A new AI tool developed by Google solved a decade-long superbug mystery in just two days, reaching the same conclusion as Professor Jose R Penades' unpublished research and even offering additional, promising hypotheses. The BBC reports: The researchers have been trying to find out how some superbugs - dangerous germs that are resistant to antibiotics - get created. Their hypothesis is that the superbugs can form a tail from different viruses which allows them to spread between species. Prof Penades likened it to the superbugs having "keys" which enabled them to move from home to home, or host species to host species.

Critically, this hypothesis was unique to the research team and had not been published anywhere else. Nobody in the team had shared their findings. So Mr Penades was happy to use this to test Google's new AI tool. Just two days later, the AI returned a few hypotheses - and its first thought, the top answer provided, suggested superbugs may take tails in exactly the way his research described.

A two-and-a-half-year-old girl shows no signs of a rare genetic disorder, after becoming the first person to be treated for the motor-neuron condition while in the womb. Nature: The child's mother took the gene-targeting drug during late pregnancy, and the child continues to take it. The "baby has been effectively treated, with no manifestations of the condition," says Michelle Farrar, a paediatric neurologist at UNSW Sydney in Australia. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday. The child was conceived with a genetic condition known as spinal muscular atrophy, which affects motor neurons that control movement, and leads to progressive muscle weakening.

About one in every 10,000 births have some form of the condition -- making it a leading genetic cause of death in infants and children. In its most severe form, as in the case of this child, individuals lack both copies of the SMN1 gene, and have only one or two copies of a neighbouring gene, SMN2, that partially compensates for that deficiency. As a result, the body does not produce enough of the protein required for maintaining motor neurons in the spinal cord and brainstem. This protein is most important in the second and third trimesters, and the first few months of life. Babies with severe disease don't usually live past their third birthday.

Chinese hospitals dominate a first-ever analysis of scientific paper retractions worldwide, with some institutions having retraction rates 50 times higher than the global average, according to data published in Nature.

Jining First People's Hospital in Shandong leads with more than 5% of its research output from 2014-2024 being retracted -- over 100 papers. The hospital had disciplined 35 researchers for publication fraud in late 2021 amid a broader Chinese government crackdown on paper mills selling fake manuscripts.

The analysis, based on data from three research integrity firms, found that about 60% of retracted articles over the past decade had authors affiliated with Chinese institutions. Other retraction hotspots include universities in Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

While retractions remain rare globally, affecting fewer than 0.1% of published papers, rates have tripled over the past decade. In 2023, over 10,000 papers were retracted, mostly from journals owned by publisher Wiley's now-closed Hindawi subsidiary following widespread peer review fraud. The surge in retractions partly reflects increased scrutiny from research integrity experts who spot problematic papers, rather than definitively indicating which institutions produce fraudulent work, according to Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: New research by Purdue University, the latest in a series of Purdue-led studies, examined how scented products -- in this case, flame-free candles -- are a significant source of nanosized particles small enough to get deep into your lungs, posing a potential risk to respiratory health [...] Scented wax melts are marketed as a flameless, smoke-free, non-toxic alternative to traditional candles, a safer way of making your home or office smell nice. To assess the truth of these claims, the researchers comprehensively measured the nanoparticles formed when they warmed wax melts in their mechanically ventilated test house. The tiny house is actually an architectural engineering laboratory called the Purdue Zero Energy Design Guidance for Engineers (zEDGE) lab. Designed and engineered to test the energy efficiency of a larger building, it's full of sensors that monitor the impact of everyday activities on indoor air quality.

The researchers knew from their previous research that new nanoparticle formation was initiated by terpenes -- aromatic compounds that determine the smell of things like plants and herbs -- released from the melts and reacting with indoor atmospheric ozone (O3). They'd found that activities such as mopping the floor with a terpene-rich cleaning agent, using a citrus-scented air freshener, or applying scented personal care products like deodorant inside the zEDGE house resulted in pulsed terpene emissions to the indoor air within five minutes. Conversely, using essential oil diffusers or peeling citrus fruits caused a more gradual increase in terpenes.

In the present study, heating the scented wax contributed significantly to the number of new particles formed in the indoor air, particularly those smaller than 100 nanometers (nm). The resulting atmospheric concentrations were over one million nanoparticles per cubic centimeter (106 cm-3), which is comparable to concentrations emitted by traditional lighted candles (106 cm-3), gas stoves (105 - 107 cm-3), diesel engines (103 - 106 cm-3), and natural gas engines (106 - 107 cm-3). By comparison, there were no significant terpene emissions when unscented wax melts were heated. The researchers also examined respiratory tract deposited dose rates (RD), a useful way of studying air pollution that measures the number of particles deposited in the respiratory tract over time. They found that the new particle formation triggered by using scented wax melts indoors produced a median RD for 1.18 to 100 nm particles of 29 billion per minute (2.9 x 1010 min-1). That's about 483 million particles per second. The majority of scented-wax-melt-formed particles were deposited in the upper airways. Their small size means they can migrate between cells and enter the bloodstream, potentially reaching organs such as the brain. The study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

France has upped the ante in the quest for fusion power by maintaining a plasma reaction for over 22 minutes -- a new record. From a report: The milestone was reached on February 12 at the Commissariat a lenergie atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA) WEST Tokamak reactor.

Achieving the dream of commercial fusion power is the Holy Grail of engineering and has been for 80 years. With a single gram of hydrogen isotopes yielding the energy equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal, a practical fusion reactor would hold the promise of unlimited, clean energy for humanity until the end of time.

Small wonder that billions have been invested by both government and industry in the quest to make fusion power a reality. However, while fusion is relatively easy to achieve in the heart of the sun or in a hydrogen bomb, creating a practical reactor that produces more energy than is put into it is another matter entirely.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the White House confirmed that it would not proceed with laying off more than 1,000 probationary employees at NASA. "NASA had sought exemptions for all of these employees, who comprise about 6 percent of NASA's workforce," notes Ars Technica. "The Trump administration has sought to fire federal employees at several federal agencies who are in the 'probationary' period of their employment. This includes new hires within the last one or two years or long-time employees who have moved into or been promoted into a new position." From the report: It was not immediately clear why. A NASA spokesperson in Washington, DC, offered no comment on the updated guidance. Two sources indicated that it was plausible that private astronaut Jared Isaacman, whom President Trump has nominated to lead the space agency, asked for the cuts to be put on hold.

Although this could not be confirmed, it seems reasonable that Isaacman would want to retain some control over where cuts at the agency are made. Firing all probationary employees -- which is the most expedient way to reduce the size of government -- is a blunt instrument. It whacks new hires that the agency may have recruited for key positions, as well as high performers who earned promotions.

The reprieve in these terminations does not necessarily signal that NASA will escape significant budget or employment cuts in the coming months. The administration could still seek to terminate probationary employees. In addition, Ars reported earlier that directors at the agency's field centers have been told to prepare options for a "significant" reduction in force in the coming months. The scope of these cuts has not been defined, and it's likely they would need to be negotiated with Congress.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Astronomers have detected over 5,800 confirmed exoplanets. One extreme class is ultra-hot Jupiters, of particular interest because they can provide a unique window into planetary atmospheric dynamics. According to a new paper published in the journal Nature, astronomers have mapped the 3D structure of the layered atmosphere of one such ultra-hot Jupiter-size exoplanet, revealing powerful winds that create intricate weather patterns across that atmosphere. A companion paper published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (PDF) reported on the unexpected identification of titanium in the exoplanet's atmosphere as well. [...]

This latest research relied on observational data collected by the European South Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope, specifically, a spectroscopic instrument called ESPRESSO that can process light collected from the four largest VLT telescope units into one signal. The target exoplanet, WASP-121b -- aka Tylos -- is located in the Puppis constellation about 900 light-years from Earth. One year on Tylos is equivalent to just 30 hours on Earth, thanks to the exoplanet's close proximity to its host star. Since one side is always facing the star, it is always scorching, while the exoplanet's other side is significantly colder.

Those extreme temperature contrasts make it challenging to figure out how energy is distributed in the atmospheric system, and mapping out the 3D structure can help, particularly with determining the vertical circulation patterns that are not easily replicated in our current crop of global circulation models, per the authors. For their analysis, they combined archival ESPRESSO data collected on November 30, 2018, with new data collected on September 23, 2023. They focused on three distinct chemical signatures to probe the deep atmosphere (iron), mid-atmosphere (sodium), and shallow atmosphere (hydrogen). "What we found was surprising: A jet stream rotates material around the planet's equator, while a separate flow at lower levels of the atmosphere moves gas from the hot side to the cooler side. This kind of climate has never been seen before on any planet," said Julia Victoria Seidel of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile and the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur in France. "This planet's atmosphere behaves in ways that challenge our understanding of how weather works -- not just on Earth, but on all planets. It feels like something out of science fiction."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The plan is to deploy a lander, a rover, and hopper to explore a site near the lunar south pole that could harbor water ice, and to put a communications satellite on lunar orbit. But the mission will also bring something that's never been installed on the moon or anywhere else in space before -- a fully functional 4G cellular network.

Point-to-point radio communications, which need a clear line of sight between transmitting and receiving antennas, have always been a backbone of both surface communications and the link back to Earth, starting with the Apollo program. Using point-to-point radio in space wasn't much of an issue in the past because there never have been that many points to connect. Usually, it was just a single spacecraft, a lander, or a rover talking to Earth. And they didn't need to send much data either. "They were based on [ultra high frequency] or [very high frequency] technologies connecting a small number of devices with relatively low data throughput," says Thierry Klein, president of Nokia Bell Labs Solutions Research, which was contracted by NASA to design a cellular network for the moon back in 2020.

SCMP: Chinese scientists have developed a revolutionary repair technology that could make lithium-ion batteries last over six times longer. Announcing their discovery in the journal Nature on Wednesday, the researchers said this low-cost, eco-friendly technology could soon be ready to enter the market.

The batteries are key for many modern technologies, from smartphones to electric vehicles. However, as these batteries age, they often become less efficient -- a process that cold weather accelerates. The researchers said they could counter this problem with the "injection" of a special solution to rejuvenate "sick" batteries. At present, lithium-ion batteries rely on sophisticated materials used to generate lithium ions -- whose movement through electrolyte is key to their performance -- and then protect them to ensure a decent lifespan.

Typically these lithium ions move from the positive terminal to the negative when the battery is charging, a process which is then reversed when it is generating power. The battery is considered to have expired when the supply of lithium ions runs low -- for example some electric car batteries have a lifespan of around 1,500 charge cycles -- but other components in the battery still remain in good working order after this happens. This insight prompted the two lead researchers, Gao Yue and Peng Huisheng from Fudan University's macromolecular science department, to see if they could revive a battery by replenishing the supply of active lithium ions.

A new family of superconductors is exciting physicists. Compounds containing nickel have been shown to carry electricity without resistance at the relatively high temperature of 45 kelvin (-228C) -- and without being squeezed under pressure. Nature: Physicists at the Southern University of Science and Technology (Sustech) in Shenzhen, China, observed the major hallmarks of superconductivity in a thin film of crystals of nickel oxide, which they grew in the laboratory. They published their work in Nature on 17 February. "There's a huge hope that we could eventually raise the critical temperature and make [such materials] more useful for applications," says Dafeng Li, a physicist at the City University of Hong Kong.

Nickelates now join two groups of ceramics -- copper-based cuprates and iron-based pnictides -- as 'unconventional superconductors' that operate at room pressure and temperatures as high as 150K (-123C). This new data point could help physicists to finally explain how high-temperature superconductors work, and ultimately to design materials that operate under ambient conditions. This would make technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging, radically cheaper and more efficient.

How unconventional superconductors operate at warmer temperatures remains largely a mystery, whereas the mechanism behind how some metals can carry electricity without resistance at colder temperatures, or extreme pressures, has been understood since 1957. The ability of the Sustech researchers to precisely engineer the material's properties is huge boon in trying to use nickelates to unravel the theory behind unconventional superconductivity, says Lilia Boeri, a physicist at the Sapienza University of Rome. "The idea that you have a system that you can sort of tune experimentally, is something quite exciting."

"A robotic lander from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is now in orbit around the Moon," reports Spaceflight Now, "and going through its final preparations to land in the coming weeks." Its arrival comes nearly a month after the spacecraft launched onboard a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. This is the third mission launched as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, an initiative designed to bring science and technology demonstrations to the Moon at a cheaper cost...

Manifested on this lander are 10 NASA payloads, which cover a range of objectives. Those include the Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) instrument, which will drill between 2- to 3-meters into the Moon's surface to study the heat flow; and the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) 1.1 instrument, which will use a series of cameras to capture the plume generated at landing to help create a three-dimensional model... "We saw that for the type of advanced scientific or engineering measurements we wanted to make, the instruments were small enough and compact enough that we could actually fly 10," [said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for Exploration in NASA's Science Mission Directorate], "if someone could actually schedule them to get all of their operations done over the 14 Earth day lunar daytime."

Firefly Aerospace ended up winning that bid and carries with it the most NASA instruments manifested on a single Commercial Lunar Payload Services lander so far.
Friday on X.com Firefly Aerospace wished a happy Valentine's Day to "all those on Earth who dare to Dream Big."

"Blue Ghost has been capturing stunning imagery of our planet throughout its journey," Spaceflight Now says in a 12-minute video.

And Friday on X.com Firefly posted Blue Ghost's first spectacular shots of the moon as it approaches — along with its special message for Valentine's Day. "I love you to the Moon, but not back — I'm staying there."

"What if time is not as fixed as we thought?" That's the question raised in an announcement from the University of Surrey.

"Imagine that instead of flowing in one direction — from past to future — time could flow forward or backward due to processes taking place at the quantum level." This is the thought-provoking discovery made by researchers at the University of Surrey, as a new study reveals that opposing arrows of time can theoretically emerge from certain quantum systems. For centuries, scientists have puzzled over the arrow of time — the idea that time flows irreversibly from past to future. While this seems obvious in our experienced reality, the underlying laws of physics do not inherently favour a single direction. Whether time moves forward or backwards, the equations remain the same....

This discovery provided a mathematical foundation for the idea that time-reversal symmetry still holds in open quantum systems — suggesting that time's arrow may not be as fixed as we experience it... The research offers a fresh perspective on one of the biggest mysteries in physics. Understanding the true nature of time could have profound implications for quantum mechanics, cosmology and beyond.
The university's announcement includes this quote from co-author Thomas Guff, a research fellow in quantum thermodynamics.

"The surprising part of this project was that even after making the standard simplifying assumption to our equations describing open quantum systems, the equations still behaved the same way whether the system was moving forwards or backwards in time. When we carefully worked through the maths, we found this behaviour had to be the case because a key part of the equation, the 'memory kernel,' is symmetrical in time."

And their research reminds readers that "the fundamental laws of physics in both the classical and the quantum realms do not manifest any intrinsic arrow of time. Newton's equations are time-reversal symmetric, as well as Schrödinger's equation. As a consequence, backward-in-time motion is equally possible as forward-in-time motion... Our findings are consistent with the second law of thermodynamics and emphasise the distinction between the concepts of irreversibility and time-reversal symmetry."

Can the iPhone, AirPods, or the Apple Watch play a role in improving health? Apple says they want to find out.

"In medical research, discoveries are often limited by the number of participants who can be recruited, the amount of data that can be captured, and the duration of a given study," the company said in a blog post this week. "But Apple devices expand the possibilities..." This new longitudinal, virtual study aims to understand how data from technology — including Apple and third-party devices — can be used to predict, detect, monitor, and manage changes in participants' health. Additionally, researchers will explore connections across different areas of health.
CNBC reports: The new study will likely influence future product development. Apple CEO Tim Cook previously said he believes health features will be the company's "most important contribution to mankind...."

The Apple Health Study will be available through the company's Research app, and participation is voluntary. Users will select each data type they are willing to share with researchers, and they can stop sharing or completely discontinue their participation at any time. Apple has no access to participants' identifiable information, the company said... The project will last at least five years and may expand beyond that.
A Harvard Medical School professor and cardiologist — also a principal investigator on the Apple Health Study — says "We've only just begun to scratch the surface of how technology can improve our understanding of human health."

Last June two NASA astronauts flew to the International Space Station on the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner. But they aren't stranded there, and they weren't abandoned, the astronauts reminded CNN this week in a rare space-to-earth interview: "That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it. We both get it," [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. "But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded." Wilmore added a request: "If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.'

"That's what we prefer," he said...

[NASA astronaut Suni] Williams also reiterated a sentiment she has expressed on several occasions, including in interviews conducted before she left Earth. "Butch and I knew this was a test flight," she told CNN's Cooper, acknowledging the pair has been prepared for contingencies and understood that the stay in space might be extended. "We knew that we would probably find some things (wrong with Starliner) and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise," she said.
When Cooper opened the interview by asking the astronauts how they're doing, Williams answers "We're doing pretty darn good, actually," pointing out they had plenty of food and great crew members. And Wilmore added that crews come to the space station on a careful cycle, and "to alter that cycle sends ripple effects all the way down the chain. We would never expect to come back just special for us or anyone unless it was a medical issue or something really out of the circumstances along those lines. So we need to come back and keep the normal cycle going..."

CNN's article notes a new announcement from NASA Tuesday that the astronauts might return a couple weeks early "after opting to change the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule it will use." That mission's targeted launch date is now March 12.

In the meantime, Williams says in the interview, "We do have some internet connection up here, so we can get some internet live. We've gotten football. It's been this crew's go-to this past fall. Also YouTube or something like that. It's not continuous — it has chunks of time that we get it. And we use that same system also to make phone calls home, so we can talk to our families, and do videoconferences even on the weekends as well. This place is a pretty nice place to live, for the most part."

And they're also "working on with folks on the ground" to test the NASA's cube-shaped, free-flying robotic Astrobees.

A new study suggests that frequent consumption of food from plastic takeout containers significantly increases the risk of congestive heart failure due to gut biome changes that trigger inflammation and circulatory damage. The Guardian reports: The authors used a two-part approach, first looking into the frequency with which over 3,000 people in China ate from plastic takeout containers, and whether they had heart disease. They then exposed rats to plastic chemicals in water that was boiled and poured in carryout containers to extract chemicals. "The data revealed that high-frequency exposure to plastics is significantly associated with an increased risk of congestive heart failure," the authors wrote. [...] They put boiling water in the containers for one, five or 15 minutes because plastic chemicals leach at much higher rates when hot contents are placed in containers -- the study cited previous research that found as many as 4.2m microplastic particles per sq cm can leach from plastic containers that are microwaved.

The authors then gave rats the water contaminated with leachate to drink for several months, then analyzed the gut biome and metabolites in the feces. It found notable changes. "It indicated that ingestion of these leachates altered the intestinal microenvironment, affected gut microbiota composition, and modified gut microbiota metabolites, particularly those linked to inflammation and oxidative stress," the authors wrote. They then checked the rats' heart muscle tissue and found it had been damaged. The study did not find a statistical difference in the changes and damage among rats that were exposed to water that had been in contact with plastic for one minute versus five or fifteen. The study has been published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety.