Time: How Republicans Have Packed the Courts for Years

By Jackie Calmes

    While the Republicans have been accusing Democrats of wanting to "pack" the Supreme Court, they have quietly been doing the same thing for years at all levels of the federal judiciary system. The most obvious effect of this is the 6-3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which is set to see some challenges to past liberal rulings like abortion and same-sex marriage. While the Democratic Party is in control of the Senate now, Republicans have sworn to stop Biden nominees should they retake the majority in 2022 or 2024.

    The GOP, specifically Mitch McConnell, has sworn to stack the judiciary with as many conservatives as they can, because judges serve for life, while laws are more volatile. Democratic Presidents have left more than 100 vacant seats at various levels because most nominees were blocked by a Republican-held Senate. The most notable stiff-arming was seen in 2016, when McConnell refused a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, claiming that the next president should choose a nominee while forcing Amy Coney Barrett's hearing through the Senate just weeks before the election in 2020.

    During his presidency, Trump appointed nearly 300 judges to the federal bench, and 3 justices - only one of whom was legitimate. It seems that McConnell's strategy to "transform the federal judiciary" will only continue during the Biden years. He has pledged to block all Biden nominees in 2024 should he regain control of the Senate in 2022, and has yet to say anything about 2023.

National Geographic: Whales don’t spray water from their blowholes and other myths, debunked

By Melissa Hobson

    There are a variety of myths out there about whales, ranging from them blowing water from their blowholes to swallowing humans. However, most of these are wrong.

    Whales have hair: Though they don't look furry, whales actually have hair, and some are even born with whiskers that fall out because they serve no purpose underwater. Hair follicles are an evolutionary trait present in all whales since whales are mammals.

    Whales can't breathe underwater: Whales have lungs just like we do, and need to breathe in order to survive (though they do last much longer on one breath than we do). Their blowhole(s) are like our noses.

    Whales expel air from their blowholes: Whales breathe, and their blowholes serve as an air intake. When they surface, they blow air out, and the hot air from their lungs condenses when it collides with cold air outside. Water and other particles that were covering the blowhole are also expelled.

    Not all whales sing: You've probably heard about whale songs - predictable sequences of sound that travel through the ocean. However, only certain baleen whales exhibit this behavior. Toothed whales use echolocation, which emits high-pitched clicks to identify objects. 

    Whale sharks are not a type of whale: While whale sharks might be called whales and grow as large as one, they are a type of fish, not a mammal. Like all sharks, they are cold-blooded, have gills, and have a skeletal system comprised of cartilage. In addition, their fins move side to side, rather than up and down.

Air and Space: Life May Have Been More Likely to Originate on Mars Than on Earth

By Dirk Schulze-Makuch

    One question in astrobiology is whether life is likely to have arisen on Mars. A team of researchers led by Benton Clark from the Space Science Institute recently explored the question. They concluded that it was just as probable for life to have arisen on Mars as on Earth.

    There are four reasons for this conclusion. First, Mars probably received a lot more organic materials from asteroids and comets. Second, sulfur, an important biological element, is more common on Mars. Third, Mars had a head start in the biological process because the Earth was hit by a meteor between 20 to 100 million years after its creation, obliterating any biology. Finally, Mars experiences a lot of wet-dry and freeze-thaw cycles, which concentrates elements. These cycles, when exposed to air, would support the hydrothermal pond theory of life's origin. However, because only around 5% of Mars was covered by water, a deep ocean origin would make it unlikely for life to have started on Mars. Ultimately, the true origin of life on Earth has a lot of implications for the results of this study and the possibility of life on Mars.

GHLC at JHU: Dr. Traci Wolbrink

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Dr. Traci Wolbrink, MD MPH, Associate Professor in Anaesthesia, Harvard Medical School, is the founder and co-director of OPENPediatrics

OPENPediatrics: Online Learning for Global Health Professionals

Dr. Traci Wolbrink is a pediatrician who realized that many doctors in rural or underserved areas did not have sufficient training materials.

She had the idea of creating an open-source learning software like MIT Opencourseware to help them learn.

One constraint was that it had to be downloadable, somewhat like an app, and be passed along on a storage device.

The result was software that could be downloaded and give feedback on modules participants could complete, and if they were connected to the Internet, could also adapt to give them more feedback.