If confirmed to be natural seismic data, it could finally help scientists understand how the Moon's insides are arranged.

The rumblings were recorded by the Vikram lander's onboard Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA).

It's the first Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology-based instrument on the Moon and it was was able to record the seismic rumbles of the mission's Pragyan rover moving around on the surface.

But it also picked up what could be a natural event, such as a quake or an impact.

"ILSA's primary objective is to measure ground vibrations generated by natural quakes, impacts, and artificial events. The vibrations recorded during the rover's navigation on August 25, 2023, are depicted in the figure," the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) wrote in a statement.

"Additionally, an event, seemingly natural, recorded on August 26, 2023, is also shown. The source of this event is currently under investigation."

This is tremendously exciting; to date, the best seismic data we have for the Moon was that collected by the Apollo program in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Scientists have been itching to get their hands on more, since we still don't know how the Moon's gizzards are arranged. Seismic data would go a long way to resolving that.

Even though it's only been a few weeks since ISRO landed on the Moon, it's already conducted a bunch of scientific observations and detected the first elements at the south pole.

Now both lander and rover are currently in sleep mode. That's because it's now night where they are on the Moon, which lasts 14 days or so.

Vikram and Pragyan, like other lunar missions before them, are solar powered, which means they "sleep" at night, when their batteries can't recharge.

Vikram and Pragyan will emerge from slumber on 22 September, when they will recommence their explorations of the mysterious south pole of the Moon.

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Analyzing the age-old belief that 98.6 Fahrenheit is normal human temperature, scientists at Stanford Medicine found that your temperature is personal.

It also depends on age, sex, height and weight, and changes throughout the day.

"Most people, including many doctors, still think that everyone's normal temperature is 98.6 F. In fact, what's normal depends on the person and the situation, and it's rarely as high as 98.6 F," said senior study author, Dr. Julie Parsonnet, a professor of medicine.

The normal temperature of a tall, underweight 80-year-old man in the morning could be a degree lower than the afternoon temperature of a 20-year-old woman who is obese, she explained in a Stanford news release.

Past research at Stanford found that Americans' average body temperature has dropped from 98.6 F by about 0.05 F every decade since the 19th century. This is likely due to better health and living conditions that reduce inflammation.

Today, a so-called normal body temperature is nearer to 97.9 F, the researchers noted.

The idea of 98.6 F comes from a German study published in the 1860s. But even then, researchers noted that men and the elderly had lower temperatures than women and young adults. Temperatures in that study were also higher in the afternoon.

"Instead of thinking about a distribution in temperatures, which is what the initial study showed, we've taken a mean of 98.6 F and used it as a cutoff value," said lead author Catherine Ley, a senior research scientist. "We've used an average value to create a false dichotomy of what's normal and what's not."

To provide updated research on this, Stanford scientists analyzed more than 618,000 oral temperature measurements from adult outpatients seen at Stanford Health Care from 2008 to 2017.

The research tracked time of day, along with each patient's age, sex, weight, height, medications and health conditions.

The investigators also applied a machine learning algorithm to identify diagnoses and medications that were disproportionately associated with extremely high or extremely low temperatures, to keep the data from being distorted by illness.

About one-third of patients were excluded from the analysis for having these diagnoses. These included infectious diseases linked to high temperature and type 2 diabetes linked to low temperature, which was a new finding.

The upshot: Adults have normal temperatures ranging from 97.3 F to 98.2 F, with an overall average of 97.9 F.

Men tended to have lower temperatures than women. Temperatures decreased with age and with height, and increased with weight.

Time of day exerted the biggest influence with temperatures coolest in the early morning and warmest around 4 p.m.

About one-quarter of temperature variability from person to person could be credited to age, sex, height, weight and time of day.

That means other factors not studied account for the remainder. This might include clothing, physical activity, menstrual cycle, measurement error, weather, and drinking a hot or cold beverage.

These individualized benchmarks could make body temperature a more accurate and useful vital sign, Parsonnet said, recalling her elderly mother-in-law's experience.

In her case, she was not diagnosed with a serious heart infection for weeks because her temperature never reached a conventional fever, usually defined as higher than 100.0 F or 100.4 F.

Future studies could look at personalized definitions of fever and whether having a consistently higher or lower normal temperature affects life expectancy, Parsonnet said.

"There's a lot of temperature data in the world, so there's a lot of opportunity to actually learn something about it," she said.

The study was published Sept. 5 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

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Under the new policy, government employees are prohibited from using devices like the iPhone for work purposes or even bringing them into office buildings. The move represents a major expansion of China's long-running effort to reduce reliance on foreign technology amid cybersecurity concerns.

In recent weeks, officials were instructed (not to use the devices) by their superiors in workplace communication channels, as part of Beijing's ongoing efforts to reduce reliance on foreign tech, enhance cybersecurity, and restrict the flow of sensitive data across China's borders.

Apple has enjoyed significant success in China's smartphone market as local competitor Huawei has been unable to keep up after being impacted by the 5G sanctions from the US. However, Apple's strong position in China could now be threatened following a new prohibition that may fuel speculation of espionage or meddling by the company.

On the other hand, Apple announced in July the launch of its online store on China's popular messaging app, WeChat. This program allows users of the app to purchase the full range of Apple products.

This is not the first time foreign-branded products have been banned in the country. In 2014, Apple products were banned from some government buildings due to security concerns. In the same year, Windows 8 was also banned from government PCs.

The ban comes amid broader tensions between China and Western nations like the US, which has imposed various trade and technology sanctions on Beijing. Recently, Microsoft reported that Chinese hackers accessed government email accounts in the United States and Europe. The company said that the hackers were likely motivated by the government.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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When the government started an antitrust investigation into Google, one of the company’s top lawyers, Kent Walker, said the solution was not a charm offensive. Google just needed to explain how its business functioned.

It was 2009, and the Federal Trade Commission was assessing whether Google had rigged technology markets in its favor. Mr. Walker’s plan worked.

The company agreed to a few small business practice changes in a 2013 settlement and maintained its search engine dominance for another decade.

Now, Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are facing their most significant legal challenge. They are facing off in federal court against the Justice Department and a collection of states, which claim the tech giant illegally abused its monopoly power to keep its search engine on top.

The Justice Department has argued that Google illegally used agreements with phone makers like Apple and Samsung, as well as internet browsers like Mozilla, to be the default search engine for their users, preventing smaller rivals from getting access to that business.

The court fight — the most important antitrust case since the Justice Department took on Microsoft 25 years ago — strikes at the heart of Alphabet’s $1.7 trillion empire and could strip power and influence away from the world’s most successful internet company.

If Google loses and a judge then approves remedies, it could eventually be forced to restructure in some way, and it could be hit with enormous fines and a prohibition on search distribution deals. That would translate to fewer users, deflated profits and perhaps even limits on how Google is able to innovate with new technologies like artificial intelligence.

To fend off the regulators’ claims, Google needs to convince Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that Google’s decades of dominance are due to its superior product, not abusive tactics.

The company is counting on Mr. Walker, 62, once again. Since being hired as Google’s general counsel in 2006, Mr. Walker has been an architect of the company’s legal strategy, overseeing a victory in a protracted courtroom showdown with rival Oracle and a case that could have held Google liable for users’ social media posts. Both legal fights went to the Supreme Court.

That Mr. Walker is defending an industry giant against the monopoly claims of regulators is an odd turnabout in his long career. He grew up in Palo Alto, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, and graduated from Harvard and Stanford Law School. Starting in 1990, he spent five formative years at the Justice Department, where he worked on the prosecution of Kevin Mitnick, once the most wanted hacker in the country.

In 1997, Mr. Walker began a pivotal four-year tenure at the pioneering internet company Netscape as deputy general counsel, bringing him into the landmark antitrust proceedings against Microsoft. The Windows company was accused of bundling its products together to snuff out other web browsers, including Netscape’s Navigator.

In a recent interview, Mr. Walker argued that he is still fighting for the same thing — that consumers should have easy access to the services they like the most. He discussed the case in societal terms, framing it as a battle over how much innovation is permissible under American antitrust law and a fight that will have “important implications for the tech sector.”

Mr. Walker has dozens of in-house lawyers and hundreds of other employees helping on the antitrust case, he said. Google has also hired three law firms to take the lead on the litigation.

John E. Schmidtlein, an experienced antitrust lawyer and a partner at the law firm Williams & Connolly, will lead Google’s courtroom defense. Wendy W.H. Waszmer, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, will also argue for Google in court. They will have three weeks to make their case after the Justice Department and attorneys general from 35 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam make theirs.

The company contends that it faces stiff competition from a number of alternative services where consumers can find products and information online, including Amazon and TikTok.

Google also argues that its partnerships with companies like Apple and Samsung are lawful and that consumers can change their default search engine in five or fewer steps on these phones. The company will also point out that when users open a Safari browser on an iPhone, they can see quick links to a variety of other services besides Google, including Microsoft’s Bing search engine and Wikipedia.

The search giant will also seek to undermine the premise of the Justice Department’s suit, claiming that the government has used antitrust law in a novel way to punish the company because of its popularity.

“American law should be about promoting benefits for consumers: that’s lower price, that’s more innovation, that’s more opportunity,” Mr. Walker said. “If we move away from that and make it harder for companies to provide great goods and services for consumers, that’s going to be bad for everyone.”

Gregory Rosston, Stanford’s public policy program director, said both sides would argue about whether the search market would be more competitive if Google did not have default-search agreements.

“Google is going to argue Apple had no interest in developing a search engine,” Dr. Rosston said. “They do search in Siri and other things, but they’re not very good at it. The government is going to say, well, they could have done it or they could have done a deal with Bing or some other start-up search engine, and maybe people would have done more searches with those.”

“Generally, antitrust laws take a dim view of agreements between competitors to divide up or not enter a market,” he added.

For nearly two decades, Google executives have depended on Mr. Walker to protect the company from high-stakes litigation. But at times, Mr. Walker has also had to simply explain how the legal system works. Harry Litman, a friend and former Justice Department colleague of Mr. Walker, recounted a story he shared at a reunion for U.S. attorneys several years ago.

Mr. Walker was in a meeting with Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, discussing a spate of lawsuits around the world, Mr. Litman said. One of the co-founders asked: Why can’t we have a single judge in every country who would get up to speed on the internet and oversee lawsuits against us?

Mr. Walker “was chuckling about his job, having to explain to these extremely rational people why the law doesn’t always work in such a rational way,” Mr. Litman said.

Despite what colleagues and friends describe as Mr. Walker’s Boy Scout persona, his team can be known for hardball tactics, legal opponents say.

David Boies, who successfully prosecuted Microsoft for the Justice Department more than 20 years ago, said Google failed to produce documents, denied all liability and fought for every inch.

Mr. Boies is suing Google in two civil cases, including one that accuses the company of tracking users without their knowledge while in its web browser’s Incognito mode. He said he had gotten sanctions against Google twice, including a million-dollar penalty, for failing to deliver relevant evidence.

“They hold the ground until it breaks,” he said. “They don’t bend.”

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Also called Pirola, the variant is highly mutated, with more than 30 changes to its spike protein compared to its close ancestor BA.2 and to XBB.1.5, CNN reported. That big leap in evolution is similar to what happened when omicron first emerged.

But scientists, including those in Sweden and China, are finding in lab tests that the variant appears to be less concerning than first thought.

U.S. scientists are among those who will release lab results soon, CNN reported.

So far, BA.2.86 has spread to the United States and 10 other countries. Denmark has reported the most sequences. In all, about three dozen sequences have been seen in a global repository over the past month, CNN reported.

"My friends, this is not the second coming of omicron. If it were, it is safe to say we would know by now," Dr. Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist who is co-director of Harvard University's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, said in a social media post.

The ongoing lab experiments are using virus isolated from patients or models of the virus' spike proteins grafted onto the body of a different virus, CNN reported.

In China, researchers determined that BA.2.86 looks different to the immune system than earlier COVID variants. It can escape some immunity, CNN reported.

Among the findings are that there was a twofold drop in the ability of vaccination and recent infection to neutralize BA.2.86, compared to viruses from XBB.1.5, Yunlong Cao from the Biomedical Innovation Center at Peking University, told CNN. But it was also 60% less infectious than XBB.1.5 variants.

"I would say it will slowly circulate in the population. It will not be able to compete with other fast prevailing variants," Cao said, referring to variants like EG.5 and FL.1.5.1, which are currently spreading in the United States.

Meanwhile, in experiments at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, researchers used blood from human donors collected in late 2022 and from late August to test the impact of antibodies against BA.2.86.

While the older blood samples couldn't stop BA.2.86, those obtained later did better, CNN reported.

"Overall, it doesn't appear to be nearly as extreme a situation as the original emergence of omicron," principal researcher Benjamin Murrell wrote in a social media post.

"It isn't yet clear whether BA.2.86 [or its offspring] will outcompete the currently circulating variants, and I don't think there is yet any data about its severity, but our antibodies do not appear to be completely powerless against it," he said.

Both studies have limitations: Among them are that researchers were testing models of the virus, and not the actual virus, CNN reported.

Yet, the results were encouraging.

"The news is better than I was expecting," Dr. Ashish Jha, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator said in a social media post. "And [it] makes me more encouraged that the new upcoming vaccine will have a real benefit against current dominant variant [EG.5], as well as BA.2.86."

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A subtle mistranslation of Isaac Newton’s first law of motion that flew under the radar for three centuries is giving new insight into what the pioneering natural philosopher was thinking when he laid the foundations of classical mechanics.

The first law of motion is often paraphrased as “objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to stay at rest.” But the history of this rather obvious-seeming axiom about inertia is complicated. Writing in Latin in his 17th-century book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Newton said, “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by the forces impressed.”

Throughout the centuries, many philosophers of science have interpreted this phrasing to be about bodies that don’t have any forces acting upon them, says Daniel Hoek, a philosopher at Virginia Tech. For example, in 1965 Newton scholar Brian Ellis paraphrased him as saying, “Every body not subject to the action of forces continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line.” But that’s a bit puzzling, Hoek says, because there are no bodies in the universe that are free of external forces acting upon them. Why make a law about something that doesn’t exist?

In a recent paper published in the journal Philosophy of Science, Hoek argued that Newton had no intention of using the first law to refer to imaginary, force-free bodies. Newton’s use of the Latin for “except insofar” (nisi quatenus) was meant not to specify that the law referred only to such bodies, he said, but to point out that motion only changes insofar as a force compels it to. In other words, Hoek wrote, a better paraphrase would refer to all bodies: “Every change in a body’s state of motion is due to impressed forces.”

This difference might seem rather academic—after all, Newton’s theories have been superseded by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. But Einstein built upon Newton, says Robert DiSalle, a historian of the philosophy of physics at Western University in Ontario. And people have used misinterpretations of Newton’s first law to argue that Einstein’s and Newton’s theories have fundamental philosophical disagreements, DiSalle says.

In particular, there have been complaints that Newton’s first law is circular. It says that force-free bodies move in straight lines or stay at rest, but how do you know that they’re force-free? Well, it’s because they move in straight lines or stay at rest.

“The paper makes it easier to see why that point of view is wrong,” DiSalle says. Not only did Newton not intend to make a law about imaginary force-free bodies, DiSalle says, but his contemporaries didn’t interpret him that way, either. “I think it’s an interpretation that people thought up looking back,” DiSalle says.

Newton’s further writings make it quite clear he meant his first law to refer to all bodies, not just theoretical force-free ones, says George Smith, a philosopher at Tufts University and an expert in Newton’s writings. “The whole point of the first law is to infer the existence of the force,” Smith says.

At the time Newton was writing, he says, it was not at all taken for granted that objects required a force to move them about; there were all sorts of old theories about objects having their own animating power. Aristotle, for example, thought that heavenly bodies were made of a theoretical form of matter called aether and naturally moved in circles. Newton was rejecting all of these older ideas in his writing, Smith says, and pointing out that there is no such thing as an object upon which no forces are acting.

The confusion over what Newton meant likely persisted because of a Latin-to-English translation made by Andrew Motte in 1729, after Newton’s death, that used the word “unless” instead of “except insofar.” This was a subtle difference that nonetheless made it seem like Newton was talking about force-free bodies instead of explaining why all bodies react to forces, Hoek says. After this, people “probably, for the most part, did not go back to the original translation,” he says.

The new explanation is more complete, says Ramón Barthelemy, a physics education researcher at the University of Utah. The words scientists use to convey their ideas can have a big impact on understanding, he says, especially for students. “I think it’s really fun that people are still out there talking about this,” Barthelemy says. “It shows that there is still discussion.... Any time we can provide more opportunities for students to engage and see a different interpretation, that’s an exciting way to get people involved in physics.”

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The origins of SARS-CoV-2 remain mysterious, but aside from having possibly jumped from another species to us, the virus has also proven capable of jumping from us to a variety of other mammals.

According to previous research, the virus may now be common among white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in some parts of the United States.

In the new study, researchers looked for SARS-CoV-2 infections by swabbing noses of free-ranging deer across Ohio. Between November 2021 and March 2022, they used nasal swabs to sample 1,522 deer found in 83 of the state's 88 counties.

A genetic analysis of the swabs showed active SARS-CoV-2 infections in 10 percent of deer, with at least one positive case found in 59 percent of counties tested.

The researchers also collected blood samples from a number of the deer to look for evidence of previous infections, indicated by the presence of specific antibodies. Based on their results, they estimate nearly 24 percent of deer in Ohio have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 at some point.

On top of that, genomic analysis suggests at least 30 of the active infections found in deer were introduced by humans.

"We generally talk about interspecies transmission as a rare event, but this wasn't a huge sampling, and we're able to document 30 spillovers. It seems to be moving between people and animals quite easily," says study co-author Andrew Bowman, a veterinary epidemiologist at Ohio State University.

White-tailed deer may serve as a reservoir for the virus, the researchers note, potentially spreading it on to other wildlife, livestock, and humans.

"And the evidence is growing that humans can get it from deer – which isn't radically surprising," Bowman says. "It's probably not a one-way pipeline."

(Danielle Brigida/USFWS/Flickr)

Bowman and his colleagues detected the coronavirus in Ohio deer at nine sites in December 2021, finding it was most prevalent near dense human populations. Without broader monitoring, however, the bigger picture remained murky.

"We expanded across Ohio to see if this was a localized problem – and we find it in lots of places, so it's not just a localized event," Bowman says.

"Some of the thought back then was that maybe it's just in urban deer because they're in closer contact with people," he adds. "But in rural parts of the state, we're finding plenty of positive deer."

Many of the deer showed evidence of exposure to the highly contagious delta variant, which was the most prevalent strain among humans in the US during the study period. There were also signs of the alpha variant, which had peaked among humans earlier in 2021.

The genetic makeup of delta variants in deer matched those spreading among humans at the time, the researchers report. This suggests spillover events occurred, in which the virus "spilled" from our species into theirs.

After a deer somehow caught the coronavirus from a human, the virus apparently began to spread among wild deer in clusters, the study found, with some clusters expanding beyond a single county.

"There's probably a timing component to what we found – we were near the end of a delta peak in humans, and then we see a lot of delta in deer," Bowman says.

"But we were well past the last alpha detection in humans," he adds. "So the idea that deer are holding onto lineages that have since gone extinct in humans is something we were worried about."

SARS-CoV-2 evolves more rapidly in deer than they do in humans, according to an examination of mutations in the viral samples, although it remains unclear what exactly that entails for us. It is plausible the virus could evolve further in deer and spread back to us, but even if it does, the study suggests COVID vaccination offers protection.

Bowman and his colleagues exposed Syrian golden hamsters – a common model animal in SARS-CoV-2 research – to coronavirus variants taken from white-tailed deer, finding that vaccinated hamsters became less sick from infection than unvaccinated hamsters.

Even if coronavirus variants from deer don't pose a direct threat to us, however, they could still wreak havoc with domesticated animals or wildlife.

According to the data so far, Bowman notes, about 70 percent of free-ranging white-tailed deer in Ohio still haven't been exposed to SARS-CoV-2.

"Having that animal host in play creates things we need to watch out for," he says. "If this trajectory continues for years and we have a virus that becomes deer-adapted, then does that become the pathway into other animal hosts, wildlife or domestic? We just don't know."

The study was published in Nature Communications.

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A vast array of marine life lives along the Florida peninsula, the US state where hurricanes make landfall most often. The Florida Keys have coral reefs. Near the panhandle, there are temperate marshes and seagrass meadows. And the plants and animals in these various regions respond differently to hurricanes.

And not all hurricanes have the same effects, said Melissa May, an assistant professor of marine biology at Florida Gulf Coast University.

A storm surge can act like an unusually high tide and leave some marine environments relatively undisturbed during the hurricane itself, she said.

But a storm's aftermath can have its own devastating effects, from changes in salinity to an influx of sediment and bacteria.

What happens to marine life during a hurricane?

In a typical year, about 10 hurricanes will develop in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The force of a hurricane can create 60-foot waves that churn together cold water from the depths with the warmer surface water. Its currents can stir up sediment as deep as 300 feet, according to NOAA.

Many marine mammals and fish can move to deeper, calmer waters. Researchers followed the movements of blacktip sharks during a 2001 tropical storm and found they left the area before it made landfall and returned after five to 13 days.

Scientists have hypothesized that lower barometric pressure, temperature changes in the water, and similar cues alert fish that a storm is imminent.

A 2019 study found that increased waves at the surface stirring water at the seafloor prompted gray triggerfish to move to deeper water before hurricanes.

If dolphins and other marine mammals don't manage to escape the path of the hurricane, they can become trapped in ponds, levees, and other freshwater habitats where they can't survive.

Hurricanes can be deadly for fish, too.

After 1992's Hurricane Andrew, an estimated 9.4 million saltwater fish died, the US Geological Survey found. Sediment may have clogged their gills or the pressure changes may have formed deadly nitrogen gas bubbles in their blood.

The same storm swirled sediment in freshwater environments and turned the water anoxic, meaning oxygen-deficient. An estimated 187 million fish died in Louisiana.

Hurricanes also impact stationary or slow-moving marine life. After hurricanes, "seagrass beds and oyster reefs have been buried by shifting sediment," said Valerie Paul, head scientist at the Smithsonian Marine Station, in an email to Insider. "If you have lots of storm surge and wave action, that can physically uproot the seagrass," May said.

Hurricane Ian swept almost 250 baby sea turtles to shore, and the Brevard Zoo's Sea Turtle Healing Center housed them until they could be re-released.

Some corals rely on waves to break them up and distribute them to new parts of the ocean. Hurricanes can also bring in cooler water and help offset some of the effects of coral bleaching — when too-warm water causes corals to purge the symbiotic algae that provide oxygen and waste removal. But overly strong waves can break up and kill corals, too.

What happens to the ocean after a hurricane?

After a powerful storm subsides, litter and waste can remain in bodies of water for months or even longer.

"There was a lot of debris with Hurricane Ian in our estuaries," May said. Dozens of cars and boats leaked gasoline and other chemicals into Estero Bay.

Sewage can also make its way into waterways, bringing with it bacteria like enterococcus and E. coli, May said.

Rain and flooding from hurricanes also bring an influx of freshwater to marine environments. "This can be stressful to any organisms that don't handle large changes in salinity," Paul said.

Marine life can often tolerate some changes in salt concentrations but not drastic or long-term alterations. For example, alligators on Sanibel Island, which Hurricane Ian hit hard, were affected by the saltier ocean water the storm brought on land.

"Although alligators can tolerate salt water for a time, they cannot live in it indefinitely," according to the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation's Chris Lechowicz.

On the other hand, marine dolphins can only live in freshwater for a short time without suffering serious effects. Overexposure to freshwater after Hurricane Katrina may have caused a deadly skin disease in bottlenose dolphins.

Freshwater has other effects, too. "Rivers tend to have a lot more sediment than ocean water, and they tend to have a lot higher concentrations of nutrients from coastal runoff," May said.

If a hurricane pushes river water into the marine system, it creates favorable conditions for the formation of large algae blooms.

"There are these cascading effects from the hurricane," May said. For example, algal blooms after Hurricane Ian didn't allow sunlight to reach the seagrass, a primary food source for manatees. This put stress on an already threatened population of sea cows in Florida.

Hurricanes are natural events, May pointed out. "Our ecosystems are actually designed every once in a while to kind of get wiped out," she said. But they also need sufficient time to recover before the next one comes along.

Climate change may not increase the number of hurricanes, but it could make them more intense, according to NASA, with higher storm surges and more flooding, both of which are bad news for ocean life.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

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The failure is costing well over $400 billion dollars a year in damages and lost income – the equivalent to the GDP of Denmark or Thailand – and that is likely a "gross underestimation", according to the intergovernmental science advisory panel for the UN Convention on Biodiversity (IPBES).

From water hyacinth choking Lake Victoria in East Africa, to rats and brown snakes wiping out bird species in the Pacific, to mosquitoes exposing new regions to Zika, yellow fever, dengue and other diseases, the report catalogued more than 37,000 so-called alien species that have taken root – often literally – far from their places of origin.

That number is trending sharply upward, along with the bill for the damage multiplying fourfold per decade, on average, since 1970.

Economic expansion, population increase and climate change "will increase the frequency and extent of biological invasions and the impacts of invasive alien species," the report concluded.

Only 17 percent of countries have laws or regulations to manage this onslaught, it said.

Whether by accident or on purpose, when non-native species wind up on the other side of the world, humans are to blame.

The spread of species is hard evidence that the rapid expansion of human activity has so radically altered natural systems as to tip the Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, scientists say.

Hitchhikers

The hyacinth that at one point covered 90 percent of Lake Victoria – crippling transport, smothering aquatic life, blocking hydroelectric dam intake and breeding mosquitoes – is thought to have been introduced by Belgian colonial officials in Rwanda as an ornamental garden flower before making its way down the Kagera River in the 1980s.

The Florida Everglades is teeming with the destructive offspring of erstwhile pets and house plants, from five-metre (16-foot) Burmese pythons and walking catfish to Old World climbing fern and Brazilian pepper.

In the 19th century English settlers brought rabbits to New Zealand to hunt and for food. When they multiplied like, well, rabbits, officials imported ferocious little carnivores called stoats to reduce their numbers.

But the stoats went after easier prey: dozens of endemic bird species that were soon decimated, from baby Kiwis to wrybills.

New Zealand and Australia – where a similar bad-to-worse saga involving rabbits unfolded – are "case studies" of how not to control one imported pest with another, Elaine Murphy, a scientist at New Zealand's Department of Conservation, told AFP.

More often, however, invasive species are accidental arrivals, hitching rides in the ballast water of cargo ships, the containers in their holds, or in a tourist's suitcase.

The Mediterranean Sea is full of non-native fish and plants, such as lionfish and killer alga, that journeyed from the Red Sea through the Suez Canal.

Vulnerable small islands

Murder hornets capable of wiping out entire bee colonies in a single attack are thought to have arrived in the US from Asia as stowaways in freight.

Largely due to huge volumes of trade, Europe and North America have the world's largest concentrations of invasive species, defined as those that are non-native and cause harm and have relocated due to human activity, the IPBES report shows.

Invasive species are a significant cause in 60 percent of all documented plant or animal extinctions, one of five main drivers along with habitat loss, global warming and pollution, according to the findings.

These drivers interact: climate change has pushed alien species into newly warmed waters or lands where native species are often vulnerable to intruders they have never encountered.

The deadly fire that reduced the Hawaiian town of Lahaina on Maui to ashes last month was fuelled in part by bone-dry grasses – imported decades ago to feed livestock – that has spread across abandoned sugar plantations.

A global treaty to protect biodiversity hammered out in Montreal last December sets a target of reducing the rate at which invasive alien species spread by half by 2030.

The IPBES report lays out general strategies for achieving this goal, but does not assess the chances of it being met.

There are basically three lines of defence, according to the report – prevention, eradication and then, failing that, containment.

Attempts at eradication have generally failed in large bodies of water and open waterways, as well as on large tracts of contiguous land. The places with the highest rate of success in removing unwanted guests – especially rats and other vertebrates – are also the ones that have proved most vulnerable: small islands.

© Agence France-Presse

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But there may be a reason to worry. This variant, which has unofficially been nicknamed "Pirola," a combination of the Greek letters Pi and Rho, has more than 30 mutations to its spike protein compared to XBB.1.5, a variant of omicron that had been the dominant strain in the United States before being surpassed recently by EG.5. The spike protein is how the coronavirus enters human cells.

"Such a high number of mutations is notable," says Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist Scott Roberts, MD, adding that it is similar to the number of mutations that differed between delta, one of the early strains of the coronavirus, and omicron.

"When omicron hit in the winter of 2021, there was a huge rise in COVID-19 cases because it was so different from the delta variant, and it evaded immunity from both natural infection and vaccination," Dr. Roberts says. "The other concern is that this strain has been picked up in at least six countries, and the cases are unrelated. This suggests some degree of transmission in the [international] community that we're not detecting."

We talked more with Dr. Roberts about BA.2.86.

What do we know so far about BA.2.86?

BA.2.86 is a newly designated variant of omicron, which itself is a variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. BA.2.86 has additional mutations compared to previously detected omicron subvariants. More specifically, it is derived from BA.2, an omicron subvariant that circulated more than a year ago, Dr. Roberts adds.

BA.2.86 was first detected in late July in Denmark and appeared in the U.S. in August. The fact that the known cases so far do not appear to be linked indicates that the strain is circulating more widely than believed, especially since COVID-19 surveillance has lessened, Dr. Roberts says.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), existing tests to detect and medications used to treat COVID-19 (such as Paxlovid, Veklury, and Lagevrio) appear to be effective with BA.2.86, but this variant may be more capable of causing infection in people who have had COVID-19 or have been vaccinated against it. There is currently no evidence that the strain is causing more severe illness.

What's more, at this time, the increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. is likely driven by XBB lineage viruses, not BA.2.86.

What is most concerning about this new variant?

Because BA.2.86 has so many mutations that make it different from other coronavirus strains, many medical experts wonder if it has the potential to bypass immune defenses both from natural infection and prior vaccination, Dr. Roberts explains.

"Nobody knows right now, but studies are ongoing," he says. "The biggest concern has been the number of mutation differences with BA.2.86.

When we went from XBB.1.5 to EG.5, that was maybe one or two mutations, and they were expected. With every respiratory virus, as it spreads from person to person, it evolves gradually over time. But these massive shifts, which we also saw from delta to omicron, are worrisome."

The flu, Dr. Roberts points out, similarly sometimes has a massive change, such as with the swine flu in 2009. However, sometimes these variants fade away and don't amount to anything, he adds.

"The big question is if BA.2.86 will have the same exponential growth that omicron did—in terms of case numbers—or if it will die out, which is certainly what everyone hopes," Dr. Roberts says.

As of Aug. 30, the CDC reports that the variant has been identified in at least four states in the U.S. in samples from either people or wastewater.

The good news is that, thanks to the greater degree of herd immunity from infection and vaccination, the world is not as vulnerable to severe illness or infection from the coronavirus as it was in 2020, Dr. Roberts explains.

"Since the original version of SARS-CoV-2, many people have gotten infected, and many have been boosted," he says. "However, for many of us, it might have been a year or more since we've had a booster, so I would encourage everyone to get the updated shot, which is expected to come out in mid-September."

Will the new COVID-19 booster protect against BA.2.86?

Scientists are evaluating the effectiveness of the forthcoming updated COVID-19 booster against BA.2.86, according to the CDC. Currently, the CDC says the updated vaccine is expected to be effective at reducing severe disease and hospitalization from BA.2.86.

"My guess is that it will also offer an added layer of protection from infection, but it won't be one hundred percent," Dr. Roberts says.

"With that being said, the CDC's preliminary report says that we don't have any evidence right now that BA.2.86 causes more severe disease, death, or hospitalization. We don't yet know how transmissible it is, and it's very possible it doesn't spread that well and we would see this peter out in a couple of weeks," says Dr. Roberts. "But it's important to remember that it's still the same virus at its core, so the same prevention methods—masking, vaccination, and hand-washing, among others—can help people avoid infection."

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A PLACE AT an Indian Institute of Technology is a golden ticket. There are 23 IITs across India, the country’s most elite technology training institutions: a production line for CEOs. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Flipkart’s founder Sachin Bansal are among their alumni. So are Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy and FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam.

Dhaval Raghwani hadn’t even considered going to an IIT until, in 2017, a coaching institute—a finishing school designed to get kids into elite institutions—opened up in Thane, close to where he lived in Mulund, Mumbai. Possibilities unrolled in front of him. Each year, the media runs headlines of students leaving these prestigious institutions with “2 crore per annum jobs” (nearly $245,000). Raghwani was swept up by the promise of earning in crores.

Taking a run at an IIT involves, counterintuitively, leaving school. To get into an engineering college in India means passing the Joint Entrance Exam, or JEE, and coaching centers specialize in preparing students for these grueling tests. Just 0.5 percent of candidates are accepted into undergraduate courses at IITs.

Raghwani quit school—completing his high school diploma as an independent candidate—to enroll in the coaching center. Classes at the coaching center would normally have cost him the equivalent of $6,000; however, with a scholarship, Raghwani paid $2,500. It was an intensive program. “I had no social life,” Raghwani says. “I [went] to coaching classes early morning and used to come back home late. I didn't have a phone. I just used to study, eat, sleep.”

The intense work paid off. In 2019 he got a place at IIT Madras in the southern city of Chennai. But there was an even steeper hill to climb. The average IIT student is expected to spend 50 to 55 hours per week on their academic program, to secure internships and placements at prestigious companies, and to maintain a variety of extracurricular interests and activities—including up to two hours of mandatory physical education per week. The definition of exceptional has become inflated over the years. It’s no longer enough to have good grades. Now you have to have edited the university paper and raised money for charity. With every student having been top of their class, the academic environment is fiercely competitive.

Current and former students say that campuses are often hypermasculine, with female students facing overt harassment and abuse.

Unsurprisingly, the dropout rate is high. For some, tragically, the pressure of the IIT pushes them into crisis. Since 2018, 33 IIT students have died by suicide, according to government figures. This year alone, the IITs saw six suicides in the first four months of the year. In late April, IIT Madras, the top-ranked IIT, reported its fourth suicide in three months.

“I guess it depends on the individual,” says Raghwani, now a 22-year-old Bachelor of Technology student, “how they [handle] the pressure.” His voice lowers as he proceeds: “In my hostel, [last semester] there was a suicide,” he clicks his tongue between every second word. “I knew that person very well—and in front of my room, he committed suicide.”

IIT Madras did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

But even as the IITs lurch from scandal to scandal, tragedy to tragedy, they remain the cornerstone of India’s tech landscape. They’re still the fastest track to a career in the country’s booming technology sector. And they’re going global, with plans to expand into Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Their continuing, and growing, influence poses questions about the future of the Indian tech industry. The intense competition for places—and the cost of securing them—makes it so that the IITs have historically skewed toward wealthier and more privileged groups. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds or castes face a double burden of high expectations and discrimination, which in turn makes it harder for them to get in and harder for them to succeed when they do. What does it mean for India’s pipeline of tech leaders—and for the world’s—that it is developed in a hothouse of hypercompetitiveness, one where privilege and misogyny are embedded into the institutions?

“The lack of caste diversity in the technology sector in India, and therefore the global sector, is a major problem, and one that is very rarely addressed,” says sociologist Devika Narayan. “It is a [dominant] caste boys’ club.”

INDIA’S EDUCATION SYSTEM is notoriously cutthroat. Due to a lack of affordable and quality higher education slots for the majority of the population, the pressure to get into a good university starts young, with parents enrolling their children in individual or group private tutoring sessions to get them ahead of the competition. In April, a student went to India’s Supreme Court to increase his final exam mark by 1 percent, from 98 to 99, because admission cutoffs were that high. In 2021, 1.5 million students took the JEE to qualify for 13,000 seats in each of the 23 IITs—meaning there were 115 candidates competing for each seat. And success tends to breed success—you’re more likely to get into an IIT if you have resources in the first place.

You’re also more likely to be male. Coaching centers, of the kind Raghwani attended, typically involve living away from home, so parents often discourage girls (who can be as young as 13 or 14) from taking the exams. Women accounted for around 20 percent of IIT students in the 2022–23 admission period. The first female IIT director was appointed earlier this year—not at an IIT in India, but in Tanzania.

Priyanka Joshi, who graduated from IIT Madras with a five-year dual degree in 2021, describes her experience there as “tough.” She was one of just three women on her course, surrounded by 57 men. Most of the faculty was male too. Women on IIT campuses often say they have made their peace with an ambient level of harassment. “Little issues, like a guy touching you inappropriately—these things happen a lot,” says Joshi matter-of-factly. She never complained, she adds, because she knew that people in authority would question her accounts, “and there’ll be a lot of back and forth.”

Several IITs have been criticized for their handling of women’s safety. In 2022, IIT Madras responded to a sexual harassment complaint by requesting that students follow a “buddy system” for their safety. In 2021, IIT Guwahati reportedly overrode recommendations from committees investigating sexual offenses on campus, letting offenders off the hook with lighter-than-recommended penalties for sexual assault.

In 2017, the IITs introduced an affirmative action scheme for women, and the gender balance has improved. But when campus recruitments began, Joshi found that a lot of roles, such as work on oil rigs, were still marked as “women not applicable.” With fewer options than her male counterparts, Joshi applied for a job at an investment firm. She was one of two candidates selected out of 400 applicants—a win that her peers didn’t take well to.

“There was a lot of talk behind my back,” she sighs, “[People said], ‘She got in because she’s a girl.’”

For students from marginalized communities, affirmative action has been a double-edged sword. Under the scheme, students from marginalized backgrounds have different JEE cutoff marks to compensate for historic socioeconomic hardships, among other factors. That, students say, has created opportunities for discrimination once they arrive at an IIT. “When people ask our rank, they’re doing the guesswork of finding out [our caste],” says Ravi, a Dalit [oppressed caste] student at an IIT in Delhi. Ravi asked to use an alias to avoid retribution.

Their families often warn Dalit students to hide their backgrounds to avoid discrimination. “Our families usually tell us to not discuss our identity,” Ravi says. “We’re usually sent to these institutions and told not to talk about it.” But their caste was outed when a course coordinator shared a spreadsheet containing personal details on a class mailing list, which made its way into a WhatsApp group. They were planning on telling people themselves at some point, “but it happened within the first week.” The student says there are often cases of “ragging”—a college initiation ritual that involves abuse, humiliation, and harassment—on the basis of their caste.

The Indian government mandates that 15 percent of faculty professors should be from marginalized castes, and 7.5 percent should come from Indigenous communities. In January, a report from Nature found that less than 1 percent of professors come from these social groups. The report also found that the number of students from these backgrounds in STEM is consistently low, and concluded that the reason was that institutes weren’t following the reservation policies, and the government wasn’t holding anyone to account for failing to meet quotas. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that students from marginalized castes are often in the first generation of their families to go to college, and don’t have access to JEE coaching facilities to begin with.

Many students from disadvantaged backgrounds coming into the IIT system struggle with intense imposter syndrome, says Lekh Bajaj, a clinical psychologist and former IIT Delhi graduate who carries out mental health workshops at IIT Delhi. Caste discrimination is a huge problem in India, Bajaj says. “But in IITs, it becomes an even bigger problem, because the narrative in colleges is that [oppressed caste] people have gotten some sort of advantage.”

The issue of how caste plays out in these academic spaces was briefly headline news in February, after a Dalit engineering student, a freshman at IIT Bombay in Mumbai, died by suicide. In March, a student group from the school filed a police report against their head counselor for casteism. To date, no action has been taken against the counselor, who remains in full-time employment.

WHAT HAPPENS AT the IITs doesn’t stay at the IITs. Since dominant castes make up the majority of IIT graduates, tech executives tend to come from dominant castes, too. The result is an exceptionally slanted tech ecosystem tilted in favor of dominant caste men—a system that has been mirrored in the US too. In 2020, it was a Dalit graduate from IIT Bombay who filed a suit in the US against Cisco Systems Inc. and two of his fellow alums, alleging caste-based discrimination at their hands while employed at the company.

“Given all the research on the reproduction of caste and gender in the IITs, it seems that these ideals of gendered middle class [and dominant caste values] shape startup worlds,” says Hemangini Gupta, a researcher in entrepreneurial economies at the University of Edinburgh. “Continually, the middle class [dominant caste] man is centered as the ‘imagined entrepreneur’ … workers need to already have key advantages to survive in such economies.”

Even though women account for 43 percent of total graduates in STEM in India, only 3 percent of CEOs in the sector are women. With a persistent glass ceiling, pay inequity, and a prevailing social structure that expects women to first marry and then quit their jobs on doing so, this statistic doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.

Startups often try to look like they’re diversifying their hiring, but they’re often doing little to make it happen, says Madhura DasGupta Sinha, founder of Aspire For Her, an NGO that aims to support women’s career aspirations. Indian startups are known for choosing not to hire women to save on maternity costs. “Culture in the startups often is not very woman-friendly—they need [to work] long hours and to travel.”

Indian startups are notoriously toxic workplaces, and are often in the news for glorifying a culture in which employees are sleep-deprived, overworked, and expected to reach impossible targets. Scandals have been reported at unicorns, including edtech giant Byju’s and food delivery app Zomato.

The dominance of dominant caste men within the tech ecosystem is likely to be self-reinforcing, since the economic opportunities that the tech sector affords remain concentrated in a single social group.

“The software industry generates high concentrations of wealth and offers a passage for upward mobility,” Narayan, the sociologist, says. “If it excludes everyone except social elites, it becomes one of the main sites through which social inequalities and hierarchies are reproduced.”

Although it is much harder to measure, the skew in the leadership of India’s tech sector and its lack of diversity and representation—which starts at the educational level—is likely to be influencing business models and technologies, from the way workers are treated to the design of algorithms.

“What entrepreneurs and funders understand [and celebrate] as ‘risk’ and ‘innovation’ are deeply tied to gendered and [dominant] caste ideals and practices,” Gupta says.

Tech company founders and senior executives are most likely to come from an IIT-driven, hypercompetitive, move-fast-and-break-things work culture, combined with a fair degree of privilege that insulates them from the negative consequences of taking risks. But the majority of Indians aren’t highly-educated, wealthy urbanites. That means architects of tech products—such as food delivery or other gig work platforms—have a fundamentally different experience of society from the people who will be working further down the chain. It may be no coincidence that gig workers in India routinely report discrimination, shocking working conditions, and arbitrary dismissal, and that tech policymakers often make sweeping decisions that disadvantage millions of people in poor and rural communities.

“Masculine risk-taking that emphasizes scale and speed as central to how startups map and materialize their growth and imagine their success [is prevalent],” Gupta says. “A migrant single mother living in cheap housing in one of the newer residential areas of Bangalore would be spatially placed at a disadvantage. Gender and caste thus shape her experience of gig work—surviving [in] the startup economy is only possible for workers who already have safety nets to navigate these new spaces of work.”

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The days of enticing employees with free food, laundry services and yoga classes are largely over. Now, executives are resorting to threats — and it’s forcing some workers to decide whether they’re willing to give up the flexibility they’ve gotten used to.

Even tech companies that were once champions of remote work are changing their tune. Zoom, whose video conferencing tool helped enable the quick transition to remote work during the pandemic, recently asked employees who live within 50 miles of a Zoom office to start coming in at least twice a week. Facebook parent company Meta recently revised its return-to-office policy, telling employees they could face termination if they do not come in at least three days a week starting Sept. 5.

At Amazon, remote workers must decide whether to move or give up their jobs, with some facing a significantly higher cost of living. At a recent meeting, chief executive Andy Jassy was blunt: If you can’t commit to returning to the office three days a week, Jassy said, “it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon.”

The new pushes for in-person work mark a major shift as executives directly acknowledge the challenges with the model — in some cases saying productivity has declined, and citing fewer opportunities for spontaneous collaboration, mentorship and connection-building. Meanwhile, employers have new leverage as the labor market has cooled, leaving workers less room to be choosy.

“The pendulum has shifted from employees having all the power,” said Matt Cohen, founder and managing partner of Ripple Ventures, a venture fund in Toronto that works with early stage companies across North America. The bulk of start-up founders he works with are requiring employees to be in offices a few days a week, although there’s pushback.

“During the pandemic, a lot of salespeople were taking calls from the top of mountains on hiking trips,” Cohen said. “That’s not working anymore.”

Zoom spokesperson Danielle Stickler said a structured hybrid approach is most effective for the company, adding that it leaves Zoom “in a better position to use our own technologies.” Meta’s return to office policy asks teams to prioritize time together to foster strong collaboration and a vibrant culture, spokesperson Dave Arnold said.

Amazon is supplying “relocation support” for employees being asked to move, who represent “a relatively small percentage” of its workforce, though it didn’t specify what that support entailed.

“There’s more energy, collaboration, and connections happening since we’ve been working together at least three days per week,” Amazon spokesman Rob Munoz said. “We’ve heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices.”

(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.)

Even with millions of workers across the country being asked to return to their cubicles, office occupancy has been relatively static for the past year. The country’s top 10 metropolitan areas averaged 47.2 percent of pre-pandemic levels last week, according to data from Kastle Systems. This time last year, the average was around 44 percent.

The lagging return is vexing leaders from city halls to the Oval Office as downtowns struggle to rebound from the pandemic. President Biden recently called on Cabinet officials to urge their employees to return to offices this fall, as downtown D.C. struggles to regain its pre-pandemic crush of commuters. (A July report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office showed that 17 of 24 federal agencies had average building utilization of 25 percent or less.)

About 52 percent of remote-capable U.S. workers are operating under hybrid arrangements, according to data from Gallup, while 29 percent are exclusively remote. And though executives like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have argued that the rise of flexible work has had a deleterious effect on productivity, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that labor productivity rose 3.7 percent in the second quarter of 2023 and is up 1.3 percent compared to this time last year.

While employers cite the collaborative benefits of spending time together in person, the majority of hybrid arrangements aren’t fostering the connections bosses want to see, according to Rob Cross, associate professor of management at Babson College who studies collaboration across various companies through surveys, email and meeting data. He’s found that mandates for a certain number of days in office are missing the mark, “because you’re not getting the right people who need to collaborate.”

“What we’re seeing that’s more successful is when companies are using some form of analytics” to determine which workers need to come in on the same days, Cross said. He estimates that only about 5 percent of organizations are taking this approach. “Leaders are just saying, ‘We need water-cooler moments,’ ” Cross said. “They’re not looking and saying, ‘These are the interactions we need to stimulate.’ ”

Cisco is trying the team-based approach. The tech company is “giving every team autonomy” in deciding how to work and when, according to Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration. The goal, Patel said, is to “get people excited” to come into the office to connect with their colleagues without overburdening them or limiting their ability to do focused work — something that’s been a struggle in the age of ballooning Zoom meetings.

“Video has evolved to being a very transactional means of communication,” Patel said, adding that the glut of meetings creates an “absence of wander time” that can be draining for employees.

Software company Workday has also grappled with an “activity avalanche” amid the return to the office, according to Ashley Goldsmith, the company’s chief people officer. The bulk of the company’s employees spend half their time per quarter in a Workday office or on-site with a customer, prospect or other external partner. Workday also recently launched a program allowing employees to work remotely, from anywhere, up to 30 days a year.

“We found that various teams were battling work overload due in part to the shift to hybrid work and changing priorities, which created a meeting-heavy schedule,” Goldsmith said. “Collaborative overload has been especially prominent among our highest performers.”

When it comes to office time, workers are looking for “elevated experiences they can’t get at home,” according to Chase Garbarino, chief executive of workplace software company HqO. Free food, great tools and attractive workspaces are a big draw, but HqO’s data shows that “the number one thing people want out of a workplace is concentration space,” Garbarino said.

“You’re not going to get them into a place just built for social interaction,” Garbarino said. “You’ve got to be able to concentrate.”

For workers who value flexibility, the shift toward in-office work is unwelcome. Loreen Targos, a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency in Chicago, had triplets last summer. The ability to do her job remotely offered the 37-year-0ld some grace as she transitioned back to work. During meetings, she often went off-camera to pump milk or nurse without having to miss discussions. She squeezed in head-down work in between naptimes and feeding schedules.

A year later, Targos said she’s found it tough caring for three toddlers even with the help of her husband and a nanny, but she relishes that she’s always nearby when her babies need her. With President Biden calling for federal workers to return to offices this fall, she may soon have to brave a two-hour commute through Chicago rush hour and rework her child-care plan — or consider a more drastic change.

“It might just be worth it to give up my job and try and find work where I can have more flexibility to be around them,” Targos said.

Still, remote work is becoming harder to find. Roughly 8 percent of all job postings now advertise remote or hybrid work, according to Nick Bunker, director of North American economic research at Indeed Hiring Lab. That’s down from 9.7 percent last year, he said, but still up significantly over pre-pandemic levels.

Dominique Joseph, a spokesperson for the EPA, said the agency will “continue to follow OMB guidance, listen to employee feedback, and monitor performance metrics as the Agency continues to prioritize its mission to safeguard human health and the environment” amid the return to office.

For Greg Galant, CEO of Muck Rack, a public relations software company, it’s been “frustrating” to see some executives dismiss remote work. Muck Rack ditched its offices during the pandemic, and Galant said the shift has benefited employees’ well-being and productivity.

The company now funnels energy and resources that used to go to stocking offices with coffee and snacks and determining operating hours toward creating intentional (and less frequent) opportunities for employees to connect in-person. For International Coworking Day on Aug. 9, the company rented co-working space and arranged happy hours in nearly a dozen cities across the country. About 75 employees — roughly a quarter of the company’s workforce — showed up.

“People are excited to go in and be together when they’re not being forced to,” Galant said. He feels many companies have written off remote work without sincerely giving it a go. “I hope more people see the potential here and don’t just go along with the return-to-office narrative.

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Valarmathi, an Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) scientist, who lent her voice on countdowns for rocket launches in Sriharikota, has died due to cardiac arrest. Her last countdown was during the launch of Chandrayaan-3, the country's third lunar mission.

Chandrayaan-3 was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on July 14.

On August 23, Chandrayaan-3's Lander Module (LM) -- comprising Vikram lander and Pragyan rover -- touched down on the lunar surface, making it only the fourth country to accomplish the feat. The landing also made the country the first to reach the uncharted south pole of Earth's only natural satellite.

Meanwhile, Isro on Saturday said the Pragyan rover on the Moon has been put to sleep. The space centre hopes to wake it up 14 days later.

The rover is equipped with two payloads, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS). The payloads that transmit data to the Earth via the lander are turned off.

The Pragyan rover and the Vikram lander had been working in tandem to gather valuable scientific data. The APXS and LIBS payloads are designed to analyse the elemental and mineralogical composition of the lunar soil and rocks.

If the Pragyan rover does not have a "successful awakening", it will stay on the Moon forever as India's lunar ambassador.

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Flu shots for the United States' 2023-2024 influenza season are now available. But when's the best time to get the vaccine, and who should get one?

Here's a rundown of what you need to know about this season's flu vaccines.

Who should get a flu shot?

Everyone ages 6 months and older should get a flu shot every season, with rare exceptions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends.

These exceptions apply to people with severe, life-threatening allergies to specific vaccine ingredients. These potentially allergy-triggering ingredients include gelatin, which is used as a stabilizer in some vaccines, and certain antibiotics, which prevent bacterial contamination during vaccine manufacturing but can linger in very small quantities in some shots post-production, according to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

People who have had a severe allergic reaction to a flu vaccine should not get the same type of vaccine again and should consult a doctor about whether to get a different shot, the CDC says. People with a history of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare paralyzing condition in which the immune system attacks the nerves, should also consult a doctor before getting a flu shot.

But everyone else can assume they should get a shot. Flu shots are especially important for people who are older than 65, younger than 2, pregnant, or have very recently given birth, the CDC states. Note that some children ages 6 months to 8 years are recommended to get two doses of vaccine.

When do you get a flu shot?

Most people should get a flu shot in September or October, before the flu starts circulating widely, the CDC advises. In a typical season, flu cases start to ramp up in late October and peak between December and February. Although it's ideal to get your flu shot early in the season, it's better to get one late than not at all.

The nasal spray is one of nine different flu vaccines available. (Image credit: Getty Images)

What types of flu shots are available?

There are nine different flu vaccines available this season, including eight that are injected and one that's sprayed up the nose. All the vaccines guard against four influenza virus subtypes: A(H1N1), A(H3N2), a Yamagata lineage influenza B virus and a Victoria lineage influenza B virus.

Speak to a doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional if you have questions about which flu shot is best for you.

Standard-dose, inactivated flu shots: Inactivated flu shots contain influenza viruses that have been "killed" so they can no longer infect cells. They are approved for use in people ages 6 months and older.

Recombinant flu shots: Recombinant flu shots are made using "recombinant technology," which involves using flu virus genetic material to make a protein found on the virus' surface — hemagglutinin (HA). There is one recombinant vaccine available called Flublok Quadrivalent, and it's approved for use in people ages 18 and older. It's one of three vaccine options especially recommended to people 65 years and older.

Nasal spray: The one vaccine that's available as a nasal spray is called FluMist Quadrivalent. It's a live attenuated vaccine, meaning it contains weakened flu viruses that can't cause disease but have not been "killed," like the viruses in inactivated shots. This vaccine is approved for most people ages 2 to 49, but it's not approved for people who are pregnant, have weakened immune systems or have certain other conditions.

High-dose and adjuvanted flu shots: One high-dose flu vaccine and one adjuvanted vaccine, which contains an added ingredient to rev up the immune system, are approved for use in people 65 and older. Along with the recombinant shot, these vaccines are especially recommended for older people because they're more protective in this age group than the standard-dose vaccines. The high-dose shot is called Fluzone High-Dose Quadrivalent and the adjuvanted vaccine is called Fluad Quadrivalent.

Which flu shot should people with egg allergies get?

People with egg allergies can receive any flu shot, egg-based or otherwise, and they don't need a special doctor's appointment to do so, the CDC says. This advice is based on new guidance from a CDC vaccine advisory committee that recently reviewed the available safety data.

Use the CDC's VaccineFinder to search for flu shot administration sites in your area. (Image credit: Peter Dazeley/Getty Images)

"Egg allergy alone necessitates no additional safety measures for influenza vaccination beyond those recommended for any recipient of any vaccine, regardless of severity of previous reaction to egg," the committee advised. All vaccines should be given in settings where allergic reactions can be recognized and treated quickly, according to the new guidance.

When will we know if the flu shots are a "good match"?

We typically don't know if the flu shots are a "good match" to circulating strains until later in the season. In 2022, for example, officials announced in December that the flu shots were likely a "very good match." A good match would mean that the flu strains included in the vaccines, which are selected ahead of time, will end up being genetically similar to the strains that actually make people sick during the 2023-2024 season.

Vaccine makers decide which flu strains to include in shots for the upcoming season by checking which strains are circulating elsewhere in the world. The Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere flu seasons happen at different times, so flu virus samples collected in one hemisphere can provide the other clues as to what's to come.

Where can you get a flu vaccine?

Use the CDC's VaccineFinder to search for flu shot administration sites in your area.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

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"The rover completes its assignments. It is now safely parked and set into sleep mode," with daylight on that part of the moon coming to an end, the Indian Space Research Organization said in a statement late Saturday.

The rover's payloads are turned off and the data it collected has been transmitted to the Earth via the lander, the statement said.

The Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover were expected to operate only for one lunar day, which is equal to 14 days on Earth.

''Currently, the battery is fully charged. The solar panel is oriented to receive the light at the next sunrise expected on September 22, 2023. The receiver is kept on. Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments!" the statement said.

There was no word on the outcome of the rover searches for signs of frozen water on the lunar surface that could help future astronaut missions, as a potential source of drinking water or to make rocket fuel.

Earlier this week, the the space agency said the moon rover confirmed the presence of sulfur and detected several other elements. The rover's laser-induced spectroscope instrument also detected aluminum, iron, calcium, chromium, titanium, manganese, oxygen and silicon on the surface, it said.

This image provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) taken by Pragyan rover of Vikram lander on Aug. 30, 2023. India’s moon rover has confirmed the presence of sulfur and detected several other elements on the surface near the lunar south pole a week after the country’s historic moon landing. ISRO says the rover’s laser-induced spectroscope instrument also has detected aluminum, iron, calcium, chromium, titanium, manganese, oxygen and silicon. Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation via AP

The Indian Express newspaper said the electronics on board the Indian moon mission are not designed to withstand very low temperatures, less than minus 120 degrees Celsius ( minus 184 degrees Fahrenheit) during the nighttime on the moon. The lunar night also extends for as long as 14 days on Earth.

Pallava Bagla, a science writer and co-author of books on India's space exploration, said the rover has limited battery power.

The data is back on Earth and will be analyzed by Indian scientists as a first look and then by the global community, he said[.]

By sunrise on the moon, the rover may or may not wake up because the electronics die at such cold temperatures, Bagla said.

''Making electronic circuits and components that can survive the deep cold temperature of the moon, that technology doesn't exist in India," he said.

This image provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation shows a crater encountered by Chandrayaan- 3 as seen by the navigation camera on Aug. 27, 2023. India's moon rover confirmed the presence of sulfur and detected several other elements near the lunar south pole as it searches for signs of frozen water nearly a week after its historic moon landing, India's space agency said Tuesday. The lunar rover had come down a ramp from the lander of India’s spacecraft after last Wednesday’s touchdown near the moon’s south pole. Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation via AP

After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India last week joined the United States, the Soviet Union and China as only the fourth country to achieve this milestone.

The successful mission showcases India's rising standing as a technology and space powerhouse and dovetails with Prime Minister Narendra Modi desire to project an image of an ascendant country asserting its place among the global elite.

The mission began more than a month ago at an estimated cost of $75 million.

India's success came just days after Russia's Luna-25, which was aiming for the same lunar region, spun into an uncontrolled orbit and crashed. It had been intended to be the first successful Russian lunar landing after a gap of 47 years.

This image from video provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation shows the surface of the moon as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft prepares for landing on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, which scientists believe could hold vital reserves of frozen water. Credit: ISRO via AP

Russia's head of the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos attributed the failure to the lack of expertise due to the long break in lunar research that followed the last Soviet mission to the moon in 1976.

Active since the 1960s, India has launched satellites for itself and other countries, and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014. India is planning its first mission to the International Space Station next year, in collaboration with the United States.

© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Q: Is there a way to cure my constipation without taking laxatives or prescription medications every day?

This is one of the most common questions I get asked as a gastroenterologist, and I understand why.

Constipation, usually defined as having fewer than three bowel movements per week, is the most frequent gastrointestinal complaint. And many people don’t want to take medications every day, or fear they will become dependent on laxatives (even though that’s a common misconception).

Here are some of the more “natural” ways to improve constipation that are also backed by science.

Increase your fiber intake

Most adults should get somewhere between 21 and 38 grams of fiber each day, according to the National Academy of Medicine. But few people in the United States do.

Prioritizing fiber-rich foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and whole grain products not only increases your fiber intake, but also may prevent constipation by making your stool bulkier, softer and easier to pass.

Experts also recommend taking psyllium, a soluble fiber supplement, every day.

Stay hydrated

Water and other hydrating foods and liquids naturally soften your stool by keeping it from becoming hard and dry.

To stay hydrated, try keeping a large, reusable water bottle filled and nearby throughout the day. Or consume hydrating foods and drinks, like milk, juice, tea or coffee (which may also stimulate the urge to defecate), or fresh fruits like melons or grapes.

Exercise regularly

Researchers have found that exercise can improve gut health in various ways, from bolstering the microbiome to reducing the risks of colorectal cancer and constipation. Even just 15 minutes of mild to moderate exercise — like going for a walk or raking the leaves — can cause blood flow and hormone changes in the gut that can stimulate your bowels to propel contents forward.

Use food as a ‘natural’ laxative

Dr. Michael Camilleri, a gut motility specialist at the Mayo Clinic, said that certain foods like prunes and kiwis may help with constipation.

In one small study published in 2011, for instance, researchers found that consuming 50 grams of dried prunes (the equivalent of about five or six prunes) twice a day was more effective at improving stool frequency and consistency than consuming 11 grams of psyllium twice a day. Drinking prune juice has also been shown to be beneficial.

A 2021 clinical trial also found that eating two kiwis per day was as powerful as prunes at increasing stool frequency and reducing straining — and had the added benefit of helping with bloating.

The sugar, fiber and other nutrients in kiwis can produce a laxative effect by increasing the water content and volume of your stool, Dr. Camilleri said. “That makes the consistency of the bowel movements softer, and makes it easier to expel.”

Use a squatty potty

Dr. Darren Brenner, a gastroenterologist at Northwestern Medicine, said that using a toilet stool to position your knees above your waist can be a low-cost, low-risk fix for constipation.

“You can use anything — a step stool, an old phone book — you just want to raise your knees above your hips,” Dr. Brenner said.

Try physical therapy for your pelvic floor

More than 20 percent of people with chronic constipation have a dysfunction of the pelvic floor muscles — called pelvic floor dyssynergia — that causes them to contract in ways that block the expulsion of stool.

Dr. Brenner said that if bowel-cleansing methods like enemas don’t help, or if you find even soft stool difficult to pass, talk to a physician about this condition.

Several small but solid studies have found that a special kind of physical therapy with biofeedback, which involves working with a physical therapist to coordinate your muscles during defecation, can help about 80 percent of people with pelvic floor dysfunction.

Vibrate the colon

A new prescription electronic capsule, called Vibrant, is now available for certain people with chronic constipation. After the capsule is swallowed, it promotes a bowel movement by stimulating the colon with gentle, timed vibrations — “similar to the vibrating device you get at a restaurant,” according to its website.

In one clinical trial of more than 300 patients with chronic constipation, those who took Vibrant five times a week had more frequent bowel movements, better quality of life and reduced straining compared with those who took a placebo.

While the vibrating capsule won’t help everyone, Dr. Camilleri said, it may be an appealing option to try given its low risk profile.

The bottom line

The jury is still out on many other purported “natural” remedies.

“People always ask about things like probiotics or fecal transplant,” Dr. Brenner said. “These may be plausible treatments in the future, but the data isn’t robust enough right now to recommend them for constipation.”

If you have new, sudden constipation, discuss it with your physician as it may warrant further investigation with a colonoscopy.

And, sometimes, “natural” or lifestyle interventions won’t cut it for severe cases. Just as you need to take medications for other health problems, like high blood pressure or diabetes, you might need medication to control chronic constipation.

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The Federal Trade Commission won a key victory in its long-running investigation and lawsuit over Intuit’s advertisements for tax prep service TurboTax, with the agency’s in-house administrative judge ruling the company deceptively promoted the product as free.

Intuit confirmed the outcome. The ruling was issued Wednesday and will remain sealed until Sept. 6, pending redactions, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The ruling is a victory for FTC Chair Lina Khan, who has vowed to tamp down corporate abuses across the economy.

Intuit’s response: “No one should be surprised by the FTC’s ruling given it came from an FTC-employed judge in a case the FTC brought before itself,” said Intuit spokesperson Derrick Plummer. “You can’t make this stuff up, it’s a flawed system and a groundless ruling. The FTC has ruled in its own favor in nearly every consumer protection case for the last two decades.”

Intuit said it will appeal the ruling. Appeals from administrative law judge rulings are first made to the FTC’s commissioners, led by Khan. After that, Intuit can go to a federal appeals court of its choice. “Intuit has always been clear, fair and transparent with our customers, and we remain committed to providing free tax preparation,” Plummer said.

The details: The ruling from Administrative Law Judge Michael Chappell will require Intuit to change how it advertises its TurboTax products, the person with knowledge said. Among the changes, the company will no longer be able to use the phrase “simple returns only” when describing what tax forms qualify as free. Instead, it will have to specifically name the forms, the person said.

Additionally, Intuit must elaborate on the phrase “see if you qualify,” by specifying that a majority of U.S. taxpayers do not qualify for free returns, the person said.

The lawsuit: The FTC sued Intuit in March 2022, accusing it of deceiving customers into believing they could file their taxes for free. The FTC said that after starting the process, many customers were told to pay a fee before they could finish filing their taxes.

The agency also sought an emergency order from a federal court in 2022 blocking Intuit from claiming its services were free, but that motion was denied.

In May, Intuit agreed to pay $141 million to a group of states making similar allegations.

An FTC spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

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India is making strides toward independently launching astronauts to space.

While the attention is currently on India’s Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander and Pragyan rover on the moon, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is also making progress toward other lofty goals.

India’s Gaganyaan mission envisions sending three astronauts to low Earth orbit, requiring the development of a spacecraft that can get crew into space and safely back to the ground.

As a crucial step toward this goal, the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) conducted drogue parachute deployment tests at the Rail Track Rocket Sled (RTRS) facility, at the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory in the city of Chandigarh between Aug. 8 and Aug. 10, according to ISRO.

The drogue parachutes are mortar-deployed conical ribbon-type parachutes with a diameter of 19 feet (5.8 meters). These are a crucial part of getting the Gaganyaan crew module safely back to the ground, serving to stabilize the spacecraft and reduce its velocity during reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

Video released by ISRO shortly after the trials shows the successful deployment of a drogue chute while traveling at high velocity on a rocket-powered rail track sled.

The drogue chutes will next be tested during a high-altitude abort test on Test Vehicle Demonstration 1 (TV-D1) in late September or early October, if all goes according to plan.

The Gaganyaan crew module will be decelerated by a complex system of 10 parachutes, according to ISRO. These are two apex cover separation parachutes, followed by a pair of drogue parachutes to stabilize the module. Three pilot chutes will then each extract three main parachutes to ready the module for a safe landing.

ISRO earlier this year conducted recovery tests, collaborating with the Indian navy to recover a mock crew module from a closed pool.

Another look at the Gaganyaan parachute tests in early August 2023. (Image credit: ISRO)

Further major steps will see ISRO conduct a pair of uncrewed flights to test and validate Gaganyaan’s technology in low Earth orbit and ensure the modified Launch Vehicle Mark-3 rocket can safely carry humans to orbit. These are scheduled to occur in late 2023 and the first half of 2024. 

The first crewed Gaganyaan flight could launch as soon as late 2024. It will carry three Indian astronauts on a short orbital test flight. At present, only the United States, Russia and China have the ability to launch people to space.

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After the launch of Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander and Aditya-L1 ventures, ISRO has readied a mission aimed at enhancing cutting edge scientific understanding in Astronomy.

XPoSat (X-ray Polarimeter Satellite) is India's first dedicated polarimetry mission to study various dynamics of bright astronomical X-ray sources in extreme conditions.

The spacecraft will carry two scientific payloads in a low earth orbit.

The primary payload POLIX (Polarimeter Instrument in X-rays) will measure the polarimetry parameters (degree and angle of polarization) in medium X-ray energy range of 8-30 keV photons of astronomical origin. The XSPECT (X-ray Spectroscopy and Timing) payload will give spectroscopic information in the energy range of 0.8-15 keV, according to ISRO.

"XPoSat is ready for launch," an official of the national space agency headquartered here said on Saturday. According to ISRO, the emission mechanism from various astronomical sources such as blackholes, neutron stars, active galactic nuclei, pulsar wind nebulae originates from complex physical processes and are challenging to understand.

While the spectroscopic and timing information by various space-based observatories provide a wealth of information, the exact nature of the emission from such sources still poses deeper challenges to astronomers, ISRO officials say.

"The polarimetry measurements add two more dimensions to our understanding, the degree of polarisation and the angle of polarization and thus is an excellent diagnostic tool to understand the emission processes from astronomical sources," ISRO said.

The polarimetric observations along with spectroscopic measurements are expected to break the degeneracy of various theoretical models of astronomical emission processes, the space agency said on the upcoming mission. This would be the major direction of research from XPoSat by the Indian science community.

POLIX is an X-ray Polarimeter for astronomical observations in the energy band of 8-30 keV. The instrument is made of a collimator, a scatterer and four X-ray proportional counter detectors that surround the scatterer, which is made of low atomic mass material which causes anisotropic Thomson scattering of incoming polarised X-rays.

The collimator restricts the field of view to 3 degree x 3 degree so as to have only one bright source in the field of view for most observations.

POLIX is expected to observe about 40 bright astronomical sources of different categories during the planned lifetime of XPoSat mission of about five years. This is the first payload in the medium X-ray energy band dedicated for polarimetry measurements.

XSPECT is an X-ray SPECtroscopy and Timing payload onboard XPoSat, which can provide fast timing and good spectroscopic resolution in soft X-rays.

Taking advantage of the long duration observations required by POLIX to measure X-ray polarization, XSPECT can provide long-term monitoring of spectral state changes in continuum emission, changes in their line flux and profile, and simultaneous long term temporal monitoring of soft X-ray emission in the X-ray energy range 0.8-15 keV.

XSPECT would observe several types of sources -- X-ray pulsars, blackhole binaries, low-magnetic field neutron star (NS) in LMXBs, AGNs and Magnetars.

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After the historic success with the Chandrayaan-3, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is ready to embark on yet another momentous mission, this time to the Sun. The mission, called Aditya-L1, will lift off from launch pad 2 of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota today, September 2. It is India's first space-based observatory-class solar mission which aims to unravel the mysteries of the Sun, such as the cause behind Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), solar flares, solar weather, and more.

To achieve all these objectives, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft is packed with groundbreaking technology and a vast array of sensors that will help carry out various studies of the Sun from the first Lagrange point (L1) of the Sun-Earth system during its almost 5-year mission.

Tech aboard Aditya-L1

According to ISRO, Aditya-L1 is carrying seven payloads to study the photosphere, chromosphere and coronal layer of the Sun, which will be done using electromagnetic and particle directors. While four of the payloads will be directly facing the Sun, the other three will conduct in-situ analysis from L1 of the solar particles and the solar fields. All the payloads will help scientists develop a greater understanding of the dynamics of solar weather, problems of coronal heating, pre-flare and flare activities, and more.

The seven payloads are - Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), Solar Ultra-violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT), Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS), High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS), Aditya Solar wind Particle EXperiment (ASPEX), Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA), and Magnetometer (MAG).

1.  Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) - This payload, developed jointly by ISRO and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, will study the behaviour of coronal mass ejections and the solar corona.

2.  Solar Ultra-violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) - The Solar Ultra-violet Imaging Telescope will measure the solar irradiance in the near ultraviolet (UV) by imaging the solar Chromosphere and Photosphere in near UV. SUIT has been developed by ISRO in collaboration with the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune.

3.  Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS) and High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) - The SoLEXS and HEL1OS payloads have been developed at the U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru. These payloads will study the X-ray flares emitted by the Sun over a wide range of X-ray energy range.

4.  Aditya Solar wind Particle EXperiment (ASPEX) and Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA) - ASPEX and PAPA payloads are designed to analyse the solar winds and their energetic ions, as well as their energy distribution. ASPEX was developed at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad while PAPA was developed at the Space Physics Laboratory, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.

5.  Magnetometer (MAG) - The Magnetometer, developed by the Laboratory for Electro Optics Systems, Bengaluru, will study and measure the interplanetary magnetic fields at the Lagrange 1 (L1) point.

All these payloads will help carry out in-situ experiments and help scientists unearth the Sun's mystery. Be sure to check out our live coverage of the Aditya-L1 launch today.

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Tobacco policies are becoming more restrictive, with bans on smoking in public places and limits on sales, such as statewide bans on flavored products. In contrast, more states are legalizing cannabis for medical or recreational use, and there are efforts to allow exceptions for cannabis in smoke-free laws.

These changes mean an increasing number of people are likely to get exposed to cannabis smoke. But how safe is direct and secondhand cannabis smoke?

I am a primary care doctor and researcher in a state where cannabis is now legal for medical and recreational use. My colleagues and I were interested in how opinions about tobacco and cannabis smoke safety have been changing during this time of growing cannabis use and marketing.

In our survey of over 5,000 U.S. adults in 2017, 2020 and 2021, we found that people increasingly felt that exposure to cannabis smoke was safer than tobacco smoke. In 2017, 26% of people thought that it was safer to smoke a cannabis joint than a cigarette daily. In 2021, over 44% chose cannabis as the safer option. People were similarly more likely to rate secondhand cannabis smoke as being "completely safe" compared with tobacco smoke, even for vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women.

Despite these views, emerging research raises concerns about the health effects of cannabis smoke exposure.

Do opinions on cannabis match the science?

Decades of research and hundreds of studies have linked tobacco smoke to multiple types of cancer and to cardiovascular disease. However, far fewer studies have been done on the long-term effects of cannabis smoke. Since cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, it is more challenging for scientists to study.

It has been particularly hard to study health outcomes that may take a long time and heavier exposure to develop. Recent reviews of research on cannabis and cancer or cardiovascular disease found those studies inadequate because they contained relatively few people with heavy exposure, didn't follow people for a long enough time or didn't properly account for cigarette smoking.

Many advocates point to the lack of clear findings on negative health effects of cannabis smoke exposure as proof of its harmlessness. However, my colleagues and I feel that this is an example of the famous scientific quote that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals in both cannabis and tobacco smoke, and they share many of the same carcinogens and toxins. Combustion of tobacco and cannabis, whether by smoking or vaping, also releases particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs and cause tissue damage.

Animal studies on the effects of secondhand tobacco and cannabis smoke show similar concerning effects on the cardiovascular system. These include impairments in blood vessel dilation, increased blood pressure and reduced heart function.

Though more research is needed to determine the risk of lung cancer, heart attacks and strokes posed by cannabis smoke, what is already known has raised concerns among public health agencies.

Why do opinions on cannabis matter?

How people perceive the safety of cannabis has important implications for its use and public policy. Researchers know from studying cannabis and other substances that if people think something is less risky, they are more likely to use it. Opinions on cannabis safety will also shape medical and recreational cannabis use laws and other policies, such as whether cannabis smoke will be treated like tobacco smoke or whether exceptions will be made in smoke-free air laws.

Part of the complexity in decisions about cannabis use is that, unlike tobacco, clinical trials have demonstrated that cannabis can have benefits in certain settings. These include managing specific types of chronic pain, reducing nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy and increasing appetite and weight gain in those with HIV/ AIDS. Notably, many of these studies were not based on smoked or vaped cannabis.

Unfortunately, though Googling cannabis will return thousands of hits about the health benefits of cannabis, many of these claims aren't supported by scientific research.

I encourage people who want to learn more about the potential benefits and risks of cannabis to talk to health care providers or seek sources that present an unbiased view of the scientific evidence. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has a good overview of studies on cannabis for treatment of a variety of medical conditions, as well as information about potential risks.

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Aditya-L1 lifted off from the launch pad at Sriharikota on Saturday at 11:50 India time (06:20 GMT).

It will travel 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) from the Earth - 1% of the Earth-Sun distance.

India's space agency says it will take four months to travel that far.

India's first space-based mission to study the solar system's biggest object is named after Surya - the Hindu god of Sun who is also known as Aditya.

And L1 stands for Lagrange point 1 - the exact place between Sun and Earth where the Indian spacecraft is heading.

According to the European Space Agency, a Lagrange point is a spot where the gravitational forces of two large objects - such as the Sun and the Earth - cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to "hover".

Once Aditya-L1 reaches this "parking spot", it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth. This also means the satellite will require very little fuel to operate.

On Saturday morning, a few thousand people gathered in the viewing gallery set up by the Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) near the launch site to watch the blast off.

It was also broadcast live on national TV where commentators described it as a "magnificent" launch. Isro scientists said the launch had been successful and its "performance is normal".

After an hour and four minutes of flight-time, Isro declared it "mission successful".

"Now it will continue on its journey - it's a very long journey of 135 days, let's wish it [the] best of luck," Isro chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said.

Project director Nigar Shaji said once Aditya-L1 reaches its destination, it will benefit not only India, but the global scientific community.

Aditya-L1 will now travel several times around the Earth before being launched towards L1.

From this vantage position, it will be able to watch the Sun constantly - even when it is hidden during an eclipse - and carry out scientific studies.

Isro has not said how much the mission would cost, but reports in the Indian press put it at 3.78bn rupees ($46m; £36m).

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