentary by C-Line Films

Filmmaker Chico Colvard, courtesy C-Line Films

Filmmaker Chico Colvard accidentally shot his sister in the leg when he was a 10 year old boy. His sister, fearing she was going to die, blurted out that she and their other two sisters were being molested by their father. This set in motion a chain of events that Colvard’s first major film, “Family Affair,” documents over a multi-year period.

Chico Colvard and co-producer Madison O’Leary are currently working on a new documentary with the working title “The Call: America’s Gilded Age of Grievance.” The film will explore the topic of phone calls to police and their different, and sometimes very tragic, outcomes. 

One of the subjects of the film will be Yale University Ph.D. candidate Sarah Braasch, who was depicted in the international media as a racist cop caller in what is now known as the “Napping While Black” incident. (If you are unfamiliar with Braasch’s story, a background link is below.) 

Sarah Braasch, Portrayed as Racist Cop Caller at Yale, Debuts YouTube Channel

In an interview with Craig Phillips for PBS’s Independent Lens collection,  Colvard says:

“THE CALL: America’s Gilded Age of Grievance examines 911 calls that range from acts of white supremacy to displays of implicit bias and genuine concerns about suspicious behavior framed by roiling racial divides. By inviting to the conversation racial justice experts, dispatchers, law enforcement, victim/survivors and the ever-elusive callers cloaked in veils of anonymity, this project synthesizes the 911 epidemic in America’s ‘New Jim Crow.’ As with any story, the ‘truth’ is elusive. Shifting memories are compromised by implicit bias, fear and trauma. The goal is not to endorse or refute the participants’ agendas, but to expose epistemic habits and emotional dispositions that shape how we understand ‘us,’ ‘them,’ and the world around us.”

Subjects of “The Call” will include: 

Corey Lewis, made famous for “Babysitting While Black,” when a woman called the police while two children were in his care. Lewis runs an after-school program and camp for children in Marietta, Georgia.

Marc Peeples, a Detroit, Michigan native who established a community garden on an abandoned lot. In a rather complicated case, three neighborhood women repeatedly called the police accusing Peeples of a variety of misdeeds which eventually resulted in his arrest on allegations of stalking. All charges were ultimately dismissed. The incident became known as “Gardening While Black.”

Blake Murphy, a medical student, who called police when she thought she saw a man breaking into a car in Evanston, Illinois. The man turned out to be a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University getting into his own car. However, local police pursued him as he drove away and Murphy’s own dash camera caught officers violently taking him to the ground.

Stephon Clark, who was shot and killed in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento, California, when police responded to a report of someone smashing car windows and stealing loose items. Clark was shot dead when police mistook his cell phone for a gun. His family continues to pursue justice against Sacramento Police Department.

Sarah Braasch, known internationally in the “Napping While Black” incident, who is currently working on her dissertation from Yale University. Braasch has two engineering degrees from the University of Minnesota, a JD from Fordham University and is a member of the New York State Bar. Braasch has petitioned the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission to release the Yale Police Department bodycam footage from the incident. To date, the YPD refuses to release the video to the public.

Colvard’s films have a unique quality as he is able to view situations as more complex than they may appear on the surface. “Family Affair” and his second film “Black Memorabilia,” surprise the viewer by approaching taboo topics with a subtle sense of duality.

After Colvard shot his sister and she disclosed the molestation by their father, his father was arrested and sent to prison, the parents divorced, and the children were torn apart and farmed out to relatives. Colvard cut off any relationship with his father for years, but his sisters ultimately formed a new and different relationship with their father.

“Family Affair” thus documents the aftermath of this tragedy and Colvard’s deeper understanding of how this family attempted to put itself back together. Colvard writes, “Family Affair does not attempt to mitigate the long-term dysfunctional impact of incest. Instead, this documentary reshapes the commonly held view that molesters are pushed to the margins of society, never to reconnect with their victim/survivors. In the end, the film focuses on the motives, accommodations and levels of forgiveness survivors make in order to maintain some semblance of family.”

Colvard’s goal is to move beyond the obvious, taking the viewer along on a ride that is complex and emotional. He writes, “At first, this documentary ran the risk of turning into a crude indictment of my father, a figure the audience is sure to view as a ‘monster’. While that assessment might be unavoidable, I do not want the audience to only view him or other pedophiles as a one-dimensional ‘monster-like’ figure.”

More recently, Colvard made the film “Black Memorabilia,” featured as part of PBS’s Independent Films collection. Again, the film is more than a simple indictment. In his director’s statement, Colvard writes, “The goal of the film is not to demonize or blame the people that hold these objects dear, but to understand the context and background in which they came to know them. Often times black memorabilia is seen as a connection to family, heritage and ‘the good old days’ of one’s childhood. In many cases these objects aren’t even considered hateful, but rather historical or even cute.”

Again, confronting a taboo topic, the film’s goal is to educate and open a difficult discussion. In a synopsis of “Black Memorabilia,” the producers explain: “In the midst of the roiling ethnic unrest in the US today, the film’s confrontation of our feelings about these objects strikes at the heart of a pressing contemporary issue and opens a unique dialogue about the continuing legacy of racism in America.”

Chico Colvard teaches Race, Law and Media related courses in the Boston area. He was the Founding Curator of the UMB Film Series. Chico is the founding member of C-LineFilms.

Madison O’Leary is a Boston-based producer. She received her BA in Communications from UMass Amherst. After working around the country as a Trauma and Abuse Counselor in federal prisons, she came on to work as an Assistant Producer and Researcher on FAMILY AFFAIR (Sundance, 2010). She worked as a Producer on BLACK MEMORABILIA (MoMA 2018) and currently heads-up operations at C-LineFilms, LLC. 

C-LineFilms is an independent storytelling group committed to social justice documentaries. Their work screens globally at festivals, museums, broadcasts and online platforms. C-Line aims to partner with college/universities, libraries, grassroots organizations and community allies to raise awareness, provoke meaningful conversations, stimulate syllabi and enhance professional development.

 

For more about C-Line Films, visit https://www.c-linefilms.org/

For more about Sarah Braasch’s FOIA request to the Yale Police Department and the Yale investigation, visit

Sarah Braasch, Yale University, Investigation of Bias and How a Similar Incident at Smith College was Resolved

Sarah Braasch, the Yale Police Dept & Connecticut’s FOIA HS Curriculum

As a skeptic, I like to stick to the facts. If you’ve never heard of Yale student Sarah Braasch or the Napping or Sleeping While Black viral video, here’s a little background.

 

https://skepticreview.com/2019/02/01/sarah-braasch-portrayed-as-racist-cop-caller-at-yale-debuts-youtube-channel/

 

As you may know, the Napping While Black incident took place in the early morning hours of May 8, 2018. Fast forward to the present, where we have Sarah Braasch today embroiled in a battle with Yale to have the Yale Police Department’s body cam footage released to the public via an FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. Yale University and the Yale Police Department intend to fight this request, so here are the most recent facts in this case.

FACT #1  Yale University has retained a prominent attorney to defend the FOIA request made by Yale student Sarah Braasch

Yale University retains prominent attorney to defend FOIA request made by Yale student Sarah Braasch

 

FACT #2 Yale Police Department refused to release body camera footage requested by The New Haven Independent in May of 2018. 

https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/yale_wont_release_body_cam_video/

FACT #3 The Connecticut FOIA Commission has developed a teaching curriculum with a lesson plan about their ruling that the Yale Police Department was subject to an FOIA request in 2008. (See page 43 forward)

https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/FOI/QuickLinks/HScurricpdf.pdf

FACT #4 Read the final decision ruling the YPD subject to an open records request here:

https://www.state.ct.us/foi/2008FD/20080213/FIC2007-370.htm

Becoming a Better Skeptic: Confirmation Bias

Illustration courtesy https://www.someecards.com/

In reply to The Conservative Skeptic’s and my ongoing examination of modern skepticism–what it is, what it isn’t, and what it should be–I wanted to touch upon Jim’s assertion that we all suffer from confirmation bias to one extent or another. Unfortunately, and much to my dismay, that is true.

https://consskep.com/2019/05/11/what-is-skepticism-can-we-know-anything/

I say unfortunately because I like to think of myself as pretty neutral, open-minded and open to belief revision. However, it seems, based on research, that will likely not happen because I have a brain that tends to want to be right.

Simply put, confirmation bias is the idea that we, as humans, tend to search out information that confirms our suspicions and beliefs. Why? Because it feels good to our brains and it reduces what is known as cognitive dissonance.

So what is cognitive dissonance? It’s a feeling that makes us uncomfortable, a feeling that we what we thought was true is not. We try to avoid it because it’s unsettling. This can apply to beliefs about people, places, things, ideologies–it provokes negative feelings to discover that what we believed to be true was no longer true or never was true.

Confirmation bias has been further complicated by social media. For example, we tend to have our beliefs confirmed if we only interact with people on social media sites that tend to agree with us. Some people refer to this as an echo chamber, where we only listen to voices that confirm what we want to hear. Many times you will see, for example, someone on Twitter who blocks everyone who disagrees with them. If you’re on Facebook, your friends tend to be people you are friends with in real life, so you are probably someone in agreement with them already or you wouldn’t be friends.

Another aspect of reinforcing confirmation bias comes through powerful tech companies such as Google. Google gets to know you, know your patterns and what you tend to like or dislike, and then tailors search results to fit that bias. YouTube will also push you in a certain direction that it predicts based on an algorithm that no one really understands.

So, when Jim brings up confirmation bias, it really is an issue we as skeptics must address. I think I may have more to say on this at a later time, but for now, I’d like to recommend an interesting documentary on this topic called The Creepy Line. The documentary is quite interesting in the exploration of the control Google and Facebook have over how we see information. I found it to be a good learning experience and I would say it has changed the way I use Google in particular.

The Creepy Line Documentary Warns of Social Media Manipulation & Privacy Concerns

 

 

What is Skepticism?

Illustration: Diagrams from Dr Alesha Sivartha’s Book of Life (1898)

One of my fellow bloggers, the “Conservative Skeptic,” has invited me to respond to his post titled, “What’s that skepticism thing you’re always going on about?”

https://consskep.com/2019/05/09/what-is-skepticism/

My favorite definition of skepticism is the following:

skepticism

1: an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object

2a: the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain

2b : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics

3: doubt concerning basic religious principles (such as immortality, providence, and revelation)

skeptic

1: an adherent or advocate of skepticism

2: a person disposed to skepticism especially regarding religion or religious principles

(Merriam-Webster)

There are different branches of skepticism and I actually enjoy exploring many of them–some more than others.

Examples of major types:

Religious Skepticism—A religious skeptic questions faith-based claims, but a religious skeptic isn’t automatically an atheist. Many people question religion but do not necessarily make a firm decision. Let’s say you were born into a devout Christian family–have you ever wondered if you had been born into a devout Muslim family, would you ultimately find your way to Christianity? If so, you just performed an exercise in religious skepticism.

Of course, a hardcore religious skeptic believes this life is it… ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That same skeptic would, however, be open to the idea of some sort of life beyond death IF evidence emerges (more solid evidence than a reality TV ghost hunters show, let’s say.)
Some of the more well known authors covering this topic are Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion; or Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists.

Philosophical Skepticism—Philosophical skepticism can be anything from radical skepticism, where final truths are unknowable, to less extreme forms in which we remain humble, not presuming to know it all, but seeking truth through questioning and investigation. This is more my style and I do dabble in it. I avoid making truth claims without thoroughly understanding a subject and backing it up with evidence.

Philosophy may seem far removed from your reality, but if you’ve ever wondered if you were born with a purpose, for example, you just practiced philosophical skepticism. Is knowing something through faith more reliable than knowing something through reason? You just did it again.

Moral Skepticism–How do we decide what’s right and what’s wrong? In the context of atheism, this debate is interesting because if we don’t follow a particular religion with a set of moral rules, where do our morals come from? You may engage in moral skepticism if you debate something like online mobbing or cancel culture–is it morally correct? Or do some people deserve to be publicly shamed and driven out of society?

Jonathan Haidt, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett are good examples of authors and public intellectuals who write about and debate these kinds of topics.

Scientific Skepticism–Everyone has practiced scientific skepticism because they had to learn it in school. Scientific skepticism applies scientific inquiry and the scientific method to prove knowledge.

Scientific skepticism includes debunkers such as Martin Gardner, the Amazing Randi, Penn & Teller or the popular “Mythbusters.” It also questions pseudoscience claims such as homeopathy. Have you ever wondered about whether you should go visit a psychic to find direction in your life but you’ve also heard they might be frauds? You just practiced scientific skepticism–and hopefully, you will look into that a bit further. In fact, some states have laws prohibiting fortune telling or predicting the future, if that gives you any clue as to the legitimacy.

Negative impressions of “skepticism” in pop culture:

In pop culture, the designation “skeptic” has been employed by some YouTubers in a way I can’t quite figure out, because they are generally what I would call not much more than vehement Anti-SJWs. (SJW is now considered a derogatory term meaning Social Justice Warriors.) I am not sure when this came about, but I don’t find it to be a proper use of the term and I think it presents skepticism in a negative and reactionary light that would not reflect the truer form of skepticism.
There are also some definitions of “Skeptic” in Urban Dictionary that also portray skeptics as some pretty awful people.

Examples:

–Colloquially refers to a pseudo intellectual cynic who hides behind the ruse of critical thinking to support their lack of belief in anything they haven’t read in Scientific American.

–They think they know everything about everything when in actuality a skeptic is the mirror image of the people they despise because they believe what they want to believe despite evidence to the contrary.

–A narrow minded individual who thinks viewing everything in a highly critical and suspicious lens makes him/her smart. This behavior only serves to make the individual look like a poser intellectual, and a prick who takes the fun out of everything.

–A pseudo-critical thinker and intellectual wannabe. Generally exhibits the following markings:

1. a tendency to completely misunderstand intellectual concepts such as burden shifting in a debate;

2. holding out as an authority on subjects about which he or she has no training or expertise;

3. an inability to respond to any argument or evidence beyond bleating tired cliches memorized from JREF web forums, “Amazing Meetings” or from such intellectual “giants” as Richard Dawkins, James Randi, and their ilk;

4. a slavish devotion to science, despite not having seriously, or even not at all, pursued an education or career in a given discipline;

5. a killjoy with a supernatural ability to suck the fun and life out of any gathering of people simply by entering the room.

Used in a sentence:

Oh God, here comes Frank the skeptic. Let’s get out of here before he starts bloviating about “the rampant rise of irrationality in society,” and kills the party for everybody.

Possible synonyms: gullible, annoying, know it all, poser, loser, punk, asshole, killjoy.

Hopefully, I have shown a side of skepticism that elevates us above “annoying punk prick know-it-alls” when in fact, a true skeptic will, I hope, reserve judgment, stay humble, ask questions and seek truth though evidence-based claims that back up any conclusions they may draw or make.

On that note, I am going to turn this debate back over to Jim!

COMPASS Pathways Receives FDA Approval for Psilocybin Therapy Clinical Trial for Treatment-resistant Depression

Illustrator: Gordon Robinson

COMPASS Pathways, a life sciences company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health, has received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a clinical trial in psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression. Regulatory approvals for the trial have already been given in the UK, the Netherlands and Canada.

Magic mushrooms may ‘reset’ the brains of depressed patients: Imperial College London

The trial is a phase IIb dose-ranging study with 216 patients taking part in 12 to 15 research sites across Europe and North America. It will begin in the UK later this month and sites in other countries will join the trial as further regulatory approvals are received.

Psilocybin therapy combines a dose of psilocybin (a psychoactive medicine and the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) with psychological support, and has shown promising signals of efficacy and safety as treatment for depression in academic studies in the UK and US. If the trial is successful, it will be followed by phase III studies.

George Goldsmith, Chairman and Co-founder of COMPASS Pathways, said, “We are excited to be starting this landmark trial which has the potential to transform lives. Depression is the leading cause of ill-health and disability worldwide, and treatment-resistant depression affects more than 100 million people. It is a huge unmet need and the trial will teach us more about how this new approach might address it.”

Ekaterina Malievskaia, Chief Medical Officer and Co-founder of COMPASS, said: “The design of this study has been a truly collaborative effort, with scientists, clinicians, patient representatives and regulators from Europe and North Americaworking together with the goal of helping patients suffering with treatment-resistant depression.”

About COMPASS Pathways

COMPASS Pathways is a life sciences company, founded in 2016 to accelerate patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health. We are developing psilocybin therapy through a late-stage clinical trial in Europe and North America for patients with treatment-resistant depression. We will improve mental health through the development of new patient care pathways, based on advances in neuroscience, psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and technology.

http://www.compasspathways.com

SOURCE Compass Pathways

Axolotl is critically endangered: “The Walking Fish” of Mexico

Photo courtesy Tech Insider, YouTube.

CONSERVATION STATUS: Critically endangered. ICUN Red List. Primary threats include pollution and tourism contributing to additional pollution.

Axolotl adults can regenerate up to 20% of their organ mass within two months, without scarring.

Recently, a team led by JAX Professor and Scientific Director Nadia Rosenthal, Ph.D., F.Med.Sci., and Research Scientist James Godwin, Ph.D., explored the role of the immune response in heart regeneration in the axolotl (salamander).

Argentinian novelist Julio Cortazar memorialized the magic of the axolotl in the following short story (1956), translated into English.

http://southerncrossreview.org/73/axolotl.html

 

Hubble shows the local Universe in ultraviolet; Photos released

Using the unparalleled sharpness and ultraviolet observational capabilities of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers has created the most comprehensive high-resolution ultraviolet-light survey of star-forming galaxies in the local Universe. The catalogue contains about 8000 clusters and 39 million hot blue stars.

Ultraviolet light is a major tracer of the youngest and hottest stars. These stars are short-lived and intensely bright. Astronomers have now finished a survey called LEGUS (Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey) that captured the details of 50 local galaxies within 60 million light-years of Earth in both visible and ultraviolet light.

This image shows the galaxy NGC 6744, about 30 million light-years away. It is one of 50 galaxies observed as part of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS), the sharpest, most comprehensive ultraviolet-light survey of star-forming galaxies in the nearby Universe, offering an extensive resource for understanding the complexities of star formation and galaxy evolution. The image is a composite using both ultraviolet light and visible light, gathered with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.
UGCA 281 is a blue compact dwarf galaxy located in the constellation of Canes Venatici. Within it, two giant star clusters appear brilliant white and are swaddled by greenish hydrogen gas clouds. These clusters are responsible for most of the recent star formation in UGCA 281; the rest of the galaxy is comprised of older stars and appears redder in colour. The reddish objects in the background are background galaxies that appear through the diffuse dwarf galaxy. The image is a composite using both ultraviolet light and visible light, gathered with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.
The spiral galaxy Messier 66 is located at a distance of about 35 million light-years in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). Together with Messier 65 and NGC 3628, Messier 66 is a member of the Leo Triplet, a trio of interacting spiral galaxies. Like all the galaxies in LEGUS, Messier 66 is undergoing vigorous star and star-cluster formation. One of the goals of LEGUS is to sample star-forming regions across each galaxy. Because the galaxies are relatively close to Earth, Hubble can resolve individual stars. An image of this galaxy was already released back in 2010 (heic1006). This newly-processed image now also shows ultraviolet radiation Hubble captured from the galaxy.
The dwarf galaxy DDO 68, also known as UGC 5340, lies about 40 million light-years away from Earth. Due to its proximity it became one of the 50 targets of LEGUS. In UGC 5340, a pocket of rapid star birth appears in the lower right corner. This region of star formation was probably triggered by a gravitational interaction with an unseen companion galaxy. But star formation is present across the entire body of UGC 5340, and the relatively young stars are responsible for the galaxy’s blue-white colour. An image of this galaxy was already released back in 2014 (heic1421). This newly-processed image now also shows ultraviolet radiation Hubble captured from the galaxy.
Messier 96, also known as NGC 3368, is a spiral galaxy about 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). It is of about the same mass and size as the Milky Way. It was first discovered by astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781, and added to Charles Messier’s famous catalogue of astronomical objects just four days later. A wave of star formation is occurring along the dark filaments that make up the spiral arms. The fledgling stars illuminate the surrounding hydrogen gas, making the stars appear pink. Star birth begins at the inner spiral arms and moves outward. The milky white regions in the centre of these galaxies represent the glow of countless stars. An image of this galaxy was already released back in 2015 (potw1535a). This newly-processed image now also shows ultraviolet radiation Hubble captured from the galaxy.
Messier 106, also known as NGC 4258, is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, a little over 20 million light-years away. This makes it one of the nearest spiral galaxies. Despite carrying his name, Messier 106 was neither discovered nor catalogued by the renowned 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier. Discovered by his assistant, Pierre Méchain, the galaxy was never added to the Messier catalogue in his lifetime. Along with six other objects discovered but not logged by the pair, Messier 106 was posthumously added to the catalogue in the 20th century. An image of this galaxy was already released back in 2013 (heic1302). This newly-processed image now also shows ultraviolet radiation Hubble captured from the galaxy.

Distant galaxy reveals very early star formation

This image shows the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223 taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; the inset image is the very distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1, seen as it was 13.3 billion years ago and observed with ALMA. Here, the oxygen distribution detected with ALMA is depicted in red.

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, W. Zheng (JHU), M. Postman (STScI), the CLASH Team, Hashimoto et al.

Astronomers have used observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to determine that star formation in the very distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1 started at an unexpectedly early stage, only 250 million years after the Big Bang. This discovery also represents the most distant oxygen ever detected in the Universe and the most distant galaxy ever observed by ALMA or the VLT. The results will appear in the journal Nature on 17 May 2018.

An international team of astronomers used ALMA to observe a distant galaxy called MACS1149-JD1. They detected a very faint glow emitted by ionised oxygen in the galaxy. As this infrared light travelled across space, the expansion of the Universe stretched it to wavelengths more than ten times longer by the time it reached Earth and was detected by ALMA. The team inferred that the signal was emitted 13.3 billion years ago (or 500 million years after the Big Bang), making it the most distant oxygen ever detected by any telescope [1]. The presence of oxygen is a clear sign that there must have been even earlier generations of stars in this galaxy.

“I was thrilled to see the signal of the distant oxygen in the ALMA data,” says Takuya Hashimoto, the lead author of the new paper and a researcher at both Osaka Sangyo University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan“This detection pushes back the frontiers of the observable Universe.”

In addition to the glow from oxygen picked up by ALMA, a weaker signal of hydrogen emission was also detected by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The distance to the galaxy determined from this observation is consistent with the distance from the oxygen observation. This makes MACS1149-JD1 the most distant galaxy with a precise distance measurement and the most distant galaxy ever observed with ALMA or the VLT.

“This galaxy is seen at a time when the Universe was only 500 million years old and yet it already has a population of mature stars,” explains Nicolas Laporte, a researcher at University College London (UCL) in the UK and second author of the new paper. “We are therefore able to use this galaxy to probe into an earlier, completely uncharted period of cosmic history.”

For a period after the Big Bang there was no oxygen in the Universe; it was created by the fusion processes of the first stars and then released when these stars died. The detection of oxygen in MACS1149-JD1 indicates that these earlier generations of stars had been already formed and expelled oxygen by just 500 million years after the beginning of the Universe.

But when did this earlier star formation occur? To find out, the team reconstructed the earlier history of MACS1149-JD1 using infrared data taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. They found that the observed brightness of the galaxy is well-explained by a model where the onset of star formation corresponds to only 250 million years after the Universe began [2].

The maturity of the stars seen in MACS1149-JD1 raises the question of when the very first galaxies emerged from total darkness, an epoch astronomers romantically term “cosmic dawn”. By establishing the age of MACS1149-JD1, the team has effectively demonstrated that galaxies existed earlier than those we can currently directly detect.

Richard Ellis, senior astronomer at UCL and co-author of the paper, concludes: “Determining when cosmic dawn occurred is akin to the Holy Grail of cosmology and galaxy formation. With these new observations of MACS1149-JD1 we are getting closer to directly witnessing the birth of starlight! Since we are all made of processed stellar material, this is really finding our own origins.”

Notes

[1] ALMA has set the record for detecting the most distant oxygen several times. In 2016, Akio Inoue at Osaka Sangyo University and his colleagues used ALMA to find a signal of oxygen emitted 13.1 billion years ago. Several months later, Nicolas Laporte of University College London used ALMA to detect oxygen 13.2 billion years ago. Now, the two teams combined their efforts and achieved this new record, which corresponds to a redshift of 9.1.

[2] This corresponds to a redshift of about 15.

Twitter Seeks Public Comments & Proposals to Improve Platform; April 13 Deadline

Posted by Jack Dorsey, 3.1.18

We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress.

Why? We love instant, public, global messaging and conversation. It’s what Twitter is and it’s why we‘re here. But we didn’t fully predict or understand the real-world negative consequences. We acknowledge that now, and are determined to find holistic and fair solutions.

We have witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns, and increasingly divisive echo chambers. We aren’t proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough.‏

While working to fix it, we‘ve been accused of apathy, censorship, political bias, and optimizing for our business and share price instead of the concerns of society. This is not who we are, or who we ever want to be.

We’ve focused most of our efforts on removing content against our terms, instead of building a systemic framework to help encourage more healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking. This is the approach we now need.

Recently we were asked a simple question: could we measure the “health” of conversation on Twitter? This felt immediately tangible as it spoke to understanding a holistic system rather than just the problematic parts.

If you want to improve something, you have to be able to measure it. The human body has a number of indicators of overall health, some very simple, like internal temperature. We know how to measure it, and we know some methods to bring it back in balance.

Our friends at @cortico and @socialmachines introduced us to the concept of measuring conversational health. They came up with four indicators: shared attention, shared reality, variety of opinion, and receptivity. Read about their work here:

MEASURING THE HEALTH OF OUR PUBLIC CONVERSATIONS

https://www.cortico.ai/blog/2018/2/29/public-sphere-health-indicators

We don’t yet know if those are the right indicators of conversation health for Twitter. And we don’t yet know how best to measure them, or the best ways to help people increase individual, community, and ultimately, global public health.

What we know is we must commit to a rigorous and independently vetted set of metrics to measure the health of public conversation on Twitter. And we must commit to sharing our results publicly to benefit all who serve the public conversation.

We simply can’t and don’t want to do this alone. So we’re seeking help by opening up an RFP process to cast the widest net possible for great ideas and implementations. This will take time, and we’re committed to providing all the necessary resources. RFP:

Twitter Health Metrics Proposal Submission

https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-health-metrics-proposal-submission.html

‏We’re going to get a lot of feedback on this thread and these ideas, and we intend to work fast to learn from and share the ongoing conversations. @Vijaya, @mrdonut and I will do a Periscope next week to share more details and answer questions.

Thanks for taking the time to read and consider, and also, come help us.