An Israeli study tracked more than 843,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine — and then explored whether the results improved for the 758,000 who then also got a booster shot.

The results? HealthDay reports: Boosted folks are 90% less likely to die from a Delta infection than people relying solely on the initial two-dose vaccination, Israeli data show.

That protection will be critically important during the next couple of months as the Delta variant continues to dominate throughout the United States, said Dr. William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. "While we are preoccupied with Omicron, you need to remember that Delta is essentially in every town and city in the United States today — being transmitted, infecting new people, sending people to the hospital, in some parts of the country stressing the health care system once again," Schaffner said. "Although we have Omicron in the United States and it's starting to take hold, nonetheless well over 95% of all new infections today are caused by Delta...."

A second study out of Israel focused on infection and severity of illness, and it also produced good tidings for boosters in the face of the Delta variant. This study involved nearly 4.7 million Israelis who'd been fully vaccinated with Pfizer and were eligible for boosters. Confirmed infections were tenfold lower in the group of people who got the Pfizer booster, researchers reported. Further, results showed that the longer a booster was in a person's system, the more resistant they became to infection from the Delta strain.

Blue Origin successfully completed a 10-minute suborbital spaceflight this morning.

But with SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and the space agencies of Russia and China, Blue Origin also helped humanity achieve another milestone Saturday. The Washington Post explains how it will push us far past a record set in 1985 when America's space shuttle made nine flights into space: Saturday's launch will be the 13th human spaceflight of the year, two more than in 1985, when NASA carried out those nine shuttle flights, and the Russian Soyuz vehicle carried astronauts on two launches.

All of those flights reached orbit, while several of the flights this year barely scratched the edge of space in relatively short suborbital jaunts. Still, this year is "the busiest year in human spaceflight," Jennifer Levasseur, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, said in an interview. "We're entering a new phase of activity that we've never, frankly, seen before. And it creates a lot of excitement."

Saturday's Blue Origin flight will also carry Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of space exploration firm Voyager Space; Evan Dick, an investor; Lane and Cameron Bess, the first parent-child pair to fly to space; and Laura Shepard Churchley, a daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space...

China, which is building a space station in low Earth orbit, flew two crewed missions this year, and Russia has flown three, including the flight this week. The flurry of activity is reminiscent of 1985, Levasseur said, a time when NASA was optimistic that it would fly dozens of times a year, carrying all sorts of people to space.
The Post ultimately calls 2021 "one of the most remarkable years for human spaceflight."

Jackie Wattles writes via CNN Business: Jeff Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin, became the subject of a federal review this fall after a group of 21 current and former employees co-signed an essay that raised serious questions about the safety of the company's rockets -- including the rocket making headlines for flying Bezos and other celebrities to space. But that review was hamstrung by a lack of legal protections for whistleblowers in the commercial spaceflight industry, according to emails from Federal Aviation Administration investigators that were obtained by CNN Business. The FAA also confirmed in a statement Friday that its Blue Origin review is now closed, saying the "FAA investigated the safety allegations made against Blue Origin's human spaceflight program" and "found no specific safety issues."

The emails obtained by CNN Business, however, reveal that investigators were not able to speak with any of the engineers who signed the letter anonymously. Investigators also were not able to go to Blue Origin and ask for documents or interviews with current employees or management, according to the FAA. The situation highlights how commercial spaceflight companies like Blue Origin are operating in a regulatory bubble, insulated from much of the scrutiny other industries are put under. There are no federal whistleblower statues that would protect employees in the commercial space industry if they aid FAA investigators, according to the agency.

The commercial space industry is in a legally designated "learning period" until at least October 2023 -- a "learning period" that has been extended several times, most recently by a 2015 law called the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. The idea is to allow the industry to mature and give companies a chance to self-regulate without overbearing government interference. But that designation effectively bars federal regulators from implementing certain new rules or wielding the same oversight powers for commercial space companies as it does for aviation. That meant that investigators had to rely on current and former Blue Origin employees voluntarily coming forward to offer information.

A team of scientists at a university in western Japan has developed masks that glow when exposed to ultraviolet light if they contain traces of the coronavirus, using antibodies extracted from ostrich eggs. From a report: The team at Kyoto Prefectural University, headed by its president, Yasuhiro Tsukamoto, 52, hopes the masks will offer users an easy way to test whether they have contracted the virus. With testing continuing to put them into practical use, the team aims to gain government approval to sell the masks possibly next year. Ostriches are capable of producing several different kinds of antibody, or proteins that neutralize foreign entities in the body. In February last year, the team injected an inactive and non-threatening form of the coronavirus into female ostriches, successfully extracting a large quantity of antibodies from the eggs that they laid.

A brand-new space telescope will soon reveal a hidden vision of the cosmos, potentially transforming our understanding of black holes, supernovas and even the nature of the universe itself. No, not that one. From a report: Much attention is being devoted this month to the James Webb Space Telescope, from NASA and the European Space Agency, which is set to launch on Dec. 22. But a more exclusive cadre of astronomers watched excitedly on Thursday during the trip to space of a smaller, but also transformative, observatory. NASA launched the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE mission, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1 a.m. Eastern. The spacecraft cost a mere $188 million, compared with the James Webb's mammoth budget of $9.7 billion, and is expected to demonstrate a new form of astronomy. It will, for the first time, perform imaging X-ray polarimetry in orbit, a technique that could offer astronomers insights that no other telescope can match.

"It's giving us information about some of the most bizarre and exciting objects in space," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. IXPE (pronounced by the mission team as "ix-pee") was placed into an orbit 340 miles above Earth after its launch. The telescope will spend several weeks there deploying its scientific instruments and testing its equipment, then begin its two-year mission. X-rays are a useful way to observe the universe. Emitted from extremely energetic objects, they allow astronomers to probe events -- superheated jets near black holes or explosions of stars, for example -- in a way other wavelengths, such as visible light, cannot. But X-rays can be studied only from space because they are mostly absorbed by Earth's atmosphere. A variety of dedicated X-ray space telescopes and instruments have launched to orbit, most notably NASA's Chandra X-ray and ESA's XMM-Newton observatories, which both launched in 1999. With spacecraft like these, scientists have unveiled the birthplaces of stars inside gaseous nebulas and mapped the spread of dark matter in clusters of galaxies, among other pioneering work.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized the first injectable monoclonal antibody cocktail for long-term prevention of Covid-19 among people with weakened immune systems before they have been exposed to the coronavirus. NBC News reports: The FDA issued an emergency use authorization Wednesday for AstraZeneca's antibody cocktail, Evusheld, for what is known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, against Covid-19. To date, such laboratory-produced antibodies have been authorized only as early treatment of Covid-19 or as preventive therapy for high-risk people immediately after close contact with someone who has tested positive.

Evusheld can be used as PrEP by people ages 12 and older who are moderately to severely immunocompromised and may not get adequate immune responses from a Covid vaccine. The therapy is also an option for the rare people who have histories of severe adverse reactions to a Covid vaccine or its components. The AstraZeneca therapy involves getting preventive injections as often as every six months. According to a large placebo-controlled clinical trial, the cocktail is about 83 percent effective at preventing symptomatic disease during such an interval. It's unclear how the highly mutated omicron variant of the coronavirus -- which is spreading in 57 countries, including the U.S. -- might affect the efficacy of the monoclonal antibody therapy.

Microplastics cause damage to human cells in the laboratory at the levels known to be eaten by people via their food, a study has found. From a report: The harm included cell death and allergic reactions and the research is the first to show this happens at levels relevant to human exposure. However, the health impact to the human body is uncertain because it is not known how long microplastics remain in the body before being excreted. Microplastics pollution has contaminated the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People were already known to consume the tiny particles via food and water as well as breathing them in. The research analysed 17 previous studies which looked at the toxicological impacts of microplastics on human cell lines. The scientists compared the level of microplastics at which damage was caused to the cells with the levels consumed by people through contaminated drinking water, seafood and table salt. They found specific types of harm -- cell death, allergic response, and damage to cell walls -- were caused by the levels of microplastics that people ingest.

Over 40 million people in the United States had their personal health information exposed in data breaches this year, a significant jump from 2020 and a continuation of a trend toward more and more health data hacks and leaks. The Verge reports: Health organizations are required to report any health data breaches that impact 500 or more people to the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, which makes the breaches public. So far this year, the office has received reports of 578 breaches, according to its database. That's fewer than the 599 breaches reported in 2020 (PDF), but last year's breaches only affected about 26 million people. Since 2015, hacks or other IT incidents have been the leading reason people have their health records exposed, according to a report (PDF) from security company Bitglass. Before then, lost or stolen devices led to the most data breaches.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Gizmodo: Scientists have spotted an unusually large exoplanet in orbit around b Centauri, a massive two-star system that is visible to the unaided eye. With a combined weight of roughly 10 Suns, it's now the heaviest star system known to host a planet. The details of this discovery were published today in Nature. The newly discovered planet, called "b Cen (AB)b," is likely a gas giant and is heavier than 10 Jupiters combined, making it one of the most massive planets ever discovered. It orbits the b Centauri binary system, which is located 325 light-years from Earth and has a combined mass of nearly 10 Suns. At 52 billion miles from its host stars, this planet has one of the widest orbits ever detected. By comparison, Pluto orbits the Sun at around 3.3 billion miles, so yeah, that's an unbelievable separation. Until now, planets had not been found in orbit around star systems weighing more than three solar masses. Astronomers didn't think planets could form around systems like this, so it's forcing a major rethink of what's possible in terms of planetary architectures and the conditions under which planets can form.

That a planet exists in this star system is indeed surprising. Young stars have protoplanetary disks around them, from which planets eventually emerge. A hot star system like b Centauri, however, is not supposed to be conducive to planetary formation, owing to tremendous amounts of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. This high-energy radiation "tends to destroy the disks in a very short time," and it was "thought that this wouldn't give planets enough time to form in the disk before it disappeared," [said Markus Janson, an astronomer at Stockholm University and the first author of the study]. Yet there it is -- a full fledged planet around the b Centauri system. [...] A neat observation is how the ratio between the masses of the star system and its planet closely matches that of our Sun and Jupiter. But that's where the comparison ends, as the scale of b Centauri is far vaster, as the planet is 10 times the mass of Jupiter and with an orbit that's 100 times wider. [...]

From an astrobiological perspective, Janson added that b Centauri is "possibly one of the worst places in the galaxy to host life." Together, the binary pair spew enormous amounts of UV and X-ray radiation, "which would sterilize any surface that is exposed to it," so "life on any surface in the system is certainly not very likely." Still, Janson did not rule out the possibility that life could exist in subterranean oceans, matching ongoing speculation about basic life existing on Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Enceladus.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from The New York Times: What if something in the blood of an athlete could boost the brainpower of someone who doesn't or can't exercise? Could a protein that gets amplified when people exercise help stave off symptoms of Alzheimer's and other memory disorders? That's the tantalizing prospect raised by a new study in which researchers injected sedentary mice with blood from mice that ran for miles on exercise wheels, and found that the sedentary mice then did better on tests of learning and memory. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, also found that the type of brain inflammation involved in Alzheimer's and other neurological disorders was reduced in sedentary mice after they received their athletic counterparts' blood. Scientific results with mice don't necessarily translate to humans. Still, experts said the study supports a growing body of research.

The study involved mice that were about three months old -- roughly the equivalent of 25-to-30-year olds for humans. Some of the mice, nocturnal animals that love to run, could freely use exercise wheels in their cages and logged about four to six miles on the wheels each night. The wheels were locked for other mice that could scoot around their cages but could not get an extended cardio workout. [...] After 28 days, the researchers took a third group of mice that also did not exercise and injected them with blood plasma, the liquid that surrounds blood cells, from either the runner mice or the non-runner mice. Mice receiving runner blood did better on two tests of learning and memory than those receiving blood from the non-runner mice. In one test, which measures how long a mouse will freeze in fear when it is returned to a cage where it previously received an electric foot shock, mice with runner blood froze 25 percent longer, indicating they had better memory of the stressful event [...]. In the other test, mice with runner blood were twice as fast at finding a platform submerged in opaque water, he said. The team also found that the brains of mice with runner blood produced more of several types of brain cells, including those that generate new neurons in the hippocampus, a region involved in memory and spatial learning. A genetic analysis showed that about 1,950 genes had changed in response to the infusion of runner blood, becoming either more or less activated. Most of the 250 genes with the greatest activation changes were involved in inflammation and their changes suggested that brain inflammation was reduced.

Switzerland is giving the green light to so-called "suicide capsules" -- 3-D printed pods that allow people to choose the place where they want to die an assisted death. Global News reports: The country's medical review board announced the legalization of the Sarco Suicide Pods this week. They can be operated by the user from the inside. Dr. Philip Nitschke, the developer of the pods and founder of Exit International, a pro-euthanasia group, told SwissInfo.ch the machines can be "towed anywhere for the death" and one of the most positive features of the capsules is that they can be transported to an "idyllic outdoor setting."

Currently, assisted suicide in Switzerland means swallowing a capsule filled with a cocktail of controlled substances that puts the person into a deep coma before they die. But Sarco pods -- short for sarcophagus -- allow a person to control their death inside the pod by quickly reducing internal oxygen levels. The person intending to end their life is required to answer a set of pre-recorded questions, then press a button that floods the interior with nitrogen. The oxygen level inside is quickly reduced from 21 per cent to one per cent. After death, the pod can be used as a coffin. [...]

Nitschke said his method of death is painless, and the person will feel a little bit disoriented and/or euphoric before they lose consciousness. He said there are only two capsule prototypes in existence, but a third machine is being printed now, and he expects this method to become available to the Swiss public next year.

sciencehabit writes: When Thomas Edison hit a wall with his inventions, he would nap in an armchair while holding a steel ball. As he started to fall asleep and his muscles relaxed, the ball would strike the floor, waking him with insights into his problems. Or so the story goes. Now, more than 100 years later, scientists have repeated the trick in a lab, revealing that the famous inventor was on to something. People following his recipe tripled their chances of solving a math problem. The trick was to wake up in the transition between sleep and wakefulness, just before deep sleep.

The study team also identified a brain activity pattern linked to the creativity-boosting phase: moderate levels of brain waves at a slow frequency known as alpha, associated with relaxation, and low levels of delta waves, a hallmark of deep sleep. Experts say researchers can now focus on this brain signature when investigating the neural mechanisms of creative problem-solving. One team has already planned an experiment to help people reach a creative zone by monitoring their brain waves in real time. "Edison's intuition was somewhat right," says the lead scientist, "and now we have a lot more to explore."

Older people who have cataract surgery to improve their eyesight are less likely to develop dementia afterwards. From a report: The effect could be because people who lose their eyesight typically spend more time at home, and so get less mental stimulation -- or it could be down to a strange effect that cataracts have on the colours that reach the retina at the back of the eye. Cataracts, which involve the lens of the eye becoming more cloudy with age, are one of the most common causes of vision loss in older people. They can be fixed by surgically removing the lens to replace it with a plastic one. Sight loss was already known to be a risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Cecilia Lee at the University of Washington in Seattle wondered whether cataract surgery would have a noticeable correlation with dementia incidence.

Pfizer and BioNTech said initial lab studies show a third dose of their Covid-19 vaccine neutralizes the omicron variant, results that will accelerate booster shot drives around the world. From a report: A booster with the current version of the vaccine increased antibodies 25-fold, providing a similar level as observed after two doses against the original virus and other variants, the companies said Wednesday. Blood plasma from people immunized with two doses of the vaccine has neutralizing antibody levels more than 25-fold less versus omicron than against the original strain of the virus, the companies said. "It's clear from these preliminary data that protection is improved with a third dose," Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in a statement. The initial data show a third dose could offer still offer enough protection from disease, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from the Associated Press: Eight years ago, a team of researchers launched a project to carefully repeat early but influential lab experiments in cancer research. They recreated 50 experiments, the type of preliminary research with mice and test tubes that sets the stage for new cancer drugs. The results reported Tuesday: About half the scientific claims didn't hold up. [...] For the project, the researchers tried to repeat experiments from cancer biology papers published from 2010 to 2012 in major journals such as Cell, Science and Nature. Overall, 54% of the original findings failed to measure up to statistical criteria set ahead of time by the Reproducibility Project, according to the team's [two studies] published online Tuesday by eLife. The nonprofit eLife receives funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports The Associated Press Health and Science Department.

Among the studies that did not hold up was one that found a certain gut bacteria was tied to colon cancer in humans. Another was for a type of drug that shrunk breast tumors in mice. A third was a mouse study of a potential prostate cancer drug. The researchers tried to minimize differences in how the cancer experiments were conducted. Often, they couldn't get help from the scientists who did the original work when they had questions about which strain of mice to use or where to find specially engineered tumor cells. "I wasn't surprised, but it is concerning that about a third of scientists were not helpful, and, in some cases, were beyond not helpful," said Michael Lauer, deputy director of extramural research at the National Institutes of Health. NIH will try to improve data sharing among scientists by requiring it of grant-funded institutions in 2023, Lauer said.