The doorway doppelgänger is so eerily convincing we're almost tempted to start believing that it leads to a little hideaway for Martians, or perhaps a portal to another Universe entirely. We're also getting 'tunnel to the center of the planet' vibes from this.

At the very least, the picture and the geological feature it's captured would seem to be enough to inspire a science-fiction movie or two.

The door-like rock formation. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

However, the far more sensible people of Reddit have pointed to this likely being a shear fracture: the result of some kind of strain on the rock breaking part of it off, perhaps given a helping hand by a marsquake or two.

In fact, the largest temblor recorded on the red planet so far happened on May 4 of this year, and scientists are still working to pinpoint where exactly it happened and what caused it.

What's more, while the the door-like rock formation may appear to be full-sized in our imaginations, it's possible the cavity seen is only a few centimeters or inches tall in real life, though it's difficult to be certain from the picture.

You can see a bigger, colorized version of the original picture here. The doorway shape is up towards the top of the composite image, a little to the left of the center.

The image was taken at a geological feature known as Greenheugh Pediment, by the Mast Camera on board Curiosity, on 7 May 2022.

In the years that we've had access to close-ups of Mars from landers and orbiters, we've been treated to some truly weird and wonderful snapshots of the red planet: craters filled with ice, strange chevron-shaped rock formations, hollowed-out mountains and plenty more.

In terms of spooky discoveries in space that appear to resemble 'alien' structures, it's important we don't get too carried away with what grainy images can sometimes suggest.

You may remember the strange, cube-shaped object spotted on the Moon by China's Yutu 2 rover last year. After further investigation, it turns out that the 'alien hut' was simply another rock – with tricks of light and perspective giving it its cuboid shape.

Similarly, we suspect that this mystery doorway will ultimately have an explanation that's just as ordinary... but we're having plenty of fun speculating in the meantime.

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A passenger with no flying experience landed a plane in Florida after the pilot fell ill.

Air traffic controller Robert Morgan teaches new pilots, and he helped guide the man down to Palm Beach International Airport just after noon on Tuesday.

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New Delhi: Steven Paul Jobs, popularly known as Steve Jobs, is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. However, there are many little known things about Jobs that continue to surprise me.

Jobs, born on February 24, 1955, was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a member of The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. (Twitter)

Jobs became the CEO of Apple in 1997 and was largely responsible for helping revive Apple, which had been on the verge of bankruptcy.

Jobs became the CEO of Apple in 1997 and was largely responsible for helping revive Apple, which had been on the verge of bankruptcy. (Twitter)

Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2003. He died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor at age 56 on October 5, 2011.

Even though his life might appear as an open book to the world, especially with his achievements and super success, a few facets and facts about the man have been under the wraps with only a very limited number of people having access.

So, here we share 10 unknown facts about Steve Jobs, whose name became synonymous with the tech giant Apple and the revolutionary products it created for the masses.

Altogether, a third of the 458 patented inventions and designs credited to Jobs have been approved since he died. (Twitter)

1. Steve Jobs was adopted. Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955 to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a political migrant from the Syrian city of Homs. He was adopted by Clara and Paul Reinhold Jobs.
2. Steve Jobs never wrote a single line of programming code. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak revealed the fact that Steve Jobs never wrote a programming code. “Steve didn’t ever code. He wasn’t an engineer and he didn’t do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs,” said Wozniak.
3. Steve Jobs was dyslexic. In fact, some of the most successful tech leaders have suffered from a reading disorder called dyslexia which is a form of learning disability that hampers the ability to read or write.”It’s extremely inspiring for youngsters who struggle with dyslexia to see people like Steven Spielberg, who not only succeed but succeed well,” says Dr Stefani Hines, an expert in the disorder at Beaumont Hospitals in Royal Oak, Michigan. “It has nothing to do with intelligence, however. A lot of dyslexics, like Apple founder Steve Jobs, are highly intelligent, even gifted,” adds Dr Stefani Hines.
4. Every Apple iPhone ad displays the time as 9:41, the time Steve Jobs unveiled it in 2007. “The 9:41 AM time displayed on iPhone and iPad advertisements is the time when the original iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs in 2007,” former iOS chief Scott Forstall once said.
5. Steve Jobs was awarded 141 new patents since his death in August 2011 which is more than most inventors win during their lifetimes. Design patents won by Steve Jobs during the 1980s show concepts for the Apple III and the MacIntosh. Altogether, a third of the 458 patented inventions and designs credited to Jobs have been approved since he died.
6. Steve Jobs is buried in an unmarked grave in Palo Alto’s Alta Mesa Cemetery. At his family’s request, his grave is unmarked and the cemetery has not revealed its location. But that hasn’t stopped people from trying to find it.
7. Steve Jobs did not let his kids use iPads and limited their use of technology to a minimum. When he was asked, “Your kids must love the iPad?” He said, “Actually we don’t allow the iPad in the home. We think it’s too dangerous for them in effect.” The reason why he said that was because he recognized just how addictive the iPad was.
8. A rare Apple-1 computer built in Steve Jobs’ garage in the summer of 1976 was sold at an auction in 2014 for USD 9,05,000. It was bought by The Henry Ford Museum.
9. During his tenure as Apple CEO, Steve Jobs paid himself just $1every year from 1997 to 2011. Steve Jobs took a salary of $1 every year from 1997 to 2011. However, during this time his stocks increased from $17.5 million to $2.2 Billion. When Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997 after a 12-year absence, the company was really struggling. Taking a $1 salary was a way of showing how much he cared about the company he’d co-founded two decades earlier in his parents’ garage. Jobs held lots of Apple shares and knew that if he could make the company a success again, he’d be compensated by seeing their value rise dramatically.
10. Steve Jobs spent seven months traveling around India, experimenting with psychedelic drugs and eventually adopting the practices of Zen Buddhism. Jobs came to India with his friend Dan Kottke somewhere between 1974 and 1976. According to unofficial Steve Jobs autobiography iCon, Kottke states “He was totally determined to go to India. He felt some kind of unresolved pain over being adopted. That was the same period that he hired a private investigator to try and track down his mother. He was obsessed with it for a while.” In New Delhi, Steve chose to don a lungi and roam around barefoot.

Steve Jobs has somewhat become a part of the folklore, given the fact that not only did he leave behind a robust, powerful legacy, but his life was also equally illustrious, mystical, and full of adventures.

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"For many decades it's been standard medical practice to treat pain with anti-inflammatory drugs. But we found that this short-term fix could lead to longer-term problems," says Jeffrey Mogil, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University and E. P. Taylor Chair in Pain Studies.

The difference between people who get better and don't

In the study published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers examined the mechanisms of pain in both humans and mice. They found that neutrophils—a type of white blood cell that helps the body fight infection—play a key role in resolving pain.

"In analyzing the genes of people suffering from lower back pain, we observed active changes in genes over time in people whose pain went away. Changes in the blood cells and their activity seemed to be the most important factor, especially in cells called neutrophils," says Luda Diatchenko a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Dentistry, and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Human Pain Genetics.

Inflammation plays a key role in resolving pain

"Neutrophils dominate the early stages of inflammation and set the stage for repair of tissue damage. Inflammation occurs for a reason, and it looks like it's dangerous to interfere with it," says Professor Mogil, who is also a member of the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain along with Professor Diatchenko.

Experimentally blocking neutrophils in mice prolonged the pain up to ten times the normal duration. Treating the pain with anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids like dexamethasone and diclofenac also produced the same result, although they were effective against pain early on.

These findings are also supported by a separate analysis of 500,000 people in the United Kingdom that showed that those taking anti-inflammatory drugs to treat their pain were more likely to have pain two to ten years later, an effect not seen in people taking acetaminophen or anti-depressants.
Reconsidering standard medical treatment of acute pain

"Our findings suggest it may be time to reconsider the way we treat acute pain. Luckily pain can be killed in other ways that don't involve interfering with inflammation," says Massimo Allegri, a Physician at the Policlinico of Monza Hospital in Italy and Ensemble Hospitalier de la Cote in Switzerland.

"We discovered that pain resolution is actually an active biological process," says Professor Diatchenko. These findings should be followed up by clinical trials directly comparing anti-inflammatory drugs to other pain killers that relieve aches and pains but don't disrupt inflammation."

"Acute inflammatory response via neutrophil activation protects against the development of chronic pain" by Marc Parisien et al. was published in Science Translational Medicine.

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Also:  Short-term use of ibuprofen may increase chance of chronic pain, study suggests.

Could Haugen get to Washington in four days, Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed asked. She'd been chosen to be the first lady's guest at the forthcoming State of the Union.

"It actually was mildly disruptive," recalls Haugen, who lives in Puerto Rico. "But, you know—the kind of disruption you don't mind."

It was only in October, during a "60 Minutes" interview, that Haugen first publicly identified herself as the whistleblower responsible for leaking thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents to Congress, the Wall Street Journal and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Those disclosures—which were subsequently made available to many other news outlets, including The Times—turned the former Facebook product manager into the face of long-brewing backlash against Facebook, its sister app Instagram and the social media industry writ large. By publicizing files demonstrating that Facebook (which has since changed its name to Meta Platforms) had been internally aware of a wide variety of problems with its products, including the effect they can have on teen mental health, Haugen offered critics of the company something that looked a lot like a smoking gun.

The transition to public figure was an unlikely one for Haugen. "I don't crave attention," she told The Times. "I eloped the first time I got married. I've had two birthday parties in, like, 20 years."

But now, her profile boosted by a presidential shout-out in the State of the Union speech, Haugen is making the most of her new soapbox. That means throwing her weight behind efforts to solve the same problems she helped expose, including in California.

Central to her efforts is a bill creeping its way through the state Assembly. Dubbed the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, it would require web platforms that children are likely to use to put in place data privacy measures such as making user settings high-privacy by default, describing privacy policies in language kids can understand and prohibiting children's personal information from being used for anything other than the purpose for which it was initially collected.

"I don't want to take too much credit for [the bill] because I did not play a hand in drafting it," Haugen said. "But I am a strong supporter that we need to be beginning to extend the same standards that we have for physical toys for children to the virtual space because right now there are some pretty insane consequences that are happening because these products aren't designed for children."

Haugen did a question-and-answer session for state lawmakers in Sacramento a few weeks ago—"I'm very willing to help answer questions for anyone who wants to understand more about what the impacts [of] algorithms are"—and also spoke at the Mom 2.0 summit, a Los Angeles gathering for parenting-focused influencers in late April.

That Haugen is largely focused on how social media affect their youngest users is no accident. Although her disclosures cast light on a wide variety of internet issues—disinformation, radicalization and human trafficking—it's been the content about children and teens that seems to have most moved lawmakers.

In particular, internal Facebook research that Haugen helped make public showed that nearly a third of teenage girls the company had surveyed said that "when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse." Facebook had historically downplayed its mental health effect on young users, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

The company has maintained post-leak that its research was misrepresented, but the reveal nevertheless sparked congressional hearings and, although the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act was developed independently of Haugen, heightened the stakes of the California bill.

"Frances has brought tremendous public awareness to this cause, especially on the issue of kids," Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), who's co-sponsoring the Design Code Act, said in an emailed statement. "I'm grateful that she came to Sacramento last month to speak to lawmakers and advocates, and that she continues to lend her voice and expertise to explaining why policies like the code are needed to keep kids safe online."

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

Haugen said she's not surprised that this part of her leaks has drawn so much interest.

"The solutions to a lot of the problems outlined in my disclosures are actually quite complicated," she said. "When it comes to kids, it's really simple."

The effect of social media on kids has become such a hot-button issue that a second bill with a similar focus is also now moving through the Assembly: the Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act, which would let parents sue social media companies for designing addictive software. Haugen said she wasn't aware of the bill, but co-sponsor Jordan Cunningham (R-Paso Robles) told The Times in March that her leaks were a catalyst for it. (A representative for Cunningham said that the assemblyman hasn't worked or spoken with Haugen directly. Wicks, the Oakland Democrat, is also a co-sponsor of the Duty to Children Act.)

Figuring prominently in Haugen's advocacy has been Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that analyzes the effect media and technology have on young people, and Jim Steyer, its founder and chief executive. Common Sense Media asked Haugen if she'd help it support the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, the whistleblower said, and she said yes.

"Frances has turned out to be an excellent partner for us because she … does a great job of explaining how the tech platforms work, some of the harms involved and why we need major legislation and regulation," said Steyer, the brother of 2020 presidential candidate and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer.

His organization has been working with Haugen for about five months, Steyer said, after her legal team approached it about collaborating: "We started planning ways in which we could work on federal legislation, as well as California legislation, and also on mobilizing young people." (Wicks used to work at Common Sense Media.)

The organization also worked with the White House to get Haugen to the State of the Union, Steyer said.

Haugen's sway extends beyond the West Coast. She estimates that she's spent about five and a half weeks in Europe working to support a landmark European Union law—the Digital Services Act—that would compel social media platforms, including Facebook, to more aggressively moderate hate speech, disinformation and other user-generated content, as well as ban online ads targeting children. Both the European Parliament and the member states of the European Union have agreed on the contents of the DSA, although it's still subject to formal approval.

"Up until the DSA passing, that was kind of the main focus, doing support around gaining awareness," Haugen said. She was on the ground "supporting legislators, doing testimony, meeting with various ministries [and] meeting with other civil society groups," and also wrote a New York Times opinion piece in support of the law.

She's also gotten involved with environmental, social and governance, or ESG, efforts aimed at helping investors "have criteria for how to evaluate whether or not social media companies are acting in a prosocial way," she said, and is working on founding a nonprofit that will combine that work with support for litigation as well as education efforts geared toward teaching people about social media. Steyer said that his organization has been helping Haugen "incubate" her nonprofit.

It's a meteoric rise for someone who, less than a year ago, had no national profile.

"When I disclosed the documents to the SEC and Congress, I had no expectations on what was going to happen," Haugen said. "My primary goal was I didn't want to carry the burden for the rest of my life that I had known something and I had done nothing."

But despite all that's happened since she stepped into the public eye—White House phone calls, European excursions, rubbing shoulders with California's political heavyweights—Haugen said the main difference she's experienced over the last few months has been the weight that's been lifted from her shoulders.

"The biggest thing that's changed in my life," she said, "is I can sleep at night."

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People started dumping their start-up stock, too.

The number of people and groups trying to unload their start-up shares doubled in the first three months of the year from late last year, said Phil Haslett, a founder of EquityZen, which helps private companies and their employees sell their stock. The share prices of some billion-dollar start-ups, known as “unicorns,” have plunged by 22 percent to 44 percent in recent months, he said.

“It’s the first sustained pullback in the market that people have seen in legitimately 10 years,” he said.

That’s a sign of how the start-up world’s easy-money ebullience of the last decade has faded. Each day, warnings of a coming downturn ricochet across social media between headlines about another round of start-up job cuts. And what was once seen as a sure path to immense riches — owning start-up stock — is now viewed as a liability.

The turn has been swift. In the first three months of the year, venture funding in the United States fell 8 percent from a year earlier, to $71 billion, according to PitchBook, which tracks funding. At least 55 tech companies have announced layoffs or shut down since the beginning of the year, compared with 25 this time last year, according to Layoffs.fyi, which monitors layoffs. And I.P.O.s, the main way start-ups cash out, plummeted 80 percent from a year ago as of May 4, according to Renaissance Capital, which follows I.P.O.s.

Last week, Cameo, a celebrity shout-out app; On Deck, a career-services company; and MainStreet, a financial technology start-up, all shed at least 20 percent of their employees. Fast, a payments start-up, and Halcyon Health, an online health care provider, abruptly shut down in the last month. And the grocery delivery company Instacart, one of the most highly valued start-ups of its generation, slashed its valuation to $24 billion in March from $40 billion last year.

“Everything that has been true in the last two years is suddenly not true,” said Mathias Schilling, a venture capitalist at Headline. “Growth at any price is just not enough anymore.”

The start-up market has weathered similar moments of fear and panic over the past decade. Each time, the market came roaring back and set records. And there is plenty of money to keep money-losing companies afloat: Venture capital funds raised a record $131 billion last year, according to PitchBook.
But what’s different now is a collision of troubling economic forces combined with the sense that the start-up world’s frenzied behavior of the last few years is due for a reckoning. A decade-long run of low interest rates that enabled investors to take bigger risks on high-growth start-ups is over. The war in Ukraine is causing unpredictable macroeconomic ripples. Inflation seems unlikely to abate anytime soon. Even the big tech companies are faltering, with shares of Amazon and Netflix falling below their prepandemic levels.

“Of all the times we said it feels like a bubble, I do think this time is a little different,” said Albert Wenger, an investor at Union Square Ventures.

On social media, investors and founders have issued a steady drumbeat of dramatic warnings, comparing negative sentiment to that of the early 2000s dot-com crash and stressing that a pullback is “real.”

Even Bill Gurley, a Silicon Valley venture capital investor who got so tired of warning start-ups about bubbly behavior over the last decade that he gave up, has returned to form. “The ‘unlearning’ process could be painful, surprising and unsettling to many,” he wrote in April.

The uncertainty has caused some venture capital firms to pause deal making. D1 Capital Partners, which participated in roughly 70 start-up deals last year, told founders this year that it had stopped making new investments for six months. The firm said that any deals being announced had been struck before the moratorium, said two people with knowledge of the situation, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Other venture firms have lowered the value of their holdings to match the falling stock market. Sheel Mohnot, an investor at Better Tomorrow Ventures, said his firm had recently reduced the valuations of seven start-ups it invested in out of 88, the most it had ever done in a quarter. The shift was stark compared with just a few months ago, when investors were begging founders to take more money and spend it to grow even faster.

That fact had not yet sunk in with some entrepreneurs, Mr. Mohnot said. “People don’t realize the scale of change that’s happened,” he said.

Entrepreneurs are experiencing whiplash. Knock, a home-buying start-up in Austin, Texas, expanded its operations from 14 cities to 75 in 2021. The company planned to go public via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, valuing it at $2 billion. But as the stock market became rocky over the summer, Knock canceled those plans and entertained an offer to sell itself to a larger company, which it declined to disclose.

In December, the acquirer’s stock price dropped by half and killed that deal as well. Knock eventually raised $70 million from its existing investors in March, laid off nearly half its 250 employees and added $150 million in debt in a deal that valued it at just over $1 billion.

Throughout the roller-coaster year, Knock’s business continued to grow, said Sean Black, the founder and chief executive. But many of the investors he pitched didn’t care.

“It’s frustrating as a company to know you’re crushing it, but they’re just reacting to whatever the ticker says today,” he said. “You have this amazing story, this amazing growth, and you can’t fight this market momentum.”

Mr. Black said his experience was not unique. “Everyone is quietly, embarrassingly, shamefully going through this and not willing to talk about it,” he said.
Matt Birnbaum, head of talent at the venture capital firm Pear VC, said companies would have to carefully manage worker expectations around the value of their start-up stock. He predicted a rude awakening for some.

“If you’re 35 or under in tech, you’ve probably never seen a down market,” he said. “What you’re accustomed to is up and to the right your entire career.”

Start-ups that went public amid the highs of the last two years are getting pummeled in the stock market, even more than the overall tech sector. Shares in Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, have fallen 81 percent since its debut in April last year. Robinhood, the stock trading app that had explosive growth during the pandemic, is trading 75 percent below its I.P.O. price. Last month, the company laid off 9 percent of its staff, blaming overzealous “hypergrowth.”

SPACs, which were a trendy way for very young companies to go public in recent years, have performed so poorly that some are now going private again. SOC Telemed, an online health care start-up, went public using such a vehicle in 2020, valuing it at $720 million. In February, Patient Square Capital, an investment firm, bought it for around $225 million, a 70 percent discount.

Others are in danger of running out of cash. Canoo, an electric vehicle company that went public in late 2020, said on Tuesday that it had “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business.

Blend Labs, a financial technology start-up focused on mortgages, was worth $3 billion in the private market. Since it went public last year, its value has sunk to $1 billion. Last month, it said it would cut 200 workers, or roughly 10 percent of its staff.

Tim Mayopoulos, Blend’s president, blamed the cyclical nature of the mortgage business and the steep drop in refinancings that accompany rising interest rates.

“We’re looking at all of our expenses,” he said. “High-growth cash-burning businesses are, from an investor-sentiment perspective, clearly not in favor.”
The post Fear and Loathing Return to Tech Start-Ups appeared first on New York Times.

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Dramatic audio between the passenger and air traffic controllers revealed the tense moments before the single-engine Cessna 208 landed at Palm Beach International Airport.

In the audio obtained by CBS News, the unidentified passenger can be heard saying: "I've got a serious situation here. My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane."

"Roger. What's your position?" a controller responds. 

"I have no idea. I can see the coast of Florida in front of me. And I have no idea," the passenger says.

The controller can be heard instructing the passenger to "maintain wings level" and to "just try to follow the coast, either north or southbound."

Minutes later, air traffic controllers were able to locate the plane on radar and walk the passenger through how to land the small plane.

"The aircraft landed safely and one patient was transported to a local hospital," Palm Beach County Fire Rescue said in a statement.

There was no word on the name or condition of the pilot. They were the only two people aboard the plane.

The FAA said it will investigate the incident.

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Called the Fulling–Davies–Unruh effect (or sometimes just Unruh effect if you're pushed for time), this eerie glow of radiation emerging from the vacuum is akin to the mysterious Hawking radiation that's thought to surround black holes.

Only in this case, it's the product of acceleration rather than gravity.

Can't feel it? There's a good reason for that. You'd need to move at an impossible speed to sense even the weakest of Unruh rays.

For now, the effect remains a purely theoretical phenomenon, far beyond our ability to measure. But that could soon change, following a discovery by researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

By going back to basics, they've demonstrated there could be a way to stimulate the Unruh effect so it can be studied directly under less extreme conditions.

In an unexpected twist, they might also have uncovered the secret to turning matter invisible.

The real prize, however, would be breaking new grounds in experiments that aim to unite two powerful but incompatible theories in physics – one that describes how particles behave, the other covering the curving of space and time.

"The theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics are currently still somewhat at odds, but there has to be a unifying theory that describes how things function in the Universe," says mathematician Achim Kempf from the University of Waterloo.

"We've been looking for a way to unite these two big theories, and this work is helping to move us closer by opening up opportunities for testing new theories against experiments."

The Unruh effect sits right on the boundary of quantum laws and general relativity.

According to quantum physics, an atom sitting all alone in a vacuum would need to wait for an incoming photon to ripple through the electromagnetic field and give its electrons a jiggle before it could consider itself illuminated.

If we consider relativity, there is a way to cheat. Simply by accelerating, an atom could experience the smallest of wobbles in the surrounding electromagnetic field as low-energy photons, transformed by a kind of Doppler effect.

This interaction between the relative experience of waves in a quantum field and the jiggle of an atom's electrons relies on a shared timing in their frequencies. Any quantum effects that don't rely on timing are usually ignored, given on paper they tend to balance out in the long run.

Together with colleagues Vivishek Sudhir and Barbara Soda, Kempf showed that when an atom is accelerated, these usually negligible conditions become far more significant, and can actually take over as dominant effects.

By tickling an atom in just the right way, such as by using a powerful laser, they showed it's possible to make use of these alternative interactions to make moving atoms experience the Unruh effect without the need for large accelerations.

As a bonus, the team also found that given the right trajectory, an accelerating atom might turn transparent to incoming light, effectively suppressing its ability to absorb or emit certain photons.

Sci-fi applications aside, by identifying ways to influence an accelerating atom's ability to engage with ripples in a vacuum, it's possible we might be able to come up with new ways to find where quantum physics and general relativity give way to a new theoretical framework.

"For over 40 years, experiments have been hindered by an inability to explore the interface of quantum mechanics and gravity," says Sudhir, a physicist from MIT.

"We have here a viable option to explore this interface in a laboratory setting. If we can figure out some of these big questions, it could change everything."

This research was published in Physical Review Letters.

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Yet, a newly discovered species, Trechalea extensa, has this exact trick up its eight furry sleeves – and coming up for breath is seemingly not required.
For an ordinary spider, the cost of being submerged could be particularly high. There's heat loss, a lack of air, different predators under the water, and no way to eat.

But in a new study, researchers describe a tropical spider found next to a stream in Costa Rica, which was observed to stay underwater for a whopping 32 minutes.

"For a lot of species, getting wet and cold is almost as risky to survival as dealing with their predators to begin with," says Binghamton University biologist and lead author of the new study Lindsey Swierk.

"Trechalea spiders weren't previously known to hide underwater from threats – and certainly not for so long."

Back in July 2019, the researchers were near a stream at the Las Cruces Biological Station in the Puntarenas Province of Costa Rica, when they saw a T. extensa sitting on a boulder next to a small stream, part of the Java River.

When the researchers tried to capture it, the spider took off over the surface of the water – which these spiders are known to do. After the researchers continued the pursuit, the spider did something surprising – it scuttled down a rock and submerged itself around 25 centimeters (10 inches) under the water, and then stayed there… for over half an hour.

Unfortunately for the enterprising spider, when it emerged the researchers did manage to capture it, but the team also managed to film and photograph the weird underwater display.

Although their observations are based on only one spider encounter so far, the secret behind this ability seems to be a 'film' of air surrounding its whole body. The hairs covering the spider are so water-repelling, they can seemingly produce a kind of shield out of air to protect the spider from the harshness of the water.

"The film of air surrounding the spider when it is underwater appears to be held in place by hydrophobic hairs covering the spider's entire body surface," Swierk says.

"It's so complete that the spider almost looks like it's been dipped in silver. The film of air might serve to keep the respiratory openings away from water, since these spiders are air-breathing. The film of air might also help to minimize thermal loss to the cold stream water that the spider submerges itself in."

The research has been published in Ethology.

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A new estimate from researchers around the world has found 48 percent of living bird species are known or suspected to have declining populations.
That's more than 5,000 species that face a risky future. Among the species surveyed, only 6 percent showed increases in population.

"We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions of continentally distributed bird species," says conservation biologist Alexander Lees from Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK, and also at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

"Avian diversity peaks globally in the tropics and it is there that we also find the highest number of threatened species."

The appalling results come from some of the same team who, in 2019, calculated nearly 3 billion breeding birds had been lost in Northern America since the 1970s.

In 2021, another study determined that millions of birds had vanished in Europe in the past 40 years.

The recent estimates suggest similar patterns exist right across the planet, but especially in tropical, polar, and montane birds.

Without transformative action, thousands of avian species around the world are at risk of endangerment or even extinction.

Compared to temperate regions, there isn't a lot of long-term data on bird population trends in tropical and subtropical latitudes. But in some nations, like South Africa, evidence indicates at least half of all birds that depend on the forest are losing habitat.

In all likelihood, that loss is impacting bird abundance, but no research has shown exactly how much.

In Costa Rica, which is famed for bird biodiversity, avian abundance has declined over the past decade.

A review of the literature suggests most hotspots for threatened bird species exist in the tropical Andes, southeast Brazil, the eastern Himalayas, eastern Madagascar, and Southeast Asian islands.

"Estimates based on current trends predict an overall effective extinction rate… six times higher than the rate of outright extinction since 1500," the authors of the review write.

In temperate zones, like some spots of Australia, the struggle is particularly severe for farmland and woodland bird species, largely due to habitat loss.

In Japan, there's a similar trend occurring among the brown shrike and the yellow-breasted bunting, which have lost huge parts of their range.

Wetland birds in temperate zones seem to be holding up better, largely due to restoration efforts in North America and Europe.

The finding is reason not to give up, the researchers say. If we can limit selective logging, control wildfires and overgrazing, and improve habitat quality, we have the power to maintain and even restore wild landscapes.

"The fate of bird populations is strongly dependent on stopping the loss and degradation of habitats," says Lees.

"That is often driven by demand for resources. We need to better consider how commodity flows can contribute to biodiversity loss and try to reduce the human footprint on the natural world."

Climate change is also threatening birds, forcing population ranges to expand or shrink. Birds that live on mountaintops are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures, as they tend to have nowhere else to flee. Some scientists have called this problem 'an escalator to extinction'.

Migrating birds could also be impacted by climate change. With changing temperatures and shifting seasons, some studies suggest that birds are arriving or leaving their destinations too early or too late to survive as per usual.

Birds are some of the most well-studied animals on our planet, so how they are faring in a rapidly changing world has important implications for our understanding of wildlife as a whole.

Birds are not only pollinators and key players in ecosystems, they are sensitive indicators of environmental health.

That's why canaries were traditionally used to detect toxic gasses in mines: what harms them will also impact us too in time, as our fates are intrinsically linked.

"Fortunately, the global network of bird conservation organizations taking part in this study have the tools to prevent further loss of bird species and abundance," says retired conservation scientist Ken Rosenberg, who once worked at Cornell.

"From land protection to policies supporting sustainable resource-use, it all depends on the will of governments and of society to live side by side with nature on our shared planet."

The study was published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

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The study was led by Dr. José Manuel Fernández-Real and Dr. Jordi Mayneris-Perxachs, from the research group on Nutrition, Eumetabolism and Health at the IDIBGI and CIBEROBN, and Dr. Rafael Maldonado, from the Neuropharmacology-Neurophar research group at Pompeu Fabra University and attached to the Hospital de la Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM).

To reach these conclusions, the type and number of amino acids in the diet of the participants was analyzed. Participants also completed a questionnaire to measure their depressive mood. "We were surprised that what was most associated with depression, evaluated through this questionnaire, was the consumption of proline," says Dr. Fernández-Real, of the IDIBGI, and also head of the Endocrinology Section at Hospital Dr. Josep Trueta in Girona and director of the Department of Medical Sciences at the University of Girona. Confirming this, when plasma metabolomics were evaluated, the concentration of proline emerged as one of the metabolites most associated with indicators of depression.

Proline levels, depending on the microbiota

But not everyone who had a high intake of proline referred in the questionnaire to being more depressed. When studying these people's intestinal microbiota, a relationship was also observed between depression and bacteria, as well as between depression and bacterial genes associated with proline metabolism. Thus, it was observed that circulating proline levels depended on the microbiota. "The microbiota of patients with high proline consumption but low plasma levels of proline was similar to the microbiota associated with low levels of depression and was enriched in bacterial genes involved in the transport and metabolism of proline," states Dr. Mayneris-Perxachs, a Miguel Servet researcher at the IDIBGI.

To find out if the presence of proline was a cause or a consequence of depressive mood, participants' microbiota was transplanted into mice. The rodents that became more depressed had received the microbiota of participants with high proline, or more depressed subjects. Different genes associated with the transport of proline were also found in the brains of these mice. "The possibility of transferring the depression phenotype from humans to mice through microbiota transplantation and the demonstration that such transplantation generates alterations in proline transport reveals that this proline may be associated causally to depression," explains Dr. Maldonado, of UPF.

Another confirmatory experiment was carried out using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), in which a more depressive mood can be induced. The researchers isolated two types of bacteria from the microbiota associated with proline consumption and added them to the flies' sterilized feed. Flies that ingested food with Lactobacillus—which in mice was associated with less depression—were more able to overcome difficulties they faced afterwards. In contrast, those that ingested Enterobacter, which is associated with depression in humans, were much more depressed.

Finally, the same experiment was performed on genetically modified flies to eliminate the channels that carry proline to the brain. In this case, the proline was unable to reach the brain, and the flies proved to be highly resilient to depression.

"These results demonstrate the importance of proline and its influence on people's depressive mood, which so far had not been taken into account," highlights Dr. Fernández-Real. The study also opens the way to new studies to find possible diet-based treatments for depression.

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What it means to have a space telescope

Owning and operating a space telescope really opens the doors to a treasury of information about the universe. Certainly, that's what motivated the creation of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The dream of cosmic exploration motivated Hermann Oberth in the 1920s to write semi-science-fictional treatises about orbiting telescopes on asteroids. In his view, astronomers would live and work in space while using the telescope for extended periods of time. Their view would be unobstructed by Earth and its atmosphere. That vision inspired a number of later scientists to start planning a space telescope for real. Their work culminated in HST, the first of the so-called "great observatories" lofted to orbit. The others are Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and Spitzer Space Telescope.

Scientifically, orbiting space telescopes offer huge payoffs across a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, before HST, no one really had a good idea of the extent of galaxies in the universe. The famous Hubble Deep Field views let astronomers observe stars and galaxies as they were shortly after the Big Bang, in both visible and infrared light. HST revealed glimpses of the large-scale structure in the cosmos and objects as small as exoplanets, comets, and asteroids. All the great observatories set the stage for new generations of orbiting instruments, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, the European Space Agency's GAIA, NASA's WISE telescope, and now, the CSST.

NASA’s Great Observatories (CGRO, Chandra, HST and Spitzer) with the electromagnetic thermometer scale. X-Rays are associated with high temperatures of about 10 million – 100 million K. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

China enters the space telescope fray

Given the potential scientific rewards, it's not surprising that China is joining the "big space telescope club." It's also a source of national pride, especially if they can "out-Hubble Hubble." For example, once CSST is operational, Chinese scientists hope to survey the sky and observe more than 1 billion galaxies. Their instruments should let them get highly precise measurements of galaxy shapes, positions and brightnesses. They'll use the telescope to go after exoplanets, star birth regions, and other distant objects, gathering incredible amounts of high-resolution data.

China's astronomers hope their telescope will provide, as HST has done and JWST will do, more insight into the extent and distribution of dark matter. It might even give them better clues about the dark energy that affects the expansion of the universe. And, as HST and other telescopes have been, CSST will be a point of inspiration. It will, its designers hope, show new generations of Chinese scientists how to explore the cosmos.

Explore CSST: A next-generation space telescope

So what do we know about CSST? Picture in your mind a giant orbiting observatory. It's about the length of a three-story building and the width of a school bus. It has a 2-meter aperture and a three-mirror array set in an off-axis configuration. This observatory has a state-of-the-art survey camera, multi-channel imager, integral field spectrograph, cool-planet imaging coronagraph, and a terahertz receiver. The telescope can scan the sky using 30 81-megapixel detectors, and it is sensitive to near-infrared, visible, and near-ultraviolet light.

Rendering of Tiangong Space Station between October 2021 and March 2022, with Tianhe core module in the middle, Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft on the left, Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft on the right, and Shenzhou-13 crewed spacecraft at nadir. Credit: Shujianyang, CC BY-SA 4.0

Rendering of Tiangong Space Station between October 2021 and March 2022, with Tianhe core module in the middle, Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft on the left, Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft on the right, and Shenzhou-13 crewed spacecraft at nadir. Credit: Shujianyang, CC BY-SA 4.0

That's just a small taste of what CSST promises to do and be, according to scientists at the academy. Not surprisingly, they often compare it to Hubble and its 32 years of breathtaking observations. If the telescope goes up as planned, it will definitely surpass HST in many ways.

Li Ran, project scientist for CSST's Scientific Data Reduction System, pointed out that HST's field of view is small compared to the CSST's, which is 300 times larger. Where Hubble sees a small part of the sky at one time, CSST will see a much bigger picture. Li used the analogy of photographing a flock of sheep to explain its capabilities by comparison. "Hubble may see a sheep, but the CSST sees thousands, all at the same resolution," he said in a press release statement.

An observatory with its own service bay

One of the most unique aspects of CSST is where it will go in space. Originally, the telescope was going to be attached to the Tiangong space station, but that changed. For one thing, there's too much chance of cross-contamination from spacecraft coming and going. For another, CSST is so sensitive that it can't be attached to the station. Vibration, stray light, and possible obstructed views would interfere with the telescope operations. Current plans are to put it in the same orbit as the station (at about 265 miles altitude), but a safe distance away.

When the observatory needs any kind of servicing, it can maneuver over to Tiangong for refueling and other maintenance activities. That plan reflects a lesson learned from HST's 70's-era design. NASA paid for five on-orbit visits by astronauts to refurbish the observatory. So making the CSST serviceable by the station astronauts turns out to be a money-saver for the Chinese.

CSST (also known as Xuntian and Chinese Survey Space Telescope) is currently under final construction. It has been in planning and development since 2010.

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They're named 'solar dots'. The fleeting phenomenon, analysis has revealed, is likely the result of magnetic shenanigans – which wouldn't be hugely surprising, given that magnetic field changes play a huge role in all sorts of wacky solar phenomena.

Nevertheless, the finding suggests the Sun is even more complex than we knew; analysis of these sun freckles could improve our understanding of the role of the magnetic field on solar dynamics, and the magnetic field itself.

The fascinating dots were, ahem, spotted in images from the joint NASA-ESA Solar Orbiter, which launched in 2020 when the Sun had just entered a new cycle, and was growing more active.

On 20 May 2020, the spacecraft imaged some regions of magnetic flux, with magnetic loops arcing up from the solar photosphere.

The solar magnetic field is a complicated beast. It's generated by a dynamo process in the solar interior – the motion of a convecting, conducting fluid that generates electric and magnetic fields. We don't know exactly how it works, but the resulting magnetic field lines are numerous, dynamic, and complex.

Sunspots, for example, are regions where magnetic fields are particularly strong, and solar flares and coronal mass ejections are produced by magnetic field lines snapping and reconnecting.

The 11-year solar cycles mentioned earlier are driven by the magnetic field reversal that takes place every 11 years, when the solar magnetic poles switch places.

Led by astrophysicist Sanjiv Tiwari of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, a team of scientists took a closer look at one of these magnetic flux regions, imaged in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. They found tiny, round specks of brightness almost hidden in the solar plasma.

Image processing drew the dots into greater prominence, allowing the team to study them in detail. Over the course of about an hour, they were able to observe and characterize around 170 dots.

Overall, on average, the dots were around 675 kilometers (420 miles) in diameter (hey, that's small for the Sun), were around 30 percent brighter than the surrounding plasma, and lasted, on average, just 50 seconds before disappearing again. About half the dots remained isolated for the duration of their brief lives, while the remainder split into two, merged with other dots, or developed explosive loops or jets.

Comparison with data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory showing the Sun's magnetic field revealed that the dots appeared in the entire field of view covered by Solar Orbiter, but were more densely clustered in more magnetically active regions, especially the bigger and brighter dots.

The next step was to try and figure out what causes the speckles. This required the use of software that simulates the magnetohydrodynamics of the solar atmosphere, Bifrost.

This simulation revealed that the dots may be moments of magnetic reconnection between magnetic field lines emerging from the solar surface, and magnetic field lines descending into it.

Since magnetic reconnection in the solar atmosphere produces loops, this would explain why many of the dots stretch into an extended loop during their evolution.

However, some of the dots did not appear in regions with tangled magnetic fields, which suggests there might be multiple formation pathways for these mysterious features. One possible explanation, the team said, is the propagation of magnetoacoustic waves in the solar plasma, which could produce shocks that result in dots.

But the mystery is far from resolved. The dots imaged by Solar Orbiter aren't the only dots seen on the Sun, and they have been observed in different wavelengths and different magnetic environments.

Future research, the team said, could help to resolve these open questions, bringing us closer to truly understanding our fascinating star.

The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

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As these changes manifest, the usually stable environment of the ocean is becoming more unpredictable and erratic, and in some ways the phenomenon is akin to the ocean losing its memory, scientists suggest.

"Ocean memory, the persistence of ocean conditions, is a major source of predictability in the climate system beyond weather time scales," researchers explain in a new paper led by first author and climate researcher Hui Shi from the Farallon Institute in Petaluma, California.

"We show that ocean memory, as measured by the year-to-year persistence of sea surface temperature anomalies, is projected to steadily decline in the coming decades over much of the globe."

In the research, the team studied sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the shallow top layer of the ocean, called the upper-ocean mixed layer (MLD).

Despite the MLD's relative shallowness – extending only to a depth of about 50 meters down from the ocean's surface – this upper layer of water exhibits a lot of persistence over time in terms of thermal inertia, especially compared to the variations seen in the atmosphere above.

In the future, however, modeling suggests that this 'memory' effect of thermal inertia in the upper ocean is set to decline globally over the rest of the century, with dramatically greater variations in temperature predicted over coming decades.

"We discovered this phenomenon by examining the similarity in ocean surface temperature from one year to the next as a simple metric for ocean memory," explains Hui.

According to the researchers, shoaling effects in the MLD will introduce greater levels of water-mixing in the upper ocean, effectively thinning out the top layer.

This is expected to lower the ocean's capacity for thermal inertia, rendering the upper ocean more susceptible to random temperature anomalies.

Just what that means for marine wildlife is unclear, but the researchers note that "consequential impacts on populations are likely", although some species are expected to fare better than others in terms of adaptation.

On another note, the ocean memory decline is expected to make it significantly harder for scientists to forecast upcoming ocean dynamics, reducing reliable lead times for all sorts of predictions related to SSTs. This will hinder our ability to project monsoons, marine heatwaves (MHWs), and periods of extreme weather, among other things.

As extreme weather is predicted to become more frequent in the future, our need to accurately forecast measurements for things like ocean temperature, precipitation levels, and atmospheric anomalies becomes only more important – but if the ocean loses its memory, we risk going the other way, the researchers say.

"The projected decline in ocean memory is likely to hinder ocean prediction efforts by reducing the lead times at which SST forecasts, including those for MHWs, are skillful," the authors write.

"Future warming-induced MLD shoaling may also alter the statistics of temperature extremes … which combined with reduced lead time for persistence-based predictions of ocean surface conditions will pose challenges for ecosystem management and marine hazard preparation."

The findings are reported in Science Advances.

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After losing contact with its helicopter, NASA put the entire Mars mission on hold

Paxlovid has become the go-to option against COVID-19 because of its at-home convenience and impressive results in heading off severe disease. The U.S. government has spent more than $10 billion to purchase enough pills to treat 20 million people.

But experts say there is still much to be learned about the drug, which was authorized in December for adults at high risk of severe COVID-19 based on a study in which 1,000 adults received the medication.

WHY DO SOME PATIENTS SEEM TO RELAPSE?

Doctors have started reporting rare cases of patients whose symptoms return several days after completing Paxlovid's five-day regimen of pills. That's prompted questions about whether those patients are still contagious and should receive a second course of Paxlovid.

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration weighed in. It advised against a second round because there's little risk of severe disease or hospitalization among patients who relapse.

Dr. Michael Charness reported last month on a 71-year-old vaccinated patient who saw his symptoms subside but then return, along with a spike in virus levels nine days into his illness.

Charness says Paxlovid remains a highly effective drug, but he wonders if it might be less potent against the current omicron variant. The $500 drug treatment was tested and OK'd based on its performance against the delta version of the coronavirus.

"The ability to clear the virus after it's suppressed may be different from omicron to delta, especially for vaccinated people," said Charness, who works for Boston's VA health system.

Could some people just be susceptible to a relapse? Both the FDA and Pfizer point out that 1% to 2% of people in Pfizer's original study saw their virus levels rebound after 10 days. The rate was about the same among people taking the drug or dummy pills, "so it is unclear at this point that this is related to drug treatment," the FDA stated.

Some experts point to another possibility: The Paxlovid dose isn't strong enough to fully suppress the virus. Andy Pekosz of Johns Hopkins University worries that could spur mutations that are resistant to the drug.

"We should really make sure we're dosing Paxlovid appropriately because I would hate to lose it right now," said Pekosz, a virologist. "This is one of the essential tools we have to help us turn the corner on the pandemic."

HOW WELL DOES PAXLOVID WORK IN VACCINATED PEOPLE?

Pfizer tested Paxlovid in the highest-risk patients: unvaccinated adults with no prior COVID-19 infection and other health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes. The drug reduced their risk of hospitalization and death from 7% to 1%.

But that doesn't reflect the vast majority of Americans today, where 89% of adults have had at least one shot. And roughly 60% of Americans have been infected with the virus at some point.

"That's the population I care about in 2022 because that's who we're seeing—vaccinated people with COVID—so do they benefit?" asked Dr. David Boulware, a University of Minnesota researcher and physician.

There's no clear answer yet for vaccinated Americans, who already have a hospitalization rate far below 1%.

That may come from a large, ongoing Pfizer study that includes high-risk vaccinated people. No results have been published; the study is expected to wrap up in the fall.

Pfizer said last year that initial results showed Paxlovid failed to meet the study's goals of significantly resolving symptoms and reducing hospitalizations. It recently stopped enrolling anyone who's received a vaccination or booster in the past year, a change Boulware says suggests those patients aren't benefitting.

At a minimum, the preliminary data should be released to federal officials, Boulware said. "If the U.S. government is spending billions of dollars on this medicine, what's the obligation to release that data so that they can formulate a good policy?"

CAN PAXLOVID BE USED TO HELP PREVENT COVID-19 INFECTION?

Pfizer recently reported that proactively giving Paxlovid to family members of people infected with COVID-19 didn't significantly reduce their chances of catching it. But that's not the end of the story. Pfizer is studying several other potential benefits of early use, including whether Paxlovid reduces the length and severity of COVID-19 among households.

"It's a high bar to protect against infection but I'd love to see data on how Paxlovid did against severe disease because it may be more effective there," said Pekosz.

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We know about its taste appeal but what if hot peppers could do more for humankind than make our food deliciously—or outrageously, depending on personal preference—spicy? What if it had therapeutic properties?

First, the basics. You're at an Indian, Mexican or Thai restaurant. You bite into a reddish substance. Immediately, your tongue tingles, you feel a rush of heat, you break out in a sweat. You've just met capsaicin!

Capsaicin is the chemical compound found in the internal membranes of chili peppers that produces the burning sensation in the mouth when ingested. The heat varies depending on the variety of pepper and is measured on the Scoville scale.

Now for a closer look at the world of capsaicin and its medicinal properties.

Pleasantly painful

Applied to the skin as a topical cream, capsaicin can relieve some arthritis pain or the pain associated with postherpetic neuralgia, the most common complication of shingles. At first application, the cream often causes a burning sensation, local redness and inflammation. So are we suffering additional pain to relieve the initial pain?

"It may seem paradoxical, but yes, we're fighting fire with fire," said Réjean Couture, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of Montreal and an expert on pain receptors.

Capsaicin activates a nociceptor (pain receptor) located at the end of the sensory neurons in the skin (C-fibers), Couture explained. When this nociceptor is stimulated by too much capsaicin through repeated topical application, the C-fiber is eventually depleted of the neurotransmitters that send pain signals to the brain.

"In short, we hypersensitize the system and then desensitize it to temporarily alleviate the pain caused by the shingles virus or other types of neurogenic inflammation involving C-fibers," said Couture.

Good for your health, but take with a grain of salt

Though it is possible to relieve pain by applying capsaicin cream to your skin, the most common way to make contact with capsaicin is of course eating it.

When ingested, it has potential antioxidant, anticarcinogenic and anti-obesogenic benefits, according to Valérie Marcil, a professor in the Department of Nutrition at UdeM interested in the effects of nutrition on disease.

"First of all, capsaicin may affect the life cycle of cancer cells by promoting apoptosis, the programmed death of cells," she noted. "This is a mechanism that often does not work normally in cancer cells. They survive and multiply, when they should have been destroyed by apoptosis. But there is evidence that capsaicin can help destroy some cancer cells. Also, the capsaicin molecule is believed to have anti-obesogenic properties, as it increases energy expenditure and the feeling of satiation."

But Marcil added a word of caution: capsaicin is not a panacea. And while its benefits have been demonstrated in in vitro studies, its effectiveness in humans has not been proven.

"This is the case with all nutrients," she pointed out. "In real life, you don't eat nutrients, you eat food. And a food isn't a drug. We have to be careful in talking about the powers of food, since the actual effects are often the result of a combination of factors."

Antibiotic potential?

A recent German literature review provided evidence that capsaicin is a promising complementary option for treating antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

While it is not potent enough to replace antibiotics, it can reduce the quantity of antibiotics needed to treat bacterial infections and decrease the risk of developing resistance.

Microbiologist Yves Brun, a researcher specializing in antibiotic resistance and professor in the Department of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Immunology at UdeM, believes this is an avenue worth exploring.

"Approaches that combine two molecules have a number of advantages, since they can have a synergistic effect," he said. "Capsaicin is well absorbed by the body and does not appear to be toxic, at least at the ingested dose. However, we don't know its mechanism of action, so that's where further research should start."

The underlying molecular mechanisms must be better understood and the translation of in vitro results into in vivo models will need to be validated in future clinical trials.

But whether the effects are antioxidant, anti-obesogenic, antibiotic or just delightfully hot, there's no reason to forego hot sauce.

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Staff at a technology factory in China have revolted over strict coronavirus measures.

Workers stormed barriers and fought with security staff during a dramatic riot on Thursday.

The Quanta factory, in the Songjiang district of Shanghai, makes devices such as MacBook Pros.

Footage from Thursday shows how helpless guards, clad in protective white gowns, tried in vain to catch workers who jumped over barriers.
The factory had been operating under strict government-mandated isolation rules.

Bloomberg report that a ‘closed loop’ system meant staff were required to sleep at nearby accommodation instead of at home.

Some had been trying to return to their dormitories to rest when they were denied exit from the factory, and chaos soon followed.

Workers at the factory outnumbered guards as they leapt over isolation barriers (Picture: Twitter)

They had been trying to return to nearby accommodation to rest, it is believed (Picture: Twitter)

The unrest had reportedly died down by Friday morning.

But the riot has impacted the factory’s output of MacBook Pro deliveries.

The site is operating at 30% capacity due to the recent disruption, Economic Daily reported.

Sweeping lockdown measures have led to major protests across China over recent months, particularly in Shanghai.

The country’s strict zero-Covid strategy, implemented since the beginning of the pandemic, has resulted in repeated lockdowns and stringent quarantine measures.

A community is ‘disinfected’ in Shanghai, China, last month after a rise of cases (Picture: Getty Images)

The Chinese government has been implementing a ‘zero Covid’ policy (Picture: Reuters)

Typically, criticism of the Communist Chinese government is rare, but an increasing number of people have started to revolt.

One local staged a protest by placing his empty fridge on his balcony last moment, as residents report struggling to find enough to eat.

There have been reports of starvation after 26 million people were locked in their homes in the city and forced to rely on deliveries.

And last month, an elderly woman launched a ‘prison break’ from her quarantine in Shanghai.

Video footage went viral of the 95-year-old boldly walking down a street in a bid to free herself from quarantine.

The woman was later placed in a small confinement area nearby, but a second clip showed her breaking through a corrugated iron cage using some tools.

She was said to have made it home after her third escape bid, the Daily Telegraph reported.

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In a new study published in the hematology journal Blood, researchers from UniSA and SA Pathology's Center for Cancer Biology describe how they have discovered a way to suppress a specific protein that promotes resistance to drugs commonly used to treat AML patients.

Professor Stuart Pitson, one of the lead authors of the study, says the finding could revolutionize the treatment of AML, a disease that recently claimed the lives of SA football great Russell Ebert and professional golfer Jarrod Lyle.

"Each year in Australia, around 900 people are diagnosed with AML, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow characterized by an overproduction of cancerous white blood cells called leukemic blasts," Prof. Pitson says.

"These cells crowd out normal white blood cells, which then can't do their usual infection-fighting work, thereby increasing the risk of infections, low oxygen levels and bleeding."

SA Pathology hematologist Associate Professor David Ross says many AML patients initially respond to Venetoclax, a new therapy for AML recently listed on the PBS, but over time AML cells become resistant to it.

Using a large biobank of patient-donated AML biopsies and world-leading advanced pre-clinical models, the CCB researchers demonstrated that by modulating lipid metabolism in the body, a protein called Mcl-1 is inhibited in AML cells—the protein that facilitates drug resistance.

"This process makes AML cells exquisitely sensitive to Venetoclax, while leaving the normal white blood cells unaffected," SA Pathology researcher and co-lead author, Associate Professor Jason Powell says.

The CCB team is now working hard to optimize drugs targeting this pathway to take into clinical trials for AML patients.

"For most people with AML, the chances of long-term survival are no better now than they were last century," Assoc. Prof. Ross says.

"Now, we have a chance to remedy that. New treatments that prevent Venetoclax resistance have the potential to prolong survival, or even increase the chances of a cure in a disease for which improved outcomes are desperately needed."

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) accounts for approximately 0.8 percent of all cancers diagnosed, at a rate of 3.7 per 100,000 people. It can occur at any age but is more common in adults (and men) over the age of 60.

In most cases the causes remain unknown, but it is thought to result from damage to one of more genes that normally control blood cell development.
Current therapies are effective at putting patients into remission, but relapse is common, with fewer than 30 percent of AML patients surviving five years post diagnosis.

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Scientists from the U.S. and United Kingdom are planning a clinical trial on the glioblastoma drug after successful experiments on mice and cells grown in the lab. The international team created a cocktail of chemicals that target what’s known as “Hox” genes.

Fewer than half of sufferers survive beyond a year of being diagnosed with a glioblastoma. President Joe Biden’s son Beau died from the disease in 2015.

“People who suffer from glioblastomas have a five percent survival rate over a five-year period – a figure that has not improved in decades,” says project leader Hardev Pandha, a professor of medical oncology the University of Surrey, in a statement. “While we are still early in the process, our seven-year project offers a glimmer of hope for finding a solution to Hox gene dysregulation, which is associated with the growth of GBM and other cancers, and which has proven to be elusive as a target for so many years.”

The peptide, named HTL-001, contains short chain amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Ironically, Hox genes are responsible for the healthy growth of brain tissue. They are ordinarily silenced at birth after vigorous activity in the embryo. If they are inappropriately “turned on” again, it can lead to the progression of cancer. Hox gene dysregulation has long been recognized in GBM.

Brain tumors are rare. Glioblastomas affect an estimated one in 30,000 people. They develop when cells supporting nerves in the brain begin to divide uncontrollably. Surgery is the main treatment. About 40 percent of patients survive beyond a year, and just 17 percent more than two years.

“We desperately need new treatment avenues for these aggressive brain tumors,” says co-author Susan Short, a professor at the University of Leeds. “Targeting developmental genes like the HOX genes that are abnormally switched on in the tumor cells could be a novel and effective way to stop glioblastomas growing and becoming life threatening.”

Hox genes have been linked to a host of common cancers ranging from colon, breast, ovarian and cervical to leukemia. The HTL-001 peptide is suitable for patient trials after passing safety tests, say the researchers. They are now being considered for glioblastomas and other cancers.

James Culverwell, CEO of University of Surrey start up HOX Therapeutics, says the breakthrough reported in BMC Cancer is exciting. “We hope with our continuing support, this research will eventually lead to novel and effective treatments for both brain and other cancers where HOX gene over-expression is a clear therapeutic target,” he adds.

The study is published in the journal BMC Cancer.

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The study analyzed all 4288 unintentional drownings in both children and adults over 10 years from 2007 through 2016 in Canada. Researchers found that people with ischemic heart disease and seizure disorders were at increased risk. Young women with seizure disorders aged 20–34 years, while not the largest group, had a risk of drowning 23 times greater than the general population.

The most common activities leading to drowning were aquatic activities such as swimming (25%) and boating (24%) and most often occurred in lakes or ponds (36%), and most deaths (63% to 84%) occurred when the person was alone or not witnessed. The majority (81%) of people who drowned were male, and about two-thirds (63%) drowned in urban areas.

Of note were the number of drownings in bathtubs in people with seizure (53%) or neurocognitive disorders (28%).

"Drowning in bathtubs is common among those with seizure disorders, as well as most other pre-existing medical conditions," writes Dr. Cody Dunne, an emergency resident physician at the University of Calgary, with coauthors. "This may be an important first target for public health messaging as it is relevant to other medical conditions, and safety planning is easier to implement than in other locations."

The authors emphasize that people with seizure disorders should use a shower instead of tub bathing and, if possible, do so when another person is home.

As swimming is good for overall health and quality of life, people with ischemic heart disease who are at higher risk of drowning should not avoid swimming. Rather, the authors recommend a safe, informed approach to water activities.

"[P]eople with cardiovascular disease should speak with a health care provider before water activity, gradually increase intensity, wear a life jacket and participate in a supervised setting or with a trained buddy," they write.

Prevention strategies tailored to specific groups and ages, including guidance for safely performing daily activities such as bathing, will help manage the risk of drowning.

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In this latest release from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter, a unique feature of Mars's geology is shown with breathtaking detail.
Looking like giant scratches across the planet's surface, these grooves are part of a giant fault system on Mars known as Tantalus Fossae.

Aside from the detail in the image, what's really gobsmacking is the scale we're looking at – these troughs are up to 350 meters (1,148 feet) deep and 10 kilometers wide (6.2 miles) and can stretch for up to 1,000 kilometers.

The image is true color, which means it represents what humans would see if they were looking at the region with their own eyes.

It's not technically a 'photo'; the image was generated from a digital terrain model of Mars and using the color channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA's Mars Express – but it presents an incredibly clear view of the vast area.

The image above shows an oblique perspective, while the shot below is a top-down view of Tantalus Fossae.

According to an ESA press release, the ground resolution of these images is approximately 18 meters/pixel and the images are centered at about 43°N/257°E. North is to the right.

So what are we looking at?

A fossa is a hollow or depression, and Tantalus Fossae run along the east side of a sprawling, relatively flat Martian volcano called Alba Mons.

When it comes to surface area, Alba Mons is the biggest volcano on Mars – its volcanic flow fields extend at least 1,350 km (840 miles). But at its highest point, its elevation is only 6.8 kilometers.

These fossae were created when Alba Mons lifted up out of the planet's crust, causing the area around it to become warped and broken.

"The Tantalus Fossae faults are a great example of a surface feature known as grabens," explains the release. "Each trench formed as two parallel faults opened up, causing the rock between to drop down into the resulting void."

A similar feature is found on the western side of Alba Mons, known as Alba Fossae.

These images aren't just beautiful to look at – they may also help us understand more about how the surface of Mars formed.

It's thought these structures didn't all form at once, but one after the other, which results in some of the troughs crisscrossing each other.

For example, the impact crater you see in the images has grabens running across it, suggesting the crater was there first. In the top two images, you can see a smaller crater to the left that's on top of the troughs and is likely younger.

Mars Express has been orbiting Mars for more than 18 years now. We look forward to seeing more of its unique views of our neighboring planet.

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Tirzepatide, developed by American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly), is a once-weekly injection that promotes weight loss by mimicking the effects of natural hormones called incretins. These hormones lower blood sugar after we eat, in addition to regulating metabolic processes related to digestion.

In the case of tirzepatide, which is not yet available on the market pending further clinical study, the drug is a synthetic combination of two particular incretins, called GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) and GIP (glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide).

The former hormone, GLP-1, is the basis of the anti-diabetes medication semaglutide, which was approved in the US as a weight-loss drug in 2021, representing the first time the FDA had endorsed a new treatment for weight loss in several years.

That approval was granted on the back of results described as a 'game-changer' for weight loss, but it looks like tirzepatide's formulation – thanks to the addition of GIP alongside GLP-1 – might well change the game again.

In Phase 3 results from the ongoing SURMOUNT–1 clinical trial investigating the effects of tirzepatide, researchers enrolled 2,539 participants who were either overweight or obese (with one weight-related comorbidity but without type 2 diabetes).

The participants received tirzepatide or a placebo over the course of 72 weeks, along with support to follow a reduced-calorie diet and increase their levels of physical activity.

Tirzepatide was administered at one of three different doses (either 5, 10, or 15 milligrams in the weekly injection), but all three groups saw significant levels of weight loss over the course of the study.

On the highest dose (15 mg), participants saw average weight reductions of 22.5 percent of their body weight (24 kg or 52 lb), while the 10 mg dose achieved 21.4 percent weight loss (22 kg or 49 lb), and 5 mg saw a 16 percent body weight reduction (16 kg or 35 lb).

By comparison, the placebo group lost only 2.4 percent of their body weight (2 kg or 5 lb). Previously, the semaglutide weight loss trials averaged a roughly 17 percent weight loss.

"Tirzepatide is the first investigational medicine to deliver more than 20 percent weight loss on average in a phase 3 study," says clinical research physician Jeff Emmick, the vice president of product development at Lilly.

While the results have not yet been peer-reviewed, Lilly says they will be submitted for such consideration in the future. Meanwhile, study in the SURMOUNT-1 trial is ongoing, alongside related SURMOUNT trials, the results of which are expected to be announced in 2023.

However, we do already know that tirzepatide does not agree with everyone who takes it. While the averaged weight-loss results do appear to slightly outperform treatment with semaglutide, and are about on par with the weight loss patients might expect from bariatric surgery, some participants in the tirzepatide arm experienced adverse effects.

Depending on dose, up to one-third of the group on tirzepatide experienced nausea, while diarrhea was also relatively common (for 18.7–23 percent of participants). Some people also experienced vomiting and constipation, although it's worth noting only a small percentage of participants left the study due to these effects.

Yet another potential barrier to stomaching tirzepatide is the issue of price – assuming subsequent research results convince the FDA to approve the drug for weight-loss patients, that is. (The drug has already been submitted for regulatory review for diabetes treatment.)

As others have noted, semaglutide – sold as a weight-loss drug under the brand-name Wegovy by Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk – sells for over US$1,300 per month, and very few patients can afford such an expensive medication, especially when drugs like this are rarely covered by health insurance.

If tirzepatide follows a similar pricing strategy – upon its expected but not-yet-assured future release – this could be another case of a potentially brilliant, life-changing medication that many people sadly won't be able to buy.

"The drugs themselves appear to be great, but Wegovy is expensive, and the others probably will be too," neuroscience and obesity researcher Stephan Guyenet told Gizmodo.

"This is especially true in the US, where Wegovy costs about four times more than in other countries. So the main question becomes one of access."

Aside from the economics, the impressive results of these medications nonetheless suggest we might soon be able to transform the treatment of obesity – a complex and harmful epidemic that has resisted our control for decades.

If we can realize that promise, and ensure equitable access to this new generation of obesity medications, we stand to improve the health of millions of people around the world, researchers say.

"This is extremely exciting, albeit preliminary data showing bariatric surgery-level weight loss from a medication, one that likely affords numerous other metabolic benefits," Scott Kahan, the director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness in Washington, DC, told Healio.

"Continued development of tirzepatide and similar agents could portend a sea change in obesity treatment, similar to how cholesterol and heart disease management was transformed by the advent of statin medications and how HIV management was transformed by antiretroviral medications."

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At first glance, the little fella looks sort of like a bronze shimmery cigar floating on end, but the feverish wiggle of its tail gives the creature's true identity away.

The little bronze beauty is known to scientists as a highfin dragonfish (Bathophilus flemingi), and of all the deep-sea dragonfish in Monterey Bay, this is one of the rarest.

"In more than three decades of deep-sea research and more than 27,600 hours of video, we've only seen this particular species four times!" researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute recently tweeted alongside footage of the fish.

The individual was caught on camera during a recent expedition on MBARI's Western Flyer, which is a large ship set up to deploy and control remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) as they dive thousands of kilometers under the sea.

In this case, the footage was taken at a depth of nearly 300 meters (1,000 feet), and by the looks of things, the dragonfish was headed even deeper.

Dragonfish are highly capable swimmers, as you can see from the MBARI footage, but when they are hunting, they hide quietly in the dark and wait.

While the highfin dragonfish is covered in an iridescent cloak of bronze scales, other species are not so colorful. In fact, dragonfish can be pigmented with some of the blackest blacks found in nature.

With a smile full of sharp teeth, these predators must look downright terrifying to smaller fish and crustaceans, as they emerge from the deep dark to engulf their prey.

The Pacific blackdragon (Idiacanthus antrostomus). (© 2015 MBARI)

The shiny loosejaw (Aristostomias scintillans). (© 2007 MBARI)

Others use bioluminescent 'fishing rods' attached to their chins to lure in their prey.

The black-belly dragonfish (Stomias atriventer). (© 2003 MBARI)

In comparison to its relatives, the highfin dragonfish looks rather cute and colorful. But that's based on a skewed perspective.

When removed from the light of an ROV, the highfin's bronze skin probably absorbs wavelengths of blue light to make it nearly invisible, according to reporting from Live Science.

Combined with the fact that this fish grows no more than 16 centimeters in length (6 inches), it's a veritable needle in a haystack.

Who knows when researchers will catch sight of it again.

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Using a helicopter to catch a falling rocket is such a complex task that Peter Beck likens it to a “supersonic ballet.”

Rocket Lab, the company that Beck founded, partially pulled off the feat Tuesday as it pushes to make its small Electron rockets reusable. But after briefly catching the spent rocket, a helicopter crew was quickly forced to let it go again for safety reasons, and it fell into the Pacific Ocean where it was collected by a waiting boat.

The California-based company regularly launches 18-meter (59-foot) rockets from the remote Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand to deliver satellites into space.

On Tuesday, the Electron rocket was launched in the morning and sent 34 satellites into orbit before the main booster section began falling to Earth. Its descent was slowed to about 10 meters (33 feet) per second by a parachute.

That’s when the helicopter crew sprang into action, dangling a long line with a hook below the helicopter to snag the booster’s parachute lines. The crew caught the rocket but the load on the helicopter exceeded the parameters from tests and simulations, so they jettisoned it again.

The roller coaster of emotions was caught in a livestream of the event, with people at mission control cheering and clapping as the rocket was caught, only to let out a collective gasp and sigh about 20 seconds later.

Still, Beck hailed the mission as a success, saying that almost everything went to plan and that the unexpected load issue was a tiny detail which would soon be fixed, a “nothing in the scheme of things.”

“They got a great catch. They just didn’t like the way the load was feeling,” Beck said of the helicopter crew in a conference call after the launch.

He said a detailed analysis should reveal the reasons for the discrepancy in the load characteristics. He said he still hoped the company could salvage some or all of the spent rocket booster, despite it getting dunked in salt water which they’d hoped to avoid.

The Electron rocket blasts off for its "There And Back Again" mission from their launch pad on the Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand, on May 3, 2022.Rocket Lab / AP

Rocket Lab named its latest mission “There And Back Again” — a reference to the movie trilogy “The Hobbit” which was filmed in New Zealand.

The company described the brief midair capture at 1,980 meters (6,500 feet) by the Sikorsky S-92 helicopter as a milestone. It says making its rockets reusable will enable the company to increase the number of launches it makes and reduce costs.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company designed the first reusable orbital rocket, the Falcon 9.

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