In this editorial piece by Jerome Viala-Gaudefroy on The Conversation, he tries to tackle the issues plaguing American society of today and how it is similar in comparison to the America of the 1920s. Tensions brought about by racial divides are the common denominator despite the century of movements and reforms that the United States underwent. Today is merely a rehash, a resurgence of the past issues except now, there is a shift in the groups who are being targeted from Eastern and Southern Europeans to Central and Latin Americans.

Back then, just like today, rapid change in society was a prime reason for the tension – the most critical change having to do with demography and ethnicity. These changes bring back to the surface America’s original sin: a nation defined exclusively in terms of whiteness, which explains why immigration is such a hot divisive issue. Today, the fear of immigration focuses on hispanics. In the 1920s, it was centered on Southern and Eastern Europeans.

Despite the growing diversity of America and the positive benefits brought about by it, there is still a group of people in America who stick to tribal mentalities and try to push away all the people who espouse American values and the American spirit despite not being "originally from America". To think, America is a nation of immigrants in the first place, now a group of people is trying to define it through an exclusive set of traits that have nothing to do with the origins of the nation. Heck, even the original Americans are being considered outsiders in their own land. Now, America is at the cusp of a crucial point in their history. What will you do America?

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Trying to paint a picture of a socialist America is like looking at a Jackson Pollock. You have to be able to pick apart the pieces and individual elements that make up the whole movement to get to a more defined image of what that would be. Many thinkers, activists, and politicians who supposedly ascribe to a socialist version of America don't exactly see eye to eye on what the end goal is. What would a socialist America look like?

There are still a few countries in the world that consider themselves socialist. China was communist but in the past 20 years, it has adopted a more capitalist economy with the political structure of socialism. Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos are some other socialist countries, and apart from Vietnam, the economies of the other countries still seem bleak. Would there be any benefit to transitioning into a socialist or communist type of system? First of all, what does socialism even entail? That's the question that many are trying to consider in America especially with the discussion garnering more discussion and being pushed to center stage with the presidential run of Bernie Sanders.

The fact is, many people have grown restless and frustrated over the current system that barely meets their needs. And that has gotten them to thinking about the alternative, whatever that may be. So, if not capitalism, what is the alternative? And if it's socialism, what does that entail?

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The rest of the world wonders why the United States still uses their old system of measurement which has a more complicated scale than using the metric system, employing a more standard and uniform scale of measurement. The British implemented the imperial system in America when they invaded but after America gained independence, why didn't they change after the metric system was created. Well, part of it is because of the history between the Americans and the French, who created the metric system. Despite that though, the US seriously tried converting to the metric system but the reason why they still aren't using it as the standard measurement is pretty simple.

Switching to metric is, in a sense, like switching to another language. If you’re not American, picture this: how would you feel if your government enacted a new rule that forced you to switch to the imperial system? Yes, the metric is simpler and uses fewer units, but rational reasons aside, you’d be furious simply because you’d have to change the frame of reference you’ve been using to all your life. The UK switched to metric in 1965, and this happened only because the industry forced it. UK companies were simply having too much a hard time trading with European countries. Even 50 years later, many Britons still refuse to move entirely to metric. Distances are still measured in miles, yards and inches, weight in pounds and stones; liquids in pints and gallons.

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Mayan temples are a rich landscape for artifacts, history, and culture. Being able to study it and understand how the Mayan people constructed their temples might take a lot of time, effort, and money to accomplish. So instead of doing that, archeologists just tore it down. They got approval from the Guatemalan Instituto de Antropologia e Historia, but their means of excavating the temple did not escape backlash from Mayanists. Read more on Atlas Obscura.

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How many volts does one lightning strike possess? Well, we didn't really have the means to measure it accurately until they looked into muons present in a thunderstorm.

Using muons, heavier relatives of electrons that constantly rain down on Earth’s surface, scientists probed the insides of a storm in southern India in December 2014. The cloud’s electric potential — the amount of work necessary to move an electron from one part of the cloud to another — reached 1.3 billion volts, the researchers report in a study accepted in Physical Review Letters. That’s 10 times the largest voltage previously found by using balloons to make similar measurements.

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Geophysicists have been paying particular attention to the Earth's magnetic field history, pointing out that there was a point when it had become very weak causing massive implications to all life-forms inhabiting it. It might have actually lead to mass extinction events during that period in time. The whole Earth would have been completely wiped out if it weren't for some processes happening within the Earth's inner core.

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Not all scientific principles and theories that form the basis of certain concepts have a technical explanation to how they work. Sometimes, when they were conceived, they might not even have a structured formula or rationale behind them. They just come from observation or very careful theorizing that seems to work. The Born rule is in essence one such example. When Max Born proposed it, it was simply "a smart guess, an intuition without a precise justification." But a team of researchers say that they have been able to derive Born's rule.

Born suggested that the right way to interpret the wavy nature of quantum particles was as waves of probability. The wave equation presented by Schrödinger the previous year, Born said, was basically a piece of mathematical machinery for calculating the chances of observing a particular outcome in an experiment.

In other words, Born’s rule connects quantum theory to experiment. It is what makes quantum mechanics a scientific theory at all, able to make predictions that can be tested. “The Born rule is the crucial link between the abstract mathematical objects of quantum theory and the world of experience,” said Lluís Masanes of University College London.

The problem is that Born’s rule was not really more than a smart guess — there was no fundamental reason that led Born to propose it. “It was an intuition without a precise justification,” said Adán Cabello, a quantum theorist at the University of Seville in Spain. “But it worked.”

Here's how they did it.

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There are so many objects in orbit around the Earth now that keeping track of them becomes a challenge. It is even more of a challenge as they would have to steer them away from colliding from one another. Not all satellites however, have been equipped with propulsion systems that could maneuver them out of the way of collision. And recently, two satellites encountered that exact problem. It was a good thing that one of them had a working jet propulsion system in place so that it could steer clear of the other. But what about the rest of the space objects we have launched into Earth's orbit? The Wired reports.

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It's a dangerous kind of work to cut down trees but it's even more dangerous what riverjacks do with them after. Floating logs down the river seems like an exciting way to transport logs but it's dwindling nowadays with trucks and railroads proving to be easier and more efficient in bringing the logs to be processed. But what is it about log drives, the practice of transporting logs down the river, that makes riverjacks stay?

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Further north in the Arctic regions, winter has been blowing really cold and frigid for the most part. Except for a city named Utqiagvik in Alaska which recorded a temperature within the 20s to 30s range last week. It wasn't the only one though. Practically the entire North Slope of Alaska "was having record temperatures of 30 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit" which is unusual for an Arctic climate during winter.

All of this, Thoman says, is related to a series of storms that moved from the North Pacific into the central and western Bering starting in late January. Some of those storms continued north into the Chukchi sea as well, and in doing so “transported very warm air up to the North Slope,” Thoman told Earther. The heat wave backed off this week, with temperatures dropping back into bone-rattlingly cold (aka normal) territory, although the respite from could be short-lived.

Read more on Gizmodo.

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Corresponding to the numbers 10^27 and 10^30 respectively, ronna and quecca will be the new prefixes to use for these numbers. Their counterparts will be called ronto and quecto. Given how big our storage space is getting as more data is being created every day, we need to update our vocabulary to know how to refer to these numbers once they become common use. It is predicted that by the 2030s, "computer data storage may surpass one yottabyte (10^24)" which is currently "the largest number with an official metric prefix".

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Global warming poses a serious threat to our environment, to our oceans, and to the various ecological systems in the world. Concerned with the survival of the Earth in the face of this anthropogenic phenomenon, several initiatives have been launched, treaties have been signed, and efforts have been made to reduce the carbon footprint and the greenhouse gas emissions of the world. But still, we are nowhere near the goal. Researchers from the University of Illinois in Chicago are trying the best they can to bring a solution that could improve our situation even just a little bit. Previously, there have been research done on artificial leaves but the problem was that "they only work in the laboratory where they used pure, pressurized carbon dioxide from tanks." Now, the researchers say they have a design that could be brought into the environment.

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Vaccines for diseases like polio, measles, and small pox have made it possible for millions and millions of people to live long, healthy lives. It has helped reduce and eradicate such diseases so that they no longer become an epidemic and cause mass outbreaks that could literally wipe out an entire population. But with all the advancements in medicine and diseases that have been cured, there are still some diseases that don't have any vaccines even though we know how to treat them. One such is for the pathogen group A Streptococcus bacteria or Strep A for short which can cause rheumatic heart disease. Emily Sohn investigates on the matter.

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When humans look for a partner with whom they want to have a relationship, we usually list the qualities to which we are attracted and what we want to see in our partner. There are some qualities that may be negotiable while there are things that you probably wouldn't compromise. But for certain species of Heliconian butterflies, they have quite strict criteria for finding their mate.

Complex and diverse, Heliconian’s wings patterns have drawn the attention of artists and scientists alike. And yet, each distinct species maintains its own unique pattern through generations. Scientists always wondered exactly how the species manage to preserve and maintain these patterns—and don’t cross-breed with each other.

One obvious reason is that Heliconian males are very picky when it comes to choosing their mates. A male will only woo a female butterfly that looks like him—meaning that she has the same color patterns as him. That’s why the red-spotted species react to Jiggins’s red cloth. Scientists knew that this specific reproductive trait drove the butterflies’ speciation, but the exact genetic basis governing their mate selection was unclear until recently.

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When your relationship has gone sour, we have a convenient legal device that provides for couples to go on their separate ways. That's divorce. However, a couple of centuries ago, divorce was illegal in different parts of the world, including England. Since couples had no way of splitting up without being chastised for it, they had to resort to other measures. Instead of going through a divorce procedure, men sold their wives for beer.

This wasn’t an unusual scene. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, English wives were “sold” for a variety of payments. Prices varied—“as low as a bullpup and a quarter of rum” all the way to “forty [British] pounds and a supper,” the North-Eastern Daily Gazette reported in 1887.

Half a gallon was the total sale price for a 26-year-old known as Mrs. Wells, purchased by a Mr. Clayton in 1876, as reported by The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Clayton approached Mr. Wells, professed his love for the man’s wife, and asked if he could marry her. Wells shrugged—for the last two years, his wife had lived with Clayton, and he didn’t care what she did anymore. He told Clayton he could have her “for nowt” (or “nothing”), but Clayton insisted he name his price—he did not want her “so cheaply.” Wells countered with a half-gallon (four pints) of beer, and the three of them went off to the pub. After buying Wells his beer, Clayton also offered to adopt the Wells’s daughter—Mrs. Wells was rather attached to her—and when Mr. Wells accepted, Clayton bought him another pint. Mrs. Wells was so pleased with the arrangement that she purchased an additional half gallon of beer, which the three drank together.

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