A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft, being transported on May 22 to the launch area at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in China's Gansu province. PHOTO: AFP

JIUQUAN, GANSU - China will be launching its first civilian and the country’s most experienced astronaut into space on Tuesday to mark the start of a new phase for Tiangong, its recently constructed space station.

Professor Gui Haichao of the Beihang University in Beijing will be travelling alongside veteran astronaut Jing Haipeng as well as Colonel Zhu Yangzhu, who will also be going into space for the first time. Major-General Jing will be leading the team.

They will be on board the Shenzhou-16, or Divine Vessel, which will be launched into space from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in north-western China at 9.31am on Tuesday.

The carrier will be docked onto Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace, where the astronauts will take over from the crew of Shenzhou-15 and live in the space station for an estimated 180 days.

The Shenzhou-15 crew has lived in space for about six months. They took about a week to complete the handover from Shenzhou-14 in 2022. Construction of the three-module Tiangong was completed following the launch of its final module – Mengtian, or Dreaming Of The Heavens – in early November, after 1½ years.

With Shenzhou-16, Maj-Gen Jing will hold the record for having the most number of space missions in the country. He was previously on Shenzhou-7, 9 and 11. Shenzhou-5, which was China’s first manned mission, was launched on Oct 15, 2003.

Revealing the identities of the three men at a press conference at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, China Manned Space Agency deputy director Lin Xiqiang said the assortment of skills of the latest batch of astronauts will be instrumental in the new phase of the Tiangong space station, which he referred to as “application and development” after construction.

In the latest phase, astronauts, which China also refers to as taikonauts, can better focus on carrying out experiments for cargo resupply, repair and maintenance of the space station, and work on breakthroughs in the fields of life ecology and materials science, he added.

Prof Gui’s duties will include the maintenance of the payload, which refers to parts of the spacecraft that will produce mission data and then sending the information back to headquarters. He will also be in charge of data collection and analysis.

The two military men – Col Zhu is a trained aerospace engineer and a former associate professor at the Space Engineering University – will control the spacecraft and carry out experiments.

Maj-Gen Jing said after the press conference that he has been doing at least 600 sit-ups, 600 push-ups and more than 1,000 skips of the jump rope every day to maintain his fitness. “That’s just the basics,” he said, adding that he has not gone back to his home town to see his parents in northern Shanxi province due to training.

Prof Gui said the dream of going into space, especially for academics, had seemed “sacred and far away” so when China allowed civilian experts to sign up to be astronauts in 2018, he did so without a second thought.

“I have long dreamed of moving my beloved research work into space,” said Prof Gui, who specialises in spacecraft systems.

The Shenzhou-16 will be relieved by the crew of Shenzhou-17, which is expected to be launched by November.

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Dubbed ‘part fashion, part mindfulness’, dopamine dressing is the TikTok trend that encourages people to choose clothing that matches their desired mood. So, if we opt for colourful clothing over the drab and dreary, we’ll get a boost of dopamine and feel happier.

Dopamine, as a neurotransmitter, is involved in several brain functions including the forming of emotions. It’s not the only molecule that can affect how we feel – serotonin, oxytocin and various endorphins interact with dopamine to give rise to our mood. But dopamine does play a fundamental part in our brain’s reward system.

As to whether our outfit choice can offer a dopamine boost, to put it plainly, we don’t know – there is no study that has asked participants to change into brightly coloured clothes while monitoring the dopamine levels in their brain. But as far as the concept goes, there are studies that show a relationship between the clothes we wear and how we act and feel.

In one study, people photographed wearing a red or black T-shirt were viewed as being more attractive than those wearing any other colour.

Wearing red can also lead to better physical performance. A review of football matches over the last 55 years showed that teams with a red kit consistently played better in home games than any other kit colour.

One study showed that wearing an outfit that has an association with a profession, like a doctor’s white coat, improves cognitive processes.

Termed ‘enclothed cognition’, this might also be why wearing gym clothes makes us more likely to exercise. While formal suits make a person act with more dominance, when it comes to performance, comfort is arguably more important – students taking exams fared better when they were wearing comfier, less formal clothes.

Those who spend their days pursuing creative endeavours might want to try wearing green, as viewing the colour has been linked to better creative performance. The colour green has also been found to evoke feelings of relaxation, likely because it reminds us of nature. Yellow, and its suggestions of summer and warmth, can bring a viewer happiness, energy and excitement, though it’s not known if these feelings occur when wearing the colour.

There are some problems with studying associations between colour and emotions, namely that our opinions are closely linked with our culture.

In the UK, we may associate the colour black with sadness because it’s what we wear to a funeral, but mourners wear white at funerals in China. We also can’t say for certain that everyone sees colour the same, as anyone who saw ‘the dress’ on social media in 2015 can attest.

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Dubbed the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, the project aims to develop a spacecraft in the coming years and then launch it in 2028 to study various asteroids.

"This mission is a follow up and a follow on the Mars mission, where it was the first mission to Mars from the region," said Mohsen Al Awadhi, program director of the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt. "We're creating the same thing with this mission. That is, the first mission ever to explore these seven asteroids in specific and the first of its kind when it's looked at from the grand tour aspect."

The UAE became the first Arab country and the second country ever to successfully enter Mars' orbit on its first try when its Hope probe reached the red planet in February 2021. The craft's goals include providing the first complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers and helping answer key questions about the planet's climate and composition.

If successful, the newly announced spacecraft will soar at speeds reaching 33,000 kilometers (20,500 miles) per hour on a seven-year journey to explore six asteroids. It will culminate in the deployment of a landing craft onto a seventh, rare "red" asteroid that scientists say may hold insight into the building blocks of life on Earth.

Organic compounds like water are crucial constituents of life and have been found on some asteroids, potentially delivered through collisions with other organic-rich bodies or via the creation of complex organic molecules in space. Investigating the origins of these compounds, along with the possible presence of water on red asteroids, could shed light on the origin of Earth's water, thereby offering valuable insights into the genesis of life on our planet.

This computer graphic rendering made available by UAE Space Agency, Monday, May 29, 2023, shows the MBR Explorer, named after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the spacecraft that will be completing the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid belt. The United Arab Emirates Space Agency unveiled plans Monday to build and send a spacecraft on an exploration of the main asteroid belt. Dubbed the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, the latest project by the oil-rich nation aims to develop a craft over six years and then launch it in 2028 to study various different asteroids. Credit: UAE Space Agency via AP

The endeavor is a significant milestone for the burgeoning UAE Space Agency, just established in 2014, as it follows up on its success in sending the Amal, or "Hope," probe to Mars. The new journey would span a distance over ten times greater than the Mars mission.

The explorer is named MBR after Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who also serves as the vice president and prime minister of the hereditarily ruled UAE. It will first make its way toward Venus where the planet's gravitational pull will slingshot it back past the Earth and then Mars.

The craft will eventually reach the asteroid belt, flying as close as 150 kilometers (93 miles) to the celestial boulders and covering a total distance of 5 billion kilometers (around 3 billion miles).

In October 2034, the craft is expected to make its final thrust to the seventh and last asteroid, named Justitia, before deploying a lander over a year later. Justitia, believed to be one of only two known red asteroids, is thought to potentially have a surface laden with organic substances and to originate from the region where the giant planets formed, or even beyond.

"It's one of the two reddest objects in the asteroid belt, and scientists don't really understand why it's so red," said Hoor AlMaazmi, a space science researcher at the UAE space agency. "There are theories about it being originally from the Kuiper Belt and where there's much more red objects there. So that's one thing that we can study because it has the potential for it to be water rich as well."

The MBR Explorer will deploy a landing craft to study the surface of Justitia that is fully developed by UAE private start-up companies. It may lay the ground for possible future resource extraction from asteroids to eventually support extended human missions in space—and maybe even the UAE's ambitious goal of building a colony on Mars by 2117.

"We have identified different key areas that we want startups in the private sector to be part of, and we will engage with them through that. And we understand that the knowledge we have in the UAE is you know still being built. We will provide these startups with the knowledge they need," said Al Awadhi.

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Published in Nature Immunology, the research is the first of its kind to decisively map immune responses produced by a COVID-19 vaccination in any First Nations populations.

In partnership with Menzies School of Health Research, researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) evaluated immune responses in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous individuals after receiving the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

Lead author of the study and Ph.D. candidate at the Doherty Institute, University of Melbourne's Wuji Zhang, said the research provides strong evidence that COVID-19 vaccination triggers effective immune responses against the virus in First Nations peoples.

"We found excellent antibody and T cell responses against SARS-CoV-2 in Australian First Nations peoples following COVID-19 vaccination. We saw high levels of antibodies binding to the virus following two vaccine doses," Zhang said.

"T cells against the spike protein, which often recognize small sections of the virus and are similar across different variants, were also seen in higher numbers and showed 'memory signatures' following vaccination."

University of Melbourne Professor Katherine Kedzierska, a Laboratory Head at the Doherty Institute, said the findings are the first to report excellent immune responses to COVID-19 vaccination in First Nations peoples.

"Like other studies on non-Indigenous cohorts, antibody responses against the COVID variants Delta and Omicron were lower compared to the ancestral strain, but were substantially increased following the booster vaccine dose.

"While the results of the study are encouraging, it also showed that antibody responses are highly affected by comorbidities in Indigenous populations, especially diabetes and renal disease," Professor Kedzierska said.

Associate Professor Jane Davies of Menzies School of Health Research said the results confirm the effectiveness of vaccination.

"Our research should further encourage First Nations communities around the world to get vaccinated and boosted," Associate Professor Davies said.

"This work also highlights the crucial importance of being up-to-date with COVID vaccination for individuals with comorbidities, especially diabetes and renal disease."

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Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem has announced an “unprecedented achievement” in the treatment of multiple myeloma cancer – the second-most common hematological disease. It accounts for one-tenth of all blood cancers and 1% of all types of malignancies.

The innovative treatment against the disease, which has long been considered incurable, was developed after a series of experiments carried out in the hospital’s bone-marrow transplant and immunotherapy department in recent years.

“We have a waiting list of over 200 patients from Israel and various parts of the world at any given time.”

Polina Stepansky

“Now, in light of the impressive results of CAR-T treatments, it seems that they have many more years to live – and with an excellent quality of life,” said Prof. Polina Stepansky, head of the department.

The treatment is based on genetic engineering technology, which is an effective and groundbreaking solution for patients whose life expectancy was only two years until a few years ago. They have used a genetic engineering technology called CAR-T, or Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy, which boosts the patient’s own immune system to destroy the cancer. More than 90% of the 74 patients treated at Hadassah went into complete remission, the oncologists said.

“We have a waiting list of more than 200 patients from Israel and various parts of the world at any given time,” Stepansky said. “Due to the complexity of the production and the complexity of the treatment itself, only one patient a week enters the treatment, which is still being conducted as an experiment.”

Hadassah University Medical Center (credit: AVI HAYOUN)

According to Prof. (emeritus) Yechezkel Barenholz, a world leader in oncology research and head of the membrane and liposome research lab at Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, the CAR-T technology is a major achievement that will make the diagnosis much easier and simpler and treatment possible.

The CAR-T cell treatment was developed and produced by Hadassah in collaboration with Prof. Cyrille Cohen, head of the immunology and immunotherapy laboratory at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan.

“We have evidence of a very positive overall response rate with minimal side effects, and they are mild,” Stepansky said. “These are dramatic results. This is a huge hope for patients with a disease that has not yet had a cure.”

The experimental treatment will also be provided throughout the US in the coming months.

What is the blood cancer known as multiple myeloma?

Multiple myeloma is a type of cancer of the bone marrow, which is the spongy tissue at the center of some bones that produces the body’s blood cells. The disease was named multiple myeloma because cancer often affects several areas of the body, including the skull, pelvis, ribs and spine. Many times, it is suspected or diagnosed after a routine blood or urine test.

At first, it may not produce any symptoms, but as it develops, myeloma causes a wide variety of problems, including chronic bone pain; weakness, shortness of breath and fatigue resulting from anemia; high levels of calcium in the blood that can trigger symptoms, including extreme thirst, stomach pain, needing to urinate frequently, confusion and constipation; weight loss, dizziness, blurred vision and headaches; repeated infections, bruising and unusual bleeding; weak bones that fracture easily; and kidney problems.

The disease is more common in people over the age of 60. It is usually diagnosed after the age of 70 and rarely under the age of 40, in men more than women and in people with a family history of multiple myeloma

The American company “Immix Bio has acquired a patent license, and we are about to open a clinical trial in the US,” Stepansky said. “The plan is to reach commercialization and FDA approval as a drug within a year.”

The groundbreaking idea of using immune-system cells to fight cancer cells was born several decades ago at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot by Prof. Zelig Eshhar’s immunology department. The development and promotion of CAR-T treatments, whose function is to program the patient’s white blood cells by collecting healthy cells from the immune system, has since been led by Stepansky. As part of the treatment, a process is performed to isolate the T cells, which are the active cells in the immune system that can fight tumors by themselves.

This is carried out by apheresis, which takes donated blood components and separates the red and white blood cells. The process takes two to four hours and is similar to a regular blood donation. The T cells are then engineered in the Hadassah laboratory, which was built especially for this purpose, according to the strictest international standards in clean rooms.

In the next step, a genetic engineering procedure is performed by adding a virus along with a genetic segment that encodes a receptor against the cancer cells. Many engineered cells are then injected into the patient. Ultimately, the engineered T cells target the tumors and destroy the cancer.

Until now, this treatment has been available only in China and the US for nearly $400,000 per patient treatment, and it is very limited in its availability.

Only 20% of those who need to receive it in these countries actually get it,” Stepansky said. “With the development led by the researchers at our Danny Cunniff Leukemia Research Laboratory, we were able to reduce the price dramatically and make the treatment affordable and accessible.

“Moreover, Hadassah developed a more sophisticated and advanced treatment than that offered in the world. As the first and only institution in Israel that develops, manufactures and delivers CAR-T treatment, Hadassah is actually leading the field that will enable the development of future treatments with CAR T cells for the benefit of patients with other types of cancer,” Stepansky said.

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Past research has examined who, when and why some people favor feeling happy now versus later, but those studies don't address how this preference for immediate versus delayed happiness relates to behavior and well-being.

Now, a University at Buffalo psychologist is filling that knowledge gap with a study that approaches happiness from a novel research angle.

The findings, published in the journal Emotion, suggest that people's beliefs about happiness matter in shaping their everyday goal pursuits and well-being.

"People can think of happiness as an investment, similar to how one might put money into a savings account and watch it grow over time. When people view happiness as a cumulative resource, they are likely to believe in 'delaying happiness'—the idea that working hard and making sacrifices toward their important long-term goals will make them happier in the future," says Lora Park, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and director of the Self and Motivation Lab in the UB College of Arts and Sciences.

"On the other hand, people can think of happiness as fleeting, similar to how one might put money into the stock market and watch it fluctuate from day to day, not knowing when the market will be up or down. When people view happiness in this way, they are likely to believe in 'living in the moment,' seizing opportunities to feel happy now, rather than postponing happiness into the unknown future. "

Park led a research team that conducted studies with samples that included both college-aged and adult community participants. They first established a new scale to measure delaying happiness versus living in the moment beliefs, and then examined the costs and benefits of endorsing these beliefs about happiness.

Results suggest that delaying happiness to pursue important long-term goals is associated with greater anticipated happiness and pride upon achieving that goal, but there is a downside, according to Park.

"Although delaying happiness has benefits, it is also related to feeling more guilty, anxious and regretful when engaging in activities that take time or energy away from one's long-term goals," says Park.

Western society often admires those who pursue goals at the expense of immediate happiness, while living in the moment can be seen as indulgent or impulsive.

But we shouldn't be dismissive. Living in the moment has benefits, too.

"People who believe in living in the moment engage in more fun and enjoyable activities, even if they are unrelated to their long-term goal pursuits, which contributes to more positive emotions and greater overall well-being," Park says. "These individuals don't see these activities of experiences as wasted time, as something to regret or feel guilty about."

Park's research found that while beliefs about happiness are relatively stable, they can also shift and be influenced by societal messages that place differential value on happiness being cumulative or fleeting.

"Happiness is often viewed as something to enjoy now or later, but our research suggests that there are costs and benefits to both, and that these beliefs are malleable as well," she says. "If you know you're graduating in a few weeks, it may be advantageous to live in the moment, rather than delaying happiness till a later point in time. You can shift to living in the moment and enjoy non-goal related pursuits now, without feeling bad about it."

There's no question that long-term goals often require persistence and focus. People give up a lot in that regard.

"But there are costs associated with this pursuit, such as passing up on opportunities to seize happiness right now, which can boost positive emotions and feelings of closeness and connection with others," says Park.

Ultimately, one belief about happiness is not necessarily better than the other, according to Park.

"Simply being aware of these different beliefs about happiness—and that one can be flexible in these beliefs—is something to consider in maximizing happiness and well-being in one's everyday life."

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Monday, May 29

On Monday, India will launch a GSLV Mk.II rocket will carry the NVS-1 navigation satellite to a geostationary orbit. It’s the first next-gen in the NaVIC constellation and will replace a satellite called IRNSS 1G.

The mission will take off at 5:12 a.m. UTC from Sriharikota. The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) provides positioning and timing services to India and the surrounding areas.

Tuesday, May 30

We have several launches on Tuesday, first, China will launch a Long March 2F/G rocket carrying the Shenzhou 16 spacecraft to the Heavenly Palace space station. It will be a manned mission carrying three unknown astronauts.

The mission is due for launch at 1:31 a.m. UTC from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. The Shenzhou 15 crew are set to come back to Earth sometime in May too.

The second and final launch on Tuesday will be a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying 22 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. The satellites will beam internet connectivity down to Earth for customers.

The launch will occur at 10:42 a.m. UTC from Cape Canaveral. If you want to watch it, head over to SpaceX’s website at that time and date, where it will be streamed if there are no delays.

Saturday, June 3

The week of launches will end on Saturday with SpaceX sending up another Falcon 9 carrying a Dragon 2 spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission is a cargo delivery mission so nobody will be aboard.

The launch is set for 4:34 p.m. UTC from Florida. As with the last Falcon 9 launch, this one will also be streaming on SpaceX’s website.

Recap

The first launch last week was a Long March 2C carrying Macao Science and LuoJia satellites. It took off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre.

Next was a Falcon 9 launch carrying Axiom astronauts to the ISS.

Here you can see the astronauts entering the ISS.

On Wednesday, Russia launched a Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress MS-23 spacecraft to the ISS on a resupply mission.

South Korea performed the third launch of its Nuri rocket which carried eight satellites to a Sun-synchronous orbit.

Virgin Galactic sent a crew up to the edge of space on its VSS Unity craft in the final flight before it begins its commercial service.

On Friday, Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket launched NASA’s TROPICS satellites.

Then we got another Soyuz launch from Russia, this time carrying a Kondor-FKA satellite.

Finally, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying the Arabsat BADR-8 satellite.

That’s all for this week, check in next time!

TWIRL 116: China to send people to space and SpaceX to resupply ISS

The pre-teen, Clovis Hung, is the youngest person to graduate from Fullerton College, the university said.

Hung started attending the school in Fall 2020, when he was just 9 years old and his mother had pulled him out of traditional public school claiming her son was highly self-motivated and goal-oriented.

“Clovis is super inquisitive, mature, diligent, self-disciplined, and highly motivated,” Hung’s mother, Song Choi, said in a statement released by the school. “He is also very curious and traditional public schools could not satisfy his curiosity, therefore, the best option was college.”

Fullerton offers “The Special Admit program” which allowed Hung to take courses at the school while he also completed the homeschool curriculum taught by his mother.

Hung was initially nervous about taking in-person college courses, but said he soon “instantly fell in love with college life. So, I challenged myself to take more classes.”

Some of Hung’s professors were worried the juvenile would be intimidated by his fellow classmates due to the age difference but were surprised at how well the more traditional college students took to Hung.

Hung’s graduation cap shows off his incredible accomplishment.
Facebook

“At first, I was a little worried about how he would relate to the other students given the age and developmental differences, however, those concerns were unfounded,” Fullerton Biology Professor Kenneth Collins said. “ Clovis has been a great mixture of ‘kid’ and college student. He is mature enough that the other students take him seriously, but enough of a kid that they look after him like a younger brother and cheer him on.”

“When I had questions, I asked them, and if they had questions, they’d ask me,” Hung told KABC. “They treated me like a little brother.”

Fullerton College is a public community college located in Orange County, approximately 30 miles from Los Angeles, and is a part of the California Community Colleges System.

Some of Hung’s professors were worried the juvenile would be intimidated by his fellow classmates due to the age difference but were surprised at how well the more traditional college students took to Hung.
Instagram/ Fullerton College

After becoming acclimated to college life, Hung took more classes and eventually was accepted into the Honors Program, where he was able to “thrive.”

Hung, who graduated on May 20 along with Fullerton’s 900 other graduates received five Associate of Arts degrees in History, Social Sciences, Social Behavior and Self-Development, Arts and Human Expression, and Science and Mathematics.

The 12-year-old decided to attend Fullerton after then-13-year-old Jack Rico graduated from the school in the spring of 2020 with four associate degrees — Rico later graduated from UNLV in December 2021.

Hung was elected to be Senator for Associated Students for the upcoming school year, where he will be taking STEM courses before he begins applying to universities.

Outside of his academic achievements, Hung is looking to the sky for his next accomplishment.

Hung’s career goals include being an aerospace engineer, piloting, or pediatrics, according to ABC7.

“I feel really proud of what I’ve accomplished so far,” Hung said. “I also just joined the Civic Air Patrol and hope to get my pilot license at age 16.”

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The Herefordshire hills basked in brilliant sunshine last weekend. Summer had arrived and the skies were cloudless, conditions that would once have heralded succeeding nights of coal-dark heavens sprinkled with brilliant stars, meteorites and planets.

It was not to be. The night sky was not so much black as dark grey with only a handful of stars glimmering against this backdrop. The Milky Way – which would once have glittered across the heavens – was absent. Summer’s advent had again revealed a curse of modern times: light pollution.

The increased use of light-emitting diodes (LED) and other forms of lighting are now brightening the night sky at a dramatic rate, scientists have found. Indiscriminate use of external lighting, street illumination, advertising, and illuminated sporting venues is now blinding our view of the stars.

In 2016, astronomers reported that the Milky Way was no longer visible to a third of humanity and light pollution has worsened considerably since then. At its current rate most of the major constellations will be indecipherable in 20 years, it is estimated. The loss, culturally and scientifically, will be intense.

“The night sky is part of our environment and it would be a major deprivation if the next generation never got to see it, just as it would be if they never saw a bird’s nest,” said Martin Rees, the astronomer royal. “You don’t need to be an astronomer to care about this. I am not an ornithologist but if there were no songbirds in my garden, I’d feel impoverished.”

Rees is a founder of the all-party parliamentary group for dark skies which recently produced a report calling for a host of measures to counter the curse of light pollution. These include proposals to appoint a minister for dark skies, create a commission for dark skies and set strict standards for the density and direction of lighting.

The introduction of a carefully selected package of planning rules to control obtrusive light – backed by legal clout and penalties for non-compliance – could make major differences, the committee stressed. The alternative would be to lose sight of night skies “painted with unnumber’d sparks,” to quote Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Research by physicist Christopher Kyba, of the German Centre for Geosciences has revealed that light pollution is now causing the night sky to brighten at a rate of around 10% a year, an increase that threatens to obliterate the sight of all but the most brilliant stars in a generation. A child born where 250 stars are visible at night today would only be able to see about 100 by the time they reach 18.

Sea turtles are among the wildlife adversely affected by light pollution. Photograph: Alamy

Gazing at a night sky crossed by a glittering Milky Way has become a splendour of another age, Kyba told the Observer. “A couple of generations ago, people would have been confronted regularly with this glittering vision of the cosmos – but what was formerly universal is now extremely rare. Only the world’s richest people, and some of the poorest, experience that any more. For everybody else, it’s more or less gone.”

Nevertheless, the introduction of only a modest number of changes to lighting could make a considerable improvement, Kyba argued. These moves would include ensuring outdoor lights are carefully shielded, point downwards, have limits placed on their brightness, and are not predominantly blue-white but have red and orange components.

“Measures like that would have an enormous impact,” he added.

The problem is that light pollution is still not perceived by the public to be a threat. As Professor Oscar Corcho, of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, has put it: “The negative consequences of light pollution are as unknown by the population as those of smoking in the 80s.”

Yet action is now urgently needed. Apart from its astronomical and cultural impact, light pollution is having serious ecological consequences. Sea turtles and migrating birds are guided by moonlight. Light pollution causes them to get confused and lose their way. Insects, a key source of food for birds and other animals, get drawn to artificial lights and are immediately killed upon contact with the source.

The case against light pollution goes further. Bluish emissions of LEDs are almost entirely lacking any red or near infrared light, said Prof Robert Fosbury, of the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London (UCL). “We are becoming starved of red and infra-red light and that has serious implications,” he said. “When reddish light shines on our bodies, it stimulates mechanisms including those that break down high levels of sugar in the blood or boost melatonin production. Since the introduction of fluorescent lighting and later LEDs, that part of the spectrum has been removed from artificial light and I think it is playing a part in the waves of obesity and rises in diabetes cases we see today.”

UCL researchers are preparing to install additional infrared lamps in hospitals and intensive care units to see if they have an effect on the recovery of patients who would otherwise be starved of light from this part of the spectrum.

“It’s going to take a huge effort to change the face of the planet and turn LEDs into more friendly lighting,” said Fosbury. It’s going to be a big job but we need to do it because it is having a very damaging effect on human health.”

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Mostafa Waziri, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters that the two large "embalming workshops" date back to the 30th dynasty (380-343 BC) and the Ptolemaic (305-30 BC) eras.

The discovery was made after a year-long excavation near the sanctuary of the goddess Bastet, which is home to the catacombs of mummified cats in Saqqara, some 30 kilometres (18.6 miles)south of Cairo.

It was the same spot where hundreds of mummified animals and statues were uncovered in 2019.

"We found embalming workshops, one for humans and one for animals. We found all the tools that they used (in mummification) in ancient times," Waziri said.

Both workshops featured stone beds, clay pots, ritual vessels, natron salt, which is one of the main ingredients for mummification, and linens among other mummification instruments.

The Saqqara excavations also led to the unearthing of two small 4,400 and 3,400-year-old tombs nearby, belonging to two priests, Ne Hesut Ba of the Old Kingdom's fifth dynasty and Men Kheber of the late kingdom's 18th dynasty respectively.

Inscriptions of cultivation, hunting and other daily activities were found on the walls of Ne Hesut Ba's tomb while "scenes showing the deceased in different positions" were engraved in Men Kheber's tomb, officials said.

Egypt has carried out extensive digging operations in Saqqara and other ancient locations in recent years, which resulted in a number of high-profile discoveries.

The country plans to inaugurate the Grand Egyptian Museum, a state-of-the-art facility near the Giza Pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo, after construction is completed later this year.

Egypt hopes it can further lure back tourists after the industry started to rebound of late, having been battered by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine.

Tourism revenues climbed to $7.3 billion in the second half of 2022, a 25.7% increase compared with the same period a year earlier, according to recently released central bank data.

(Reporting and writing by Hatem Maher; editing by Clelia Oziel)

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The relief in the City of Canals is palpable. For centuries, regular high tides—acqua alta to the locals—have flowed through Venice, submerging walkways, flooding buildings, and stopping boats from passing under its many bridges.

For most of the city, at least, that is no longer the case. In operation since last year, after nearly two decades under construction, a giant piece of hydraulic engineering called the Experimental Electromechanical Module—known by its Italian acronym MOSE—now protects Venice and its lagoon. In a city where waders were as easy to buy as postcards and ice cream, most people can now go about their business without consulting tide charts. Property prices are up, especially for flats and shops on the ground floor.

Or at least, they are for now. Although MOSE is up and running, there are questions about how long the barrier will last. The flood-defence scheme was designed to serve for a century. But Hermes Redi, the director-general of Consorzio Venezia Nuova (CVN), the Venetian engineering consortium that built it, fears that, thanks to a combination of climate change and the gradual sinking of the city itself, its useful lifespan might be just half as long.

MOSE is made up of 78 hinged steel floodgates that run for 1.6km along the sea floor beneath the three inlets to the Venetian lagoon. When a high tide begins, machines that consume enough electricity to power “a small town”, as a technician puts it, compress air that is blasted into each floodgate. As seawater is forced out, the floodgates rise into nearly vertical positions. The resulting barrier holds back the Adriatic until the tide retreats.

That sinking feeling

For all its technological whizzyness, the system has downsides. Cost is one. Mr Redi reckons each raising of the barrier costs about €150,000 (other estimates are higher). Maintenance costs add up, too. Sand must be cleared from the machinery. Each floodgate is designed to be removed every five years for defouling. Last year, when MOSE was used 36 times, the operating cost was more than €70m ($76m).

The barrier also disrupts maritime traffic, causing protests from both fishermen and the big container ships that call at Marghera, a busy port in the lagoon. Antonio Revedin of the North Adriatic Sea Port Authority says a delay can cost an individual cargo ship €80,000 a day—though a system of locks, due to come online later this year, should help.

There are environmental issues, too. Most of Venice’s sewage flows into its canals. As Luigi Tosi, a geologist with Italy’s National Research Council (CNR), puts it, a lagoon that is sealed off too often would become “first a bathtub, then a sewer”. All that means that mose is only used when tides exceed 110cm. That means that some low-lying parts of the city, including St Mark’s square, still flood.

Rising sea levels will make those downsides more apparent as the barrier is raised more and more frequently. One paper, published in 2021, predicted a rise in water levels of between 32 and 110cm in the Venetian lagoon by 2100, depending on how sharply the world cuts its carbon emissions.

What is needed, then, is a plan to extend the system’s life. Dr Tosi is among those who think that seawater could be the answer as well as the problem. They propose to pump seawater underground, and in doing so to raise the land. That may seem outlandish but, in principle, it is merely the reversal of something that has already happened. Between the 1940s and 1970s the extraction of groundwater for use by industry caused Venice to sink by about 15cm. Pietro Teatini, a hydraulic engineer at Padua University, points out that there is precedent from the oil-and-gas industry, which has shown that storing gas in underground reservoirs can lift the land above.

The area’s geology is promising. Its sandy subsoils should be relatively expandable. Those sandy layers are capped with watertight clay which would prevent injected seawater seeping upwards to contaminate freshwater aquifers.

Giuseppe Gambolati, a semi-retired hydraulic engineer at Padua University, thinks it should be possible to achieve a rise of 25cm across the entire city within a decade. His proposal calls for drilling three test wells. If those reveal no show-stopping problems, then the full job would involve a dozen wells 600 to 800 metres deep around the city. Dr Gambolati reckons the city could be raised for something like 2% of MOSE’s €5.5bn construction cost. Maintaining the uplift, by continual pumping of water, might cost 5% as much as the flood barrier’s operating expenses.

For now seawater injection remains just an idea. But if something is not done, then the rising waters may eventually force more drastic changes. Dario Camuffo, who studies both the environment and Venice’s cultural heritage at cnr, says one option would be simply to abandon the city’s ground floors. Raised pavements could allow people to enter buildings on the storey above. Another, he says, is that prized structures might be taken apart for reassembly elsewhere. Mr Redi worries that Venice’s lagoon may need to be permanently cordoned off from the sea with a dyke. For a city proud of its maritime heritage, that might be seen more as a humiliation than an adaptation.

Source

Study narrows long COVID’s 200+ symptoms to core list of 12

The pressure to publish or perish has led some desperate researchers to pay for fake papers to pad their resumés.

Worse still, some of these sham papers are getting published in official scientific journals.

A computer program designed to detect these made-up studies suggests far too many are slipping past peer review.

The study was published as a preprint paper and still awaiting peer review itself, but if the results are confirmed, it's seriously concerning.

Using artificial intelligence, researchers trained a computer to look for several red flags commonly seen in fake papers submitted to scientific journals.

When the tool could pick out red flags with 90 percent accuracy, it was used to comb through roughly 5,000 neuroscience and medical papers published in 2020.

The tool marked 28 percent as probably made-up or plagiarized.

If this applies to all 1.3 million biomedical papers published in 2020, more than 300,000 would have been flagged.

Not all these flags are truly fakes, but they help identify the most suspicious studies that should receive extra scrutiny by reviewers.

For every 100 red-flagged papers the new tool identified, about 63 were actually fake, and 37 were authentic.

Neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel from Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg in Germany is one of the authors behind the study and an editor of a neurology journal.

He, like many others, has been dealing with a recent rise in fake papers. But even Sabel was shocked by his tool's initial numbers.

"It is just too hard to believe," he told Science.

Sabel and his colleagues blame 'paper mills' for the fraudulent activity. Paper mills bill themselves as 'academic support' services, but in reality, they use AI to scale and sell fake publications to researchers.

Prices for fake papers can range from US$1,000 up to US$25,000.

The quality of these studies is often poor but just good enough to pass peer review, even in established journals.

Publishers are aware that this is a serious issue that undermines their reputation. Scientists have even tricked publications into accepting laughably fake papers to bring attention to the problem.

Sometimes, paper mills will go so far as to pay publishers to accept their fake studies. In fact, an unsolicited email of this nature to the editor of a journal prompted the new study.

"Because the problem is still perceived to be small (an estimated 1 of 10,000 publications), publishers and learned societies are just beginning to adjust editorial, peer-review, and publishing procedures," researchers write.

"Yet the actual scale of fake publishing remains unknown, despite the fact that the number of reports on paper mills are increasing."

Between 2010 and 2020, the new tool revealed a 12 percentage point increase in the rate of potential fake papers published by some journals.

The nation with the highest number of potential fakes was China, contributing to just over half the red flags. Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and India were also significant contributors.

"Fake science publishing is possibly the biggest science scam of all times, wasting financial resources, slowing down medical progress, and possibly endangering lives," researchers argue.

And the rise of generative AI such as ChatGPT only makes the scam more of a threat.

To counter this emerging technology and uphold the reputation of science itself, researchers say a more rigorous review system is urgently needed.

The preprint was published in medRxiv.

Source

 

Welcome to Edition 5.40 of the Rocket Report! I would like to congratulate Virgin Galactic on its successful return to space on Thursday morning above the state of New Mexico. It has been a long period, nearly two years, since the company's last human spaceflight. Here's hoping the company can reach a regular flight rate soon.

 

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

 

 

Virgin Galactic takes to the skies again. On Thursday morning Virgin Galactic successfully returned to human spaceflight after a nearly two-year hiatus. In a news release, the company said its VSS Unity spacecraft reached an apogee of 87.2 km before landing at Spaceport America in New Mexico. Virgin Galactic says it is now readying the vehicle for the start of long-awaited commercial operations, with the "Galactic 01" mission planned for late June.

 

A sunny experience ... Mission specialists Jamila Gilbert, Christopher Huie, and Luke Mays became the newest Virgin Galactic Astronauts as they evaluated the end-to-end astronaut training and spaceflight experience alongside Beth Moses in the main cabin. The flight was commanded by Mike Masucci, with CJ Sturckow serving as pilot. "Witnessing our inspiring crew’s pure joy upon landing, I have complete confidence in the unique astronaut experience we have built for our customers," said Michael Colglazier, CEO of the company.

 

Virgin Orbit's assets are sold off. It's now official—the launch company Virgin Orbit is being sold for parts. In a new filing this week as part of the bankruptcy process, Rocket Lab purchased the company's main production facility in Long Beach, California, to support its Neutron rocket. Stratolaunch bought Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 aircraft and related equipment. And Launcher acquired the company's lease on a test site in Mojave. That's it. After six years, Virgin Orbit is done, and its LauncherOne will fly no more.

 

A non-closing business case ... In an analysis, Ars Technica explains how the company's business plan did not make much sense from the beginning. It seemed fairly obvious that, with the large workforce hired by CEO Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit was probably never going to break even. The company's human resources bill alone was likely about $150 million per year, and that did not include facilities, leases, equipment, and hardware costs. Assuming a profit of $10 million per launch—an exceedingly generous figure—Virgin Orbit would have to launch something like 30 times a year to break even. There clearly was no satellite market to support this, and even reaching such a cadence would have required several years.

 

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South Korean rocket flies again. The country’s Nuri rocket, also called KSLV-II, completed its third launch on Thursday, Payload reports. This marks the first time a Korean launch vehicle has carried commercial payloads to space. The Nuri launcher deployed eight satellites into orbit, including three from domestic companies: Lumir, Justek, and Kairo Space. One of the CubeSats was unaccounted for, however.

 

Nuri goes commercial ... After winning a technology transfer contract from the Korean space agency last year to jointly advance the rocket’s capabilities for its cadence of launches through 2027, Hanwha Aerospace, a leading Korean aircraft engine producer, oversaw the supply and integration aspects of the rocket. Hanwha aims to make the small launcher, which can loft about 3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, more price competitive. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

 

Rockets may soon fly from the Gulf of Mexico. The Spaceport Company announced Tuesday that it hosted four sounding rocket launches with the support of Evolution Space on Monday from a platform in the Gulf of Mexico, Space News reports. The launches were part of a proof-of-concept test of the ability to conduct launches from an offshore platform. The Spaceport Company said the low-altitude launches were intended to exercise the procedures needed to conduct an orbital launch from such a platform.

 

Launch site with a view ... This includes getting approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration and US Coast Guard, clearing airspace and waters to allow for a safe launch and remotely launching the rocket. The launches used propulsion systems supplied by Evolution Space, a Mojave, California-based company working on solid-propellant launch vehicles for defense and space applications. The company conducted its first launch that passed the 100-kilometer Kármán Line on April 22 from the California desert, reaching a peak altitude of 124.5 kilometers. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

 

A spaceport map of the world. There are more spaceports in the world than you probably think. The team of analysts at BryceTech has characterized more than 80 operational, planned, and announced spaceports and major ballistic missile testing sites globally.

 

A British thing ... You can download a copy of the map here. There are so many proposed spaceports in the United Kingdom—seven—that the map includes a breakout section showing just England, Scotland, and Ireland. No wonder I have had difficulty keeping track of all the British spaceport proposals.

 

 

SpaceX launches tenth crew mission. SpaceX on Sunday evening launched a commercial mission to the International Space Station carrying four people, including former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Ars reports. This Axiom-2 mission was commanded by Whitson and carried a paying customer named John Shoffner, who served as pilot, as well as two Saudi Arabian mission specialists, Ali al-Qarni and Rayyanah Barnawi. Shoffner and the government of Saudi Arabia procured the seats on Crew Dragon from Axiom, a Houston-based spaceflight company that brokered the mission to the space station. Whitson is an employee of Axiom.

 

Dragon's ascendancy ... For SpaceX, this was its 10th human space mission since the Demo-2 flight for NASA that launched in May 2020. In less than three years, the company has now put 38 people into orbit. Of these, 26 were professional astronauts from NASA and its international partners, including Russia; eight were on Axiom missions, and four on Jared Isaacman's Inspiration4 orbital free-flyer mission. Isaacman is due to make a second private flight on board Dragon, Polaris Dawn, later this year. In just three years, SpaceX has become the world's most prolific provider of orbital human spaceflight. The company now flies more people into orbit annually than the rest of the world combined. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

 

Europe has a rocket problem. In a remarkably candid and accurate assessment, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher writes about how Europe used to dominate the commercial launch market. But no longer: "SpaceX has undeniably changed the launcher market paradigm as we know it," Aschbacher wrote. "With the dependable reliability of Falcon 9 and the captivating prospects of Starship, SpaceX continues to totally redefine the world’s access to space, pushing the boundaries of possibility as they go along. Once successful, Starship will carry payloads of around 100 tonnes into low-Earth orbit while reducing the launch cost by a factor of 10. Falcon 9 aims to launch 100 times in 2023."

 

Aschbacher then says Europe has fallen behind ... "Europe, on the other hand, finds itself today in an acute launcher crisis with a (albeit temporary) gap in its own access to space and no real launcher vision beyond 2030," Aschbacher wrote. "My hope, quite possibly my biggest aspiration for Europe, is that this temporary lack of access to space, combined with this moment of novel opportunities in exploration and a rapidly evolving space economy, will be the impetus for a deep reflection of Europe’s modus operandi, leading to a transformation of our overall space ecosystem." My hope is that Aschbacher gets his way.

 

Canadian spaceport says manifest is growing. Maritime Launch Services, which is developing a spaceport in Nova Scotia, said this week it signed a contract with an undisclosed European company that "if fully realized," would be valued at over $1 billion. The agreement would fill up the spaceport's medium-class launch vehicle manifest through 2027, spaceQ reports. The publication speculates that the space logistics provider is probably D-Orbit or Exolaunch.

 

A fairly speculative venture ... Maritime Launch Services says it has "Canadian and international clients lined up to launch using small-class vehicles starting as early as 2024" and is planning on having the Ukrainian-built Cyclone 4M medium-class launch vehicle ready and launching by 2025. Earlier this spring, work began in earnest on a small launch vehicle launch pad, which will be ready for use shortly. However, more funding is needed before construction can begin on other facilities at the spaceport. (submitted by JoeyS-IVB)

 

 

NASA supporting depots, distributed launch. In a feature article, Ars explores the bold new future that NASA is charting with its Human Landing System contracts. In its new iteration, the Blue Moon lander is now completely reusable; it will remain in lunar orbit, going up and down to the surface. It will be serviced by a transport vehicle that will be fueled in low-Earth orbit and then deliver propellant to the Moon. This transporter, in turn, will be refilled by multiple launches of the reusable New Glenn rocket. To be sure, that is a lot of hardware that has yet to be built and tested.

 

This is the way ... But when we step back, there is one inescapable fact. With SpaceX's fully reusable Starship, and now Blue Moon, NASA has selected two vehicles based around the concept of many launches and the capability to store and transfer propellant in space. This is a remarkable transformation in the way humans will explore outer space—potentially the biggest change in spaceflight since the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957. It has been a long time coming. This is a future of propellant depots, in-space refueling, and distributed launch.

 

Vulcan test firing delayed. United Launch Alliance said Thursday morning that it was preparing for a "Flight Readiness Firing" of the Vulcan rocket as early as 5 pm ET that day. This hot-fire test, during which the rocket's two BE-4 engines will ignite for burn for about six seconds, will take place at Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. However, a few hours before the test was to be conducted, the company announced that it had canceled the test.

 

Last major test ...  "During the countdown, the team observed a delayed response from the booster engine ignition system that needs further review prior to proceeding with the flight readiness firing," United Launch Alliance said in an emailed statement. "We will be rolling the rocket back to the Vertical Integration Facility to gain access to the booster ignition system." This likely delays the debut flight of Vulcan until August at the earliest.

 

FAA, other agencies testing methane safety. Three US government agencies are undertaking studies to examine the safety issues associated with a new generation of launch vehicles that use liquid oxygen and methane propellants, Space News reports. These efforts are underway, officials said, to understand the explosive effects of that propellant combination in the event of a launch accident. The regulatory agencies are concerned that both LOX and methane are miscible, meaning that they readily mix together, increasing their explosive potential.

 

Lots of methane vehicles coming ... Understanding that explosive potential will support FAA work on public safety, such as establishing hazard areas and refining calculations of the maximum probable loss that launch providers need to insure against. Relativity Space and SpaceX have launched vehicles with methane-burning engines to date, and it will also be used on engines that will power Relativity’s larger Terran R as well as Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

 

Second Mobile Launcher finally making progress. The first components for a new mobile launch platform for NASA’s Space Launch System, which has suffered extensive cost and schedule overruns, have arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, Space News reports. Bechtel, the prime contractor for the Mobile Launcher 2, said Thursday that the first steel components for the structure arrived at KSC earlier this month. The steel trusses, manufactured for Bechtel by Paxton & Vierling Steel in Iowa, will be part of the foundation of the structure's base.

 

That's a big cost overrun ... NASA awarded a contract to Bechtel in 2019 to design and build the mobile launcher, which will be used by the larger Block 1B version of the SLS. That cost-plus contract was originally valued at $383 million, with delivery of ML-2 scheduled for March 2023. However, the development of the structure has suffered serious delays and cost overruns. An audit by NASA’s Office of Inspector General in June 2022 concluded that the structure would cost up to $1.5 billion and not be completed until late 2027. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

May 26: Electron | TROPICS 3 | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 03:30 UTC

May 26: Soyuz 2.1a | Kondor-FKA no. 1 | Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia | 21:14 UTC

May 27: Falcon 9 | Arabsat 7B | Kennedy Space Center, Fla. | 03:25 UTC

 

 

Rocket Report: Europe has a rocket problem, FAA testing safety of methane

The findings of a recent study by researchers from the University of Michigan in the US suggest the perception of insatiable hunger alone can trigger the anti-aging effects of intermittent fasting. The animal doesn't actually have to starve.

"We've sort of divorced [the life extending effects of diet restriction] from all of the nutritional manipulations of the diet that researchers had worked on for many years to say they're not required," says physiologist Scott Pletcher.

"The perception of not enough food is sufficient."

Intermittent fasting has become a popular diet fad in recent years, although at this point evidence supporting its benefits is limited and largely based on animal studies.

Work on fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and rodents seems to suggest calorie restriction can extend life spans and promote good health. But these are still early days, and far more research is needed before the results can be extended to humans – especially since some studies have produced conflicting results, or even highlighted potential dangers.

To study the molecular mechanisms of fasting further, the researchers behind this latest investigation turned once again to the humble fruit fly.

In the past, fruit fly studies have helped scientists identify numerous neural signals for hunger and satiety in the brain. These creatures share 75 percent of the same disease-related genes as us, and their metabolisms and brains have useful similarities to those in mammals.

Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) are essential nutrients that appear to trigger feelings of fullness in flies when consumed. Eating more BCAAs, therefore, reduces their feelings of hunger.

To explore how this might impact aging, researchers kept fruit flies hungry by giving them snacks low in BCAA.

Their hunger was gauged by how much the insects ate from a buffet of food hours after consuming the snack.

Flies that were fed a low-BCAA snack ate more food at the later buffet. They also targeted protein-heavy foods over carbohydrate-heavy foods – a sign that the flies were driven by a need-based hunger, not a want-based one.

So researchers went straight to the source. When the team directly activated the neurons in fruit flies that trigger hunger responses, they found these hunger-stimulated flies also lived longer.

"Thus," Pletcher and colleagues write, "the motivational state of hunger itself, rather than the availability or energetic characteristics of the diet, might slow aging."

Further experiments showed lowering BCAA in flies' diets also led to their hunger neurons fashioning modified support proteins called histones, which bind to DNA and help regulate gene activity. The researchers think these modified histones might be the link between diet, hunger responses and aging. Interestingly, past studies have linked an increasing histone supply to an extended lifespan.

In light of the findings, researchers think chronic hunger might be an adaptive response, "mediated by modifications to histone proteins in discrete neural circuits, that slows aging."

The findings could help explain why low-BCAA diets seem to be good for our own health. Perhaps they provide the body with sufficient nutrients, while not quieting hunger signals in the brain completely.

Of course, that idea needs a lot more testing. One study on fruit flies isn't going to cut it.

For now, the researchers are interested in exploring whether the health of fruit flies is tied to eating for pleasure as well as for necessity.

The study was published in Science.

Source

Machine learning and AI algorithms are trained to classify and identify image features, like the features of our faces in facial recognition. But the data underpinning these algorithms can be vulnerable to cyber attacks. Subtle manipulation of image data by removing only a few pixels—invisible to the human eye—can result in incorrect predictions and even pose serious security threats.

Is quantum computing the answer?

Research published May 25 in Nature Machine Intelligence by researchers from CSIRO's Data61 and University of Melbourne reveals that advances in quantum technology may hold the key to protecting AI algorithms from cyber attacks.

Dr. Muhammad Usman is lead senior author of the paper and team leader of Quantum Systems at CSIRO's Data61. He described the potential of integrating quantum computing with AI as a game-changing technology.

"The hunt for quantum advantage is heating up," Usman said.

"Quantum machine learning is one of the front-runner applications of quantum computing. By integrating quantum with machine learning we can speed up AI training and enhance robustness against cyber attacks."

What's all the fuss about quantum computing?

Worldwide, interest in quantum is surging. On May 3, 2023, the Australian Government launched the National Quantum Strategy, with a vision for Australia to be recognized as a leader in the global quantum industry by 2030. The Strategy stated that quantum technologies are expected to create an Australian quantum industry worth $6B by 2045.

We have established our ambitious Quantum Future Science Platform to develop these world-leading technologies and launched a new program that will soon be accepting students to become the next generation of quantum technology specialists.

A machine learning algorithm has been trained to identify people (top left image). The algorithm correctly identifies people (top right image), but if just a few pixels are changed in a cyber attack (bottom left image), the algorithm cannot identify the people (bottom right image). In the case of a driverless car, if a machine learning algorithm predicts there are no people on the road as the result of a cyber attack, there could be serious consequences. Credit: Jan Hendrik Metzen et al, Universal Adversarial Perturbations Against Semantic Image Segmentation, arXiv (2017). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1704.05712

How it works

Quantum computing is a new field of computing. It stores information as "qubits" rather than as binary "bits." While a single bit can store or process information in the form of 0 and 1 on a conventional computer, a quantum qubit can be placed in a 0 or 1 state or represent both states simultaneously. This is called superposition.

A second special property of quantum mechanics is known as entanglement, which allows qubits to interact with each other at long distances without any physical connection. Einstein famously called it "spooky action at a distance."

Calculations or code-breaking functions that may take a conventional computer thousands of years could take just hours on a quantum computer.

The quantum advantage

As more industries from transport to defense and banking incorporate AI, security will be paramount. Quantum could help ensure AI-powered technologies are resilient to attacks and may provide a competitive advantage for early adopters.

But Usman cautions that quantum computers could also be used to generate very powerful cyber attacks.

"This is a very serious cybersecurity threat. However, rapid advancements in quantum hardware and software and more sophisticated error mitigation strategies are coming. Quantum computers of the near future should enable quantum machine learning algorithms to start demonstrating advantages," Usman said.

"This is a very exciting research direction which could have significant socio-economic and security implications for Australia."

Source

Worldwide, children can be found who reported that they have memories of a previous life. More than 2,500 cases have been studied and their specifications have been published and preserved in the archives of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia (United States). Many of those children come from countries where the majority of the inhabitants believe in reincarnation, but others come from countries with different cultures and religions that reject it. In many cases, the revelations of the children have been verified and have corresponded to a particular individual, already dead. A good number of these children have marks and birth defects corresponding to wounds on the body of his previous personality. Many have behaviors related to their claims to their former life: phobias, philias, and attachments. Others seem to recognize people and places of his supposed previous life, and some of their assertions have been made under controlled conditions. The hypothesis of reincarnation is controversial. We can never say that it does not occur, or will obtain conclusive evidence that it happens. The cases that have been described so far, isolated or combined, do not provide irrefutable proof of reincarnation, but they supply evidence that suggest its reality.

Source

Petermann Glacier is one of Greenland’s largest marine-terminating glaciers. Like most glaciers that discharge ice into the ocean, Petermann periodically sheds large icebergs. But contact with the sea also means warming waters have been melting the glacier’s ice from below, with implications for sea level rise.

Satellite image of Petermann Glacier acquired on August 16, 2002, using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

 

Satellite image of Petermann Glacier acquired on August 16, 2022, using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

 

This pair of images, acquired with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows retreat of the glacier’s floating ice tongue. The upper image shows the glacier in August 2002; the lower image shows the same area two decades later, in August 2022.

Petermann is generally thinning, retreating, and its flow is accelerating. The acceleration stretches and thins the glacier, which makes it more prone to fractures, or rifts, that can break and form an iceberg. Several large icebergs have broken from Petermann during the years spanned by these images, including a 251-square-kilometer berg in 2010, and a 32-square-kilometer berg in 2012. Rifting and periodic iceberg calving are normal parts of an outlet glacier’s life cycle, even in northwest Greenland. Still, these two events reduced the ice tongue by one-third.

Satellite image of Petermann Glacier acquired on May 14, 2023, using the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.

 

In 2017, a rift formed near a stream channel running lengthwise along the glacier’s surface. Since then, the “new” rift has converged with an older rift. The merged rifts are visible in this detailed image of the floating ice tongue, acquired on May 14, 2023, with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. It remains to be seen if the rift will eventually grow across the width of the glacier and release another large iceberg.

Other signs of action are visible along Petermann’s eastern edge, where the ice of smaller glaciers flowing into the fjord has been mashed up by the more massive Petermann. As a result, a mixture of relatively small, thin icebergs lines the east side of the main glacier.

Meanwhile, warming ocean waters are helping to melt the floating ice tongue from below. This melting might be especially significant along the grounding line—the area where the glacier loses contact with the bedrock and begins to float.

Recent research found that the highest melt rates under Petermann’s floating ice tongue—as much as 80 meters per year—occurred within its grounding zone. Tides can help the warmer seawater reach farther into the grounding zone than previously thought, where it can melt inland ice from below. Unlike meltwater from icebergs or an ice tongue, which are already floating, meltwater from inland ice contributes to sea level rise.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Allison Nussbaum, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen with information from Christopher Shuman/UMBC/NASA.

Source

"Several informants" have passed on important information about Tesla's customer complaints. According to the files shared with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Tesla has received thousands of complaints from customers about its self-driving feature.

The files that were shared with the German publication contain around 100GB of data.

There were 23,000 internal files in the collection, including complaints from March 2022 and as far back as 2015. The manufacturer reportedly received 2,400 reports about problems with self-acceleration and 1,500 cases related to concerns with brake function during that time. The latter includes 383 complaints regarding phantom stops brought on by false collision alerts, as well as 139 complaints concerning mistaken emergency brakes.

The files also reportedly contained 3,000 incidents when drivers raised safety concerns regarding Tesla's driver assistance technology, as well as 3,000 crash reports.

Even though the majority of the recorded incidents happened in the US, several owners in Europe and Asia have also had complaints. Numerous clients from the files were reportedly contacted by Handelsblatt to validate their claims, and some were even able to provide films for publishing, Jalopnik said.

The files apparently featured guidelines for employees on how to interact with consumers too. They are reportedly prohibited from pasting incident reports into emails or text messages or leaving them as voicemail messages. Customers can only receive the information verbally from them.

Handelsblatt explained why they chose to publish

Sebastian Matthes, editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt, said in a letter outlining the publication's decision to publish data from the Tesla files. He claimed that a 12-person team spent six months sorting through and analyzing the files.

"The data paints the picture of an electric car pioneer who seems to have far greater technological problems than previously known. With its Autopilot, for example. The Tesla files contain thousands of reports about complications with the driver assistance systems. Complaints of Tesla vehicles suddenly braking at full speed. Or accelerate suddenly," he said.

Source

The Montreal Protocol was a landmark international agreement for the benefit of all humankind. It is among the only United Nations treaties ratified by every country in the world, designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out harmful chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons. And it is working. Since it entered into force in 1989, the ozone has been slowly recovering, and now researchers believe that it is also delaying the first summer in the Arctic where no ice is present.

Over the last 40 years, about half of all Arctic Sea Ice has gone for good. The summer Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking by one-eighth every decade and we are getting closer to the point of a completely ice-free Arctic. But the Montreal Protocol has delayed that scenario by as much as 15 years, according to new research.

Ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) not only destroy the ozone layer, which protects us from the dangerous ultraviolet light from the Sun, but they are also powerful greenhouse gases. They are tens of thousands of times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the Protocol, their atmospheric concentrations have steeply declined, and this has impacted global warming.

“The first ice-free Arctic summer – with the Arctic Ocean practically free of sea ice – will be a major milestone in the process of climate change, and our findings were a surprise to us,” co-author Lorenzo Polvani, from Columbia University, said in a statement. “Our results show that the climate benefits from the Montreal Protocol are not in some faraway future: the Protocol is delaying the melting of Arctic sea ice at this very moment. That's what a successful climate treaty does: it yields measurable results within a few decades of its implementation.”

The estimate from their work shows that without the Montreal Protocol being enacted, the global mean surface temperature in 2050 would be around 0.5°C (0.9°F) warmer and the Arctic polar cap would be almost 1°C (1.8°F) warmer. As we are trying to keep the global mean surface temperature below 1.5°C (2.7°F), such an increase would have been terrible. 

“This important climate mitigation stems entirely from the reduced greenhouse gas warming from the regulated ODSs, with the avoided stratospheric ozone losses playing no role,” added co-author Mark England. 

“While ODSs aren’t as abundant as other greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, they can have a real impact on global warming. ODSs have particularly powerful effects in the Arctic, and they were an important driver of Arctic climate change in the second half of the 20th century. While stopping these effects was not the primary goal of the Montreal Protocol, it has been a fantastic by-product.”

The work shows the beneficial consequences of treaties that are taken seriously and enforced. 

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Stem cell transplants have been used to cure two monkeys of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV), the HIV-relative that infects 45 primate species. Although some human cures have already been achieved, the technique has had far too many side effects for widespread application. In the monkey cases, however, the researchers responsible think they understand why the approach worked and what needs to be done to apply it to humans on a consistent basis.

It’s been 14 years since Timothy Ray Brown, known as the Berlin patient, was cured of HIV, so it’s easy to wonder what is taking so long. However, the Berlin patient also had acute myeloid leukemia, forcing him to undergo a dangerous stem cell transplantation.

The stem cells he received were from a donor with a mutation in the CCR5 gene, which meant he lacked the receptor HIV uses to infect white blood cells. The recipient proceeded to produce white blood cells impregnable to HIV. Without the ability to infect new cells, the virus died out, and he was eventually found to be cured.

There have been four similar cases reported since, representing the only known HIV cures. If we were still back in the 1980s, when HIV was a near-certain death sentence, such treatments might be adopted widely, despite the huge cost. However, with the development of highly effective treatments, most people prefer to take medication for the rest of their lives than undergo a painful, dangerous, and unreliable treatment, unless in exceptional circumstances such as also suffering from cancer. Work published in the journal Immunity might be a big step to changing that.

Four of the five humans cured through the stem cell treatment suffered from Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD), where donor white blood cells attack the host’s cells. The one exception offers hope, but controlling GVHD, and understanding the causes, are essential if the cures are to become widespread.

Professor Jonah Sacha of Oregon Health & Science University led a team that transplanted stem cells from SIV-negative donors into four Mauritian cynomolgus macaques with the disease, while another four were kept as controls. Initially, SIV samples plunged by a factor of about 1,000 in all four treated macaques. Two treated monkeys were cured by the process and remained healthy four years later, while SIV in the other two eventually rebounded. Unsurprisingly none of the controls experienced remission. 

A 50 percent success rate is still not something one would want to take to humans while alternatives are available, but the comparison between the monkeys where SIV disappeared, and where it returned revealed a lot about what works. Virologists have debated what was causing success in the cured humans and the authors think they now have a lot of the answers.

The authors observed HIV in blood from the animals’ limbs fell below detectable levels first, followed by lymph nodes in the arms and legs, and finally in the abdomen. They think the fact the whole body was not cleared at once could explain why some patients have appeared to be HIV-free, only to have the infection return, particularly if the abdominal lymph nodes were not tested. 

The team realized two processes were taking place at once. The transplanted stem cells identified the HIV-infected cells as foreign to the body and attacked them in a way that resembles a technique widely used to cure leukemia.

In the cured macaques, CCR5 receptor deficiency helped prevent SIV rebounding, but in the other two macaques, this failed to work perfectly. The team behind this paper have also demonstrated that a CCR5-blocking antibody can mimic the effects of transplantation from a CCR5-deficient host, and hope to use this in future.

“We hope our discoveries will help to make this cure work for anyone – and ideally through a single injection instead of a stem cell transplant,” Sacha said in a statement.

The study is published in Immunity.

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The neurons that make you feel hangry

At long last, the glorious future we were promised in space is on the way

It is allergy season once again. If you are one of the 81 million Americans with hay fever, spring is a mixed blessing. Yes, the days are longer, but they are accompanied by itchy eyes, runny noses, and an endless hunt for antihistamines. On days when the pollen count is highest, seasonal allergies are like an assault—from the outside world, but also from our own bodies’ immune systems going into overdrive.

There are growing numbers of allergy sufferers, too. In 1997, around 0.4 percent of US children were reported to have a peanut allergy. By 2008 the figure was 1.4 percent. In the UK, hospital admissions due to severe food allergies tripled between 1998 and 2018. And although rates of asthma—often triggered by allergies—have leveled off in the US, they are continuing to rise globally thanks to increased rates in the developing world. We’re also seeing a rise in unusual allergies, such as alpha-gal syndrome, where some people bitten by lone star ticks develop strong reactions to red meat.

Looking at the rise in allergies, it’s hard to shake the feeling that something is out of kilter. Either it’s the outside world, our bodies, or the complex interaction between the two, but something is going wrong. The question is why—and what can we do about it?

A good place to start is by figuring out what the hell allergies actually are. In her book Allergic: How Our Immune System Reacts to a Changing World, medical anthropologist Theresa MacPhail attempts to do just that. One theory is that allergic reactions evolved as a way for the body to expel carcinogens and toxins—from insect stings to snake bites. Even a few centuries ago, an extreme immune response to a potentially fatal snake bite might have been a useful way for the body to respond, one researcher tells MacPhail.

As the world has changed, our overactive immune systems have started to seem decidedly out-of-step with the threats we face. It doesn’t help that growing seasons for crops are getting longer, exposing people to pollen earlier each spring. At the same time, changing diets and lifestyles are putting our microbiomes out of whack, perhaps making children more likely to become sensitized to food allergens. Stress might also influence our susceptibility to allergies—we know that stress hormones provoke a similar kind of response in mice cells as allergic stressors.

If this is sounding a bit inconclusive, then you’d be right. As MacPhail discovers, it’s hard to pin down exactly what is causing the rise in allergies—doctors don’t even completely agree on what an allergy is or how best to diagnose one. But MacPhail has a good reason to dive into these complexities. In August 1996, her father was cruising down a New Hampshire road on his way to a beach with his girlfriend. A solitary bee flew through the open sedan window and stung him on the side of the neck. Soon afterward, her father died from anaphylactic shock; he was 47. “You are really here today because you want to know why your father died,” one allergy doctor tells MacPhail during an interview.

But in the world of allergy research there are no easy answers. Maybe it was genetic, or the fact that her father wasn’t carrying a potentially lifesaving EpiPen, or that the pharmacist on duty at the drugstore wasn’t allowed to inject him with adrenaline, or that he was sensitized to bee stings during his two tours of duty in Vietnam. Maybe he was just unlucky.

This is the thread that runs through Allergic: The answers we reach tell us everything about how we view the world. At the turn of the 19th century, some Harvard researchers thought that asthma in children might be caused by a “fixation of hate subconsciously directed toward the mother.” Allergy sufferers tended to be white, urban, and educated, and often they were young boys or women—people deemed to be prone to neurosis and imbalance. Some of this stigma today still lurks in people who accuse allergy sufferers of “faking it” or who roll their eyes when plane attendants announce they won’t be serving nuts on a flight.

Our own biases are also on display when we think about solutions to the rise in allergies. Until very recently, the world of allergy treatment has moved at a glacial pace. Antihistamines were discovered in 1937, and since the 1940s they’ve been the main treatment for allergies, even though researchers acknowledge they have major shortcomings. Now a new range of treatments is coming to the fore. In January 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral immunotherapy allergy drug, Palforzia, which works by exposing people to a gradually increasing amount of peanut allergens over time. There are also new “vaccines” being developed to immunize people against bee stings, although these require 50 injections over a long period of time.

It’s not just new drugs we need—we need to change the world in which they exist. Alpha-gal syndrome is becoming more common because the range of habitats for the lone star tick is expanding as the world warms; extended pollen seasons are the consequence of climate change and the introduction of plant species into places they never existed in before. Money matters, too. Injectable adrenaline, sold in branded form as the EpiPen, can help people survive severe allergic attacks, but the pens are so expensive—roughly $600 for two injectors—that many people who should carry an auto-injector simply can’t afford to. Better food labeling and production can cut down the risk that children will have deadly reactions to prepackaged foods, but only if companies are on board with the change.

“Allergy is ultimately about our human vulnerability, both biological and social,” MacPhail writes. It’s about problems of our own creation and spiraling risks that no one could have foreseen. How we choose to respond is entirely in our hands.

You’re Allergic to the Modern World

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