Clear your plans on Saturday: NASA says we’re going to have a rocket launch.

The space agency moved the date for the next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to Saturday, September 3rd, after determining that the initial plan for Friday was going to run into bad weather.

There was a 60 percent chance that the launch would have been delayed for weather on Friday, officials said during a media briefing. The two-hour launch window opens at 2:17PM.

This will be NASA’s second attempt this week at launching its massive next-generation rockets. The first attempted launch on Monday was scrubbed after one of the four RS-25 engines failed to reach the appropriate temperature to allow for liftoff.

The Artemis I mission is comprised of the 322-foot tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, with the Orion crew capsule at the top. If the launch is successful, the 39-day mission will see SLS carry the uncrewed Orion to an altitude of just under 4,000 kilometers before the two craft separate and the core stage of the rocket falls back to Earth.

Orion will continue onward to the Moon, which it will orbit for six days before returning to Earth. The capsule is scheduled to splash down in the ocean on October 11th.

If everything goes according to plan, it will signal the start of NASA’s Artemis program to return to the Moon, which has been plagued by years of delays, development mishaps, and billions of dollars in budget overruns.

NASA moves next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to September 3rd

Fishing boats kept washing up in Japan with dead North Koreans on board. Dozens were documented every year, but they spiked in 2017, with more than 100 boats found on the northern coasts of Japan. No one could explain the appearance of these ghost ships. Why were there so many?

An answer arrived in 2020. Using a swarm of satellites orbiting Earth, a nonprofit organization called Global Fishing Watch in Washington, DC, found that China was fishing illegally in North Korean waters, “in contravention of Chinese and North Korean laws, as well as UN sanctions on North Korea,” says Paul Woods, the organization’s cofounder and chief innovation officer. As a result, North Korean fishermen were having to travel further afield, as far as Russia, something their small ships weren’t suited for. “They couldn’t get back,” says Woods. China, caught out, promptly halted its activities.

The alarming discovery was made possible by the DC-based firm Spire Global, which operates more than 100 small satellites in Earth orbit. These are designed to pick up the radio pings sent out by boats across the globe, which are primarily used by vessels to avoid each other on the seas. Listening out for them is also a useful way to track illegal maritime activity.

“The way they move when they’re fishing is distinct,” says Woods of the boats. “We can predict what kind of fishing gear they’re using by their speed, direction, and the way they turn.” Of the 60,000 vessels that emit such pings, Woods says 5,000 have been found conducting illegal activities thanks to Spire, including fishing at restricted times or offloading hauls of protected fish to other vessels to avoid checks at ports.

Satellite constellations like Spire’s have seen huge growth in recent years, and novel uses like this are becoming more common. Where once satellites would be large, bulky machines costing tens of millions of dollars, technological advances mean smaller, toaster-sized ones can now be launched at a fraction of the cost. Flying these together in groups, or constellations, to conduct unique assignments has become an affordable prospect. “It’s now economically viable to deploy many, many more satellites,” says Joel Spark, cofounder and a general manager at Spire.

Before 2018, no constellations of more than 100 active satellites had ever been launched into Earth orbit, says Jonathan McDowell, a satellite expert at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US. Now there are three, with nearly 20 more constellations in the process of being launched and some 200 more in development. It is a “boom in constellations,” says McDowell.

The reasons for flying constellations are numerous. The most notorious is to beam the internet to remote locations, made famous by SpaceX’s Starlink mega-constellation. This vast swarm of 3,000 satellites accounts for nearly half of all those in orbit, and it will swell further to 12,000 or more. Others, like Amazon, have plans for vast space internet constellations of their own. Many are worried about launching so many satellites into orbit, significantly raising the risk of collisions and producing dangerous space junk.

 

Courtesy of Spire

Smaller satellite constellations have their problems too. Many of their satellites lack the ability to maneuver, for example, to avoid a collision. “I’m a little uncomfortable with it,” says McDowell, although their small size means most fall back into our atmosphere within a few years, naturally clearing the skies. For now we can cope, but stricter regulation will be needed in the future as more are launched.

Satellite constellations can encompass the globe, providing valuable data that single satellites cannot. Some can track illegal methane emissions, others can provide useful communications networks, and others still can provide constant imagery of our planet’s surface. “I definitely did not expect the diversity of use cases,” says Sara Spangelo, cofounder and CEO of Swarm Technologies in California, whose own constellation of 160 satellites allows small packets of data to be sent between devices around the globe, even from remote locations, creating a worldwide internet of things.

One organization—Rainforest Connection, based in Texas—has found a particularly novel way of using Swarm’s satellites: tracking illegal logging and poaching in more than 32 countries. In areas where loggers or poachers might operate, Rainforest places solar-powered acoustic sensors called Guardians high in treetops, designed to blend in with the tree from the ground. If the sensors pick up the sound of illegal activity up to 1.5 kilometers away (assessed by software on board the Guardians), such as chain saws or gunshots, they send a signal to one of Swarm’s satellites overhead, which relays the information back to a ground station.

This allows Rainforest Connection to alert law enforcement or locals to illegal activity, from villages in Sumatra to lands that are home to Indigenous tribes in Brazil. “In countries like Brazil and Malaysia, deforestation contributes to over 70 percent of their total greenhouse gas emissions,” says Bourhan Yassin, Rainforest’s CEO. “It’s a very large problem.”

Prior to working with Swarm, Rainforest relied on cellular networks to transmit data. While quicker, that limited its monitoring to regions near populated areas. “With Swarm, we can put the devices anywhere we want,” says Yassin. “It’s doubled up the capability we can do.”

Gai Jorayev at University College London’s Institute of Archaeology, meanwhile, is using imagery from a constellation of more than 200 satellites run by the California firm Planet Labs to track Russia’s shelling of archaeological sites in Ukraine. Planet’s satellites take images of the entire Earth every day. This has enabled Jorayev, working with the Global Heritage Fund in California, to find that more than 165 sites have been damaged or destroyed by Russian shelling.

“Almost everywhere I look, I’m surprised by the levels of damage,” says Jorayev. “I did not expect it at this scale. The damage is very, very bad.”

Planet has provided its imagery free of charge to Jorayev and his team. “I’m exceptionally grateful,” says Jorayev. The hope is that Russia can be held accountable for its actions in future. That, however, “is a long process,” he says.

These are just a handful of ways satellite constellations are being used today: Spire says it has more than 700 customers, Planet also 700, and Swarm about 300. Concerns about collisions and the satellites’ potential to create space junk are well founded, but if we can find ways to adequately supervise these constellations, there are many ways they can prove useful.

“There are important roles that large constellations can play,” says McDowell. “It’s a question of managing it, and not having it be a free-for-all.”

Swarms of Satellites Are Tracking Illegal Fishing and Logging

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The heartbreaking incident occurred on Friday, Aug. 19, after the 23-year-old employee left work early at the e-commerce giant’s Norwood delivery station. According to the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office, the man drove away from the facility but a short time later returned to the parking lot, where he was found shot sometime before 8:15 a.m.

The employee passed away at a hospital the next morning, and the DA’s Office said he appears to have died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and that a Glock pistol was recovered at the scene.

David Traub, a spokesman for the DA’s office, which routinely investigates unattended deaths in the small town, said that investigators don’t suspect foul play in the man’s death, but that the case won’t be closed until an autopsy report is complete. (A spokesman for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said the case is still pending.)

“There was video footage available for law enforcement to review,” Traub told The Daily Beast. “There is no belief that anyone else was involved in this.”

The worker, identified as Yvens Jean, had been with the Amazon facility known as DCB4 since July. After police were called to the warehouse, Jean was transported to a Brockton hospital, then medevacked to a medical center in Boston, where he died.

“We’re truly saddened by this incident and our thoughts are with everyone impacted,” Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly told The Daily Beast. “We are cooperating with law enforcement as they investigate and will defer any relevant questions to them for now.”

It’s unclear whether Jean ever brought a gun into the building. Firearms are prohibited at the e-tailer’s warehouses, and signage throughout the Norwood facility communicates this ban.

One Amazon driver, who is employed through the company’s Delivery Service Partner program, told The Daily Beast that they’re concerned someone could bring guns onto the property, especially because the warehouse lacks metal detectors. They only learned about Jean’s death through a coworker, after asking about an unexpected text message ordering all drivers to return to work on Saturday. “It’s a little uneasy feeling that there is the possibility of somebody toting around a gun for no good reason,” the person said.

“It can be a stressful and thankless job,” the driver added of the Amazon warehouse. “Not knowing the guy who did that to himself, I can only imagine he couldn’t handle the pressure or was having some problems at home. But they [Amazon] work very hard to keep it from us. Pretend like everything’s fine here. Nothing to see here.”

Amazon told The Daily Beast that Jean worked for the company for six weeks. After his death, the company added, management notified employees that a tragedy occurred, counseling would be available, and the site would be closed for the day. Employees were also compensated for the hours they lost on Friday, Amazon said.

The incident seems to have jarred some warehouse workers who were sent home early that day. In a since-deleted Reddit post, one person wrote, “Showed up to work this morning and it was a literal crime scene.”

“Tons of cops. Had us wait out together in the parking lot. No clue what was going down. Management came out and sent us home after a while. Paid half day. Allegedly an Amazon employee took their own life in the warehouse. FFS,” added the employee, who could not be reached by press time.

The person commented that it was “scary to think someone shot a gun in there” and continued, “Management isn’t giving any details and it hasn’t been on the news or anything so no statements from the police.”

They later amended the post with an update: “Amazon management had a stand up w us this morning. The person who shot themself is actually alive and in the hospital.”

The 162,000-square-foot Norwood facility opened in early 2021. Last August, one former employee made headlines for allegedly stealing a delivery van and leading cops on an hour-long chase through several communities. Police said the 23-year-old suspect showed up to his old job and argued with a manager before taking off with the vehicle.

Meanwhile, deaths on Amazon properties are under increased scrutiny, as the company faces pressure from federal investigators over workplace injuries and alleged safety hazards.

For years, unions and labor activists have argued the fast-paced and physically repetitive working conditions, long hours, and employee quotas at Amazon warehouses were leading to deaths, injuries, and mental health crises.

This month, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) said it was investigating the circumstances of three Amazon employees who died in New Jersey facilities this summer.

As The Daily Beast revealed, one of those employees was Rafael Reynaldo Mota Frias, a dad from the Dominican Republic who had a fatal heart attack during Amazon’s Prime Day event. Coworkers feared Frias was overworked and overheated when he collapsed inside the Carteret warehouse, which at the time lacked air conditioning.

Amazon, however, said it conducted its own investigation and found that Frias’ death was unrelated to his job but likely caused by a “personal medical condition.”

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COLOGNE, Germany — A drug that patients normally take during cancer therapy may have the power to increase the human lifespan, a new study reveals. Researchers in Germany say rapamycin can cause side-effects when patients take it as a lifelong anti-aging treatment. However, their new report finds even brief usage can have a dramatic impact on longevity while cutting down on side-effects.

Rapamycin is a cell growth inhibitor and immunosuppressant that people normally take while undergoing cancer treatment or after receiving an organ transplant. A team from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, however, notes that the drug is also a promising anti-aging formula. Studies involving animals have found that low doses of rapamycin can extend life by preventing age-related changes in the intestines. Until now, however, scientists have looked at this drug as something patients would need to take for the rest of their lives.

“At the doses used clinically, rapamycin can have undesirable side-effects, but for the use of the drug in the prevention of age-related decline, these need to be absent or minimal. Therefore, we wanted to find out when and how long we need to give rapamycin in order to achieve the same effects as lifelong treatment,” explains study lead investigator Dr. Paula Juricic in a university release.

Rapamycin treatment most effective when taken earlier in life?

The new study tested rapamycin in two short-term experiments using fruit flies and lab mice. The first treated young, adult flies for two weeks. The second treated young, adult mice (3 months-old) for a three-month period. In both experiments, the team found that rapamycin had a beneficial effect on the health of each animal’s intestines during middle age.

“These brief drug treatments in early adulthood produced just as strong protection as continuous treatment started at the same time. We also found that the rapamycin treatment had the strongest and best effects when given in early life as compared to middle age. When the flies were treated with rapamycin in late life, on the other hand, it had no effects at all. So, the rapamycin memory is activated primarily in early adulthood,” explains Dr. Thomas Leech, co-author of the paper.

“We have found a way to circumvent the need for chronic, long-term rapamycin intake, so it could be more practical to apply in humans,” adds co-author Dr. Yu-Xuan Lu.

“It will be important to discover whether it is possible to achieve the geroprotective effects of rapamycin in mice and in humans with treatment starting later in life, since ideally the period of treatment should be minimized. It may be possible also to use intermittent dosing. This study has opened new doors, but also raised many new questions,” concludes senior author Prof. Linda Partridge.

More research is needed to confirm the results of the study while proving that rapamycin can be safely used as an anti-aging drug.

The study is published in the journal Nature Aging.

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As omicron subvariant BA.5 continues to drive the coronavirus’ spread in the United States, I’ve been thinking about what could come next. Omicron and its offshoots have been topping the variant charts since last winter. Before that, delta reigned.

Scientists have a few ideas for how new variants emerge. One involves people with persistent infections — people who test positive for the virus over a prolonged period of time. I’m going to tell you about the curious case of a person infected with SARS-CoV-2 for at least 471 days and what can happen when infections roil away uncontrolled.

That lengthy infection first came onto epidemiologist Nathan Grubaugh’s radar in the summer of 2021. His team had been analyzing coronavirus strains in patient samples from Yale New Haven Hospital when Grubaugh spotted something he had seen before. Known only as B.1.517, this version of the virus never got a name like delta or omicron, nor rampaged through communities quite like its infamous relatives.

Instead, after springing up somewhere in North America in early 2020, B.1.517 tooled around in a handful of regions around the world, even sparking an outbreak in Australia. But after April 2021, B.1.517 seemed to sputter, one of the who-knows-how-many viral lineages that flare up and then eventually fizzle.

B.1.517 might have been long forgotten, shouldered aside by the latest variant to stake a claim in local communities. “And yet we were still seeing it,” Grubaugh says. Even after B.1.517 had petered out across the country, his team noticed it cropping up in patient samples. The same lineage, every few weeks, like clockwork, for months.

One clue was the samples’ specimen ID. The code on the B.1.517 samples was always the same, Grubaugh’s team noticed. They had all come from a single patient.

That patient, a person in their 60s with a history of cancer, relapsed in November of 2020. That was right around when they first tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. After seeing B.1.517 show up again and again in their samples, Grubaugh worked with a clinician to get the patient’s permission to analyze their data.

Ultimately, the patient has remained infected for 471 days (and counting), Grubaugh, Yale postdoctoral researcher Chrispin Chaguza and their team reported last month in a preliminary study posted at medRxiv.org. Because of deteriorating health and a desire to maintain their anonymity, the patient was not willing to be interviewed, and Grubaugh has no direct contact with them.

🧵for our latest preprint on the intrahost evolution of SARS-CoV-2 virus in an immunocompromised individual (60s) with a history of cancer chronically infected for at least 471 days (ongoing) with consistently replicating viruses at a high viral load. 1/nhttps://t.co/qBNEjXTqMt

 — Chrispin Chaguza (@ChrispinChaguza) July 3, 2022

But all those samples collected over all those days told an incredible tale of viral evolution. Over about 15 months, at least three genetically distinct versions of the virus had rapidly evolved inside the patient, the team’s analyses suggested.

Each version had dozens of mutations and seemed to coexist in the patient’s body. “Honestly, if any one of these were to emerge in a population and begin transmitting, we would be calling it a new variant,” Grubaugh says.

That scenario is probably rare, he says. After all, lots of prolonged infections have likely occurred during the pandemic, and only a handful of concerning variants have emerged. But the work does suggest that persistent viral infections can provide a playground for speedy evolutionary experimentation — perhaps taking advantage of weakened immune systems.

Grubaugh’s work is “probably the most detailed look we’ve had at a single, persistent infection with SARS-CoV-2 so far,” says Tom Friedrich, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who was not involved with the work.

The study supports an earlier finding about a different immunocompromised patient — one with a persistent omicron infection. In that work, researchers documented the evolution of the virus over 12 weeks and showed that its descendant infected at least five other people.

Together, the studies lay out how such infections could potentially drive the emergence of the next omicron.

“I am pretty well convinced that people with persistent infection are important sources of new variants,” Friedrich says.

Who exactly develops these infections remains mysterious. Yes, the virus can pummel people with weakened immune systems, but “not every immunocompromised person develops a persistent infection,” says Viviana Simon, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who worked on the omicron infection study.

In fact, doctors and scientists have no idea how common these infections are. “We just don’t really have the numbers,” Simon says. That’s a huge gap for researchers, and something Mount Sinai’s Pathogen Surveillance Program is trying to address by analyzing real-time infection data.

Studying patients with prolonged infections could also tell scientists where SARS-CoV-2 evolution is heading, Friedrich says. Just because the virus evolves within a person doesn’t mean it will spread to other people. But if certain viral mutations tend to arise in multiple people with persistent infections, that could hint that the next big variant might evolve in a similar way. Knowing more about these mutation patterns could help researchers forecast what’s to come, an important step in designing future coronavirus vaccine boosters.

Beyond viral forecasting, Grubaugh says identifying people with prolonged infections is important so doctors can provide care. “We need to give them access to vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs,” he says. Those treatments could help patients clear their infections.

But identifying persistent infections is easier said than done, he points out. Many places in the world aren’t set up to spot these infections and don’t have access to vaccines or treatments. And even when these are available, some patients opt out. The patient in Grubaugh’s study received a monoclonal antibody infusion about 100 days into their infection, then refused all other treatments. They have not been vaccinated.

Though the patient remained infectious over the course of the study, their variants never spread to the community, as far as Grubaugh knows.
And while untreated chronic infections might spawn new variants, they could emerge in other ways, too, like from animals infected with the virus, from person-to-person transmission in groups of people scientists haven’t been monitoring, or from “something else that maybe none of us has thought of yet,” he says. “SARS-CoV-2 has continued to surprise us with its evolution.”

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Tea can be part of a healthy diet and people who drink tea may even be a little more likely to live longer than those who don't, according to a large study.

Tea contains helpful substances known to reduce inflammation. Past studies in China and Japan, where green tea is popular, suggested health benefits.

The new study extends the good news to the U.K.'s favorite drink: black tea.

Scientists from the U.S. National Cancer Institute asked about the tea habits of nearly a half million adults in the United Kingdom, then followed them for up to 14 years. They adjusted for risk factors such as health, socioeconomics, smoking, alcohol intake, diet, age, race and gender.

Higher tea intake—two or more cups daily—was linked to a modest benefit: a 9% to 13% lower risk of death from any cause vs. non-tea drinkers. Tea temperature, or adding milk or sugar, didn't change the results.

The study, published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine, found the association held up for heart disease deaths, but there was no clear trend for cancer deaths. Researchers weren't sure why, but it's possible there weren't enough cancer deaths for any effect to show up, said Maki Inoue-Choi, who led the study.

A study like this, based on observing people's habits and health, can't prove cause and effect.

"Observational studies like this always raise the question: Is there something else about tea drinkers that makes them healthier?" said Marion Nestle, a professor of food studies at New York University. "I like tea. It's great to drink. But a cautious interpretation seems like a good idea."

There's not enough evidence to advise changing tea habits, said Inoue-Choi.

"If you drink one cup a day already, I think that is good," she said. "And please enjoy your cup of tea."

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Dr. Skye McGregor from the Kirby Institute says, "HIV has been declining in Australia since 2015 and this is the lowest number of cases recorded since the beginning of the HIV epidemic. Australia should be very pleased with this sustained downward trend in diagnoses. The declines are likely the result of high uptake of HIV prevention measures including pre-exposure prophylaxis, testing, and high levels of treatment among people living with HIV.

"However, we need to consider these particularly low numbers in 2020 and 2021 within a context of changes to testing and sexual behavior brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. There is evidence of a decrease in testing, a decrease in casual sexual partners, as well as a decrease in the movement of people in and out of Australia. As we emerge from the pandemic and return to pre-pandemic behaviors, it's important to remember to re-adopt HIV prevention measures, and to test frequently. As HIV testing rates also return to pre-pandemic levels, it is possible we will see increases in the number of HIV diagnoses."

Most new HIV cases continued to be among gay and bisexual men, who accounted for more than two-thirds (68%) of cases in 2021. More than a quarter of cases (27%) were attributed to heterosexual sex. While the proportion of cases attributed to heterosexual sex has increased, the number of diagnoses attributed to heterosexual sex has declined, but at a slower rate compared to the decline in cases among gay and bisexual men.

Almost half of all new HIV diagnoses in 2021 were considered late diagnoses. This means that the person diagnosed may have been living with HIV for four or more years without knowing their HIV status and may be experiencing HIV-related illness.

Scott Harlum, President of National Association of People with HIV Australia (NAPWHA) says that late diagnoses are more common among people who acquire HIV through heterosexual sex. "These communities may not have perceived themselves to be at risk. It is very important that we normalize HIV testing among heterosexual people. If you are getting tested for sexually transmissible infections, you should test for HIV too. Early diagnosis is crucial to support the health of individuals, as well as prevent onward transmission."

In good news, HIV diagnoses remained very low among female sex workers and people who inject drugs, reflecting the ongoing success of HIV prevention programs targeting these populations.

"Australia is very fortunate to have low HIV rates among these populations. We need to ensure that health programs and services supporting these groups, such as needle and syringe programs and peer-led prevention programs for people engaged in sex work, are sustained. There is also more work to be done to challenge the stigma and discrimination experienced by these groups, which creates social and legal barriers to accessing care," says Dr. McGregor.

Progress to be made on UNAIDS targets

UNAIDS has set global targets for the proportion of people with HIV who have been diagnosed, are on treatment, and who have achieved viral suppression (this means that their treatment has made their HIV undetectable and untransmittable). The current target is 95-95-95 by 2025.

At the end of 2021, an estimated 29,460 people in Australia were living with HIV. An estimated 91% of these were diagnosed, 92% of those diagnosed were on antiretroviral therapy (ART) and 98% of people on ART had achieved viral suppression (91-92-98).

"Despite record low HIV diagnoses, additional investment and effort is needed for Australia to achieve its UNAIDS targets," says Adjunct Professor Darryl O'Donnell, CEO of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organizations (AFAO). "It is encouraging that 91% of people with HIV are aware of this status, however this proportion has not improved very much in the last few years. It's vital that people know their HIV status. Greater effort is needed to promote HIV testing among all those who may have HIV. AFAO and the community-led HIV response are ready and able to partner with government to go the last mile and fulfill our potential."

Continuing declines among gay and bisexual men

Over the past 10 years, there has been a 52% decrease in new diagnoses among gay and bisexual men. "The downward trend over recent years, alongside the uptake of PrEP, treatment as prevention, and enhanced national prevention strategies, means gay and bisexual men should be very proud of our collective efforts to drive down HIV," says the Kirby Institute's Professor Andrew Grulich.

"But there is more work to be done. PrEP needs to reach all people who could benefit from it. In particular, we need to improve access and promotion for gay and bisexual men living outside of inner-city areas, gay and bisexual men born overseas, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay and bisexual men. And across the board, we need to increase HIV testing."

Among participants of the Gay Community Periodic Survey conducted by UNSW's Center for Social Research in Health (CSRH), in 2021 66% of HIV-negative gay and bisexual men reported having had an HIV test in the 12 months prior to the survey, down from 74% in 2019, prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. These data are included in CSRH's Annual Report of Trends in Behavior, also released at the conference today.

"We know that in 2021 gay and bisexual men continued to report fewer sex partners than before COVID-19, and that HIV risk appeared to be lower," says Professor Martin Holt from CSRH. "HIV testing levels were suppressed compared to before COVID-19, and PrEP use was also slightly lower. Encouraging re-engagement with HIV testing and prevention remains vital, particularly as people become more sexually active again."

Targeted programs needed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities

There were 17 new HIV diagnoses among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in both 2020 and 2021. This represents a 51% decrease over the past ten years, however the numbers are very small, so caution should be taken in interpretation.

Mr. Robert Monaghan, head of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research at the Kirby Institute, says that "although the numbers are small in Aboriginal communities, Aboriginal people face additional barriers to accessing prevention and care. Tailored campaigns for the community are needed, focused on testing, treatment and PrEP."

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However, thanks to missions like the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have since learned that roughly 5 billion years ago, the rate of expansion has been accelerating.

This led to the widely-accepted theory that a mysterious force is behind the expansion (known as Dark Energy), while some insist that the force of gravity may have changed over time.

This is a contentious hypothesis since it means that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (which has been validated nine ways from Sunday) is wrong.

But according to a new study by the international Dark Energy Survey (DES) Collaboration, the nature of gravity has remained the same throughout the entire history of the Universe.

These findings come shortly before two next-generation space telescopes (Nancy Grace Roman and Euclid) are sent to space to conduct even more precise measurements of gravity and its role in cosmic evolution.

The DES Collaboration comprises researchers from universities and institutes in the US, UK, Canada, Chile, Spain, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Italy, Australia, Norway, and Switzerland.

Their third-year findings were presented at the International Conference on Particle Physics and Cosmology (COSMO'22), which took place in Rio de Janeiro from August 22nd to 26th.

They were also shared in a paper titled "Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Constraints on extensions to Lambda CDM with weak lensing and galaxy clustering" that appeared in the American Physical Society journal Physical Review D.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which he finalized in 1915, describes how the curvature of spacetime is altered in the presence of gravity.
For over a century, this theory has accurately predicted almost everything in our Universe, from Mercury's orbit and gravitational lensing to the existence of black holes.

But between the 1960s and 1990s, two discrepancies were discovered that led astronomers to wonder if Einstein's theory was correct. First, astronomers noted that the gravitational effects of massive structures (like galaxies and galaxy clusters) did not accord with their observed mass.

This gave rise to the theory that space is filled with an invisible mass that interacts with 'normal' (aka. 'luminous' or visible) matter via gravity. Meanwhile, the observed expansion of the cosmos (and how it is subject to acceleration) gave rise to the theory of Dark Energy and the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (Lambda CDM) cosmological model.

Cold Dark Matter is an interpretation where this mass is composed of large, slow-moving particles while Lambda represents Dark Energy. In theory, these two forces constitute 95 percent of the total mass-energy content of the Universe, yet all attempts to find direct evidence of them have failed.

The only possible alternative is that Relativity needs to be modified to account for these discrepancies. To find out if that's the case, members of the DES used the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Telolo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to observe galaxies up to 5 billion light-years away.

They hoped to determine if gravity has varied over the past 5 billion years (since the acceleration began) or over cosmic distances. They also consulted data from other telescopes, including the ESA's Planck satellite, which has been mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) since 2009.

They paid close attention to how the images they saw contained subtle distortions due to dark matter (gravitational lenses). As the first image released from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) illustrated, scientists can infer the strength of gravity by analyzing the extent to which a gravitational lens distorts spacetime.

So far, the DES Collaboration has measured the shapes of over 100 million galaxies, and the observations all match what General Relativity predicts. The good news is that Einstein's theory still holds, but this also means that the mystery of Dark Energy persists for the time being.

Luckily, astronomers will not have to wait long before new and more detailed data is available. First, there's the ESA's Euclid mission, slated for launch by 2023 at the latest. This mission will map the geometry of the Universe, looking 8 billion years into the past to measure the effects of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

By May 2027, it will be joined by NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will look back over 11 billion years. These will be the most detailed cosmological surveys ever conducted and are expected to provide the most compelling evidence for (or against) the Lambda-CDM model.

As study co-author Agnès Ferté, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral researcher at JPL, said in a recent NASA press release:

 "There is still room to challenge Einstein's theory of gravity, as measurements get more and more precise. But we still have so much to do before we're ready for Euclid and Roman. So it's essential we continue to collaborate with scientists around the world on this problem as we've done with the Dark Energy Survey."

In addition, observations provided by Webb of the earliest stars and galaxies in the Universe will allow astronomers to chart the evolution of the cosmos from its earliest periods. These efforts have the potential to answer some of the most pressing mysteries in the Universe.

These include how Relativity and the observed mass and expansion of the Universe coincide but could also provide insight into how gravity and the other fundamental forces of the Universe (as described by quantum mechanics) interact – a Theory of Everything (ToE).

If there's one thing that characterizes the current era of astronomy, it is the way that long-term surveys and next-generation instruments are coming together to test what has been the stuff of theory until now.

The potential breakthroughs that these could lead to are sure to both delight and confound us. But ultimately, they will revolutionize the way we look at the Universe.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

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Weight is one of the biggest banes for car designers and engineers. Batteries are exceedingly heavy and dense, and with the internal combustion engine rapidly pulling over for an electric future, the question of how to deal with an EV’s added battery mass is becoming all the more important.

If you want to build an EV with better range, slapping in a larger battery to provide that range is not necessarily the solution. You would then have to increase the size of the brakes to make them capable of stopping the heavier car, and because of the bigger brakes you now need bigger wheels, and the weight of all those items would require a stronger structure. This is what car designers call the “weight spiral,” and the problem with batteries is that they require you to lug around dead weight just to power the vehicle.

But what if you could integrate the battery into the structure of the car so that the cells could serve the dual purpose of powering the vehicle and serving as its skeleton? That is exactly what Tesla and Chinese companies such as BYD and CATL are working on. The new structural designs coming out of these companies stand to not only change the way EVs are produced but increase vehicle ranges while decreasing manufacturing costs.

According to Euan McTurk, a consultant battery electrochemist at Plug Life Consulting, since technologies such as cell-to-pack, cell-to-body, and cell-to-chassis battery construction allow batteries to be more efficiently distributed inside the car, they get us much closer to a hypothetical perfect EV battery. “The ultimate battery pack would be one that consists of 100 percent active material. That is, every part of the battery pack stores and releases energy,” he says.

Traditionally, EV batteries have used cell modules that are then interconnected into packs. BYD pioneered cell-to-pack technology, which does away with the intermediate module stage and puts the cells directly into the pack. According to Richie Frost, the founder and CEO of Sprint Power, “standard modules may fit well within one pack but leave large areas of ‘wasted’ space in another pack. By removing the constraints of a module, the number of cells can be maximized within any enclosure.”

So cell-to-pack allows the module building blocks to be left out of a battery pack, meaning less wasted volume. BYD has also championed LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries, which have better chemical stability and are cheaper to produce. One problem is that the energy density of LFP cells isn’t that good compared to the NCM (nickel cobalt manganese) chemistry cells used in EVs like Hyundai’s Kona Electric, Jaguar’s I-Pace, and Volkswagen’s ID range. However, a cell-to-pack design enables the company to fit more cells into a given space and increase the density to a level closer to that achievable with NCM batteries.

Shenzhen-based BYD is one of the world’s most vertically integrated EV producers—meaning it makes the batteries, many of the vehicle components, and the cars themselves—but it actually started out as a battery company. Its biggest rival in the Chinese battery space is Contemporary Amperex Technology, a company that in 2021 was the world’s largest EV battery producer, with a 32.6 percent market share. This was largely due to CATL dominating the Chinese market with a 52 percent share.

CATL already has a plant in Germany, along with a $5 billion battery plant under construction in Indonesia and plans for a similar investment in the US. Its own investments in both lithium and cobalt mining help shield the company from commodity price fluctuations. But one of the key factors for CATL’s global expansion will be cell-to-chassis technology, where the battery, chassis, and underbody of an EV are integrated as one, completely eliminating the need for a separate battery pack in the vehicle.

Redistributing the batteries’ bulk will also free up space in a car’s design for a roomier interior, since designers will no longer need to raise the floor height of an EV to stash the cells underneath in a big slab. Freed from these previous constraints, as the cells can make up the entire chassis, manufacturers will be able to squeeze more cells into each EV, thereby increasing range.

CATL estimates that production vehicles of this design will achieve ranges of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) per charge—a 40 percent increase over conventional battery tech. 

Body Shop

At Tesla’s 2020 Battery Day, the company shared information about a few key advancements. While Tesla’s new 4680 battery dominated the headlines, CEO Elon Musk and senior vice president Drew Baglino outlined how production of Tesla cars was changing through the usage of large-scale die-cast parts to replace multiple smaller components. They also said that Tesla would start using cell-to-body technology by around 2023.

Using the analogy of an aircraft wing—where now instead of having a wing with a fuel tank inside, the tanks are wing-shaped—the duo said the battery cells would become integrated into a car’s structure. To do that, Tesla has developed a new glue. Normally the glue in a battery pack keeps the cells and pack plates together and acts as a fire retardant. Tesla’s solution adds a strengthening function for the adhesive, making the whole battery load-bearing.

McTurk explains: “Integrating cells into the chassis allows the cells and the chassis to become multi-purpose. The cells become energy-storing and structurally supporting, while the chassis becomes structurally supporting and cell-protecting. This effectively cancels out the weight of the cell casing, turning it from dead weight into something valuable to the structure of the vehicle.”

According to Tesla, this design, along with its die-casting, could allow vehicles to save 370 parts. This cuts body weight by 10 percent, lowers battery costs by 7 percent per kilowatt-hour, and improves vehicle range.

While Tesla’s 4680 battery with its larger volume seems to play an integral role in the company’s ability to move to a cell-to-body design, CATL’s new Qilin battery boasts a 13 percent increase in capacity over the 4680, with a volume utilization efficiency of 72 percent and an energy density of up to 255 watt-hours per kilogram. It is set to become a key part of CATL’s third-generation cell-to-pack solution and will likely form the basis of the company’s cell-to-chassis offering.

An Easy Cell

For those thinking these breakthrough battery technologies are still a few years off, cell-to-chassis is in fact already here. The rapidly growing but still relatively unknown Chinese EV startup Leapmotor claims to be the first company to bring a production car featuring cell-to-chassis technology to market. Leap’s C01 sedan should go on sale before the end of 2022. Using proprietary technology, which the company has offered to share for free, Leap says the C01 offers superior handling (the better weight distribution of cell-to-chassis designs might account for this), slightly longer range, and improved collision safety. 

Many EVs were previously created from the platforms of internal-combustion cars—and some still are—but the adoption of cell-to-chassis designs will make those older platforms hopelessly outclassed. According to Frost at Sprint Power, “the commitment by most [manufacturers] to an EV-only future in conjunction with more integrated designs, such as cell-to-chassis, will lead to significant improvements in the overall design and performance of EVs.”

While cell-to-chassis tech is undoubtedly the next step with EVs, it is not a panacea. Technologies like solid-state batteries and sodium-based batteries are likely to be parts of the puzzle. And cell-to-chassis adoption will undoubtedly introduce new problems for the industry.

For one thing, replacing faulty cells will be far more difficult in a cell-to-chassis housing, as each cell will be an integral part of the car’s structure. Then there is the question of what happens when the car is scrapped. Currently, modules can find their way into many second-life applications, but  McTurk believes the larger battery sizes in cell-to-pack and cell-to-chassis designs may limit them to grid-storage applications.

A New Approach to Car Batteries Is About to Transform EVs

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Honda is the latest automaker looking to build a US battery factory

Chinese propose to build a dam with a distributed 3D printer

Until the late 20th century, odds were the amount of ice lost to the sea would be replaced by a dusting of precipitation. Today there's a 99 percent chance of more water going into the Atlantic than falling on land.

Just what determines Greenland's annual ice budget depends on numerous geological and meteorological features, many of which scientists are still vague on. Now an international team of researchers has fine-tuned their estimates on factors that hold the island's enormous reservoir of frozen water at bay.

Based on an analysis of the sheet's fluctuations between 2000 and 2019, we can expect to lose a little over 3 percent of the existing ice, even if the climate were to stabilize.

To put that into perspective, we're talking enough water being dumped into the oceans to force a rise of around 27.4 centimeters, or nearly a foot. That's if the future climate was to loop through the past decade of temperatures and rainfall over and over again.

If the worst year in the past two decades were to become representative of Greenland's water cycle, the commitment of ice loss could cause sea levels to creep up by around 78.2 centimeters (over 2.5 ft).

Being optimistic, more of the good years could even see a return to ice growth.

Based on Greenland's history of ice loss and accumulation, these could be seen as long-term predictions based on cycles that take place over thousands of years.

Unfortunately we live in unprecedented times. While the new model doesn't tell us precisely what kind of time-scale this transaction might occur on, the researchers suggest we could be looking at a window of maybe one or two centuries given what we know about our world today.

As for tomorrow? Just what our world will look like in coming years depends a lot on how we act now, of course.

But short of a spontaneous ice age occurring, Greenland is locked into a debt of slowly melting ice for the foreseeable future.

Key to the new method for understanding the equilibrium of ice accumulation and melting – what is known as surface mass balance – is to focus on changes in the geometry of the ice within a set climate.

The rate at which glaciers flow into the sea is constrained by the volume of ice pressing down over a certain area. By also taking into account the way Greenland's glaciers break up around its coastline, it's possible to calculate a committed loss of ice that's already being squeezed into the Atlantic under its own pressure.

At some point the steady slide of glacial ice and meltwater might once again balance the weight of snow accumulating on Greenland's peaks and plateaus.

Precisely what that point is will depend on whether we have more years like 2018 – with a relatively low amount of ice loss – or horror years like 2012, where there were days that 97 percent of the ice sheet showed signs of surface melting.

In that worst-case scenario, a much larger fraction of Greenland's ice will end up in the drink, with glaciers trickling away at speeds precipitation just can't match.

Were that to occur, it's not just sea-level rise we'd need to worry about. Such a volume of fresh water being dumped into the north Atlantic would float on top of the denser salt water, effectively putting the brakes on a major ocean current that helps cool the planet's equator.

Every fraction of a degree of temperature rise brings us closer to that grim possibility. Under a so-called 'business as usual' scenario, where regulations fail to mitigate growing emissions, we might expect Greenland to be far less frozen by the year 2200.

It's a fate we can avoid. While a cut of Greenland's ice is destined to vanish, it's still in our power to keep its glaciers flowing for a long time to come.

This research was published in Nature Climate Change.

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This research was published in Nature Climate Change.

"People living with ongoing disability after stroke may not have the opportunity to achieve their preferred life goals. It is time to focus on the individual burden of disease and how we can best support people with stroke in the long term," wrote Dr. Kate Scrivener from Macquarie University and colleagues.

"Stroke is a chronic, lifelong health condition, but it is managed like an acute condition in Australia. Typically, a person after stroke is admitted to an acute hospital for early management; they then receive inpatient rehabilitation if they meet the selection criteria, followed by outpatient rehabilitation.

"In reality, the amount of rehabilitation provided by the hospital sector is limited," Scrivener and colleagues wrote.

"Recent moves towards early discharge and rehabilitation in the home have been shown to be less effective in maximizing function than inpatient rehabilitation, whereas functional gain is possible with investment in subacute and community rehabilitation (e.g., Council of Australian Governments national partnership agreements).

"After hospitalization, 64% of people after stroke are referred for community rehabilitation; however, the actual amount of community rehabilitation that occurs is profoundly low."

Part of the problem, according to the authors is that people after stroke are caught between the health, disability and aged care sectors.

"People after stroke report feeling forgotten and neglected once their allotted rehabilitation quota has finished," they wrote.

Unlike other chronic conditions, such as heart disease, stroke survivors are rarely the beneficiaries of interventions that can prevent further strokes.

"It is time for people with long term disability after stroke to have access to the services they need, when they require them," wrote Scrivener and colleagues.

"We suggest a new model of long-term support for people after stroke who experience ongoing disability. The cornerstone of the model is a deliberate move to the disability sector from the health sector.

"The current system is disjointed with multiple funding sources, leading to inequality in who receives which services and when. People after stroke need the ability to have regular ongoing check-ups with services implemented where required, more support for ongoing lifestyle changes such as text reminders, person-centered tools such as self-management, habit-forming exercise, ongoing gym memberships, and strategies for meaningful social interactions.

"We support the urgency for a national rehabilitation strategy to move the rehabilitation focus from the hospital to the community," they concluded.

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What it means: The impact of Russia's war in Ukraine — and the combination of sanctions and embargoes drastically curbing Russian gas supplies — is beginning to have real effects on the West's standard (and cost) of living.

Big picture: In late July, the European Union's 27 member states agreed to voluntarily cut gas consumption by 15% between August and March 2023.

•  As part of the agreement, mandatory cuts could be imposed if the energy supply situation worsens.

What's happening: A range of government-imposed restrictions, akin to the kind of restraints during wartime, here is a sampling.

In Germany:

•  Cologne's magnificent cathedral — normally lit throughout the night — now goes dark over night. Public buildings, museums and other landmarks — such as the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin — will no longer be illuminated overnight either.

•  In Hanover last month, hot water was cut off at public buildings, as the city seeks to cut consumption by 15%.

•  The southern city of Augsburg decided to turn off traffic lights.

Spain:

•  Congress agreed to temperature limitations — air conditioning no cooler than 27 degrees Celsius, or nearly 81 degrees Fahrenheit.

•  After 10 p.m. shop windows and unoccupied public buildings won't be lit.

Italy:

•  Air conditioning in schools and public buildings has already been limited in what the government labeled "Operation Thermostat," starting in May.

•  Italy is one of the European countries most reliant on Russian energy.

France:

•  While roughly 70% of its energy comes from nuclear power, France has committed to cutting natural gas consumption as well.

•  Shopkeepers will now be fined for keeping doors open and air conditioning running, a common practice.

•  Illuminated signs will be banned between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.

What we're watching: Whether the discomfort of the energy crisis — which could worsen during winter — reduces public and political support for sanctions on Russia in response to its brutal invasion of a smaller neighbor.

•  Analysts say Vladimir Putin hopes the strain of the energy crisis could split Europe's nations, weakening its unified response to the Ukraine war. That might help Russia to wriggle out of some painful sanctions.

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An unidentified and charismatic Indigenous man thought to have been the last of his tribe has died in the Brazilian Amazon, causing consternation among activists lamenting the loss of another ethnic language and culture.

The solitary and mysterious man was known only as the Índio do Buraco, or the “Indigenous man of the hole”, because he spent much of his existence hiding or sheltering in pits he dug in the ground.

Over a period of decades, during which his land was attacked and friends and family were killed, he resisted all attempts to contact him, laying traps and shooting arrows at anyone who came too close.

“Having endured atrocious massacres and land invasions, rejecting contact with outsiders was his best chance of survival,” said Sarah Shenker, a campaigner at Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples.

“He was the last of his tribe, and so that is one more tribe made extinct – not disappeared, as some people say, it’s much more active and genocidal a process than disappearing.”

Officials know very little about the man, but his determined independence and evident solace helped create a mystique around him that captured the attention of activists and media across Brazil and around the world.

“He didn’t trust anyone because he had many traumatising experiences with non-Indigenous people,” said Marcelo dos Santos, a retired explorer who monitored his wellbeing for Funai, Brazil’s national Indigenous foundation.

< View the video at the source page. >

Dos Santos said he and other Funai officials left strategically placed gifts of tools, seeds and food but were always rebuffed.

They believe that sometime in the 1980s, illegal ranchers, after leaving initial offerings of sugar, gave the tribe rat poison that killed all bar the “man of the hole”.

A Funai official who monitored the man’s wellbeing from a distance found his body lying in a hammock in a state of decomposition. Because he had placed brightly coloured feathers around his body, the official believes the man had prepared for death. He estimated the man was about 60 years old.

Indigenous organisations put the number of remaining tribes at between 235 and 300, but an exact figure is hard to determine because some tribes have had very little contact with settler society.

At least 30 groups are believed to be living deep in the jungle and next to nothing is known about their numbers, their language or culture.

“Because he resolutely resisted any attempts at contact, he died without revealing which ethnicity he belonged to, nor the motivations of the holes he dug inside his house,” the Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Recent Contact Indigenous Peoples (OPI) wrote on learning of the man’s death.

“[He] clearly expressed his option for distancing himself without ever saying a single word that would allow his identification with some known Indigenous language.”

OPI said Funai officials first noticed the man in the mid-1990s. Indigenous activists found small plots of farmed land that had been destroyed by invading ranchers and the remains of dwellings they believe had been swept away by tractors. Large, hand-dug pits were also present.

The area, along Brazil’s border with Bolivia, was and remains under attack by ranchers, prospectors and loggers who covet its valuable natural resources.
The discovery led Funai to fence off an area where the man could live unhindered, and in 1997 the Tanaru reserve was formally created.

OPI called for the reserve to be maintained in its present state and asked officials to carry out archaeological and anthropological studies that could shed some light on the man’s background and way of life.

The number of tribes whose land is under threat has soared since the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, took power in 2018. The number of invasions registered on Indigenous land rose from 109 in 2018 to 305 last year, according to the rights group Cimi.

Bolsonaro has long made his contempt for Indigenous peoples clear, once saying Brazil had erred by not decimating native peoples like the US cavalry did. Before assuming the presidency, he vowed not to give Indigenous people one more square centimetre of land, and he has kept that promise.

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Artemis 1 launch called off for today

Nasa has officially called off today’s planned launch of Artemis 1 because of a “conditioning” issue with one of the four engines on the rocket’s main stage.

The engine “didn’t get the high accuracy temperature that they were looking for,” launch control communicator Derrol Nail said of engineers’ efforts to “condition” the engine for launch.

The next attempt will likely be on 2 September.

More details to follow…

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You’re alluding to an unkind stereotype of older people, but does it have any truth to it? In personality terms, the evidence shows that, on average, the older we get, the more closed-minded we tend to become. We are less willing to see alternative perspectives or explore new experiences.

Importantly, however, another way that our personalities tend to mature in old age is that our neuroticism decreases and our agreeability increases. That is, older people tend to be calmer, warmer, friendlier and more trusting than they were when they were younger – which is hardly consistent with the stereotype of an ageing curmudgeon. In fact, a Swiss study of people over 80 years old noted their remarkable composure and nonchalance toward old age – a trait the researchers called ‘senior coolness’.

Another perspective comes from the Danish-American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, whose eight-stage theory of life development described the final stage – from roughly 65 years old and upwards – as a psychological battle between integrity and despair.

If older people view their lives with disappointment and regret, he said, then despair will win, thus fuelling bitterness. In contrast, older people who recognise they did the best they could and see their lives with acceptance and a sense of meaning, then they avoid bitterness and get to enjoy feelings of wisdom instead.

Maybe that’s the ‘coolness’ the Swiss researchers observed!

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Double rainbows are one thing, but a double aurora? They can happen, though some kinds are rare. One particular red-and-green combo is especially puzzling. Now, images captured by amateur astronomers may help reveal its secrets.

Citizen scientists living in Canada and Finland used cameras to document an unusual combination of auroras in the night sky. Physicists have studied those images to learn what may have triggered the peculiar light show.

Alan Dyer was outside his home in Strathmore, Canada, when the dancing Northern Lights caught his attention. He grabbed his camera and started filming. “I knew I had something interesting,” says Dyer, a photographer who also writes about astronomy. His footage turned out to be the most complete record of this rarely seen phenomenon ever captured.

At first glance, the double aurora looks like a floating slice of watermelon. The rind — a shimmery green aurora — is well-understood. Scientists know that it’s caused when the solar wind energizes protons trapped within Earth’s magnetic field. Those protons rain down, bumping into electrons and atoms in their path. That’s what gives the green glow — called a proton aurora — its name.

The fruity looking red strip is more mystifying. Scientists have known about these “stable auroral red arcs” for decades. But there’s no agreement on how they form. One idea is that Earth’s magnetic field can heat up certain areas of the atmosphere. That heat could knock particles around, like in proton rain.
Researchers had seen these two types of auroras occur together before. But it was always mysterious, says Toshi Nishimura. He’s a space physicist at Boston University. “Scientists didn’t have a good idea of why they could be together.”

After looking at satellite observations along with the images captured by Dyer and others, Nishimura and his team concluded how the two phenomena might be related. The key is the thin rays in the red aurora. They mark the paths of electrons falling through the Earth’s magnetic field.

That means electron rain appears to trigger the red aurora, just as proton rain triggers the green one. Both get powered by the solar wind. But the electrons carry less energy than the protons, so they make for a more reddish color. The team reported its findings in JGR: Space Physics.

Electron rain might not be the only way to produce the stable red arcs, though, says Brian Harding. He’s a space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. He says the results do show that what’s going on is more complicated than researchers had thought.

It’s important to understand those complications. The auroras Dyer saw could be danger zones for radio communication and GPS systems, says Nishimura. If you were driving under them, for instance, your GPS might tell you to veer off the road and into a field.

Scientists need to understand these red glows or they won’t be able to forecast space weather like they do normal weather, Harding explains. “You want to make sure that you can predict stuff like this.”

The citizen scientists who took the photos were a critical part of the new findings, Nishimura says. “This is a new way of doing research…. When they take more and more cool images, they find more and more things that we don’t know about.”

The photos will keep coming, says Dyer. “We can make a unique contribution to science,” he says. After all, “you never know what’s going to appear.”

Power Words   More About Power Words

amateur: One who engages in a pursuit as a pastime, not as a profession.

astronomy: The area of science that deals with celestial objects, space and the physical universe. People who work in this field are called astronomers.

atmosphere: The envelope of gases surrounding Earth, another planet or a moon.

atom: The basic unit of a chemical element. Atoms are made up of a dense nucleus that contains positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons. The nucleus is orbited by a cloud of negatively charged electrons.

attention: The phenomenon of focusing mental resources on a specific object or event.

aurora: A light display in the sky caused when incoming energetic particles from the sun collide with gas molecules in a planet’s upper atmosphere. The best known of these is Earth’s aurora borealis, or northern lights. On some outer gas planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, the combination of a fast rate of rotation and strong magnetic field leads to high electrical currents in the upper atmosphere, above the planets’ poles. This, too, can cause auroral “light” shows in their upper atmosphere.

citizen scientists: Public volunteers — people of all ages and abilities — who participate in research. The data that these citizen “scientists” collect helps to advance research. Letting the public participate means that science can get data from many more people and places than would be available if they were being collected by trained scientists alone.

electron: A negatively charged particle, usually found orbiting the outer regions of an atom; also, the carrier of electricity within solids.
field: (in physics) A region in space where certain physical effects operate, such as magnetism (created by a magnetic field), gravity (by a gravitational field), mass (by a Higgs field) or electricity (by an electrical field).

footage: (in movies and videos) A term for the uncut or unprocessed motion pictures or video imagery taken by a camera. It takes its name from the fact that it took several feet of film to capture a few seconds of motion-picture photography.

GPS: Abbreviation for global positioning system, which uses a device to calculate the position of individuals or things (in terms of latitude, longitude and elevation — or altitude) from any place on the ground or in the air. The device does this by comparing how long it takes signals from different satellites to reach it.

particle: A minute amount of something.

phenomena: Events or developments that are surprising or unusual.

physics: The scientific study of the nature and properties of matter and energy. A scientist who works in such areas is known as a physicist.
proton: A subatomic particle that is one of the basic building blocks of the atoms that make up matter. Protons belong to the family of particles known as hadrons.

radio: Referring to radio waves, or the device that receives these transmissions. Radio waves are a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that people often use for long-distance communication. Longer than the waves of visible light, radio waves are used to transmit radio and television signals. They also are used in radar. Many astronomical objects also radiate some of their energy as radio waves.

rainbow: An arc of color displayed across the sky during or just after a rain. It’s caused when water droplets in the atmosphere bend (or diffract) white sunlight into a number of its component hues: usually red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

satellite: A moon orbiting a planet or a vehicle or other manufactured object that orbits some celestial body in space.

solar: Having to do with the sun or the radiation it emits. It comes from sol, Latin for sun.

solar wind: A flow of charged particles (including atomic nuclei) that have been ejected from the surface of the star, such as our sun. It can permeate the solar system. When emitted by a star other than the sun, this radiation is known as a stellar wind.

space weather: Conditions on the sun, in the solar wind and within Earth’s upper atmosphere that can affect technologies on Earth and that have the potential to endanger human health. Triggering these weather events are the stream of plasma, or solar wind, emitted by the sun. In addition, there are clouds of material spewed by the sun, known as coronal mass ejections. Together, these can contribute to large magnetic and electrical storms in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

system: A network of parts that together work to achieve some function. For instance, the blood, vessels and heart are primary components of the human body's circulatory system. Similarly, trains, platforms, tracks, roadway signals and overpasses are among the potential components of a nation's railway system. System can even be applied to the processes or ideas that are part of some method or ordered set of procedures for getting a task done.

unique: Something that is unlike anything else; the only one of its kind.

weather: Conditions in the atmosphere at a localized place and a particular time. It is usually described in terms of particular features, such as air pressure, humidity, moisture, any precipitation (rain, snow or ice), temperature and wind speed. Weather constitutes the actual conditions that occur at any time and place. It’s different from climate, which is a description of the conditions that tend to occur in some general region during a particular month or season.

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It was the juice that tipped him off. At lunch, Ícaro de A.T. Pires found the flavor of his grape juice muted, flattened into just water with sugar. There was no grape goodness. “I stopped eating lunch and went to the bathroom to try to smell the toothpaste and shampoo,” says Pires, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Hospital IPO in Curitiba, Brazil. “I realized then that I couldn’t smell anything.”

Pires was about three days into COVID-19 symptoms when his sense of smell vanished, an absence that left a mark on his days. On a trip to the beach two months later, he couldn’t smell the sea. “This was always a smell that brought me good memories and sensations,” Pires says. “The fact that I didn’t feel it made me realize how many things in my day weren’t as fun as before. Smell can connect to our emotions like no other sense can.”

As SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, ripped across the globe, it stole the sense of smell away from millions of people, leaving them with a condition called anosmia. Early in the pandemic, when Pires’ juice turned to water, that olfactory theft became one of the quickest ways to signal a COVID-19 infection. With time, most people who lost smell recover the sense. Pires, for one, has slowly regained a large part of his sense of smell. But that’s not the case for everyone.

About 5.6 percent of people with post–COVID-19 smell loss (or the closely related taste loss) are still not able to smell or taste normally six months later, a recent analysis of 18 studies suggests. The number, reported in the July 30 British Medical Journal, seems small. But when considering the estimated 550 million cases and counting of COVID-19 around the world, it adds up.

Scientists are searching for ways to hasten olfactory healing. Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have a better idea of how many people are affected and how long it seems to last. Yet when it comes to ways to rewire the sense of smell, the state of the science isn’t coming up roses.
A method called olfactory training, or smell training, has shown promise, but big questions remain about how it works and for whom. The technique has been around for a while; the coronavirus isn’t the first ailment to snatch away smell. But with newfound pressure from people affected by COVID-19, olfactory training and a host of other newer treatments are now getting a lot more attention.

The pandemic has brought increased attention to smell loss. “If we have to provide a silver lining, COVID is pushing the science at a speed that’s never happened before,” says Valentina Parma, an olfactory researcher and assistant director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “But,” she cautions, “we are really far from a solution.”

Nasal attack

Compared with sight or hearing, the sense of smell can seem like an afterthought. But losing it can affect people deeply. “Your world really changes if you lose the sense of smell, in ways that are usually worse,” Parma says. The smell of a baby’s head, a buttery curry or the sharp salty sea can all add emotional meaning to experiences. Smells can also warn of danger, such as the rotten egg stench that signals a natural gas leak.

As an ear, nose and throat doctor, Pires recalls a deaf patient who lost her sense of smell after COVID-19 and enrolled in a clinical trial that he and colleagues conducted on smell training. She worked in a perfumery company — her sense of smell was crucial to her job and her life. “At the first appointment, she said, with tears in her eyes, that it felt like she wasn’t living,” Pires recalls.

Unlike the cells that detect color or sound, the cells that sense smell can replenish themselves. Stem cells in the nose are constantly pumping out new smell-sensing cells. Called olfactory sensory neurons, these cells are dotted with molecular nets that snag specific odor molecules that waft into the nose. Once activated, these cells send messages through the skull and into the brain.

Because of their nasal neighborhood, olfactory sensory neurons are exposed to the hazards of the environment. “They may be covered with a little layer of mucus, but they’re sitting out there being constantly bombarded with bacteria and viruses and pollutants and who knows what else,” says Steven Munger, a chemosensory neuroscientist at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville.

Exactly how SARS-CoV-2 damages the smell system isn’t clear. But recent studies suggest the virus’s assault is indirect. The virus can infect and kill nose support cells called sustentacular cells, which are thought to help keep olfactory neurons happy and fed by delivering glucose and maintaining the right salt balance. That attack can inflame the olfactory epithelium, the layers of cells that line parts of the nasal cavity.

Once this tissue is riled up, the olfactory sensory neurons get wonky, even though the cells themselves haven’t been attacked. After an infection and ensuing inflammation, these neurons slow down the production of their odor-catching nets, a decrease that could blind themselves to odor molecules, scientists reported in the March 17 Cell.

With time, the inflammation settles down, and the olfactory sensory neurons can get back to their usual jobs, researchers suspect. “We do think that for post-viral smell disorders, the most common way to recover function is going to be spontaneous recovery,” Munger says. But in some people, this process doesn’t happen quickly, if ever.

That’s where smell training comes in.

A nose workout

One of the only therapies that exists, smell training is quite simple — a good old-fashioned nose workout. It involves deeply smelling four scents (usually rose, eucalyptus, lemon and cloves) for 30 seconds apiece, twice a day for months.

In one study, 40 people who had smell disorders came away from the training with improved smelling abilities, on average, compared with 16 people who didn’t do the training, olfactory researcher Thomas Hummel and his colleagues reported in the March 2009 Laryngoscope.

Since then, the bulk of studies has shown that the method helps between 30 and 60 percent of the people who try it, says Hummel, of Technische Universität Dresden in Germany. His view is that the method can help some people, “but it does not work in everybody.”

One of the nice things is that there are no harmful side effects, Hummel says. That’s “the charming side of it.” But to do the training correctly takes discipline and stamina. “If you don’t do it regularly, and you give up after 14 days, this is futile,” he says.

Pires in his recent trial had hoped to speed up the process, which usually takes three months, by adding four more odors to the regimen. For four weeks, 80 participants received either four or eight smells. Both groups improved, but there was no difference between the two groups, the researchers reported July 21 in the American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy.

It’s not known how the technique works in the people it seems to help. It could be that it focuses people’s attention on faint smells; it could be stimulating the growth of replacement cells; it could be strengthening some pathways in the brain. Data from other animals suggest that such training can increase the number of olfactory sensory neurons, Hummel says.

Overall, this nose boot camp may be a possible approach for people to try, but big questions remain about how it works and for whom, Munger says. “In my view, it’s very important to be up front with patients about the very real possibility this therapy may not lead to a restoration of smell, even if they and their doctor feel it is worth trying,” he says. “I am not trying to discourage people here, but I also think we need to be very careful not to give unwarranted promises.”

Smell training doesn’t come with harmful biological side effects, but it can induce frustration if it doesn’t work, Parma says. In her practice, “I have been talking to a lot of people who say, ‘I did it every day for six months, twice a day for 10 minutes. I met in groups with other people, so we kept each other accountable, and I did that for six months. And it didn’t work for me.’” She adds, “I would want to address the frustration that this induces in patients.”

Beyond training

Other potential treatments are coming under scrutiny, such as steroids, omega-3 supplements, growth factors and vitamins A and E, all of which might encourage the recovery of the nasal epithelium.

More futuristic remedies are also in early stages of research. These include epithelial transplants designed to boost olfactory stem cells, treatments with platelet-rich plasma to curb inflammation and promote healing, and even an “electronic nose” that would detect odor molecules and stimulate the brain directly. This cyborg-smelling system takes inspiration from cochlear implants for hearing and retinal implants for vision.

For many people, the sense of smell is appreciated only after it’s gone, Parma says, an apathy that’s illustrated in stark terms by a recent study of about 400 people. The vast majority of respondents — nearly 85 percent — would rather give up their sense of smell than sight or hearing. About 19 percent of respondents said they would prefer to give up their sense of smell than their cell phone. The survey results “dramatically illustrate the negligible value people place on their sense of smell,” researchers wrote in the March Brain Sciences.

Even as a doctor who treats people with smell loss, Pires has a newfound fondness for a good whiff. “Having lost it for a while made me appreciate it even more.”

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Health mis- and disinformation are a serious public health concern, with an increased spread of fake health news on social media platforms in the last few years. Previous research has shown that online health messages are mostly incomplete and inaccurate and have potentially harmful health information. Fake health news can lead to poor health choices, risk-taking behavior, and loss of trust in health authorities.

"There has been an explosion of misinformation in the area of health during the COVID-19 pandemic," said principal investigator Dr. Radomír Masaryk, of Comenius University.

Most research on message credibility has focused on adults. Masaryk and his colleagues have now investigated whether teenagers are equipped to tackle the high volume of fake health news on the internet.

"As adolescents are frequent users of the internet, we usually expect that they already know how to approach and appraise online information, but the opposite seems to be true" commented Masaryk.

The researchers found that 41% of teenagers couldn't tell the difference between true and fake online medical content. What's more, poor editing of health messages was not perceived as a sign of low trustworthiness. These latest findings were published in Frontiers in Psychology.

Teenagers and the media

Teenagers are an often-overlooked group that are at an increased risk of encountering fake health news. As so-called 'digital natives' they are the world's most well-connected group, with 71% of the world's youth using the internet.

Research has shown that positive portrayals of risky behavior in the media, such as smoking and drinking, leads to increased risk behavior in teenagers.

On the other hand, online health information that supports information provided by professionals can lead to healthy lifestyle changes, self-care, and treatment compliance.

Teenagers look at the structural features of a website, such as language and appearance, to evaluate online information. For example, authoritative organizations, trusted brands, or websites with business-like language tend to be more trusted.

Previous research on message trustworthiness with adolescents identified five editorial elements that deduced perceived message credibility:

superlatives, clickbait, grammar mistakes, authority appeal, and bold typeface. Drawing on this previous study, Masaryk and colleagues designed research to evaluate the effects of manipulation with content and format of health online messages on their trustworthiness in an adolescent sample.

They presented 300 secondary school students (aged between 16 and 19 years old) with seven short messages about the health promoting effects of different fruits and vegetables. The messages had different levels: fake message, true neutral message, and true message with editorial elements (superlatives, clickbait, grammar mistakes, authority appeal, and bold typeface). Participants were then asked to rate the message's trustworthiness.

The participants were able to discern between overtly fake health messages and health messages whether true or slightly changed with editing elements; 48% of participants trusted the true neutral health messages more than the fake ones. However, 41% of participants considered fake and true neutral messages equally trustworthy and 11% considered true neutral health messages less trustworthy than fake health messages.

Clickbait less likely to work

"Putting trust in messages requires identification of fake versus true content," said Masaryk.

In the case of health messages that seem plausible and reasonable, teenagers could not tell the difference between true neutral health messages and health messages with editorial elements. Teenagers did not seem to decide on the trustworthiness of a message based on editing cues.

"The only version of a health message that was significantly less trusted compared to a true health message was a message with a clickbait headline," continued Masaryk.

The results highlight a need for better instruction of teenagers to spot editing cues that give away the quality of a piece of information. The authors suggest focusing on health literacy and media literacy training, and skills such as analytical thinking and scientific reasoning.

"Analytical thinking and scientific reasoning are skills that help distinguish false from true health messages," Masaryk concluded.

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The findings, published in Nature Communications on August 29, 2022, will help scientists predict how plants will respond to climate change—and increase crop productivity despite the yield-harming global temperature rise.

"Right now, we grow crops in certain densities, but our findings indicate that we will need to lower these densities to optimize growth as our climate changes," says senior author Professor Joanne Chory, director of Salk's Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "Understanding the molecular basis of how plants respond to light and temperature will allow us to fine-tune crop density in a specific way that leads to the best yields."

During sprouting, seedlings rapidly elongate their stems to break through the covering soil to capture sunlight as fast as possible. Normally, the stem slows down its growth after exposure to sunlight. But the stem can lengthen rapidly again if the plant is competing with surrounding plants for sunlight, or in response to warm temperatures to increase distance between the hot ground and the plant's leaves. While both environmental conditions—canopy shade and warm temperatures—induce stem growth, they also reduce yield.

In this study, the scientists compared plants growing in canopy shade and warm temperatures at the same time—a condition that mimics high crop density and climate change. The scientists used the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, as well as tomato and a close relative of tobacco, because they were interested to see if all three plant species were affected similarly by this environmental condition.

Across all three species, the team found that the plants grew extremely tall when simultaneously trying to avoid the shade created by neighboring plants and being exposed to warmer temperatures. On a molecular level, the researchers discovered that transcription factor PIF7, a protein that helps turn genes "on" and "off," was the dominant player driving the increased rapid growth. They also found that the growth hormone auxin increased when the crops detected neighboring plants, which fostered growth in response to simultaneous warmer temperatures. This synergistic PIF7-auxin pathway allowed the plants to respond to their environments and adapt to seek the best growing conditions.

A related transcription factor, PIF4, also stimulated stem elongation during warm temperatures. However, when shade and increased temperatures were combined, this factor no longer played an important role.

"We were surprised to find that PIF4 did not play a major role because prior studies have shown the importance of this factor in related growth situations," says first author Yogev Burko, a Salk staff researcher and assistant professor at the Agriculture Research Organization at the Volcani Institute in Israel. "The fact that PIF7 is the dominant driving force behind this plant growth was a real surprise. With this new knowledge, we hope to fine-tune this growth response in different crop plants to help them adapt to climate change."

The researchers believe that there is another player, yet to be discovered, that is boosting the effect of PIF7 and auxin. They hope to explore this unknown factor in future studies. Burko's lab will also be studying how this pathway can be optimized in crop plants.

"Global temperatures are increasing, so we need food crops that can thrive in these new conditions," says Chory, who co-directs Salk's Harnessing Plants Initiative and holds the Howard H. and Maryam R. Newman Chair in Plant Biology. "We've identified key factors that regulate plant growth during warm temperatures, which will help us to develop better-performing crops to feed future generations."

Other authors included Björn Christopher Willige and Adam Seluzicki of Salk; Ondřej Novák of Palacký University and Institute of Experimental Botany at The Czech Academy of Sciences; and Karin Ljung of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

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Launch controllers halted the tanking operation, which already was running an hour late because of thunderstorms offshore. They slowly resumed the process to confirm that it was, indeed, a hydrogen fuel leak and not faulty sensors, but alarms forced another temporary pause as precious minutes in the countdown ticked away.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket is the most powerful ever built my NASA, out-muscling even the Saturn V that carried astronauts to the moon a half-century ago.

This test flight, if successful, would put a crew capsule into lunar orbit for the first time in 50 years.

No astronauts were inside the Orion capsule atop the rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Instead, three test dummies were strapped in for the lunar-orbiting mission, expected to last six weeks.

Even with no one on board, thousands of people jammed the coast to see the Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket soar. Vice President Kamala Harris flew into Orlando with her husband, but had yet to make the hourlong drive to Cape Canaveral for the planned liftoff.

The next launch attempt wouldn't be until Friday at the earliest.

Hydrogen fuel leaks marred NASA's countdown test back in April, prompting a slew of repairs. The demo was repeated with more success in June, but that, too, experienced some leakage. Managers said they would not know for certain whether the fixes were good until attempting to load the rocket's tanks with nearly 1 million gallons of super-cold fuel on Monday.

Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her team also had to deal with a communication issue involving the Orion capsule.

Engineers scrambled to understand an 11-minute delay in the communication lines between Launch Control and Orion that cropped up late Sunday.

Although the problem had cleared by Monday morning, NASA needed to know why it occurred before committing to launch.

The NASA moon rocket stands ready less than 24 hours before it is scheduled to launch on Pad 39B for the Artemis 1 mission to orbit the moon at the Kennedy Space Center, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2022, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Credit: AP Photo/John Raoux

This first flight of NASA's 21st-century moon-exploration program, named Artemis after Apollo's mythological twin sister, is years overdue. Repeated delays have led to billions in budget overruns; this demo alone costs $4.1 billion.

Assuming the test goes well, astronauts would climb aboard for the second flight and fly around the moon and back as soon as 2024. A two-person lunar landing could follow by the end of 2025. NASA is targeting the moon's south pole.

NASA’s new moon rocket is set to blast off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Monday morning.

During Apollo, 12 astronauts landed on the moon from 1969 through 1972, with stays of no more than a few days. NASA is looking to establish a lunar base during Artemis, with astronauts rotating in and out for weeks at a time. The next step would be Mars, possibly in the late 2030s or early 2040s.

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Synthetic milk does not require cows or other animals. It can have the same biochemical make up as animal milk, but is grown using an emerging biotechnology technique know as "precision fermentation" that produces biomass cultured from cells.

More than 80 percent of the world's population regularly consume dairy products. There have been increasing calls to move beyond animal-based food systems to more sustainable forms of food production.

Synthetic milks offer dairy milk without concerns such as methane emissions or animal welfare. But it must overcome many challenges and pitfalls to become a fair, sustainable, and viable alternative to animal-based milk.

Not a sci-fi fantasy

My recent research examined megatrends in the global dairy sector. Plant-based milks and, potentially, synthetic milks, emerged as a key disruption.

Unlike synthetic meat – which can struggle to match the complexity and texture of animal meat – synthetic milk is touted as having the same taste, look, and feel as normal dairy milk.

Synthetic milk is not a sci-fi fantasy; it already exists. In the US, for example, the Perfect Day company supplies animal-free protein made from microflora, which is then used to make ice cream, protein powder, and milk.

In Australia, start-up company Eden Brew has been developing synthetic milk at Werribee in Victoria. The company is targeting consumers increasingly concerned about climate change and, in particular, the contribution of methane from dairy cows.

CSIRO reportedly developed the technology behind the Eden Brew product. The process starts with yeast and uses "precision fermentation" to produce the same proteins found in cow milk.

CSIRO says these proteins give milk many of its key properties and contribute to its creamy texture and frothing ability. Minerals, sugars, fats, and flavors are added to the protein base to create the final product.

Towards a new food system?

Also in Australia, the All G Foods company this month raised AU$25 million to accelerate production of its synthetic milk. Within seven years, the company wants its synthetic milk to be cheaper than cow milk.

If the synthetic milk industry can achieve this cost aim across the board, the potential to disrupt the dairy industry is high. It could steer humanity further away from traditional animal agriculture towards radically different food systems.

A 2019 report into the future of dairy found that by 2030, the US precision fermentation industry will create at least 700,000 jobs.

And if synthetic milk can replace dairy as an ingredient in the industrial food processing sector, this could present significant challenges for companies that produce milk powder for the ingredient market.

Some traditional dairy companies are jumping on the bandwagon.

For example, Australian dairy co-operative Norco is backing the Eden Brew project, and New Zealand dairy cooperative Fonterra last week announced a joint venture to develop and commercialize "fermentation-derived proteins with dairy-like properties".

Synthetic milk: the whey forward?

The synthetic milk industry must grow exponentially before it becomes a sizable threat to animal-based dairy milk. This will require a lot of capital and investment in research and development, as well as new manufacturing infrastructure such as fermentation tanks and bioreactors.

Production of conventional animal-milk in the Global South now outstrips that of the Global North, largely due to rapid growth across Asia. Certainly, the traditional dairy industry is not going away any time soon.

And synthetic milk is not a panacea. While the technology has huge potential for environmental and animal welfare gains, it comes with challenges and potential downsides.

For example, alternative proteins do not necessarily challenge the corporatization or homogenization of conventional industrial agriculture. This means big synthetic milk producers might push out low-tech or small-scale dairy – and alternative dairy – systems.

What's more, synthetic milk could further displace many people from the global dairy sector. If traditional dairy co-ops in Australia and New Zealand are moving into synthetic milk, for example, where does this leave dairy farmers?

As synthetic milk gains ground in coming years, we must guard against replicating existing inequities in the current food system.

And the traditional dairy sector must recognize it's on the cusp of pivotal change. In the face of multiple threats, it should maximize the social benefits of both animal-based dairy and minimize its contribution to climate change.

Milena Bojovic, PhD Candidate, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Do you like old timey music?

Splendid.

You can’t get more old timey than Hurrian Hymn No. 6, which was discovered on a clay tablet in the ancient Syrian port city of Ugarit in the 1950s, and is over 3400 year old.

Actually, you can – a similar tablet making reference to Lipit-Ishtar, a hymn glorifying the 5th king of the First Dynasty of Isin, in what is now Iraq, is older by some 600 years, but as CMUSE reports, it “contains little more than tuning instructions for the lyre.”

Hurrian Hymn No. 6 offers meatier content, and unlike five other tablets discovered in the same location, is sufficiently well preserved to allow archeologists, and others, to take a crack at reconstructing its song, though it was by no means easy.

University of California emeritus professor of Assyriology Anne Kilmer spent 15 years researching the tablet, before transcribing it into modern musical notation in 1972.

Hers is one of several interpretations YouTuber hochelaga samples in the above video.

While the original tablet gives specific details on how the musician should place their fingers on the lyre, other elements, like tuning or how long notes should be held, are absent, giving modern arrangers some room for creativity.

Below archaeomusicologist Richard Dumbrill explains his interpretation from 1998, in which vocalist Lara Jokhader assumes the part of a young woman privately appealing to the goddess Nikkal to make her fertile:

Here’s a particularly lovely classical guitar spin, courtesy of Syrian musicologist Raoul Vitale and composer Feras Rada…

And a haunting piano version, by Syrian-American composer Malek Jandali, founder of Pianos for Peace:

And who can resist a chance to hear Hurrian Hymn No. 6 on a replica of an ancient lyre by “new ancestral” composer Michael Levy, who considers it his musical mission to “open a portal to a time that has been all but forgotten:”

 I dream to rekindle the very spirit of our ancient ancestors. To capture, for just a few moments, a time when people imagined the fabric of the universe was woven from harmonies and notes. To luxuriate in a gentler time when the fragility of life was truly appreciated and its every action was performed in the almighty sense of awe felt for the ancient gods.

Samurai Guitarist Steve Onotera channels the mystery of antiquity too, by combining Dr. Dumbrill’s melody with Dr. Kilmer’s, trying and discarding a number of approaches – synthwave, lo-fi hip hop, reggae dub (“an absolute disaster”) – before deciding it was best rendered as a solo for his Fender electric.

Amaranth Publishing has several MIDI files of Hurrian Hymn No 6, including Dr. Kilmer’s, that you can download for free here.

Open them in the music notation software program of your choice, and should it please the goddess, perhaps yours will be the next interpretation of Hurrian Hymn No. 6 to be featured here on Open Culture…

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When Anika Puri visited India with her family four years ago, she was surprised to come across a market in Bombay filled with rows of ivory jewelry and statues. Globally, ivory trade has been illegal for more than 30 years, and elephant hunting has been prohibited in India since the 1970s.

“I was quite taken aback,” the 17-year-old from Chappaqua, New York, recalls. “Because I always thought, ‘well, poaching is illegal, how come it really is still such a big issue?’”

Curious, Puri did some research and discovered a shocking statistic: Africa’s forest elephant population had declined by about 62 percent between 2002 and 2011. Years later, the numbers continue to drop. A wildlife lover, Puri wanted to do something to help protect the species and others still threatened by poaching.

Drones are currently used to detect and capture images of poachers, and they aren’t that accurate, the teenager explains. But after watching videos of elephants and humans, she saw how the two differed vastly in the way they move—their speed, their turning patterns and other motions.

“I realized that we could use this disparity between these two movement patterns in order to actually increase the detection accuracy of potential poachers,” she says.

Over the course of two years, Puri created ElSa (short for elephant savior), a low-cost prototype of a machine-learning-driven software that analyzes movement patterns in thermal infrared videos of humans and elephants. Puri says the software is four times more accurate than existing state-of-the-art detection methods. It also eliminates the need for expensive high-resolution thermal cameras, which can cost in the thousands, she says. ElSa uses a $250 FLIR ONE Pro thermal camera with 206x156 pixel resolution that plugs into an off-the-shelf iPhone 6. The camera and iPhone are then attached to a drone, and the system produces real-time inferences as it flies over parks as to whether objects below are human or elephant.

Puri submitted her project to this year’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest international pre-college STEM competition, where her work is in the company of other highschoolers’ novel designs for an electric vehicle motor, electronic waste sorting robot arm and a pipe-climbing robot. Her eloquence in describing her research and its potential impact on society earned her the Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication, and she also won a top award in the competition’s earth and environmental sciences category.

Puri won the $10,000 Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication for her ability to communicate her research. Society for Science

“It's really amazing just to see all these kids coming together. And for the same purpose— enjoying science and doing research,” Puri says. “I was honored just to be on that stage.”

Puri first learned about the capabilities of artificial intelligence just after ninth grade, when she was selected to attend Stanford A.I. Lab’s summer program.

“Initially, my enthusiasm for artificial intelligence was based off of this limitless possibility for social good,” she says. But she soon discovered that because data is collected and analyzed by humans, it contains human biases, and so does A.I. as a result.

“It really has the capability to reinforce some of the worst aspects of our society,” she says. “What I really realized from this is how important it is that women, people of color, all sorts of minorities in the field of technology are at the forefront of this kind of groundbreaking technology.”

About a year later, Puri founded a nonprofit called mozAIrt, which inspires girls and other underrepresented groups to get involved in computer science using a combination of music, art and A.I.

At an A.I. conference where she held a workshop, Puri met Elizabeth Bondi-Kelly, a Harvard computer scientist who was working on a wildlife conservation project using drones and machine learning. Bondi-Kelly had also started a nonprofit, called Try AI, to increase diversity in the field.

Puri reached out to the computer scientist about her idea to catch elephant poachers using movement patterns, and Bondi-Kelly became her mentor for the project.

To create her model, Puri first found movement patterns of humans and elephants using the Benchmarking IR Dataset for Surveillance with Aerial Intelligence (BIRDSAI), a dataset collected by Bondi-Kelly and her colleagues using a thermal infrared camera attached to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in multiple protected areas in Africa. Sifting through the data, Puri identified 516 time series extracted from videos that captured humans or elephants in motion.

Puri used a machine learning algorithm to train a model to classify a figure as either an elephant or a human based on its speed, group size, turning radius, number of turns and other patterns. She used 372 series—300 elephant movements, and 72 human movements. The remaining 144 were used to test her model with data it hadn’t seen before. When tested on the BIRDSAI dataset, her model was able to detect humans with over 90 percent accuracy.

Puri obtained her commercial drone piloting license to test her research in her backyard. Anika Puri

Puri's software is "quite commendable," says Jasper Eikelboom, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who is designing a system to detect poachers using GPS trackers on animals. “It's quite remarkable that a high school student has been able to do something like this,” he says. “Not only the research and the analysis, but also…being able to implement it in the prototypes.”

Eikelboom cautions that Puri’s model still needs to be tested on raw video footage to see how well it can detect poachers—the accuracy of Puri’s model was tested using figures already determined either human or elephant. He also says other barriers already exist to using drones in parks, such as the money and manpower to keep them flying.

ElSa, he notes, could be used broadly for other conservation goals, not just for spotting poachers, too.

“In ecology in general, we like to track animals and see what they're doing and how it impacts the ecosystem,” he says. “And if we look, for example, on the satellite data, we can find a lot of moving patterns, but we don't know what species they are. I think it's a very smart move to look at these movement patterns themselves instead of only at the image—at the pixels—to determine what kind of species it is.”

In the fall, Puri will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she wants to study electrical engineering and computer science. She has plans to expand her movement pattern research into other endangered animals. Next up is rhinos, she says. And she wants to begin implementing her software in national parks in Africa, including South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Covid-19 restrictions delayed some of her plans to travel to these parks to get her project off the ground, but she hopes to explore her options after she starts college. Because drones only have a battery life of a few hours, she is currently creating a path-planning algorithm to ensure maximum efficiency in the drone’s flight course.

“Research isn't a straight line,” Puri says. “That has made me more resourceful. It also helped me develop into a more innovative thinker. You learn along the way.”

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