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Sure, duh: Vehicle lights serve the important and vital safety function of allowing drivers to see where they’re going, and everyone else to see when they’re coming. But for decades, car designers have clocked headlamps and tail lights as an opportunity for creativity, to build a distinctive brand that says, “Here comes that car.” Think of Lamborghini’s y-shaped headlights, or the almost menacing double barrels of the Dodge Challenger, or the halo rings on BMWs.

But a new era of car light design, ushered in by new technologies, powertrains, and even business models, has transformed the front profile of vehicles. “It’s been an incredible, critical acceleration in the last few years,” says César Muntada, the head of light design at Audi.

The result is lights that are brighter, thinner, and in more complex configurations than ever before. Lights that dance when a car is approached by its owner, lights that blink when it’s being charged. Lights that can be customized to fit personal taste, or even mood. Lights that even, if regulators allow them, won’t blind other drivers. In the future, cars might even use lights to communicate with others on the road.

Today, automakers are doubling down on unique headlight signatures, arguing that a car’s front is its most important bit in not only selling the vehicle to customers, but the idea of the vehicle—what it means.

“We call it a face,” says Tim Kozub, who directs Cadillac’s design team. “It relates back to us as humans. The front of the vehicle is the personality.” Internal Cadillac market research shows that people react first to a vehicle’s front, then its rear, and then its side view, he says. So car designers are spending even more time—and money—on getting the face just right.

Light It Up

In some ways, the story of the beautification of the vehicle headlight is the story of advances in light technology. In the mid-20th century, headlights were small, halogen bulbs inside a large eye. By the early 1990s, some automakers began using xenon or high-intensity discharge (HID) headlamps, which were more powerful, efficient, and lasted longer than halogen. At the turn of the century, automakers experimented with using different shapes and textures inside headlights.

Finally: Enter the LED. Starting with a 2007 Lexus, automakers began using the smaller, powerful, and even more long-lasting lights inside headlamps. Headlights no longer needed to be bulbs inside a large casing, says Raphael Zammit, the chair of the Transportation Design program at the College of Creative Studies.

The creativity has flowed from there. “We’ve moved away from the physical aspect of lamps and moved towards a very thin, minimalist perspective,” says Zammit. “You’re looking at lines, gestures of lines. LEDs have taken it to the next level.”

Just in the past few years, automakers including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Hyundai have introduced digital headlights, which use LEDs and vehicles’ increasingly sophisticated onboard computers to illuminate with even more specificity. Audi’s Matrix-design headlights can, for example, “greet” drivers with model-specific headlight animations, a kind of personalized hello enabled by advances in lighting.

The OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) used in Audi’s Matrix setup both create the picture and emit their own light. You can think of each individual pixel of an OLED display as a tiny, color-changing light bulb. This makes it able to turn off entirely to provide perfect black levels, or illuminate in any color or pure white. We'll cover more about the benefits and drawbacks of this capability later in this piece.

Gone Electric

Now electric vehicles have brought even more innovation to the headlight world. From a practical perspective, this is because EV “grilles” are different from their gas-powered counterparts. In a standard vehicle, multiple holes in the front take in air to cool down the engine as it fires. EVs need some air to cool their batteries, but not nearly as much. For that reason, designers can take “a ‘blank-page’ approach as we get into EVs,” says Kozub, the Cadillac designer.

Cadillac’s Lyriq and Celestique, both all-electric options, include “slimline” headlights that echo the classic Cadillac tail fin shape. Kozub says Cadillac had always hoped to make a headlight that looked like this; new LED technologies and the smoother front offered by EV tech has simply made it possible.

The California-based electric vehicle startup Lucid was also forced by the particularities of EVs to innovate in headlamps. In its initial offering, a luxury sedan called the Air, the air-conditioning condenser lives at the front of the vehicle. That required the automaker to design a way to build very short headlights, says Hans-Christoph Eckstein, Lucid’s director of electronics and optical engineering. Building a small headlight to accommodate a bigger cooling unit ends up increasing the vehicle’s performance, he says.

Because headlight tech advancement has dovetailed so neatly with the electric revolution, headlights have also become an easy way for automakers to signal that their new EV offerings are ultramodern and luxe. “The easiest, clearest way to express innovation is through light,” says Muntada, the Audi designer.

For Lucid, lighting is the easiest way to communicate that the car is advanced. “A new type of lighting makes people think: New car, new electrification,” says Jenny Ha, who directs the automaker’s exterior design.

The Lucid Air’s headlights, made up of six slim LED arrays, have become a signature design feature—and a launching point for the car’s branding. Jamie Calderon, a partner and creative director at the creative agency Tolleson who worked with Lucid to launch the vehicle, says every bit of the EV, from its overall shape down to its lighting and even badge typography, is meant to communicate sleekness and simplicity. “It’s all very thin, very elegant, very reductive,” he says.

Hyundai has said its pixelated lamps, found in the all-electric Ioniq 5’s daytime running lights and rear, are arranged in an EV-specific design that will echo in all future Ioniq models.

Distinctive headlight shapes can even be protected by design patents, says Jeremy Kriegel, a partner and chair of the design patents practice group at the intellectual-property-focused law firm Marshall, Gerstein & Borun.

Recently, though, automakers have spent the most time and money defending design patents from aftermarket parts manufacturers, not other designers, he says. In general, it seems, automakers actively avoid each others’ most distinctive headlight designs because they want to build their own distinctive brands.

Electric automaker Rivian wanted to do just that. RJ Scaringe, Rivan’s CEO, told WIRED at a car event this spring that the mission was to make its lighting design feel iconic. For the company’s designers, the starting place was, again, a familiar theme: Simplicity. “When you have complex forms, they tend to be of-the-moment and age poorly,” he says.

Yet the designers also needed to come up with something memorable and distinctive. And something that would look great on vehicles beyond the initial offerings in Rivian’s lineup, a large truck and SUV. Scaringe says he remembers looking at Rivian’s initial sketches in 2016 and thinking, “Boy, this front end really could work on a much smaller car, on a crossover.”

Now the automaker’s distinctive oval lights and thick lightbar are set to appear on the next two vehicles in its lineup, a more affordable SUV and a small hatchback.

A refresh of Rivian’s original truck and SUV, announced earlier this summer, is slated to feature adaptive drive beams that change depending on oncoming traffic, and an updated horizontal lightbar with 10 different sections that can show off color. Right now, the bar illuminates green squares while charging to demonstrate how far the battery has to go, but in the future, Rivian could use the bar to illustrate other features, it claims.

Headlight Future

New vehicles and concepts illuminate the way forward for vehicle lighting. The future might be less about iconic headlight arrangements, and more about this changeability Rivian craves. In the new, second generation Audi Q6 e-tron, lights “come alive” thanks to six digitally-powered OLED panels full of 360 individually controlled segments.

The tech also allows the vehicle to automatically make micro-adjustments for different lighting and traffic conditions, which helps eliminate one of the most common headlight complaints: That they blind oncoming drivers. (Note: Because of regulations, Audi says, this technology is not currently available in North America.) Audi will also allow drivers to choose between eight different sets of headlight profiles—that way, you’ll supposedly know when your car approaches that it is your husband or wife, not your son or daughter, that’s behind the wheel.

It’s an interesting idea. It also presents challenges for automakers. If headlights are branding, what’s the value of a brand "face” that can be changed by customers with a few taps on a phone? Or as Zammit, the design professor puts it: “If our eyes can be anything, who are we?”

Audi says it isn’t worried about the branding adjustments. “If you look at the history of Audis, each Audi was different,” says Muntada, the automaker’s head of light design. Now the brand is ready to press into what it sees as the next frontier of lighting: Using breakthroughs in light and precision to “speak” to other road users.

You can see this already on the new, second generation Q6 e-tron, as well as the A5 hatchback, both released this year: Small triangles automatically illuminate inside the taillights to tell anyone behind the vehicle that there’s an accident or obstruction ahead. (The vehicle “knows” this thanks to road data collected by third parties.)

But Audi’s ambitions are grander than small triangles, says Muntada. “Our target is to create a language of [light] communication that is internationally understood,” he says. Regulators will have to get involved at some point, yes, but, in the future, an Audi’s lights might be able to tell other drivers not only that hazards lie ahead but precisely what kinds of hazards.

Such forms of vehicle-led communication might get even more important in a future without drivers, of course. Waymo’s robotaxis, for example, illuminate their “roof domes” to inform other road users that the vehicles are yielding to pedestrians.

Audi’s light vision will need more regulator involvement, and that will inevitably mean delays. But, unsurprisingly, Michael Kruppa, who heads up headlight development at Audi, remains bullish: “We are reaching a new level of what we can really do.”

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Welcome to Edition 7.05 of the Rocket Report! The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for 15 days after a rare failure of its upper stage earlier this month. The FAA gave the green light for Falcon 9 to return to flight July 25, and within a couple of days, SpaceX successfully launched three missions from three launch pads. There's a lot on Falcon 9's to-do list, so we expect SpaceX to quickly return to form with several flights per week.

 

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

Big delay for a reusable rocket testbed. The French space agency, CNES, has revealed that the inaugural test flight of its Callisto reusable rocket demonstrator will not take place until late 2025 or early 2026, European Spaceflight reports. CNES unveiled an updated website for the Callisto rocket program earlier this month, showing the test rocket has been delayed from a debut launch later this year to until late 2025 or early 2026. The Callisto rocket is designed to test techniques and technologies required for reusable rockets, such as vertical takeoff and vertical landing, with suborbital flights from the Guiana Space Center in South America.

 

Cooperative action ... Callisto, which stands for Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage Toss-back Operations, is a joint project between CNES, German space agency DLR, and JAXA, the Japanese space agency. It will stand 14 meters (46 feet) tall and weigh about 4 metric tons (8,800 pounds), with an engine supplied by Japan. Callisto is one of several test projects in Europe aiming to pave the way for a future reusable rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

 

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Small step for Themis. Another European project established to demonstrate reusable rocket tech is making slow progress toward a first flight. The Themis project, funded by the European Space Agency, is similar in purpose to the Callisto testbed discussed above. This week, the German aerospace manufacturing company MT Aerospace announced it has begun testing a demonstrator of the landing legs that will be used aboard the Themis reusable booster, European Spaceflight reports. The landing legs for Themis are made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites, and the initial test demonstrated good deployment and showed it would withstand the impact energy of landing.

 

Also delayed ... Like Callisto, Themis is facing delays in getting to the launch pad. ArianeGroup, the ESA-selected Themis prime contractor, had been expected to conduct an initial hop test of the demonstrator before the end of 2024. However, officials have announced the initial hop tests won't happen until sometime next year. The Themis booster is intended to eventually become the first stage booster for an orbital-class partially reusable rocket being developed by MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9 is flying again. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket returned to flight on July 27, barely two weeks after an upper stage failure ended a streak of more than 300 consecutive successful launches, Ars reports. By some measures this was an extremely routine mission—it was, after all, SpaceX's 73rd launch of this calendar year. And like many other Falcon 9 launches this year, the "Starlink 10-9" mission carried 23 of the broadband Internet satellites into orbit. However, after a rare failure earlier this month, this particular Falcon 9 rocket was making a return-to-flight for the company and attempting to get the world's most active booster back into service.

 

Best part is no part ... The Falcon 9 successfully deployed its payload of Starlink satellites about an hour after lifting off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Later in the weekend, SpaceX launched two more Starlink missions on Falcon 9 rockets from Florida and California, notching three flights in less than 28 hours. The launch failure on the previous Falcon 9 launch was caused by a liquid oxygen leak on the upper stage, which led to a "hard start" on the upper stage engine when it attempted to reignite in flight. Engineers and technicians were quickly able to pinpoint the cause of the leak, a crack in a "sense line" for a pressure sensor attached to the vehicle’s liquid oxygen system.

 

Atlas V's NSSL era is over. United Launch Alliance delivered a classified US military payload to orbit Tuesday for the last time with an Atlas V rocket, ending the Pentagon's use of Russian rocket engines as national security missions transition to all-American launchers, Ars reports. This was the 101st launch of an Atlas V rocket since its debut in 2002, and the 58th and final Atlas V mission with a US national security payload since 2007. The Atlas V is powered by an RD-180 main engine made in Russia, and with a little prodding from SpaceX (via a lawsuit) and Congress, the Pentagon started making moves to end its reliance on the RD-180 a decade ago.

 

Other options available ... The RD-180 never failed on a National Security Space Launch (NSSL) mission using the Atlas V rocket, but its use became politically untenable after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, which predated Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later. SpaceX began launching US military missions in 2018, and ULA debuted its new Vulcan rocket in January. Assuming a successful second test flight of Vulcan in September, ULA's next-generation rocket has a good shot at launching its first national security mission by the end of the year. The Space Force's policy is to maintain at least two independent launch vehicles capable of flying military payloads into orbit. Vulcan and SpaceX's Falcon rocket family fulfill that requirement, so the military no longer needs the Atlas V. However, 15 more Atlas V rockets remain in ULA's inventory for future commercial flights.

 

Crackdown at the Cape. While this week's landmark launch of the Atlas V rocket is worthy of celebration, there's a new ULA policy that deserves ridicule, Ars reports. Many of the spectacular photos of rocket launches shared on social media come from independent photographers, who often make little to no money working for an established media organization. Instead, they rely on sales of prints to recoup at least some of their expenses for gas, food, and camera equipment needed to capture these images, which often serve as free publicity for launch providers like ULA. Last month, ULA announced it will no longer permit these photographers to set up remote cameras at their launch pads if they sell their images independently. This new policy was in place for the Atlas V launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Tuesday morning.

 

But why? ... "ULA will periodically confirm editorial publication for media participating in remote camera placement," ULA stated in an email distributed to photographers last month. "If publication does not occur, or photos are sold outside of editorial purposes, privileges to place remote cameras may be revoked." To the photographers who spend many hours preparing their equipment, waiting to set up and remove cameras, and persevering through scrubs and more, it seemed like a harsh judgment. And nobody knows why it happened. ULA has offered no public comment about the new policy, and the company did not respond to questions from Ars about the agreement.

 

Astroscale achieves a first in orbit. There are more than 2,000 mostly intact dead rockets circling the Earth, but until this year, no one ever launched a satellite to go see what one looked like after many years of tumbling around the planet, Ars reports. A Japanese company named Astroscale launched a small satellite in February to chase down the derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. Astroscale's ADRAS-J spacecraft arrived near the H-IIA upper stage in April, and the company announced this week that its satellite has now completed two 360-degree fly-arounds of the rocket. This is the first time a satellite has maneuvered around an actual piece of space junk, and it offers an unprecedented snapshot of how an abandoned rocket holds up to 15 years in the harsh environment of space.

 

Prepping for the future ... Astroscale's ADRAS-J mission is partially funded by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Astroscale and JAXA also have a contract for a follow-up mission named ADRAS-J2, which will attempt to link up with the same H-IIA rocket and steer it on a trajectory to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. This would be the first demonstration of active debris removal, a concept pursued by Astroscale and other companies to help clear space junk out of low-Earth orbit.

 

An update on Ariane 6. The European Space Agency has released its first update on the results from the first flight of the Ariane 6 rocket since its launch July 9. Europe's new flagship rocket had a mostly successful inaugural test flight. Its first stage, solid rocket boosters, and upper stage performed as expected for the first phase of the flight, delivering eight small satellites into an on-target orbit. The launch pad at the Guiana Space Center in South America also held up to the violent environment of launch, ESA said.

 

Still investigating ... However, the final phase of the mission didn't go according to plan. The upper stage's Vinci engine was supposed to reignite for a third time on the test flight to deorbit the rocket, which would have released two small reentry capsules on technology demonstration missions to test heat shield technologies. This didn't happen. An Auxiliary Propulsion Unit, which is a small engine to provide additional bursts of thrust and pressurize the upper stage's propellant tanks, shut down shortly after startup ahead of the third burn of the primary Vinci engine. "This meant the Vinci engine's third boost could not take place," ESA said. "Analysis of the APU’s behavior is ongoing and further information will be made available as soon as possible, while the next task force update is expected in September." (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Room to grow at Starbase. SpaceX has since launched Starship four times from its launch site in South Texas, known as Starbase, and is planning a fifth launch within the next two months, Ars reports. However, as it continues to test Starship and make plans for regular flights, SpaceX will need a higher flight rate. This is especially true as the company is unlikely to activate additional launch pads for Starship in Florida until at least 2026. To that end, SpaceX has asked the FAA for permission for up to 25 flights a year from South Texas, as well as the capability to land both the Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster stage back at the launch site.

 

The answer is probably yes … On Monday, the FAA signaled that it is inclined to grant this request. The agency released a draft assessment indicating that its extensive 2022 analysis of Starship launch activities on the environment, wildlife, local communities, and more was sufficient to account for SpaceX's proposal for more launches. There is more to do for this conclusion to become official, including public meetings and a public comment period this month.

 

SpaceX eyes Australia. SpaceX is in talks with US and Australian officials to land and recover one of its Starship rockets off Australia's coast, a possible first step toward a bigger presence for Elon Musk's company in the region as the two countries bolster security ties, Reuters reports. At the end of SpaceX's fourth Starship test flight in June, the rocket made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean hundreds of miles off the northwest coast of Australia. The discussions now underway are focused on the possibility of towing a future Starship vehicle from its splashdown point in the ocean to a port in Australia, where SpaceX engineers could inspect it and learn more about how it performed.

Eventually, it'll come back to land … On the next Starship flight, currently planned for no earlier than late August, SpaceX plans to attempt to recover Starship's giant Super Heavy booster using catch arms on the launch pad tower in Texas. On Sunday, Elon Musk told SpaceX and Tesla enthusiasts at an event called the "X Takeover" that it will take a few more flights for engineers to get comfortable returning the Starship itself to a landing onshore. "We want to be really confident that the ship heat shield is super robust and lands at the exact right location," he said. "So before we try to bring the ship back to the launch site, we probably want to have at least three successful landings of the ship [at sea]." (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

August 2: Electron | "Owl for One, One for Owl" | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 16:39 UTC

August 3: Falcon 9 | NG-21 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 15:28 UTC

August 4: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-1 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 07:00 UTC

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Semiconductor designer Nvidia is reportedly the subject of two separate U.S. Department of Justice antitrust probes, focused on its acquisition of an Israeli artificial intelligence company and the chip giant's alleged anti-competition business practices.

Politico reported that the trust-busting wing of Justice is examining Nvidia's purchase of Run:ai. The Information reported the DOJ is assessing if Nvidia has abused dominance in the AI chip market to dissuade competition.

Nvidia in April announced its acquisition of an Israeli graphics processing units management software startup Run:ai in a $700 million deal.

As chip demand for AI computational workloads outpaces supply, the purchase likely brought immense value to the $3 trillion company.

One of Run:ai's key functions is to optimize AI hardware infrastructure, allowing its enterprise customers to do more with fewer chips.

Regulators globally, including in the United States and the United Kingdom, have been paying close attention to big-tech acquisitions, especially in the AI space. They recently pledged to "safeguard against tactics that would undermine fair competition or lead to unfair or deceptive practices in the AI ecosystem."

The DOJ's other investigation is focused on Nvidia allegedly abusing its market dominance to pressure customers into purchasing its products, dissuading them from going to its competitors by overcharging for networking equipment if they bought AI chips from its rivals.

"We compete based on decades of investment and innovation, scrupulously adhering to all laws, making Nvidia openly available in every cloud and on-prem for every enterprise, and ensuring that customers can choose whatever solution is best for them," Nvidia spokesperson Mylene Mangalindan told Politico, adding that the company is "happy to provide any information regulators need."

Nvidia potentially controls around 90% of the global market for chips that are in high demand as necessary pieces to train AI models, and the demand is booming to a point where the chipmaker briefly became the most valuable company in the world, dethroning Microsoft.

The latest news come amid advocacy groups petitioning the DOJ's chief antitrust enforcer, Jonathan Kanter, to carry out an antitrust investigation, accusing Nvidia of scaring off investors from funding rival companies that are "struggling to gain traction" because its "near-absolute dominance of the market is difficult to counter."

The company may also be facing antitrust charges in France over its anti-competitive business practices.

Earlier this year, the DOJ reportedly took the reins on investigating Nvidia over antitrust violations, while the Federal Trade Commission focused on probing OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft.

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Cancer rates are on the rise for younger generations, as a recent study in the journal Lancet Public Health demonstrates. For Generation X and Millennials, the rates for 17 different types of cancers have increased dramatically, with many cases linked to the rise in obesity rates.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) analyzed information from nearly 24 million patients diagnosed with 34 types of cancer (with over 7 million fatal cases) between Jan. 1, 2000 and Dec. 31, 2019. Within that cohort, the ACS discovered that the incidence rates have skyrocketed for 17 of the 34 types of cancers among two specific demographics: Generation X and Millennials. Notably, these include cancers that are linked to obesity including "colorectum, uterine corpus, gallbladder and other biliary, kidney and renal pelvis, and pancreas" cancers.

That said, the authors only hint at obesity as being a culprit of the cancer rate spike, arguing that "the rising cancer incidence for many cancer types in successively younger generations suggests increases in the prevalence of carcinogenic exposures during early life or young adulthood, which have yet to be elucidated." They advocated intervention strategies "that align with the social and cultural context, values, and preferences of the young generations."

Outside experts, however, believe that this data points to the obesity epidemic as a likely culprit. Among other things, free fatty acids — which are more likely to be present at high quantities in the blood of people with obesity — are associated with cancers and other diseases, like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“When someone is obese, a lot of things change in the body, including chronic inflammation that leads to years and years worth of damage to cells and tissues in the body, which can lead to cancer,” Timothy Rebbeck, professor of cancer prevention at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told Yahoo Life.

"Without effective population-level interventions, the maturation of younger generations could lead to an overall increase in cancer burden in the future, halting or reversing decades of progress against cancer," the study authors warn.

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An international team of scientists has developed a new family of compounds that can clear bacterial infections in mice. Some of these infections can result in serious “flesh-eating” illnesses. There are about 700 to 1,100 cases of flesh-eating illnesses every year in the United States. The new family of compounds could also represent the beginning of a new class of antibiotics and are described in a study published August 2 in the journal Science Advances.

Growing resistance

For decades, clinicians have been sounding the alarm about pathogens that are increasingly becoming more resistant to drugs currently available. This makes them more dangerous and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the US every year. More than 35,000 people die from these infections. To combat this, newer antimicrobial compounds will be needed to replace the ones that bacteria have become resistant to.

Molecular microbiologists Scott Hultgren and Michael Caparon from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and chemist Fredrik Almqvist from the University of Umeå in Sweden collaborated on this new family of compounds called GmPcides.

GmPcides work by targeting gram-positive bacteria. These types of bacteria can cause various drug-resistant staph infections, toxic shock syndrome, and other bacterial illnesses that can turn deadly.

“All of the gram-positive bacteria that we’ve tested have been susceptible to that compound. That includes enterococci, staphylococci, streptococci, C. difficile, which are the major pathogenic bacteria types,” Caparon said in a statement. “The compounds have broad-spectrum activity against numerous bacteria.”

A ‘happy accident’

The new GmPcide compounds are based on a type of molecule called ring-fused 2-pyridone that was developed by what the team calls a happy accident. Caparon and Hultgren had asked Almqvist to develop a chemical compound that can prevent bacterial films from latching onto the surface of urethral catheters. These are a common cause of urinary tract infections in hospital settings.

The resulting compound also had infection-fighting properties against multiple types of bacteria. Some of their earlier research showed that GmPcides can kill bacteria strains in petri dish experiments.

In this new study, they took those petri dish experiments one step further by testing how compounds work on necrotizing soft-tissue infections. These fast-spreading infections usually involve multiple types of gram-positive bacteria. Necrotizing fasciitis–or flesh-eating disease–is the best known of these infections. It can rapidly damage tissue so severely that limb amputation is often necessary to control its spread. Roughly 20 percent of patients with flesh-eating disease die.

The team focused on one pathogen that is responsible for about 500,000 deaths every year–Streptococcus pyogenes. A group of mice was infected with S. pyogenes. One group was treated with GmPcide, while the other wasn’t. Those that received the GmPcide treatment fared better than the untreated mice in almost every metric. They lost less weight, had smaller ulcers, and fought off the infection faster. Damaged areas of skin also appeared to heal quicker post-infection.

While it is still not fully clear how GmPcides did all of this, a microscopic examination showed that the treatment has a significant effect on bacterial cell membranes. These are the outer wrapping of the microbes.

“One of the jobs of a membrane is to exclude material from the outside,” Caparon said. “We know that within five to ten minutes of treatment with GmPcide, the membranes start to become permeable and allow things that normally should be excluded to enter into the bacteria, which suggests that those membranes have been damaged.”

This can alter the bacteria’s own functions, including actions that damage the host and make the bacteria less effective at taking down the host’s immune response to infections.

GmPcides also may be less likely to lead to drug-resistant strains. The experiments designed to create resistant bacteria found that very few cells can withstand treatment. This means they are less likely to pass on their advantages to the next generation of bacteria.
The road ahead

According to Caparon, there are still numerous steps before GmPcides will be available at your local pharmacy. The team has patented the compound used and licensed it to QureTech Bio, a company that Caparon, Hultgren and Almqvist have an ownership stake in. The license was contingent on the expectation that they will collaborate with a separate company that can manage the pharmaceutical development and clinical trials to bring it to market.

According to the team, the kind of collaborative science that created GmPcides will be needed to treat the problems like antimicrobial resistance.

“Bacterial infections of every type are an important health problem, and they are increasingly becoming multi-drug resistant and thus harder to treat,” Hultgren said in a statement. “Interdisciplinary science facilitates the integration of different fields of study that can lead to synergistic new ideas that have the potential to help patients.”

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While a small handful of cosmic particles might appear trivial, the signature of the antihelium shower is strange enough for researchers to treat the event like a rainstorm in a desert.

In their recently published analysis, scientists from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada and Johns Hopkins University in the US make a case for considering physics outside of the currently accepted Standard Model, going as far as suggesting dark matter could be involved.

Since 2011, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) has sat on board the International Space Station, quietly ringing up more than 200 billion cosmic ray events.

While most were run-of-the-mill particles kicked across vast distances of space at high speed, unpublished reports suggest ten of them were anything but typical, consisting of pairs of antiprotons stuck to one or two antineutrons.

Every fundamental particle of 'ordinary' matter, such as electrons, neutrinos, and quarks, has a matching counterpart with the same features but an opposite charge: an antiparticle.

Theoretically, antiparticles like positrons, antineutrinos, and antiquarks should have emerged from the Big Bang's ovens in more or less the same quantities as electrons and neutrinos and quarks, quickly canceling each other out in a puff of gamma rays.

The fact the Universe consists of far more than an expanding glow of electromagnetic radiation suggests there's something we don't quite understand about the balance of primordial matter and antimatter.

Just as it's possible to squeeze out a fine mist of antimatter using particle colliders here on Earth, nature continues to shed antiprotons and antineutrons in cataclysmic high-energy events. A proportion will even escape to survive annihilation, occasionally colliding with detectors here on Earth.

The alleged AMS-02 detections involved antiprotons and antineutrons in the form of antihelium nuclei – a rare union that would have required the antiparticles to be slow moving and densely packed to give the subatomic particles a chance to bond.

Curiously, for each antihelium nucleus with two antineutrons, an isotope called antihelium-4, there were two with a single antineutron: antihelium-3. Relying solely on established physics, the best researchers have come up with is a measured isotope ratio of 10,000 to one.

Whatever created the two flavors of antimatter isotope and sent them zooming in our direction wasn't as discriminating in the size of antihelium as known processes, suggesting the initial conditions required the subatomic building blocks to be incredibly slow moving before they were ejected.

One possibility might involve the decay of a currently unknown particle, which might even qualify as dark matter. Even if such a particle existed, there remains the question of how it came to be flying across the cosmos at a fraction of light speed.

Working backward, the researchers theorize that an incredibly hot, rapidly expanding concentration of plasma made from known particles just might deliver both the kick and the right ratio of antihelium nuclei.

While such 'fireballs' have never been observed, they might occur in collisions between dark matter masses that contain sufficient quantities of antiquarks.

A second possible scenario involves what are known as 'dark dwarfs'. These hypothetical balls of dark photons, dark electrons, and dark neutrons could also come crashing together to create conditions that just might emit antihelium in the measured ratios.

Neither model has been fully fleshed out, consisting of complex dynamics that leave a great deal of discussion over the potential details.

And that's just the physics we know about – dark matter itself is yet to be confirmed as a material phenomenon, let alone understood.

Yet buried in the mathematics of even highly speculative models like this, there could be the seeds of discovery that might turn other unexpected measurements into fireballs of creation generated by colliding darkness.

With another six years of operation, AMS-02 might yet collect data that provides yet another perspective on the origins of this bizarre antihelium shower.

Or it might confirm something unexpected in the far reaches of space is building atoms of antimatter, taunting us from the shadows.

This research was published in Physical Review D.

Source

There are more than 2,000 mostly intact dead rockets circling the Earth, but until this year, no one ever launched a satellite to go see what one looked like after many years of tumbling around the planet.

 

In February, a Japanese company named Astroscale sent a small satellite into low-Earth orbit on top of a Rocket Lab launcher. A couple of months later, Astroscale's ADRAS-J (Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan) spacecraft completed its pursuit of a Japanese rocket stuck in orbit for more than 15 years.

 

ADRAS-J photographed the upper stage of an H-IIA rocket from a range of several hundred meters and then backed away. This was the first publicly released image of space debris captured from another spacecraft using rendezvous and proximity operations.

 

Since then, Astroscale has pulled off more complex maneuvers around the H-IIA upper stage, which hasn't been controlled since it deployed a Japanese climate research satellite in January 2009. Astroscale attempted to complete a 360-degree fly-around of the H-IIA rocket last month, but the spacecraft triggered an autonomous abort one-third through the maneuver after detecting an attitude anomaly.

 

ADRAS-J flew away from the H-IIA rocket for several weeks. After engineers determined the cause of the glitch that triggered the abort, ADRAS-J fired thrusters to approach the upper stage again this month. The ADRAS-J spacecraft is about the size of a kitchen oven, while the H-IIA rocket it's visiting is nearly the size of a city bus.

 

Astroscale's satellite completed two fly-around maneuvers of the H-IIA upper stage on July 15 and 16, examining all sides of the rocket as it soared more than 350 miles (560 kilometers) above the planet. Engineers also wanted to measure the upper stage's spin rate and spin axis. At first glance, the upper stage appears remarkably similar to the way it looked when it launched. Despite exposure to the harsh conditions of space, the rocket's outer skin remains covered in orange foam insulation, and the engine nozzle still shines as if it were new.

 

ADRAS-J autonomously maneuvered around the rocket at a distance of about 50 meters (164 feet), using navigation data from a light detection and ranging sensor and Astroscale's custom-developed guidance algorithms to control its position as the vehicles moved around Earth at nearly 4.7 miles per second (7.6 kilometers per second). This is the crux of the challenge for ADRAS-J because the rocket is unpowered and unable to hold position. The upper stage also lacks laser reflectors and targets that would aid an approaching spacecraft.

This is a first

These types of complex maneuvers, known as rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), are common for crew and cargo spacecraft around the International Space Station. Other commercial satellites have demonstrated formation-flying and even docking with a spacecraft that wasn't designed to connect with another vehicle in orbit.

 

Military satellites from the United States, Russia, and China also have RPO capabilities, but as far as we know, these spacecraft have only maneuvered in ultra-close range around so-called "cooperative" objects designed to receive them. In 2003, the Air Force Research Laboratory launched a small satellite named XSS-10 to inspect the upper stage of a Delta II rocket in orbit, but it had a head start. XSS-10 maneuvered around the same rocket that deployed it, rather than pursuing a separate target.

ADRAS-J is the first mission to approach a piece of space debris, which comes with more challenges. The H-IIA upper stage lacks laser reflectors and targeting aids that would help an approaching spacecraft navigate its way closer.

 

A few years ago, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) cinched a public-private partnership with Astroscale to demonstrate technologies the private sector could use to remove large pieces of space debris littering low-Earth orbit. The same robotic technologies could also apply to satellite servicing or refueling missions.

 

With more financial assistance from JAXA, Astroscale is developing a follow-on mission called ADRAS-J2 to dock with the same H-IIA rocket visited by the ongoing mission, then steer it on a trajectory to reenter the atmosphere. Astroscale hopes a successful demonstration of this capability on the ADRAS-J2 mission will lead to more contracts from commercial or government operators to remote large pieces of space junk from orbit.

 

In a press release, Astroscale observations from ADRAS-J revealed no major damage to the H-IIA rocket's payload attach fitting, which is the planned capture point for the next mission.

 

After completing the fly-around maneuvers earlier this month, Astroscale may attempt to move ADRAS-J even closer to the rocket, perhaps as close as a couple of meters, to demonstrate more of the capabilities needed for ADRAS-J2.

So much debris

US Space Command said in December that the population of space debris in orbit has increased by 76 percent since 2019 to 44,600 objects. The uptick in space junk is primarily due to debris-generating events, such as anti-satellite tests or occasional explosions. The number of active satellites has also increased to more than 7,000, driven by launches of mega-constellations like SpaceX's Starlink Internet network.

 

The European Space Agency breaks down the different types of space debris. As of June, ESA reported more than 2,000 intact rocket bodies were orbiting Earth, along with thousands more rocket-related debris fragments. Nearly half of these are in low-Earth orbit, flying at altitudes up to 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers), where most active satellites are located. Experts have ranked these spent rocket stages as the most dangerous type of space debris because they are large and sometimes retain propellants and electrical energy that can cause explosions well after their missions are complete.

 

At orbital velocity, even a small fragment of debris can cause catastrophic damage to an active satellite. And these collisions beget more debris, escalating the overall problem.

 

The good news is launch companies are now deorbiting more of their upper stages after deploying their payloads in space. So, the number of rocket stages left behind in orbit isn't rising as quickly as the global launch rate. But the danger from stuff already up there isn't going away soon.

 

An H-IIA upper stage similar to the one visited by Astroscale's demo mission broke apart in 2019, creating more than 70 new debris fragments in low-Earth orbit. A predicted close flyby by one of the pieces from the H-IIA upper stage prompted the International Space Station to fire its engines to move out of its path in 2020.

 

Listing image by Astroscale

 

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During a bombshell segment on German legacy media outlet Welt, the panel argued that the government owes the public an apology for claiming Covid was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Prominent German reporter Hans-Ulrich Jörges said the unvaccinated were “the winners” because they refused to comply with the government’s mass vaccination agenda.

Jörges called for public apologies from key government officials who perpetuated the narrative that the pandemic was solely a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

He began the discussion by reflecting on the pandemic era.

The journalists described the Covid pandemic as a challenging time marked by confusion and fear.

However, he then declared that those who refused to submit to government and media pressure to get vaccinated have now been proved correct.

“The winners for me are the unvaccinated during the Covid times” he proclaimed.

“They have now been proved right.

“And there’s nothing left to argue about that.”

He cited the bombshell revelations from the unredacted crisis team protocols from the Robert Koch Institute.

“It was officially determined by them that the statement, ‘the pandemic is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ is not correct,” Jörges highlighted.

“Literally not correct,” he emphasized.

Underscoring the severe implications of these false claims, Jörges noted the injustices faced by the unvaccinated.

“There was this 2G rule, that only vaccinated and recovered people could move around freely,” he lamented.

“The unvaccinated were not allowed to go to the cinema, theater, concert, or restaurant.

“They couldn’t do anything except work, even though they had to get tested every day.”

For many, these infringements were not just inconvenient but they stripped the public of their personal freedoms and dignity.

In a powerful call for accountability, Jörges named powerful government officials and prominent figures.

He argued that they should come forward and apologize to the German people.

“There are all those who championed the phrase ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated,’” Jörges noted.

“Mr. Spahn, the Health Minister. Mr. Söder, Mr. Lauterbach, Mr. Ramelow from the Left Party.

“And, hear this, the Federal President, Mr. Steinmeier, also propagated this,” he stated.

The reporter expressed disbelief and disappointment in these leaders’ actions.

“And they have been insulted and berated in such a way that one can only be ashamed of it in retrospect,” he asserted.

Jörges continued by demanding direct action against those responsible.

“I think they should now publicly apologize for it,” he said.

“I want to see someone stand up, have the courage, and say, ‘I was wrong back then, I’m sorry, now I see what has happened to many people because of this, I apologize.’”

He cited Spahn’s earlier statement: “We will have to forgive a lot at the end of the pandemic.”

Jörges argued that Spahn should be the first to act and ask for forgiveness.

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A deadly heatwave brought temperatures well above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) to southern Europe and North Africa, where such extreme summer spells are becoming more frequent.

Scorching heat claimed more than 20 lives in a single day in Morocco, fanned wildfires in Greece and the Balkans, and strained athletes competing across France in the Summer Olympic Games.

World Weather Attribution, a network of scientists who have pioneered peer-reviewed methods for assessing the possible role of climate change in specific extreme events, said this case was clear.

"The extreme temperatures reached in July would have been virtually impossible if humans had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels," according to the WWA report by five researchers.

The analysis looked at the average July temperature and focused on a region that included Morocco, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece.

Scientists used this and other climate data to assess how the heat in July compared to similar periods in a world before humanity began rapidly burning oil, coal and gas.

They concluded the heat recorded in Europe was up to 3.3 °C hotter because of climate change.

Beyond the Mediterranean, intense heat reached Paris this week where athletes competing in the Olympic Games withered as temperatures hit the mid-30s this week.

"Extremely hot July months are no longer rare events," said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, a co-author of the study.

"In today's climate… Julys with extreme heat can be expected about once a decade," she said.

Scientists have long established that climate change is driving extreme weather and making heatwaves longer, hotter and more frequent.

This latest episode came in a month when global temperatures soared to their highest levels on record, with the four hottest days ever observed by scientists etched into the history books in July.

The past 13 months have been the warmest such period on record, exceeding a 1.5 °C limit that scientists say must be kept intact over the long term to avoid catastrophic climate change.

© Agence France-Presse

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Even without star striker Sam Kerr, the Matildas—who enjoyed a famous run to finish fourth at the 2023 FIFA World Cup—were considered medal fancies but couldn't progress past the group stage.

It was a devastating loss—but how do these athletes (and others who don't achieve their goals in Paris) rebound from the disappointment?

The pressure of performing

Every four years, billions of viewers around the world unite in awe of the skill and perseverance of Olympians and Paralympians.

The athletes fortunate enough to compete in Paris 2024 will have done their best to put years of dedicated preparation into their performances.

Many will have performed well and some achieved their goal of claiming a medal. Others, though, will finish the games with the feeling they did not fully realize their potential when it counted most.

This leaves many athletes finishing the games with crushing disappointment.

Famously, legendary swimmer (and now retired) Cate Campbell experienced this after her results at the Rio Olympics, which led to awful abuse and harassment from a portion of the Australian public.

Research has shown that many athletes report lower well-being after returning from the Olympics, including a sense of loneliness, disappointment, and lack of direction.

One of the reasons Olympic disappointment is so difficult is the deep ways in which an athlete's identity gets wrapped up in their performance.

That is, after years of being seen as "an athlete", many begin to feel who they are as a person is dependent on how they perform.

Athlete mental health and the role of self-criticism

The mental health challenges faced by many athletes are now well recognized. Research here in Australia has found elite athletes show rates of mental ill-health at similar, if not greater, numbers than the general public. Major performance disappointments are well known contributors to this.

Perhaps adding salt to the wound, one of the ways that elite athletes deal with disappointment is through self-criticism. This can include hostile ways of relating to oneself, which can lead to feelings of worthlessness and inferiority.

Being self-critical is seen in many pursuits as the only way to get ahead, in an attempt to remove weakness and demand self-improvement.

However, research repeatedly shows that most forms of self-criticism are associated with symptoms of mental ill-health. Moreover, harsh forms of internal judgment are far less effective at motivating growth and development than we might think.

Athletes, like the rest of us, need to find another way to handle the inevitable setbacks and disappointments as they arise.

A role for compassion

A growing body of research and practice has suggested self-compassion might fit the bill.

Compassion can be defined as the sensitivity to suffering in self and others, with a commitment to try to reduce or prevent the suffering.

Two-time Olympian Laurence Halsted says self-compassion helped improve his performance.

It can be directed to others, received from others, or directed internally (self-compassion).

For an athlete experiencing post-Olympic distress, showing self-compassion involves turning towards that distress rather than avoiding, judging, or criticizing, and then identifying what they need to address it.

This is harder than it may seem.

One of the reasons self-compassion is so difficult is because it goes against many of the ways in which we have learned to self-motivate.

Indeed, many athletes will report a common worry: that being self-compassionate might lower their standards.

That's just not the case. Research has shown self-compassion can motivate self-improvement and athletes with higher levels of self-compassion show positive performance outcomes in sport. This is in contrast to self-criticism.

Research has also shown athletes who engage in more self-compassion tend to report a range of benefits including better mental health, and more helpful responses to disappointment.

For this reason, there is a growing focus within clinical and sport psychology to help develop self-compassion among athletes as a resource for resilience.

Building self-compassion

So, how can athletes (and the rest of us) build an ability to be self-compassionate?

There are lots of ways. A great start is using our inner wisdom to recognize how we would offer compassion to another person we care for, and then directing it inwards.

Perhaps ask yourself: "how would I respond to a close friend in this situation?"

Other strategies aim to trigger a soothing response in our bodies which can affect both our psychology and physiology. For example we can actively change the tone of our inner thoughts and outward facial expression to be friendly rather than neutral or hostile.

Additional practices involve mental imagery (or visualization) to develop our "compassionate self", which we can then learn to step into. These practices make up some of the key ingredients to compassionate mind training and compassion-focused therapy, which have been shown to reduce depression and self-criticism.

In this way, athletes can offer themselves the support they need to get through the difficulties of Olympic and Paralympic disappointment.
More than self-compassion

Just as important as an athlete's self-compassion is the receiving of compassion from others.

After her Rio disappointment, Cate Campbell said

"Australians love winners—I felt like the only way I could endear myself to the Australian public was to come back with one of those shiny gold medals."

So during and after these Olympic and Paralympic Games, let's come together and support our athletes, no matter their result.

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After just 46 seconds and two massive shots to the head, Italy's Angela Carini threw her helmet onto the mat and abandoned the bout against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, shouting "This is unjust!"

A couple of punches to the head and it’s all over. /2 pic.twitter.com/6egSrRj51s

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 1, 2024

The 25-year-old Carini, and Italian police officer, refused to shake hands with Khelif - who was previously banned from the 2023 world championships by the International Boxing Association after failing tests to establish gender qualification.

After the Olympic match was stopped, the referee raised Khelif's hand in the air, while a visibly furious Carini yanked her hand away from the official and stormed off, the Daily Mail reports. She then dropped to her knees and burst into tears, saying she had never felt such strong blows in a match.

IOC allowed this male boxer to fight a woman. He won. Fight abandoned after 46s /4 pic.twitter.com/YwUfZQ6ssb

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 1, 2024

"I'm used to suffering. I've never taken a punch like that, it's impossible to continue. I'm nobody to say it's illegal," she said after the match.

This is the power punch to the head that finished the match. pic.twitter.com/ssJqe20dza

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 1, 2024

“I have never been hit so hard in my life. It’s up to the IOC to judge.”

Italy’s Angela Carini after lasting just 46 seconds against Algeria’s intersex athlete Imane Khelif.

Biological firestorm at Paris Olympics. pic.twitter.com/BQRTF9Dc3m

— Pete Badel (@badel_cmail) August 1, 2024

"I got into the ring to fight. But I didn't feel like it anymore after the first minute. I started to feel a strong pain in my nose. I didn't give up, but a punch hurt too much and so I said enough. I'm leaving with my head held high."

Following the match, Carini spoke with the press where she was clearly distraught.

She said she did not walk away from the fight as a protest against her opponent's inclusion, but that was a decision for the Olympics to consider.

She was taken away for medical assessment to examine the seriousness of her facial injuries which included a bruised nose.

Carini's coach in the mix zone after the fight said: 'I don't know if her nose is broken. I have to speak with the girl. But many people in Italy tried to call and tell her: 'Don't go please: it's a man, it's dangerous for you.'  -Daily Mail

On Wednesday evening, the IBA - which banned Khelif - said that the transgender boxer had initially appealed their decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but "but withdrew the appeal during the process, making the IBA decision legally binding."

The IBA also directly criticized the IOC, saying "The IOC’s differing regulations on these matters, in which IBA is not involved, raise serious questions about both competitive fairness and athletes’ safety," however the IOC position is that Khelif, and Chinese transgender athlete Lin Tu-ting of Taipei, "are women according to their passports," who had qualified under the rules of elligibility.

XY Chromosomes?

There has been some controversy over whether Khelif was actually born a male or a female - with some claiming 'she' has hyperandrogenism, a condition which features higher-than-usual levels of androgens (male hormones), however earlier this year IBA president Umar Kremlev told Russian news agency TASS that DNA tests "proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from the sports events."

The IBA told The Guardian that it had made the decision "following a comprehensive review and was intended to uphold the fairness and integrity of the competition."

That said, the IOC - which is embroiled in its own Chinese doping scandal, banned the IBA from running the Olympic boxing tournament in Paris due to long-running issues with governance (they're Russian) - meaning that the IOC's Boxing Unit, which has more lax entry requirements, is running the show.

The Algerians say the IBA decision to disqualify Khelif hours before the 2023 world championships in New Delhi, India was a conspiracy to deny them a medal.

"I repeat that all the competitors comply with the eligibility rules," said IOC spox Mark Adams. "But what I would say is that this involves real people. And, by the way, this is not a transgender issue. I should make this absolutely clear."

From the IBA:

IBA Secretary General and CEO explained that testing was conducted upon the request of the Technical Delegate and Medical Jury of the Championships. The results became available in seven days and the IBA Secretary General and CEO, acting on behalf of IBA, notified the athletes immediately about their disqualification, giving them twenty-one days to appeal the decision to CAS.

Mr. Yerolimpos confirmed that similar testing was conducted by a different independent laboratory with the same athletes at the previous edition of the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships in Istanbul, Turkey in 2022. However, the results were received only upon conclusion of the event, hence the athletes were not disqualified back then.

Now, the IOC faces a harsh backlash - including UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, who wrote on X: " When will this madness stop? Men cannot become women. Why is the British Government not objecting to this?"

JK Rowling also chimed in, writing on X: "What will it take to end this insanity? A female boxer left with life-altering injuries? A female boxer killed?"

My reaction was yours.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 1, 2024

Absolutely https://t.co/twccUEOW9e

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 1, 2024

If anyone knows Angela Carini, or has a route to her - please reach out. What she's experienced is a public mugging. Her safety, her very humanity, have been treated with contempt. She will be feeling angry, humiliated, despairing. I would love to be in touch with her. DMs open

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) August 1, 2024

The Olympics did the South Park meme pic.twitter.com/vddHXQUuHW

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 1, 2024

Satire is now reality pic.twitter.com/c4wmshSzwX

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 1, 2024

And remember...

The people who support this are calling the people who don't "weird." https://t.co/jDM7YeWGcD

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 1, 2024

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Question  Is aspirin use associated with a reduction in colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence across a continuum of established lifestyle factors?

Findings  In this cohort study of 107 655 men and women receiving aspirin and followed up for more than 3 decades, the absolute reduction in CRC risk was more pronounced among those with an unhealthier lifestyle (ie, higher body mass index, greater amount of smoking, higher alcohol intake, less physical activity, and poorer diet quality) compared with those with a healthier lifestyle. In contrast, the relative reduction in CRC risk associated with aspirin use was similar.

Meaning  The findings of this study suggest that aspirin may be useful for CRC prevention for individuals with additional risk factors.

Abstract

Importance  Aspirin reduces the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC). Identifying individuals more likely to benefit from regular aspirin use for CRC prevention is a high priority.

Objective  To assess whether aspirin use is associated with the risk of CRC across different lifestyle risk factors.

Design, Setting, and Participants  A prospective cohort study among women in the Nurses’ Health Study (1980-2018) and men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986-2018) was conducted. Data analysis was performed from October 1, 2021, to May 22, 2023.

Exposures  A healthy lifestyle score was calculated based on body mass index, alcohol intake, physical activity, diet, and smoking with scores ranging from 0 to 5 (higher values corresponding to a healthier lifestyle). Regular aspirin use was defined as 2 or more standard tablets (325 mg) per week.

Main Outcome and Measures  Outcomes included multivariable-adjusted 10-year cumulative incidence of CRC, absolute risk reduction (ARR), and number needed to treat associated with regular aspirin use by lifestyle score and multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios for incident CRC across lifestyle scores.

Results  The mean (SD) baseline age of the 107 655 study participants (63 957 women from the Nurses’ Health Study and 43 698 men from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study) was 49.4 (9.0) years. During 3 038 215 person-years of follow-up, 2544 incident cases of CRC were documented. The 10-year cumulative CRC incidence was 1.98% (95% CI, 1.44%-2.51%) among participants who regularly used aspirin compared with 2.95% (95% CI, 2.31%-3.58%) among those who did not use aspirin, corresponding to an ARR of 0.97%. The ARR associated with aspirin use was greatest among those with the unhealthiest lifestyle scores and progressively decreased with healthier lifestyle scores (P < .001 for additive interaction). The 10-year ARR for lifestyle scores 0 to 1 (unhealthiest) was 1.28%. In contrast, the 10-year ARR for lifestyle scores 4 to 5 (healthiest) was 0.11%. The 10-year number needed to treat with aspirin was 78 for participants with lifestyle scores 0 to 1, 164 for score 2, 154 for score 3, and 909 for scores 4 to 5. Among the components of the healthy lifestyle score, the greatest differences in ARR associated with aspirin use were observed for body mass index and smoking.

Conclusions and Relevance  In this cohort study, aspirin use was associated with a greater absolute reduction in risk of CRC among individuals with less healthy lifestyles. The findings of the study suggest that lifestyle risk factors may be useful to identify individuals who may have a more favorable risk-benefit profile for cancer prevention with aspirin.

Source

Also:  Study finds regular aspirin use associated with greatest reduction in colorectal cancer among those most at risk &

          Daily Aspirin Cuts Odds for Colon Cancer: Who Benefits Most?

The lawsuit accuses the company of making "false and misleading" statements about its software testing.

It also says the company's share price dropped 32% in the 12 days after the incident, causing a loss in market value of $25bn (£14.5bn).

CrowdStrike denies the allegations and says it will defend itself against the proposed class action lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the firm has said computers affected by the massive global IT outage are effectively now back to normal.

The US-based company stated that as of 5pm local time on Monday, 29 July (00:00, Tuesday GMT), the outage had been fixed - ten days after the incident began.

The suit filed in the Austin, Texas federal court, alleges that CrowdStrike executives defrauded investors by making them believe the company's software updates were adequately tested.

The lawsuit is seeking an unspecified amount of compensation for investors who owned CrowdStrike shares between 29 November and 29 July.

It cites chief executive George Kurtz, who said in a conference call on 5 March that the firm's software was "validated, tested and certified."

CrowdStrike told BBC News that its disputes the claims.

“We believe this case lacks merit and we will vigorously defend the company,” a spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, Ed Bastian, has said in an interview with business news channel CNBC that the disruption caused by the outage cost the airline $500m, including lost revenue and compensation to passengers.

Delta has reportedly hired a prominent lawyer and is preparing to seek compensation from CrowdStrike.

The faulty update on 19 July crashed 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers around the world. The outage disrupted businesses and services, including airlines, banks and hospitals.

In a detailed review of the incident, CrowdStrike said there was a "bug" in a system designed to ensure software updates worked properly.

CrowdStrike said the glitch meant "problematic content data" in a file went undetected.

The company said it could prevent a repeat of the incident with better software testing and checks, including more scrutiny from developers.

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One of the most unlikely passengers on the AI gadgets hype train is the toothbrush. With claims of using advanced algorithms and companion apps to help you brush your teeth better, toothbrushes have become a tech product for some brands.

 

So-called "AI toothbrushes" have become more common since debuting in 2017. Numerous brands now market AI capabilities for toothbrushes with three-figure price tags. But there's limited scientific evidence that AI algorithms help oral health, and companies are becoming more interested in using tech-laden toothbrushes to source user data.

AI toothbrushes

Kolibree was the first company to announce a "toothbrush with artificial intelligence." The French company debuted its Ara brush at CES 2017, with founder and CEO Thomas Serval saying, "Patented deep learning algorithms are embedded directly inside the toothbrush on a low-power processor. Raw data from the sensors runs through the processor, enabling the system to learn your habits and refine accuracy the more it’s used."

 

That's pretty much how other AI toothbrush companies describe their products: There's a vague algorithm working with an unnamed (likely cheap) processor and sensors to gather information, including how hard, fast, or frequently you brush your teeth. Typically, Bluetooth connectivity enables syncing this data with an app, purportedly letting users see interpretations of their brushing habits and how they could improve.

 

Kolibree now licenses its technology to Colgate-branded AI toothbrushes. The associated app, Colgate Connect, allows users to order Colgate products, sometimes at a discount. Other companies selling "AI toothbrushes" with connected e-commerce apps are Procter & Gamble's (P&G's) Oral-B, Philips, and Oclean, which announced a new tech-equipped toothbrush in July. Unlike many other toothbrushes, Oclean's X Ultra can work with Wi-Fi.

 

An Oclean spokesperson told Ars Technica via email:

 

The toothbrush’s chip and accelerometer collect user behavior data. The embedded algorithm processes this data, and the brushing data is uploaded to the cloud in real time (no need to open the app once Wi-Fi is connected). Data processed on the toothbrush is displayed on the screen with limited dimensions, while cloud-processed results are shown on the mobile app with more dimensions and AI suggestions (based on recent or long-term brushing habits).

Assuming you could find an AI toothbrush that delivers on its claims by helpfully pointing out that you tend to miss your top-right molar, there's reason to be skeptical about the necessity of such technology and the underlying motivations a brand may have in releasing an app-connected toothbrush.

AI toothbrushes help companies sell, develop products

Outside of toothbrushes, personal care brands have been seeking new ways to make money beyond selling units. As Stéphane Bérubé, CMO at beauty brand L’Oréal, put it, the industry can get value from selling services instead of just products. "I believe that the company that just sells products will not be successful," she said at a 2018 marketing conference.

 

AI toothbrushes follow a similar approach. Toothbrushing tips act as a service, while the connected apps offer ways to potentially diversify a company's business, make more revenue through product sales, and get an intimate understanding of how people use a product. The Oral-B toothbrush app, for example, can provide users information about their toothbrushing habits and recommend P&G products to buy while providing purchase links.

 

P&G has also discussed using AI in general as a way to get information that could help shape product development. As explained by P&G CIO Vittorio Cretella in a 2022 blog post, "algorithms can be defined to process consumer feedback on product changes and flag R&D engineers in real time, along with recommending adjustments accordingly.” As P&G's R&D team has pointed out, traditional methods for collecting data on consumers, like surveys and focus groups, rely on self-reporting that can be inaccurate. Using tech to gather information about the way people use products is a way for corporations to address that flaw.

 

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One of the things that the James Webb Space Telescope was designed to do was look at some of the earliest objects in the Universe. And it has already succeeded spectacularly, imaging galaxies as they existed just 250 million years after the Big Bang. But these galaxies were small, compact, and similar in scope to what we'd consider a dwarf galaxy today, which made it difficult to determine what was producing their light: stars or an actively feeding supermassive black hole at their core.

 

This week, Nature is publishing confirmation that some additional galaxies we've imaged also date back to just 300 million years after the Big Bang. Critically, one of them is bright and relatively large, allowing us to infer that most of its light was coming from a halo of stars surrounding its core, rather than originating in the same area as the central black hole. The finding implies that it formed through a continuing burst of star formation that started just 200 million years after the Big Bang.

Age checks

The galaxies at issue here were first imaged during the JADES (JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey) imaging program, which includes part of the area imaged for the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Initially, old galaxies were identified by using a combination of filters on one of Webb's infrared imaging cameras.

 

Most of the Universe is made of hydrogen, and figuring out the age of early galaxies involves looking for the most energetic transitions of hydrogen's electron, called the Lyman series. These transitions produce photons that are in the UV area of the spectrum. But the redshift of light that's traveled for billions of years will shift these photons into the infrared area of the spectrum, which is what Webb was designed to detect.

 

What this looks like in practice is that hydrogen-dominated material will emit a broad range of light right up to the highest energy Lyman transition. Above that energy, photons will be sparse (they may still be produced by things like processes that accelerate particles). This point in the energy spectrum is called the "Lyman break," and its location on the spectrum will change based on how distant the source is—the greater the distance to the source, the deeper into the infrared the break will appear.

 

Initial surveys checked for the Lyman break using filters on Webb's cameras that cut off different areas of the IR spectrum. Researchers looked for objects that showed up at low energies but disappeared when a filter that selected for higher-energy infrared photons was swapped in. The difference in energies between the photons allowed through by the two filters can provide a rough estimate of where the Lyman break must be.

 

Locating the Lyman break requires imaging with a spectrograph, which can sample the full spectrum of near-infrared light. Fortunately, Webb has one of those, too. The newly published study involved turning the NIRSpec onto three early galaxies found in the JADES images.

Too many, too soon

The researchers involved in the analysis only ended up with data from two of these galaxies. NIRSpec doesn't gather as much light as one of Webb's cameras can, and so the faintest of the three just didn't produce enough data to enable analysis. The other two, however, produced very clear data that placed the galaxies at a redshift measure roughly z = 14, which means we're seeing them as they looked 300 million years after the Big Bang. Both show sharp Lyman breaks, with the amount of light dropping gradually as you move further into the lower-energy part of the spectrum.

 

There's a slight hint of emissions from heavily ionized carbon atoms in one of the galaxies, but no sign of any other specific elements beyond hydrogen.

 

One of the two galaxies was quite compact, so similar to the other galaxies of this age that we'd confirmed previously. But the other, JADES-GS-ZZ14-0, was quite distinct. For starters, it's extremely bright, being the third most luminous distant galaxy out of hundreds we've imaged so far. And it's big enough that it's not possible for all its light to be originating from the core. That rules out the possibility that what we're looking at is a blurred view of an active galactic nucleus powered by a supermassive black hole feeding on material.

 

Instead, much of the light we're looking at seems to have originated in the stars of JADES-GS-ZZ14-0. Most of those stars are young, and there seems to be very little of the dust that characterizes modern galaxies. The researchers estimate that star formation started at least 100 million years earlier (meaning just 200 million years after the Big Bang) and continued at a rapid pace in the intervening time.

 

Combined with earlier data, the researchers write that this confirms that "bright and massive galaxies existed already only 300 [million years] after the Big Bang, and their number density is more than ten times higher than extrapolations based on pre-JWST observations." In other words, there were a lot more galaxies around in the early Universe than we thought, which could pose some problems for our understanding of the Universe's contents and their evolution.

 

Meanwhile, the early discovery of the extremely bright galaxy implies that there are a number of similar ones out there awaiting our discovery. This means there's going to be a lot of demand for time on NIRSpec in the coming years.

 

Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07860-9  (About DOIs).

 

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You wake in the middle of the night to the sound of your child’s screams. You run into their room, where you find them thrashing about their bed as though battling an invisible monster. You call their name, but they don’t respond.

This situation sounds, and feels, like a parent’s nightmare — or perhaps a scene from Stranger Things. In fact, it’s known as a night terror, and, while disturbing, it’s not an uncommon occurrence in children, nor is it a harmful one.

What are night terrors?

Think of a night terror as a nightmare taken to the next level to include sound and motion. It can be frightening to observe, as the person appears to be in great distress.

“A child having a night terror might sit up in bed. They might act very afraid and upset. They may even be shouting or screaming or kind of flail and thrash about,” Tyanna C. Snider, a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, told HuffPost.

“You might also see some more fear or panic symptoms like sweating, rapid heart rate, faster breathing,” she added. In spite of all this, the child remains asleep.

“Typically, the child will not even respond if someone tries to help,” Dr. Jonathan Miller, chief of pediatric primary care at Nemours Children’s Health in Delaware, told HuffPost.

“They can be very difficult, and honestly, almost nearly impossible to console,” Snider said.

The good news is that night terrors end without any intervention. “After a few minutes, or sometimes longer, the child calms down and goes back to sleep,” Miller said.

Bizarrely, and in contrast to a nightmare, the child will have no memory of their night terror the next morning — though parents often need some time to recover from the scare!

While adults can get night terrors, they are seen more frequently in children under the age of 13, Snider said. Some children only have a night terror once, while in others they are recurring, but most kids won’t have them once they reach adolescence.

“Night terrors in adults are often related to underlying anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder,” Miller said. He added that adults are also more likely to be injured during a night terror when they move around or get out of bed.

In children, night terrors are not uncommon. Estimates of their prevalence range widely, from 1-30%. A 2022 study involving 324 children who were followed from ages 1-3 found that the incidence was 16.7–20.5%.

Sleepwalking, sleep talking and night terrors are all considered sleep disorders, or parasomnia. While a person may walk or talk during a night terror, walking or talking during sleep doesn’t necessarily mean that a night terror is taking place.

“Sleepwalking may be associated with night terrors, but it is not a night terror itself,” Miller said. Interestingly, while people are often able to recall their nightmares, they usually have no recollection of night terrors, sleepwalking or  sleep talking.

Usually, Snider said, night terrors occur “within that first third of the night, because they’re happening during non-REM sleep.”

How should I handle a night terror?

If you believe your child is having a night terror, there is little to do other than wait for it to pass. Miller suggests that you:

•     Sit quietly near your child.
•     Make sure they don’t get hurt by thrashing or running around.
•     Wait patiently until your child goes back to sleep, usually within a few minutes.

While it is hard to see your child in this strange type of distress, Snider suggested that you “keep in mind that the child won’t have memory of this night terror, and that they’re not in any real danger.”

You may have heard that it is dangerous to awaken a person having a night terror. While it won’t physically harm the person, experts do recommend against it, as it can be disorienting for the child.

“Don’t try to wake your child,” Miller advised. “This usually doesn’t work, and kids who do wake up are likely to be confused and upset.”

It’s worth mentioning any night terrors your child has to your pediatrician, as they are sometimes associated with obstructive sleep apnea or reflux, both medical conditions that can be treated. If your child’s night terrors are frequent, you may be advised to consult a sleep specialist.

Is there any treatment for night terrors?

There is no medication or therapy to treat night terrors. (However, if the person having night terrors is diagnosed with PTSD or anxiety, there are various treatments for those conditions.)

“The best treatment is prevention,” Snider explained. Children who aren’t getting enough sleep are more prone to night terrors, she said, as are children experiencing stress.

Miller said that a person susceptible to night terrors may be triggered by:

•     Insufficient sleep
•     Illness
•     Certain medications
•     A change in sleep environment (such as sleeping in a new place or away from home)
•     Anxiety or stress
•     Caffeine
•     Disturbances in sleep, such as obstructive sleep apnea and reflux.

If your child is having frequent night terrors, you may be able to find a pattern in terms of when they occur — generally during the first few hours of your child’s sleep.

“Sometimes you can identify and kind of pinpoint a time frame, and waking your child up 10 to 15 minutes before [the night terror is likely to happen] can sometimes prevent them from happening,” Snider said.

If your child does have a night terror, it may help to know that the only one to remember it will be you.

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Their findings were published in Biofilm in an article titled, “Pseudomonas aeruginosa quorum sensing and biofilm attenuation by a di-hydroxy derivative of piperlongumine (PL-18).”

The Indian long pepper is sometimes used in combination with other herbs in Ayurvedic medicine. It is used to improve appetite and digestion, as well as to treat stomach aches, heartburn, indigestion, intestinal gas, diarrhea, and cholera. The researchers turned to the plant to explore its protection against antibiotic resistance.

Many plants’ secondary metabolites are essential for plant protection against microbial pathogens. These compounds have long been considered an important source for drug discovery. The synthesis of new derivatives of these metabolites increases the probability of finding new drugs for many therapeutic purposes.

In the study, sixteen derivatives of Piperlongumine (PL), an amide alkaloid from Piper longum L., were screened for Quorum Sensing Inhibition (QSI). Quorum Sensing (QS) uses auto-inducers to control bacterial concentration. PL-18 had the best QSI activity.

PL-18 both reduced bacterial virulence and disrupted the biofilms that protected their sample bacteria. The researchers noted: “The transcriptome study of treated P. aeruginosa showed that PL-18 indeed reduced the expression of QS and iron homeostasis related genes, and upregulated sulfur metabolism related genes. Altogether, PL-18 inhibits QS, virulence, iron uptake, and biofilm formation. Thus, PL-18 should be further developed against bacterial infection, antibiotic resistance, and biofilm formation.”

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Some men are at increased risk for prostate cancer. You are at increased risk for getting or dying from prostate cancer if you are African-American or have a family history of prostate cancer.

For some men, genetic factors may put them at higher risk of prostate cancer. You may have an increased risk of getting a type of prostate cancer caused by genetic changes that are inherited if:

• You have more than one first-degree relative (father, son, or brother) who had prostate cancer, including relatives in three generations on your mother’s or father’s side of the family.
• You were diagnosed with prostate cancer when you were 55 years old or younger.
• You were diagnosed with prostate cancer, and other members of your family have been diagnosed with breast, ovarian, or pancreatic cancer.

Different people have different symptoms for prostate cancer. Some men do not have symptoms at all. If you have any of the following symptoms, be sure to see your doctor right away:

•     Difficulty starting urination
•     Weak or interrupted flow of urine
•     Frequent urination, especially at night
•     Difficulty emptying the bladder completely
•     Pain or burning during urination
•     Blood in the urine or semen
•     Pain in the back, hips, or pelvis that doesn’t go away
•     Painful ejaculation

Keep in mind that these symptoms may be caused by conditions other than prostate cancer.

Cancer screening means looking for cancer before it causes symptoms. The goal of screening for prostate cancer is to find cancers that may be at high risk for spreading if not treated, and to find them early before they spread.

There is no standard test to screen for prostate cancer. Two tests that are commonly used to screen for prostate cancer are a blood test called a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and a digital rectal examination. PSA is a substance made by the prostate, and the levels of PSA in the blood can be higher in men who have prostate cancer. But the PSA level may also be elevated in other conditions that affect the prostate.

The recommendations about prostate cancer screening are:

• Men who are 55 to 69 years old should make individual decisions about being screened for prostate cancer with a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test.
• Before making a decision, men should talk to their doctor about the benefits and harms of screening for prostate cancer, including the benefits and harms of other tests and treatment.
• Men who are 70 years old and older should not be screened for prostate cancer routinely.

This recommendation applies to men who:

•     Are at average risk for prostate cancer.
•     Are at increased risk for prostate cancer.
•     Do not have symptoms of prostate cancer.
•     Have never been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

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Supervised by select paediatric hospitals, eligible babies will be given gradually increasing doses of peanut powder each day for at least two years, to reduce sensitivity.

Oral immunotherapy has been available in clinical trials and some specialist allergy centres around the globe, but this is the first time it has ever been adopted as a national model of care for peanut allergies.

Australia is often dubbed the "allergy capital of the world", with one in 10 infants diagnosed with food sensitivities.

Peanut allergy affects about 3% of Australians at 12 months old and – unlike other food allergies – few children outgrow it, making it the most common food allergy among school-aged children.

“[This] might be the game changer we have all wanted to stop this terrible allergy in its tracks,” Assistant Minister for Health Ged Kearney said.

The free programme is only available to children under 12 months who have already been diagnosed with a peanut allergy and are receiving care at one of ten participating hospitals across the country.

The dosing schedule will be carefully calculated for each child, until they reach a “maintenance dose” which they will remain on for two years, programme lead Tim Brettig told the BBC.

Some children may experience side effects including an allergic reaction, but for most children in this age group they are mild and do not require treatment, he said.

The aim is to raise their tolerance threshold and lower the risk - and anxiety - posed by exposure to peanuts, with results measured by a food allergy test at the end of the treatment.

"In some cases, [the threshold] might be so high that they can eat peanut in their diet freely, for others it might raise it to a level where accidental exposures wouldn't result in an allergic reaction."

“Ultimately, we want to change the trajectory of allergic disease in Australia so that more children can go to school without the risk of a life-threatening peanut reaction," said Professor Kirsten Perrett, Director of the National Allergy Centre of Excellence (NACE).

NACE will evaluate the programme for both effectiveness and safety with the hope of extending it to more hospitals, and potentially other food allergies.

However, doctors have stressed that families should not try oral immunotherapy at home unsupervised.

"It's definitely not a programme for everybody," Dr Brettig said.

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Most respiratory illnesses have very similar symptoms at the start: sore throat, congested or runny nose, headache, fatigue and fever. This may progress to a dry cough.

Best case scenario is that you have "a cold" (which can be any one of hundreds of viruses, most commonly rhinovirus), which is short-lived and self-limiting.

But some respiratory illnesses can be much more serious. Here is a brief guide to some important bugs to know about that are circulating this winter, and how to work out which one you have.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)

For most people an RSV infection will feel like "a cold"—annoying, but only lasting a few days.

However, for babies, older adults and people with immune issues, it can lead to bronchiolitis or pneumonia, and even become life-threatening.

RSV isn't seasonal, which means you are just as likely to get it in summer as in winter. However, it is highly contagious so we noticed it disappearing almost completely during COVID lockdowns.

There is now a rapid-antigen test (RAT) for RSV which also checks for influenza and COVID, and is the best way of finding out if RSV is what is causing symptoms.

Recently, a preventative immune therapy has become available for high risk babies (nirsevimab) and there are also vaccines for higher risk adults. Nirsevimab is also available to all babies for free in Western Australia and Queensland.

But there are no specific treatments. Adults who get it simply have to ride it out (using whatever you need to manage symptoms).

Babies and higher risk patients need to present to an emergency department if they test positive for RSV and are also looking or feeling very unwell (this might mean rapid shallow breathing, fevers not coming down with paracetamol or ibuprofen, a baby not feeding, mottled-looking skin, or going blue around the mouth).

If a patient has developed a bronchiolitis or pneumonia, they may need to be hospitalized.

Influenza

Once you have had the "true flu" (influenza), you will find it frustrating when people call their sniffly cold-like symptoms a "flu."

Influenza infections generally start with a sore throat and headache which quickly turns into high fevers, generalized aches and excessive fatigue. You feel like you have been hit by a truck and may struggle to get out of bed. This can last a week or more, even in people who are generally fit and healthy.

Influenza is a major public health issue internationally, with 3–5 million cases of severe illness and 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths annually.

People who are at greater risk of complications from influenza include pregnant women, children under five, adults aged 65 and over, First Nations peoples, and people with chronic or immunosuppressive medical conditions. For this reason, annual vaccination is recommended and funded for vulnerable people.

Vaccination is also readily available for all Australians who want it, through pharmacies as well as medical clinics, usually at a cost of less than A$30. In some states, it's free for all residents.

Influenza is seasonal, with definite peaks in the winter months. This is why vaccines are offered from early autumn.

If you think you may have influenza, there are now home-testing RATs: all current influenza RATs are in combination with COVID RATs, as the symptoms overlap.

Treatment for most people is to manage symptoms and try to avoid spreading it around. Doctors can also prescribe antivirals to vulnerable patients; these work best if started within 48 hours of symptoms.

COVID

It has been less than five years since COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, started to spread around the world in pandemic proportions.

Although COVID is no longer a public health emergency, it still causes more deaths than influenza and RSV combined.

Unlike RSV and influenza, only those aged over 70 are in a high-risk age group for COVID. Other factors besides age may put you at higher risk of becoming very unwell when infected by this virus. This includes having other respiratory diseases (such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also known as COPD), diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, obesity or heart disease.

Unlike most respiratory viruses, SARS-CoV-2 tends to set off inflammation beyond the respiratory system. This can involve a range of other organs including the heart, kidneys and blood vessels.

Although most people are back to their usual work or study after a week or two, a significant proportion go on to experience extended symptoms such as fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog and mood changes. When these last more than 12 weeks, without any other explanation for symptoms, it's called long COVID.

COVID vaccines can prevent serious illness and have been monitored for several years now for their safety and effectiveness. Current vaccination recommendations are based on age and immune status. It's worth discussing them with your doctor if you are unsure whether you would benefit or not.

Antivirals can treat COVID in higher-risk people who contract it, whether vaccinated or not.

Specific advice about what to do if you test positive on a RAT will vary according to your current state guidelines and workplace, however the general principles are always: avoid spreading the virus to others, and give yourself time to rest and recover.

What if it's not one of those?

So you've done your combined RSV/flu/COVID RAT and the result is negative. But you still have symptoms. What else could it be?

More than 200 different viruses can cause cold and flu symptoms, including rhinovirus (mentioned above), adenovirus and sometimes even undefined pathogens.

If an illness progresses to a cough which will not go away, and/or you start coughing up sputum, this could be a bacterial infection, such as pertussis (whooping cough), streptococcus pneumoniae, haemophilus influenzae or moraxella catarrhalis. So it's worth getting assessed by a GP who may do a chest Xray and/or test your sputum, particularly if they suspect pneumonia.

You also may also start out with what is clearly a viral infection but then get a secondary bacterial infection later. So if you are getting more unwell over time, it's worth getting tested, in case antibiotics will help.

However, taking antibiotics for a purely viral illness will not only be useless, it can contribute to harmful antibiotic resistance and give you unwanted side effects.

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Developed in conjunction with scientists, clinicians and researchers from Flinders University, QUT, the University of Sydney and the Immunisation Coalition, the online calculator provides a personalized risk assessment of developing long COVID 6 months after infection.

Associate Professor Kirsty Short from UQ's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences said the tool will be useful in helping tackle the obstinate disease.

"At least 65 million people globally are thought to suffer from the post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), more commonly known as long COVID," Dr. Short said.

"It's an incredibly debilitating disease causing more than 200 symptoms across 10 different organ systems and can affect individuals quite differently. Common symptoms include fatigue, brain fog and shortness of breath."

Dr. Short said while diagnosing and treating long COVID is still in its infancy, there is now a strong understanding of the risk factors associated with the condition's development.

"The calculator takes into account a range of personal factors including age, sex, comorbidities, vaccination status, number of previous infections and use of antiviral medications," she said.

"All of this data allows our research-backed algorithm to provide a personalized risk assessment of developing long COVID. Users see their risk results either as 'a chance' or 'per million people'. The interface is user-friendly and easy to navigate for people of all ages and technological proficiencies."

Associate Professor John Litt from Flinders University, a co-lead on the calculator project, said by helping to identify those who might be at higher risk, the tool allows for proactive measures and early interventions to potentially mitigate the severity and duration of long COVID symptoms.

"While many adults don't see COVID-19 as a big issue now, many are concerned about getting long COVID," he said. "The chance of suffering long COVID increases with every bout of COVID-19 a person catches."

Dr. Short said the project also puts a spotlight on the controllable factors that can lead to long COVID.

"Incomplete vaccination, missed drug treatment during acute infection and repeat infections are the greatest controllable influencers that increase risk, so there are actions you can take right now to reduce that," she said.

"Health managers and individuals in conjunction with clinicians can use the risk assessment tool for shared decision making on vaccination, infection-avoidant behaviors and pursuing early treatment during acute infection.

"Knowing your personal risk and the steps you can take to protect your health can help us win the war against long COVID."

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