New submitter berghem shares a report from The Guardian: For the first time, researchers have formally shown that exposure to toxic PFAS increases the likelihood of death by cardiovascular disease, adding a new level of concern to the controversial chemicals' wide use. The findings are especially significant because proving an association with death by chemical exposure is difficult, but researchers were able to establish it by reviewing death records from northern Italy's Veneto region, where many residents for decades drank water highly contaminated with PFAS, also called "forever chemicals." Records further showed an increased likelihood of death from several cancers, but stopped short of establishing a formal association because of other factors. [...]

Veneto's drinking water was widely contaminated by a PFAS-production plant between 1985 and 2018. Researchers first found an excess of about 4,000 deaths during this period, or about one every three days. Part of the region was supplied with water from a different source, giving researchers the opportunity to compare records for tens of thousands of people who drank contaminated water and lived near those who did not. Though PFAS can affect the cardiovascular system in different ways, it is largely a problem because it produces stubbornly high and dangerous levels of cholesterol. The levels are difficult to control because they aren't caused by dietary or lifestyle choices that can be addressed with adjustments, but hormonal changes that affect the metabolism and the body's ability to control plaque in arteries. The study's authors suspect that post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the environmental disaster, which upended lives across the region, may also be contributing to circulatory disease. The evidence of a jump in kidney cancer was also "very clear," [said Annibale Biggeri, the peer-reviewed study's lead author, and a researcher with the University of Padua]. In the study's first five years, 16 cases were recorded, while 65 were recorded in the last five years. It also found elevated levels of testicular cancer during some time periods.

The records "showed clearly" that earlier life exposures led to higher levels of mortality, except for women who have multiple children. Previous research has found levels were higher in women with only one child. The chemicals accumulate in placentas and are passed on to children during pregnancy, which reduces levels in the body. Mortality levels among women who were of child-bearing age were generally lower, but increased in older women. The chemicals will be passed down to children for generations, said Laura Facciolo, a Veneto resident who drank contaminated water. She said the findings underscore the need to ban PFAS, and the disaster's injustice. The findings have been published in the journal Environmental Health.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Harvard geneticist David Sinclair, who has said his "biological age" is roughly a decade younger than his actual one, has put forward his largely unlined face as a spokesman for the longevity movement. The 54-year-old has built his brand on the idea that aging is a treatable disease. The notion has proven so seductive that legions of acolytes follow his online postings about his research and the cocktails of supplements he consumes to stave off the inevitable. His social-media accounts are a platform for assertions that his work is pushing nearer to a fountain of youth. He claimed last year that a gene therapy invented in his Harvard lab and being developed by a company he co-founded, Life Biosciences, had reversed aging and restored vision in monkeys. "Next up: age reversal in humans," he wrote on X and Instagram.

On Feb. 29, in the eyes of many other scientists working to unlock the mysteries of aging, he went too far. Another company he co-founded, Animal Biosciences, quoted him in a press release saying that a supplement it had developed had reversed aging in dogs. Scientists who study aging can't even agree on what it means to "reverse" aging, much less how to measure it. The response was swift and harsh. The Academy for Health and Lifespan Research, a group of about 60 scientists that Sinclair co-founded and led, was hit with a cascade of resignations by members outraged by his claims. One scientist who quit referred to Sinclair on X as a "snake oil salesman." Days later, in a tense video meeting, the academy's five other board members pressed Sinclair to resign as president. He contended that the press release contained an inaccurate quote, according to people who were in the meeting, but he later stepped down.

Sinclair's work is published regularly in top-tier scientific journals and has brought attention to an emerging field vying for credibility and funding. He has parlayed his research into hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in various companies, more than 50 patents and prominence as a longevity influencer. Along the way, his claims -- especially in his social-media posts, interviews and his book -- have drawn criticism from scientists who have accused him of hyping his research and extolling unproven products, including some from companies in which he had a financial interest. "My lab's ideas and findings are typically ahead of the curve, which is why some peers might feel the research is overstated at the time," Sinclair said to The Wall Street Journal in an email. "I stand behind my track record as a trusted scientist in one of the most competitive professions of all." He said he doesn't engage with social-media critics, including those calling him a snake oil salesman, and that many such comments are "nothing more than mischaracterizations."

Walmart isn't making enough money off its new health centers, so it decided to close up shop. From a report: The retail giant announced today that it'll shutter all 51 health centers it opened up across five states since 2019. Walmart is also getting rid of its virtual care program after acquiring telehealth provider MeMD in 2021. "We determined there is not a sustainable business model for us to continue," Walmart said in an announcement today.

"This is a difficult decision, and like others, the challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs create a lack of profitability that make the care business unsustainable for us at this time," Walmart said today. It's an about-face from last year when Walmart said it planned to double its number of health clinics and expand into two new states in 2024.

Richard Speed reports via The Register: NASA's optical communications demonstration has hit 25 Mbps in a test transmitting engineering data back to Earth from 140 million miles (226 million kilometers) away. The payload is riding aboard the Psyche probe, which is headed for an asteroid of the same name. On December 11, when the spacecraft was 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) away, it reached 267 Mbps, which NASA described as "comparable to broadband internet download speeds."

However, as Psyche has continued on its trajectory, the distances have become greater, and the rate at which data can be transmitted and received has tumbled. At 140 million miles, the project's goal was to reach a lofty 1 Mbps. Instead, engineers managed to get 25 Mbps out of the demonstration. Earlier demonstrations tested the technology using preloaded data, such as a cat video. The latest experiment used a copy of engineering data also sent via Psyche's radio transmitter.

"We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8," said Meera Srinivasan, the project's operations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. "Until then, we'd been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche. This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft's radio frequency comms system." The demonstrator is only along for the ride -- Psyche uses conventional radio technology for its mission. However, the demonstration does point to the potential for higher-bandwidth communications in future projects.

Crypto company Tether announced Monday that it has invested $200 million to acquire a majority stake in brain-computer interface company Blackrock Neurotech via its venture capital division Tether Evo. [The firm is not related to the asset management giant BlackRock.] CoinDesk reports: Blackrock Neurotech develops medical devices that are powered by brain signals and aims to help people impacted by paralysis and neurological disorders. The investment will fund the roll-out and commercialization of the medical devices and also for research and development purposes, the press release said. Tether is the company behind USDT, the largest stablecoin with a market cap of $110 billion. Recently, Tether established four divisions to expand beyond stablecoin issuance. "Tether has long believed in nurturing emerging technologies that have transformative capabilities, and the Brain-Computer-Interfaces of Blackrock Neurotech have the potential to open new realms of communication, rehabilitation, and cognitive enhancement," Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, said in a statement.

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) wants to tell you about a "new" star that will be visible to the naked eye — without a telescope — sometime before September: By "star", I do not mean "comet", "meteorite" or "firefly", but genuine [star] photons arriving here after about 3000 years in flight, causing your eyes to see a bright point on the nighttime sky. When it happens, the star will go from needing-a- telescope-or-good-binoculars-to-see, to being the 50th (or even 30th) brightest star in the sky.

For a week or so. Of course, it could just go full-on supernova, and be visible in daylight for a few weeks, and dominate the night sky for months. But that's unlikely.
Named "T Corona Borealis" (because it's the 20th variable star studied in the constellation "Corona Borealis") it's now visible all night, all year, for about 60% of the world's population (although normally you need binoculars to see it).

But RockDoctor writes that in 2016, "T CrB" (as it is known) has started showing "a similar pattern of changes" to what happened in the late 1930s when it became one of only 10 "recurring nova" known to science: In 2023, the pattern continued and the match of details got better. The star is expected to undergo another "eruption" — becoming one of the brightest few stars in the sky, within the next couple of months. Maybe the next couple of weeks. Maybe the next couple of hours....

Last week, astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst posted on the expected event in her monthly "Night Sky News" video blog. If you prefer your information in text not video, the AAVSO (variable star observers) posted a news alert for it's observers a while ago. They also hosted a seminar on the star, and why it's eruption is expected Real Soon Now, which is also on YouTube. A small selection of recent papers on the subject are posted here, which also includes information on how to get the most up-to-date brightness readings (unless you're a HST / JWST / Palomar / Hawai`i / Chile telescope operator). Yes, the "big guns" of astronomy have prepared their "TOO — Target Of Opportunity" plans, and will be dropping normal observations really quickly when the news breaks and slewing TOO the target.

You won't need your eclipse glasses for this. (Dr Becky's video covers where you can send them for re-use.) But you might want to photograph the appropriate part of the sky so you'll notice when the bomb goes off. Bomb? Did I say that the best model for what is happening is a thermonuclear explosion like a H-bomb the size of the Earth detonating? Well, that's the best analogue.
This CNN article includes a nice animation from NASA illustrating the multi-star interaction that's causing the event: The stars in the orbiting pair are close enough to each other that they interact violently. The red giant becomes increasingly unstable over time as it heats up, casting off its outer layers that land as matter on the white dwarf star. The exchange of matter causes the atmosphere of the white dwarf to gradually heat until it experiences a "runaway thermonuclear reaction," resulting in a nova [according to NASA]...

The NASAUniverse account on X, formerly known as Twitter, will provide updates about the outburst and its appearance.
The BBC reiterates the key data points — that "The rare cosmic event is expected to take place sometime before September 2024. When it occurs it will likely be visible to the naked eye. No expensive telescope will be needed to witness this cosmic performance, says NASA."

Long-time Slashdot reader lee1 shares "an interesting essay on the history of orthodoxy in quantum mechanics," published this week in Nature.

Its title? "'Shut up and calculate': how Einstein lost the battle to explain quantum reality." [T]he views of Danish physicist Niels Bohr came to dominate. Albert Einstein famously disagreed with him and, in the 1920s and 1930s, the two locked horns in debate. A persistent myth was created that suggests Bohr won the argument by browbeating the stubborn and increasingly isolated Einstein into submission. Acting like some fanatical priesthood, physicists of Bohr's 'church' sought to shut down further debate. They established the 'Copenhagen interpretation', named after the location of Bohr's institute, as a dogmatic orthodoxy.

My latest book Quantum Drama, co-written with science historian John Heilbron, explores the origins of this myth and its role in motivating the singular personalities that would go on to challenge it. Their persistence in the face of widespread indifference paid off, because they helped to lay the foundations for a quantum-computing industry expected to be worth tens of billions by 2040...
The Einstein-Bohr dispute raised larger issues, according to the article. "What is the purpose of physics? Is its main goal to gain ever-more-detailed descriptions and control of phenomena, regardless of whether physicists can understand these descriptions? Or, rather, is it a continuing search for deeper and deeper insights into the nature of physical reality?

"Einstein preferred the second answer," the articcle notes — and concluded that quantum mechanics was incomplete: Unlike Bohr, Einstein had established no school of his own. He had rather retreated into his own mind, in vain pursuit of a theory that would unify electromagnetism and gravity, and so eliminate the need for quantum mechanics altogether. He referred to himself as a "lone traveler". In 1948, U.S. theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer remarked to a reporter at Time magazine that the older Einstein had become "a landmark, but not a beacon".

Subsequent readings of this period in quantum history promoted a persistent and widespread suggestion that the Copenhagen interpretation had been established as the orthodox view... When learning quantum mechanics as a graduate student at Harvard University in the 1950s, US physicist N. David Mermin recalled vivid memories of the responses that his conceptual enquiries elicited from his professors, whom he viewed as 'agents of Copenhagen'. "You'll never get a PhD if you allow yourself to be distracted by such frivolities," they advised him, "so get back to serious business and produce some results. Shut up, in other words, and calculate."
The book argues that actually the physics world suffered from "a subtly different kind of orthodoxy" — an indifference to "foundational questions" outside the mainstream — but that the "myth" motivated projects and experiments.

"Although the wider physics community still considered testing quantum mechanics to be a fringe science and mostly a waste of time, exposing a hitherto unsuspected phenomenon — quantum entanglement and non-locality — was not..."

In September NASA's James Webb Space Telescope investigated an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, and "revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide." Webb's discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that [planet] K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface... The planet's large size — with a radius 2.6 times the radius of Earth — means that the planet's interior likely contains a large mantle of high-pressure ice, like Neptune, but with a thinner hydrogen-rich atmosphere and an ocean surface. Hycean worlds are predicted to have oceans of water. However, it is also possible that the ocean is too hot to be habitable or be liquid.
NASA's announcement included some additional context: K2-18 b orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the habitable zone and lies 120 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. Exoplanets such as K2-18 b, which have sizes between those of Earth and Neptune, are unlike anything in our solar system. This lack of equivalent nearby planets means that these 'sub-Neptunes' are poorly understood, and the nature of their atmospheres is a matter of active debate among astronomers. The suggestion that the sub-Neptune K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet is intriguing, as some astronomers believe that these worlds are promising environments to search for evidence for life on exoplanets...

The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b.
Long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam noticed some sites resurfacing the news from September this week with more spectacular headlines, like "NASA discovered a planet twice as big as Earth with a gas that is 'only produced by life'" and "Discovery... sparks huge excitement among astronomers.

NASA's announcement? It's early Webb observations "provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide. On Earth, this is only produced by life." The bulk of the dimethyl sulfide in Earth's atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments.

The inference of dimethyl sulfide is less robust and requires further validation. "Upcoming Webb observations should be able to confirm if dimethyl sulfide is indeed present in the atmosphere of K2-18 b at significant levels," explained Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the paper announcing these results.

While K2-18 b lies in the habitable zone, and is now known to harbor carbon-bearing molecules, this does not necessarily mean that the planet can support life.
But it's all a validation of the new discoveries being made possible by space telescopes — new and old. "The first insight into the atmospheric properties of this habitable-zone exoplanet came from observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which prompted further studies..." "This result was only possible because of the extended wavelength range and unprecedented sensitivity of Webb, which enabled robust detection of spectral features with just two transits," said Madhusudhan... "These results are the product of just two observations of K2-18 b, with many more on the way," explained team member Savvas Constantinou of the University of Cambridge. "This means our work here is but an early demonstration of what Webb can observe in habitable-zone exoplanets."

[...] The team now intends to conduct follow-up research with the telescope's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) spectrograph that they hope will further validate their findings and provide new insights into the environmental conditions on K2-18 b. "Our ultimate goal is the identification of life on a habitable exoplanet, which would transform our understanding of our place in the universe," concluded Madhusudhan. "Our findings are a promising step towards a deeper understanding of Hycean worlds in this quest."

Japan's moon lander "has woken up again," reports the Register, "having survived three lunar nights." A post on social media from the lander's X account confirmed that once more, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had defied the odds and snapped a picture of the lunar surface using its navigation camera. SLIM was revived a few weeks ago, after a second lunar night. However, with telemetry showing that some of the electronics (temperature sensors) and battery cells were malfunctioning, the chances of the lander making it through a third lunar night seemed remote.

Yet against all odds, SLIM has stirred once more on the lunar surface despite lacking heaters to keep its electronics warm.

This week Russia vetoed a UN resolution that proposed banning nuclear weapons in space, CNN reports.

But it all happened "amid U.S. intelligence-backed concerns that Moscow is trying to develop a nuclear device capable of destroying satellites." In February, President Joe Biden confirmed the US has intelligence that Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satellite capability. Three sources familiar with the intelligence subsequently told CNN the weapon could destroy satellites by creating a massive energy wave when detonated...

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Wednesday's vote "marks a real missed opportunity to rebuild much-needed trust in existing arms control obligations." A US and Japan-drafted resolution had received cross-regional support from more than 60 member states. It intended to strengthen and uphold the global non-proliferation regime, including in outer space, and reaffirm the shared goal of maintaining outer space for peaceful purposes. It also called on UN member states not to develop nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction designed to be placed in Earth's orbit....

Experts say this kind of weapon could have the potential to wipe out mega constellations of small satellites, like SpaceX's Starlink, which has been successfully used by Ukraine to counter Russian troops. This would almost certainly be "a last-ditch weapon" for Russia, the US official and other sources said — because it would do the same damage to whatever Russian satellites were also in the area.
The article notes that in March Russian President Vladimir Putin "told officials that space projects, including the setup of a nuclear power unit in space, should be a priority and receive proper financing."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

"For the first time in at least a billion years, two lifeforms have merged into a single organism," reports the Independent: The process, called primary endosymbiosis, has only happened twice in the history of the Earth, with the first time giving rise to all complex life as we know it through mitochondria. The second time that it happened saw the emergence of plants. Now, an international team of scientists have observed the evolutionary event happening between a species of algae commonly found in the ocean and a bacterium...

The process involves the algae engulfing the bacterium and providing it with nutrients, energy and protection in return for functions that it could not previously perform — in this instance, the ability to "fix" nitrogen from the air. The algae then incorporates the bacterium as an internal organ called an organelle, which becomes vital to the host's ability to function.

The researchers from the U.S. and Japan who made the discovery said it will offer new insights into the process of evolution, while also holding the potential to fundamentally change agriculture. "This system is a new perspective on nitrogen fixation, and it might provide clues into how such an organelle could be engineered into crop plants," said Dr Coale.
Two papers detailing the research were published in the scientific journals Science and Cell.

Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Nature: The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has released the highest-resolution geological maps of the Moon yet. The Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globe, which took more than 100 researchers over a decade to compile, reveals a total of 12,341 craters, 81 basins and 17 rock types, along with other basic geological information about the lunar surface. The maps were made at the unprecedented scale of 1:2,500,000. The CAS also released a book called Map Quadrangles of the Geologic Atlas of the Moon, comprising 30 sector diagrams which together form a visualization of the whole Moon. [...] China will use the maps to support its lunar ambitions and Liu says that the maps will be beneficial to other countries as they undertake their own Moon missions. Three spacecraft have launched aiming for the Moon so far this year, and in May, China intends to send a craft to collect rocks from the Moon's far side.

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by superconductivity physicist Ranga Dias against his employer, the University of Rochester in New York. From a report: In February, a university investigation found that he had committed scientific misconduct by, among other things, fabricating data to claim the discovery of superconductors -- materials with zero electrical resistance -- at room temperature. Dias filed the lawsuit against the university for allegedly violating his academic freedom and conducting a biased investigation into his work.

On 19 April, Monroe County Supreme Court justice Joseph Waldorf denied Dias's petitions and dismissed the lawsuit as premature. The matter "is not ripe for judicial review," Waldorf wrote, because, although Rochester commissioned an independent review that found Dias had committed misconduct, it has not yet finished taking administrative action. The university provost has recommended that Dias be fired, but a final decision is still forthcoming. A spokesperson for the university said Rochester was "pleased" with the justice's ruling, and reiterated that its investigation was "carried out in a fair manner" and reached a conclusion that it thinks is correct.

Nature's news team reported on Rochester's investigation previously: three scientists external to the university conducted a 10-month probe into 16 allegations against Dias and determined that the physicist had committed plagiarism, and data fabrication and falsification related to four scientific papers, including two published in Nature. Normally, the details of the investigation would probably have remained confidential. But in response to Dias's lawsuit, the university submitted the entire report as a court exhibit, making it public.

Noise pollution from traffic stunts growth in baby birds, even while inside the egg, research has found. From a report: Unhatched birds and hatchlings that are exposed to noise from city traffic experience long-term negative effects on their health, growth and reproduction, the study found. "Sound has a much stronger and more direct impact on bird development than we knew before," said Dr Mylene Mariette, a bird communication expert at Deakin University in Australia and a co-author of the study, published in the journal Science. "It would be wise to work more to reduce noise pollution."

A growing body of research has suggested that noise pollution causes stress to birds and makes communication harder for them. But whether birds are already distressed at a young age because they are affected by noise, or by how noise disrupts their environment and parental care, was still unclear. Mariette's team routinely exposed zebra finch eggs for five days to either silence, soothing playbacks of zebra finch songs, or recordings of city traffic noises such as revving motors and cars driving past. They did the same with newborn chicks for about four hours a night for up to 13 nights, without exposing the birds' parents to the sounds.

An international team of scientists used 1.8 billion letters of genetic code from more than 9,500 species covering almost 8,000 known flowering plant genera to create the most up-to-date understanding of the flowering plant tree of life. The research has been published in the journal Nature. Phys.Org reports: The major milestone for plant science, led by [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew] and involving 138 organizations internationally, was built on 15 times more data than any comparable studies of the flowering plant tree of life. Among the species sequenced for this study, more than 800 have never had their DNA sequenced before. The sheer amount of data unlocked by this research, which would take a single computer 18 years to process, is a huge stride towards building a tree of life for all 330,000 known species of flowering plants -- a massive undertaking by Kew's Tree of Life Initiative.

The flowering plant tree of life, much like our own family tree, enables us to understand how different species are related to each other. The tree of life is uncovered by comparing DNA sequences between different species to identify changes (mutations) that accumulate over time like a molecular fossil record. Our understanding of the tree of life is improving rapidly in tandem with advances in DNA sequencing technology. For this study, new genomic techniques were developed to magnetically capture hundreds of genes and hundreds of thousands of letters of genetic code from every sample, orders of magnitude more than earlier methods. A key advantage of the team's approach is that it enables a wide diversity of plant material, old and new, to be sequenced, even when the DNA is badly damaged. The vast treasure troves of dried plant material in the world's herbarium collections, which comprise nearly 400 million scientific specimens of plants, can now be studied genetically.

[...] Across all 9,506 species sequenced, more than 3,400 came from material sourced from 163 herbaria in 48 countries. Additional material from plant collections around the world (e.g., DNA banks, seeds, living collections) have been vital for filling key knowledge gaps to shed new light on the history of flowering plant evolution. The team also benefited from publicly available data for more than 1,900 species, highlighting value of the open science approach to future genomic research. Flowering plants alone account for about 90% of all known plant life on land and are found virtually everywhere on the planet -- from the steamiest tropics to the rocky outcrops of the Antarctic Peninsula. [...] Utilizing 200 fossils, the authors scaled their tree of life to time, revealing how flowering plants evolved across geological time. They found that early flowering plants did indeed explode in diversity, giving rise to more than 80% of the major lineages that exist today shortly after their origin. However, this trend then declined to a steadier rate for the next 100 million years until another surge in diversification about 40 million years ago, coinciding with a global decline in temperatures. These new insights would have fascinated Darwin and will surely help today's scientists grappling with the challenges of understanding how and why species diversify. A list of "remarkable species" included in the flowering plant tree of life is embedded below the article.

Looking ahead, the study's authors believe this data will aid future attempts to identify new species, refine plant classification, uncover new medicinal compounds, and conserve plants in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Generative A.I. technologies can write poetry and computer programs or create images of teddy bears and videos of cartoon characters that look like something from a Hollywood movie. Now, new A.I. technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can today. Described in a research paper published on Monday by a Berkeley, Calif., startup called Profluent, the technology is based on the same methods that drive ChatGPT, the online chatbot that launched the A.I. boom after its release in 2022. The company is expected to present the paper next month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. "Its OpenCRISPR-1 protein is built on a similar structure as the fabled CRISPR-Cas9 DNA snipper, but with hundreds of mutations that help reduce its off-target effects by 95%," reports Fierce Biotech, citing the company's preprint manuscript published on BioRxiv. "Profluent said it can be employed as a 'drop-in replacement' in any experiment calling for a Cas9-like molecule."

While Profluent will keep its LLM generators private, the startup says it will open-source the products of this initiative. "Attempting to edit human DNA with an AI-designed biological system was a scientific moonshot," Profluent co-founder and CEO Ali Madani, Ph.D., said in a statement. "Our success points to a future where AI precisely designs what is needed to create a range of bespoke cures for disease. To spur innovation and democratization in gene editing, with the goal of pulling this future forward, we are open-sourcing the products of this initiative."

Nicola Davis reports via The Guardian: If every day appears to go in a blur, try seeking out new and interesting experiences, researchers have suggested, after finding memorable images appear to dilate time. Researchers have previously found louder experiences seem to last longer, while focusing on the clock also makes time dilate, or drag. Now researchers have discovered the more memorable an image, the more likely a person is to think they have been looking at it for longer than they actually have. Such images were also easier for participants to recall the next day. Prof Martin Wiener, co-author of the study who is based at George Mason University in the U.S., said the findings could help develop improve artificial intelligence that interacts with humans, while they also offer opportunities to tweak our perceptions, given research has previously shown non-invasive brain stimulation can be used to lengthen a perceived interval.

The results from two groups, totaling about 100 people, revealed participants were more likely to think they had been looking at small, highly cluttered scenes -- such a crammed pantry -- for a shorter duration than was the case, whereas the reverse occurred when people viewed large scenes with little clutter, such as the interior of an aircraft hangar. The team also carried out experiments involving 69 participants that found images known from previous work to be more memorable were more likely to be judged as having been shown for longer than was the case. Crucially, the effect seemed to go both ways.

"We also found that the longer the perceived subjective duration of an image, the more likely you were to remember it the next day," said Wiener. When the team carried out an analysis using deep learning models of the visual system, they discovered more memorable images were processed faster. What's more, the processing speed for an image was correlated with how long participants thought they had been looking at it. "Images may be more memorable because they are processed faster and more efficiently in the visual system, and that drives the perception of time," said Wiener. The team suggest time dilation might serve a purpose, enabling us to gather information about the world around us. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

NASA last week formally approved a $3.35 billion mission to explore Saturn's largest moon with a quadcopter drone. "Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. "Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth." The mission has a launch date of July 2028. Ars Technica reports: After reaching Titan, the eight-bladed rotorcraft lander will soar from place to place on Saturn's hazy moon, exploring environments rich in organic molecules, the building blocks of life. Dragonfly will be the first mobile robot explorer to land on any other planetary body besides the Moon and Mars, and only the second flying drone to explore another planet. NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was the first. Dragonfly will be more than 200 times as massive as Ingenuity and will operate six times farther from Earth.

Despite its distant position in the cold outer Solar System, Titan appears to be reminiscent of the ancient Earth. A shroud of orange haze envelops Saturn's largest moon, and Titan's surface is covered with sand dunes and methane lakes. Titan's frigid temperatures -- hovering near minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius) -- mean water ice behaves like bedrock. NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which flew past Titan numerous times before its mission ended in 2017, discovered weather systems on the hazy moon. Observations from Cassini found evidence for hydrocarbon rains and winds that appear to generate waves in Titan's methane lakes. Clearly, Titan is an exotic world. Most of what scientists know about Titan comes from measurements collected by Cassini and the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which Cassini released to land on Titan in 2005. Huygens returned the first pictures from Titan's surface, but it only transmitted data for 72 minutes.

Dragonfly will explore Titan for around three years, flying tens of kilometers about once per month to measure the prebiotic chemistry of Titan's surface, study its soupy atmosphere, and search for biosignatures that could be indications of life. The mission will visit more than 30 locations within Titan's equatorial region, according to a presentation by Elizabeth Turtle, Dragonfly's principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "The Dragonfly mission is an incredible opportunity to explore an ocean world in a way that we have never done before," Turtle said in a statement. "The team is dedicated and enthusiastic about accomplishing this unprecedented investigation of the complex carbon chemistry that exists on the surface of Titan and the innovative technology bringing this first-of-its-kind space mission to life."

quonset writes: Just over two weeks ago, NASA figured out why its Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped sending useful data. They suspected corrupted memory in its flight data system (FDS) was the culprit. Today, for the first time since November, Voyager 1 is sending useful data about its health and the status of its onboard systems back to NASA. How did NASA accomplish this feat of long distance repair? They broke up the code into smaller pieces and redistributed them throughout the memory.

From NASA: "... So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well. The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft's engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 1/2 hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 1/2 hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft. During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

AmiMoJo writes: Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade. An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students' submissions in Canvas -- the most widely used online learning management system -- which is based on alphabetical rank of their surnames.

What's more, the researchers found, those alphabetically disadvantaged students receive comments that are notably more negative and less polite, and exhibit lower grading quality measured by post-grade complaints from students.