Latest news with #AlexRiley
Daily Mail
14 hours ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
Super Natural by Alex Riley: Boil it, drown it, nuke it - but you can't kill it
Super Natural: how life thrives in impossible places by Alex Riley (Atlantic Books £22, 368pp) A tiny animal called a tardigrade was first identified in 1861, and described as 'a little puppy-shaped animal very busy pawing about . . . a very comical amusing fellow'. They've also been called 'water bears' and 'moss piglets'. What's truly staggering, says Alex Riley in this brilliant new book, is 'that such a squishy and microscopically cuddly animal would turn out to be so extraordinarily tough'. They can live at 6,000 metres above sea level, survive in boiling water for half an hour. They can endure pressures of 1,000 atmospheres and radiation 1,000 times the lethal dose for humans. Oh, and they're fine about being fired into space, and surviving space vacuum and solar and galactic radiation with aplomb. Their secret appears to be an ability to dehydrate, yet remain alive. In this state they don't even age. Tardigrades are a key reason scientists think that total sterilisation of the Earth would be impossible. 'Once life begins on a planet,' said a team from Oxford and Harvard, 'it is likely to endure.' There are fish that live at 2c below freezing, fungi that flourish inside the Chernobyl reactor, and turtles that don't need to take a breath for six months. Riley is good at sketching the geeks at the forefront of the research. One, supposedly an expert on mammalian hibernation, now cheerfully admits, after years of close study, that 'they've confused the living crap out of me'. It's as if the more we learn about nature, the more we don't understand. Surviving on very little oxygen, bar-headed geese migrate over the Himalayas, flying at an impossible 8,000 metres, thanks to some brilliant adaptations in their blood cells and lungs. There's the possibility that the geese have been flying this route for over 50 million years, since before the Himalayas were there. Another lesson from nature is that destruction is also creation. Two billion years ago, photosynthetic bacteria nearly exterminated life on Earth when they began to belch out oxygen, a gas hitherto very rare in our atmosphere. Yet after a huge die-off, new life forms emerged to exploit this resource. Some 440 million years ago, trees quickly colonised the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea, and sucked up mega-tonnes of CO2 in the process, thus abruptly 'turning a greenhouse world into an ice world'. Some 85 per cent of all species became extinct. Today, the disaster of Chernobyl has a sobering lesson, too. Nature flourishes and multiplies here because the humans have left. Nature doesn't really mind radiation; what it can't cope with is people. James Lovelock, of the Gaia theory, suggested that the best way to protect the tropical rainforests would be to dump radioactive waste there, 'to exclude humans'. Riley takes comfort in the resilience of nature. While he's dismayed by erratic climate change and collapsing biodiversity, none of these can really threaten life on Earth, though they may well threaten us. The tardigrades will keep going, evolving into new and unimaginable forms of life.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Springfield Rep. Alex Riley launches bid for Speaker of the Missouri House
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Local state representative Alex Riley announced he will be running to become the next Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives. Riley is vying to replace the current speaker, Representative Jon Patterson (R-Lee's Summit), who will be term-limited out of office by 2026. The speaker of the Missouri House is elected by fellow House members. Riley was first elected to the Missouri House in 2020 for District 134, which encompasses much of southern Greene County. In 2023, Riley was appointed as the House Majority Leader, becoming the first elected official from Springfield in 100 years to serve that role. If elected, he will become only the second Speaker of the House from Springfield in state history. Springfield residents give feedback on Sunshine Street corridor study 'It is my goal to restore legislative authority to the people's elected representatives to address real issues facing Missouri – like reforming the state's broken initiative petition process, addressing crime and public safety, building our economy, improving education outcomes for our state's kids, and providing meaningful tax relief to hard-working Missourians,' Riley stated in a press release. In addition to being a state representative, Riley also practices law at Healy Law Offices in Springfield and received a law degree from the Southern Illinois University School of Law. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Super Natural by Alex Riley review – the creatures that can survive anywhere
Atop the gloop that swirls on subterranean pools in Romania's Movile cave, a host of mostly translucent, unseeing creatures scrabbles around. These singular beasties – centipedes, spiders, scorpions, leeches, snails and woodlice – derive their daily nutrients from slimy mats of sulphur-loving bacteria that thrive in the oxygen-poor atmosphere. This unique ecosystem was isolated for more than 5m years until 1986, when drilling for a potential power plant pierced the cave's walls. As the science writer Alex Riley reports in Super Natural, 37 out of the 52 invertebrate species living in the 240-metre-long space – which sits 21 metres below the surface near the Black Sea coast – exist nowhere else on Earth. While our ancestors were evolving in the intervening aeons – learning how to use fire, circling the globe, discovering petroleum and then polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases – 'the animals in Movile cave slurped up their microbial crop' oblivious to the world outside. They represent just a few of the exotic species that populate Riley's fascinating portrait of how life survives despite radiation, desiccation, the heat of the Sahara, freezing polar temperatures, total darkness, extended famine, lack of oxygen and the oceans' abyssal depths. Among them are the hardy tardigrades, cute little invertebrate 'moss piglets' half a millimetre long that can withstand 'unimaginable extremes', including 'freezing to near absolute zero, boiling heat, pulverising radiation, the vacuum of space' (they've been taken into orbit several times). But there are also more familiar creatures, including mammals and birds. Within the Chornobyl exclusion zone, wild Przewalski's horses – a once near-extinct species – thrive and reproduce despite the lingering radiation. In North America, the common poorwill (or hölchoko, 'the sleeping one' in Hopi) is the only bird known to hibernate, lowering its body temperature to 5C (41F) and remaining in this torpid state for weeks. The deep ocean was once regarded as hostile to any form of life, with 19th-century biologists such as Louis Agassiz deeming it 'quite impassable for marine animals'. There was no sustenance for them , he wrote, 'and it is doubtful if animals could sustain the pressure of so great a column of water'. That turned out to be wrong, and in 2022 scientists were able to film the Pseudoliparis snailfish at 8,336 metres below sea level off the coast of Japan – a depth roughly equivalent to the height of Everest. It doesn't stop there. 'Sea stars, isopods, sea cucumbers, glass sponges: all have representatives that filter water or sediment to feed in waters over 10 kilometers down.' The most common are scavenging crustaceans that feed on the dead organisms falling from above – one of which, the supergiant amphipod Alicella gigantea, looks like a flea and can grow to the size of a rat. Sadly, their diet has begun to change. Dissecting an amphipod collected in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, ecologist Johanna Weston 'found a blue microscopic fibre inside its stomach. Just over half a millimetre long and shaped like an archer's bow, it was a sliver of polyethylene terephthalate.' That's the plastic used in water bottles, and Weston named the species Eurythenes plasticus. Related: More than 5,000 new species discovered in Pacific deep-sea mining hotspot This all sounds depressing, but the book isn't, and Riley writes with levity and self-deprecating humour. 'Observing an animal so indifferent to my existence was comforting,' he writes as he focuses his microscope on a tardigrade he has extracted from a clump of moss. The minutes he spends observing this tiny animal with its 'eight chubby legs' open 'a tiny portal into a world beyond humanity'. It's also oddly comforting to realise that nature is highly resilient, enduring five mass extinctions before the current, sixth one. The Permian extinction, caused by volcanic activity 252m years ago, killed 96% of all life in the oceans. And yet, by clearing the seabed of rugose corals and trilobites, 'a new world of predatory cephalopods, crabs, snails, sharks, bony fish and marine reptiles could emerge', writes Riley. And, whatever happens, you can bet that near-indestructible tardigrades will continue plodding along. 'Life, once it has emerged on a planet, is very hard to destroy.' • Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places by Alex Riley is published by Atlantic (£22). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Super Natural by Alex Riley review – the creatures that can survive anywhere
Atop the gloop that swirls on subterranean pools in Romania's Movile cave, a host of mostly translucent, unseeing creatures scrabbles around. These singular beasties – centipedes, spiders, scorpions, leeches, snails and woodlice – derive their daily nutrients from slimy mats of sulphur-loving bacteria that thrive in the oxygen-poor atmosphere. This unique ecosystem was isolated for more than 5m years until 1986, when drilling for a potential power plant pierced the cave's walls. As the science writer Alex Riley reports in Super Natural, 37 out of the 52 invertebrate species living in the 240-metre-long space – which sits 21 metres below the surface near the Black Sea coast – exist nowhere else on Earth. While our ancestors were evolving in the intervening aeons – learning how to use fire, circling the globe, discovering petroleum and then polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases – 'the animals in Movile cave slurped up their microbial crop' oblivious to the world outside. They represent just a few of the exotic species that populate Riley's fascinating portrait of how life survives despite radiation, desiccation, the heat of the Sahara, freezing polar temperatures, total darkness, extended famine, lack of oxygen and the oceans' abyssal depths. Among them are the hardy tardigrades, cute little invertebrate 'moss piglets' half a millimetre long that can withstand 'unimaginable extremes', including 'freezing to near absolute zero, boiling heat, pulverising radiation, the vacuum of space' (they've been taken into orbit several times). But there are also more familiar creatures, including mammals and birds. Within the Chornobyl exclusion zone, wild Przewalski's horses – a once near-extinct species – thrive and reproduce despite the lingering radiation. In North America, the common poorwill (or hölchoko, 'the sleeping one' in Hopi) is the only bird known to hibernate, lowering its body temperature to 5C (41F) and remaining in this torpid state for weeks. The deep ocean was once regarded as hostile to any form of life, with 19th-century biologists such as Louis Agassiz deeming it 'quite impassable for marine animals'. There was no sustenance for them , he wrote, 'and it is doubtful if animals could sustain the pressure of so great a column of water'. That turned out to be wrong, and in 2022 scientists were able to film the Pseudoliparis snailfish at 8,336 metres below sea level off the coast of Japan – a depth roughly equivalent to the height of Everest. It doesn't stop there. 'Sea stars, isopods, sea cucumbers, glass sponges: all have representatives that filter water or sediment to feed in waters over 10 kilometers down.' The most common are scavenging crustaceans that feed on the dead organisms falling from above – one of which, the supergiant amphipod Alicella gigantea, looks like a flea and can grow to the size of a rat. Sadly, their diet has begun to change. Dissecting an amphipod collected in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, ecologist Johanna Weston 'found a blue microscopic fibre inside its stomach. Just over half a millimetre long and shaped like an archer's bow, it was a sliver of polyethylene terephthalate.' That's the plastic used in water bottles, and Weston named the species Eurythenes plasticus. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion This all sounds depressing, but the book isn't, and Riley writes with levity and self-deprecating humour. 'Observing an animal so indifferent to my existence was comforting,' he writes as he focuses his microscope on a tardigrade he has extracted from a clump of moss. The minutes he spends observing this tiny animal with its 'eight chubby legs' open 'a tiny portal into a world beyond humanity'. It's also oddly comforting to realise that nature is highly resilient, enduring five mass extinctions before the current, sixth one. The Permian extinction, caused by volcanic activity 252m years ago, killed 96% of all life in the oceans. And yet, by clearing the seabed of rugose corals and trilobites, 'a new world of predatory cephalopods, crabs, snails, sharks, bony fish and marine reptiles could emerge', writes Riley. And, whatever happens, you can bet that near-indestructible tardigrades will continue plodding along. 'Life, once it has emerged on a planet, is very hard to destroy.' Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places by Alex Riley is published by Atlantic (£22). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Missouri House set for debate on flat tax, rate cuts as session moves into final weeks
House Majority Leader Alex Riley speaks April 10 at a news conference in the Missouri House. (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications) Missouri House Republicans aren't ready to give up on dual goals of enacting a flat income tax and cutting the overall rate, and have loaded a Senate bill with their latest plan — flat tax and capital gains cut now, rate cuts later. On April 7, the state Senate approved a bill exempting capital gains — profits from property or investments held for more than a year — from state income tax. Individuals would get the break right away, while corporations would be allowed the exemption when revenue triggers lower the top individual income tax rate to 4.5%. The current top rate is 4.7%. CONTACT US One vote and that bill, sponsored by House Speaker Pro Tem Chad Perkins, is on its way to Gov. Mike Kehoe. The House passed the original version on a party-line vote in February. But there's no rush to bring it to a vote, even though Perkins has said he is ready. 'We have been hanging on to that bill for a little while, the House bill, to preserve options as we go into these last three weeks of session,' House Majority Leader Alex Riley of Springfield said Thursday. Next week, Riley said, the House will debate a bill loaded with property tax changes as well as the flat tax at a rate of 4.7%, an immediate capital gains exemption and a 10-step income tax rate cut. The changes made in the bill, originally passed in the Senate as a simple exemption for National Guard active duty pay during state activations, boosted the estimate cost from $47,282 to as much as $1.7 billion when fully implemented in 2037 or later. 'We just want to see what opportunities we have over these last three weeks of session,' Riley said. State Sen. Adam Schnelting of St. Charles, the sponsor of the bill, isn't pleased with the changes. 'We're at that stage in the game where things aren't moving as quickly or as often as people would like, and so when you send something to the other chamber, it's just natural at this point for them to load it up,' Schnelting said. Items added to Schnelting's bill in addition to an income tax cut would: Decrease the percentage of the value of vehicles and other personal property to 32% and remove the value of personal property from tax rate adjustments based on reassessments. Increase the income tax limits and credit amounts for the refundable credit known as the circuit breaker. The credit is for property taxes paid by homeowners and renters who are 65 or older or who have a qualifying disability. Limit new local property tax revenue from the increased value of real estate to 3% or inflation, whichever is less. The political stakes behind the tax cut are adding pressure to make some kind of reduction this year. During the 2024 campaign, Kehoe and his Republican primary opponents all campaigned on a promise to eliminate the state income tax. Since 2014, when lawmakers enacted a tax cut over the veto of then-Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon, Missouri's top income tax rate has fallen from 6% to 4.7%. Two future tax cuts, to a 4.5% rate, are already in state law and will take effect if general revenue growth hits targets. But revenues have declined more than 1% so far this fiscal year and the two-step test for the trigger is unlikely to be met this year or in fiscal 2026, which begins July 1, according to estimates from the Office of Budget and Planning. The next rate cut to 4.6%, put into law in 2022, is not likely before Jan. 1, 2028, when Kehoe will be seeking re-election. The proposal going to the full House would not speed up the steps, but it would add a new layer of cuts that would eventually take the rate to 3.4%. The proposal is a prudent one at a time of revenue uncertainty, said state Rep. Mike McGirl, a Potosi Republican who will handle it during the House debate. 'You have to achieve a certain amount of revenue in order for a trigger to work,' McGirl said. 'So whatever revenue is lost by that trigger is actually a wash. Now anything over the trigger is new revenue.' Democrats, who hold fewer than one-third of the seats in the Missouri House, will be unable to defeat the proposal on their own. But they will argue that it makes permanent cuts to the state's future revenue at a time when the fiscal needs of the next year are not clear. Missouri is heavily dependent on federal revenue for roads, health care and education programs. Any federal changes that alter the rate for state matching funds would rapidly increase demands on the state treasury. 'We're not sure what we're going to be getting from the feds,' said state Rep. Del Taylor of St. Louis, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. 'We are expecting some pretty lean years, and some of it is self imposed by all these tax cuts and tax cuts on capital gains.' State Rep. Adrian Plank, a Columbia Democrat, said he likes proposals such as increasing the income limits on the circuit breaker but is dismayed it is paired with cuts that favor wealthy individuals. Most of the benefits from a cut in the capital gains rate for individuals would go to a small slice of taxpayers. The 23,800 federal income tax returns for 2022 from Missouri reporting incomes greater than $500,000 a year represent 0.8% of all returns but 65% of the capital gains income. 'If I was in control, I would say, let's give the working class tax breaks and make the people who have all that privilege pay their fair share,' Plank said. Meanwhile, the capital gains tax cut bill passed by the Senate, which includes numerous other tax reductions, sits idle awaiting the House to send it to the governor. Perkins said he's not concerned the delay on his bill will put a tax cut in danger. 'We've got a little bit of time left and it's all over here in the House,' Perkins said. 'We can make it happen quickly when the time comes.' The cost estimate for Perkins' bill forecasts it would reduce revenue by about $240 million in the coming fiscal year, with an ongoing reduction of about $350 million annually when the corporate capital gains cut kicks in. The official estimate, however, has been challenged as too low by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The institute's estimate is based on IRS data from 2022 that showed $13.3 billion in long-term capital gains reported on individual returns from Missouri. Using the state's top tax rate of 4.7%, applied to taxable income more than $8,911, the institute estimated the revenue from that much income would be about $625 million. The Missouri Department of Revenue stands by its estimate that the individual capital gains cut would reduce revenue by about $110 million annually. The corporate capital gains cut would reduce revenue by about $180 million annually. Delaying the corporate cut until individual rates decline was one of the concessions negotiated by Democrats in the Senate. Democrats also won the tax changes targeting lower-income Missourians to balance the package. The change to the circuit breaker credit limits in the Senate-passed version of Perkins' bill would reduce revenue by about $72 million. A sales tax exemption for adult diapers would reduce revenue by $17 million annually and a similar exemption for baby diapers would cost the state about $1.7 million a year. Missouri collected $13.4 billion in general revenue in the most recent fiscal year. Estimates published in December project $13.6 billion of general revenue in the year that starts July 1. On Tuesday, the Senate will debate a state operating budget that would spend $15.7 billion from general revenue, a plan that is balanced by using money from the accumulated surplus. There is another $770 million of general revenue dedicated to capital improvement projects in bills awaiting a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee. State Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Republican from Springfield and chairman of the appropriations committee, said the budget proposal leaves a healthy cash balance. In a 2022 tax cut bill he sponsored, Hough wrote the two-step trigger for future tax cuts. The next cut will occur when revenue in a fiscal year exceeds the highest of the previous three years by $200 million and the revenue five years previously by more than the intervening rate of inflation. 'My job is not just to look at this fiscal year, but it's really to look at that runway and what it looks like in the future,' Hough said. Hough voted for Perkins' bill when it passed the Senate. But he's not willing to go along with putting new rate cuts into law while the state faces both revenue and federal funds uncertainty. 'It's easy to cut taxes, or say you want to cut taxes when we still have money,' Hough said. 'What happens in three or four years? What happens in two years? What happens if the federal government changes the reimbursement rate on our expanded Medicaid population?' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
