Bob Siederer
26 January 2026
Hello again Science Fans!
Before we get into the news, here are my recommendations for this week:
- COP30 Debrief: Reflecting on Belém and the Road Ahead – Livestream, Tuesday 1/27 at 11:00 AM
- Wonderfest: The Physiology of Consciousness, Thuesday 1/27 at 7:00 PM, Novato
- SETI Live: Life After Ice – 46,000 Year Old Worm Wakes Up – Livestream – 01/29/2026 12:00 PM
- Tilden Fungus Fair, 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM, Saturday 1/31 and Sunday, 2/1, Berkeley
It is really difficult to keep up with all the happenings around the world these days, and there is a strategy in that. The more strange happenings assault our senses, the more we tend to disconnect from all the noise, allowing the perpetrators to get away with more and more devious things! This seems to be deliberate.
Fortunately, some people and organizations are keeping track of all this and report on the results. With last Wednesday marking the end of the first year of the Trump 2.0 administration, Dr. Jessica Knurick published a list of things lost in that first year. It is longer than I would have guessed, and I would have guessed a high number! And this is just a list of health and nutrition losses!
There are some successes in that some of the cuts and cancelations have been restored by courts, while other actions were recinded following public outcry. I strongly recommend you look at this list and keep a count of how many directly affect you. How about reduction of the FoodNet program, where the CDC now looks at only two food-borne pathogens instead of the previous eight, or the withdrawal of a proposal to reduce salmonella in poultry. Or removal of over 8,000 public-facing health and science web pages covering reproductive health, environmental hazards, and more. The same for climate reports and the EPA’s removal of mentions of human-caused climate change from their websites. Or removing the US from the World Health Organization…again. Or a series of changes to various vaccine recommendations, including polio. Polio! (more on this one here).
Dr. Knurick also deconstructed the new dietary guidelines and the “flipped pyramid” issued by the administration. There are some good recommendations in the guidelines, but a lot of propaganda and clear lobbying by food manufacturers to influence placement of their products.
There was also a little good news, with restored funding, reinstated workers, and legal developments.
Sixty six. That’s the number of international organizations the administration withdrew the US from this month, saying these are “International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States.” These withdrawals ignored the science (the interest of the people) and were done for ideological reasons (the interests of politicians and businesses).
The EPA used to consider the cost of human lives when setting limits on polution. No longer! Now, only costs to industry will be considered.
I had more examples, but this is getting depressing, so I’ll move on to other things.
Mars is half the size of Earth, and 1/10 of Earth’s mass. Yet Mars helps shape long-term climate patterns on Earth, including ice ages.
Pandora is a new orbital observatory, launched this month, with the job of hunting for exoplanets, those that orbit other stars. It has this specialized mission and will hopefully be able to discover planets even the James Webb scope can’t see.
The Perseverance rover has been driving around Jezero Crater on Mars for 5 years and has now covered more than a marathon’s distance. Only one other land-based vehicle has traveled further on another world; Opportunity, also on Mars. It went a few miles further during its 15-year mission. Perseverance is close behind and in only 1/3 of the time.
Do you remember SETI@home? This UC Berkeley project ran for 21 years, with members of the public making the compute power of their idle personal computers available for research, looking for signals from space. Some of our readers probably participated! Scientists are now taking a second look at the 100 or so deemed worth studying, using telescope technology not available at the time.
There’s a rumor floating around the internet that Earth will lose gravity for 7 seconds on August 12. Ah, no, it isn’t true, and here’s why. That an article was even written about this says a lot about our times.
Last Sunday, the California Academy of Sciences celebrated the life of Claude, an albino alligator that delighted school children and adults alike. Claude was 30 years old when he died, and over 1,000 people turned out to remember him.
Have you ever heard of Gladys West? Next time you use GPS to navigate somewhere, think of her. Gladys played pivotal roles in charting orbital trajectories and other models used today by GPS satellites. She passed away on the 17th at the age of 95. Godspeed Gladys.
Have a great week in Science!
Bob
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