"A photo of Japan's robotic moon lander shows that though the spacecraft did make the quarter-million-mile journey to the lunar surface, it landed upside down..." reports Mashable. Because of the lander's now-apparent inverted position, its solar panels weren't oriented correctly to generate power, according to the space agency. The team elected to conserve power by shutting down the spacecraft about 2.5 hours after landing.

What's perhaps as surprising as the photo of the lander is how it was taken. Two small rovers separated from the crewless mothership just prior to touchdown. It was one of these baseball-sized robots that was able to snap the image of the spacecraft with its head in the moondust. The rover, built with the help of Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy, is a sphere that splits in half to expose a pair of cameras that point front and back. The two hemispheres also become the rover wheels. "The company is perhaps most famous for originally creating the Transformers, the alien robots that can disguise themselves as machines," said Elizabeth Tasker, who provided commentary on the moon landing in English on Jan. 20.

The space agency still isn't entirely sure what went wrong. At about 55 yards above the ground, the spacecraft performed an obstacle avoidance maneuver, part of the pinpoint-landing demonstration. Just prior to this step, one of the two main engines stopped thrusting, throwing the lander's orientation off. JAXA is continuing to investigate what caused the engine problem... Despite the fact that the spacecraft is now sleeping, the SLIM team hasn't lost hope for a recovery. With solar panels facing west, the lander still has a chance of catching some rays and generating power. If the angle of sunlight changes, SLIM could still be awakened, mission officials said.

That would have to happen soon, though. Night will fall on the moon on Feb. 1, bringing about freezing temperatures. The spacecraft was not built to withstand those conditions.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has now passed over the landing site at an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km) — and snapped their own photograph which they say shows "the slight change in reflectance around the lander due to engine exhaust sweeping the surface."

UPI reports: New research published Friday offers hope that the sediment samples picked up by the Mars rover Perseverance could reveal traces of life — if it ever existed on the Red Planet.

The rover already has confirmed an ancient lake on Mars. The new research published in Science Advances shows the Jezero Crater, where Perseverance verified lake sediments, is theorized to have been filled with water that deposited layers of sediments on the crater floor. "The delta deposits in Jezero Crater contain sedimentary records of potentially habitable conditions on Mars," the research article's abstract stated. "NASA's Perseverance rover is exploring the Jezero western delta with a suite of instruments that include the RIMFAX ground penetrating radar, which provides continuous subsurface images that probe up to 20 meters below the rover."

The research by UCLA and the University of Oslo shows the lake subsequently shrank and the sediments carried by a river formed a large delta... [R]adar images revealed sediments shaped like lake deposits on Earth. Their existence was confirmed by the new research.

"Exercising for 25 minutes a week, or less than four minutes a day, could help to bulk up our brains," reports the Washington Post, "and improve our ability to think as we grow older." A new study, which involved scanning the brains of more than 10,000 healthy men and women from ages 18 to 97, found that those who walked, swam, cycled or otherwise worked out moderately for 25 minutes a week had bigger brains than those who didn't, whatever their ages.

Bigger brains typically mean healthier brains. The differences were most pronounced in parts of the brain involved with thinking and memory, which often shrink as we age, contributing to risks for cognitive decline and dementia... The results have practical implications, too, about which types of exercise seem best for our brain health and how little of that exercise we may really need.
The article notes that the researchers used AI to assess brain scans from 10,125 "mostly healthy adults of all ages who'd come to the university medical center for diagnostic tests... A clear pattern quickly emerged." Men and women, of any age, who exercised for at least 25 minutes a week showed mostly greater brain volume than those who didn't. The differences weren't huge but were significant, said Cyrus A. Raji, an associate professor of radiology and neurology at Washington University in St. Louis, who led the new study, especially when the researchers looked deeper inside the organ. There, they found that exercisers possessed greater volume in every type of brain tissue, including gray matter, made up of neurons, and white matter, the brain's wiring infrastructure, which supports and connects the thinking cells. More granularly, the exercisers tended to have a larger hippocampus, a portion of the brain essential for memory and thinking. It usually shrinks and shrivels as we age, affecting our ability to reason and recall. They also showed larger frontal, parietal and occipital lobes, which, together, signal a healthy, robust brain...

Exactly how exercise might be altering brains is impossible to say from this study. But Raji and his colleagues believe exercise reduces inflammation in the brain and also encourages the release of various neurochemicals that promote the creation of new brain cells and blood vessels. In effect, exercise seems to help build and bank a "structural brain reserve," he said, a buffer of extra cells and matter that could protect us somewhat from the otherwise inevitable decline in brain size and function that occurs as we age. Our brains may still shrink and sputter over the years. But, if we exercise, this slow fall starts from a higher baseline...

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious group of giant elderly stars at the heart of the Milky Way that are emitting solar system-sized clouds of dust and gas. The stars, which have been named "old smokers," sat quietly for many years, fading almost to invisibility, before suddenly puffing out vast clouds of smoke. The discovery was made during the monitoring of almost a billion stars in infrared light during a 10-year survey of the night sky. The Guardian: The astronomers had set out to capture rarely seen newborn stars -- known as protostars -- while undergoing the equivalent of a stellar growth spurt. During these periods, young stars rapidly acquire mass by gorging on surrounding star-forming gas, leading to a sudden increase in luminosity. The team tracked hundreds of millions of stars and identified 32 erupting protostars that increased in brightness at least 40-fold and in some cases more than 300-fold.

Another group of red giant stars near the centre of the Milky Way unexpectedly showed up in the analysis, however. When they were studied in more detail using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, seven of the stars were deemed to be a new type of red giant star, which the researchers named "old smokers." Convection currents and instabilities within the star could trigger the release of enormous columns of smoke, Prof Philip Lucas of the University of Hertfordshire, who led the observations, suggested.

cusco writes: After three years and 72 flights of its 5-flight mission the mission of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars is finally over. Images show that Ingenuity suffered damage to one of its rotor blades and will not be able to take off again. NASA's press release, also shared by cusco: Ingenuity landed on Mars Feb. 18, 2021, attached to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover and first lifted off the Martian surface on April 19, proving that powered, controlled flight on Mars was possible. After notching another four flights, it embarked on a new mission as an operations demonstration, serving as an aerial scout for Perseverance scientists and rover drivers. In 2023, the helicopter executed two successful flight tests that further expanded the team's knowledge of its aerodynamic limits.

[...] Over an extended mission that lasted for almost 1,000 Martian days, more than 33 times longer than originally planned, Ingenuity was upgraded with the ability to autonomously choose landing sites in treacherous terrain, dealt with a dead sensor, cleaned itself after dust storms, operated from 48 different airfields, performed three emergency landings, and survived a frigid Martian winter.

Designed to operate in spring, Ingenuity was unable to power its heaters throughout the night during the coldest parts of winter, resulting in the flight computer periodically freezing and resetting. These power "brownouts" required the team to redesign Ingenuity's winter operations in order to keep flying.

With flight operations now concluded, the Ingenuity team will perform final tests on helicopter systems and download the remaining imagery and data in Ingenuity's onboard memory. The Perseverance rover is currently too far away to attempt to image the helicopter at its final airfield.

When is cancer not cancer? It's an unexpected question that has stirred the world of cancer treatment in recent years, most notably now with prostate cancer. WSJ: A growing number of doctors are advocating what might seem like an unusual position: That low-grade prostate cancers that grow very slowly or not at all shouldn't be called cancer or carcinoma. The reason, they say, is that those words scare men, their families and sometimes even their doctors into seeking more aggressive treatment than patients need -- leaving men with debilitating side effects -- rather than pursuing a carefully monitored wait-and-see approach.

A name change wouldn't be unprecedented. Certain other forms of thyroid, cervical and bladder cancers have been reclassified, sometimes partly to avoid scaring people about cancers that are unlikely to spread. "The word 'cancer' engenders so much anxiety and fear," says Dr. Laura Esserman, a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco and director of its Breast Care Center, who is advocating for a type of lower-risk breast cancer to be renamed. "Patients think if I don't do something tomorrow, this is going to kill me. In fact, that's not true."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is seeking to retract six scientific studies and correct 31 others that were published by the institute's top researchers, including its CEO. The researchers are accused of manipulating data images with simple methods, primarily with copy-and-paste in image editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop. The accusations come from data sleuth Sholto David and colleagues on PubPeer, an online forum for researchers to discuss publications that has frequently served to spot dubious research and potential fraud. On January 2, David posted on his research integrity blog, For Better Science, a long list of potential data manipulation from DFCI researchers. The post highlighted many data figures that appear to contain pixel-for-pixel duplications. The allegedly manipulated images are of data such as Western blots, which are used to detect and visualize the presence of proteins in a complex mixture.

DFCI Research Integrity Officer Barrett Rollins told The Harvard Crimson that David had contacted DFCI with allegations of data manipulation in 57 DFCI-led studies. Rollins said that the institute is "committed to a culture of accountability and integrity," and that "every inquiry about research integrity is examined fully." The allegations are against: DFCI President and CEO Laurie Glimcher, Executive Vice President and COO William Hahn, Senior Vice President for Experimental Medicine Irene Ghobrial, and Harvard Medical School professor Kenneth Anderson. The Wall Street Journal noted that Rollins, the integrity officer, is also a co-author on two of the studies. He told the outlet he is recused from decisions involving those studies.

Testing a person's blood for a type of protein called phosphorylated tau, or p-tau, could be used to screen for Alzheimer's disease with "high accuracy," even before symptoms begin to show, a new study suggests. CNN: The study involved testing blood for a key biomarker of Alzheimer's called p-tau217, which increases at the same time as other damaging proteins -- beta amyloid and tau -- build up in the brains of people with the disease. Currently, to identify the buildup of beta amyloid and tau in the brain, patients undergo a brain scan or spinal tap, which often can be inaccessible and costly. But this simple blood test was found to be up to 96% accurate in identifying elevated levels of beta amyloid and up to 97% accurate in identifying tau, according to the study published Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology.

"What was impressive with these results is that the blood test was just as accurate as advanced testing like cerebrospinal fluid tests and brain scans at showing Alzheimer's disease pathology in the brain," Nicholas Ashton, a professor of neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and one of the study's lead authors, said in an email. The study findings came as no surprise to Ashton, who added that the scientific community has known for several years that using blood tests to measure tau or other biomarkers has the potential to assess Alzheimer's disease risk. "Now we are close to these tests being prime-time and this study shows that," he said. Alzheimer's disease, a brain disorder that affects memory and thinking skills, is the most common type of dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Gummy vitamin supplements have surged in popularity, with sales projected to double to $14 billion by 2027. However, experts warn that the candy-like taste and texture increase risks of overdosing, especially among children, as calls to Poison Control for melatonin overdoses have jumped 530% in a decade. Formulating vitamins into gummies also leads to faster nutrient degradation from heat, light and moisture than pills. Testing shows gummy vitamins often contain far more or less of ingredients than labels state. While some sweetness makes supplements appealing, gummies mimic candy too closely at the expense of safety and reliability. The Atlantic: A recent analysis of melatonin and CBD gummies yielded similar results: Some contained as much as 347 percent the amount of those substances stated on the label. Because the FDA generally does not regulate supplements as drugs, such wild variability is accepted in a way that it isn't for actual pharmaceuticals. (In 2020, the FDA granted the first-ever Investigational New Drug Application for a gummy medication, though no such product appears to have come to market.) "If you have something that you need a specific amount of every time you take it, gummies are not the way to go," says Pieter Cohen, a doctor at Cambridge Health Alliance, in Somerville, Massachusetts, and the lead author of the melatonin-CBD research. Taking too much of a supplement is generally not as dangerous as taking too much of a prescription drug, but, as Breuner noted, many supplements taken in sufficient excess can still be toxic. When I asked Cooperman what advice he had for people trying to navigate all of this, his answer was simple: "Don't buy a gummy."

Perhaps the rise of gummy supplements was inevitable. The supplement industry has become so big in part because it can promote its products as, say, boosting the immune system or supporting healthy bones, without subjecting them to the strict regulatory demands imposed on pharmaceuticals. Supplements blur the line between food and drug, and gummy supplements -- designed and marketed on the premise that healthy stuff can and should taste as good as candy -- only intensify that blurring. Cohen, for one, thinks the distinction is worth preserving. Calcium supplements should not go down as easy as Haribos. That may be a bitter pill to swallow, but not everything can taste like candy.

NASA announced Friday that it finally got a canister of asteroid dust open, four months after it parachuted down through the Earth's atmosphere into the Utah desert. The Guardian reports: The space administration announced Friday that it had successfully removed two stuck fasteners that had prevented some of the samples collected in 2020 from the 4.6bn-year-old asteroid Bennu, which is classified as a "potentially hazardous" because it has one in 1,750 chance of crashing into Earth by 2300. Most of the rock samples collected by Nasa's Osiris-Rex mission were retrieved soon after the canister landed in September, but additional material remaining inside a sampler head that proved difficult to access.

After months of wrestling with the last two of 35 fasteners, scientists in Houston managed to get them dislodged. "It's open! It's open!" Nasa's planetary science division posted on Twitter/X. The division also posted a photograph of dust and small rocks inside the canister. According to the Los Angeles Times, the team designed custom tools made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel to pry it open -- all without the samples being contaminated by Earthly air. Nasa said it will now analyze the nine-ounce sample.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: Doctors are now being encouraged to consider more blood testing for PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals," according to guidance released (PDF) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The federal agency is recommending providers have a discussion with their patients regarding consumer and environmental exposures to large levels of the chemicals, and if blood testing may be of benefit.

"This information is intended for individuals and communities around the country, who are concerned about exposure to PFAS to have productive conversations with their medical providers" Dr. Aaron Bernstein, Director of CDC's National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), told ABC News. "Over 90% of people in this country have been exposed to PFAS and many, many communities around the country there have been very high exposures. And we've learned more and more in recent years about how exposures to PFAS may increase risk for many disease" he added.

The new guidance advises providers to consider an individual's exposure history; the results of PFAS testing from a patient's water supply, food sources, or other exposures; and whether those results can inform regarding ways to reduce future exposures. Most Americans are exposed to PFAS through drinking water, according to Bernstein, who also notes that many municipal water agencies are already testing for PFAS, and those test results are typically publicly available. [...] While blood tests for PFAS may help guide exposure reduction or provide psychological relief to patients, such tests do not help identify the source of exposure, nor can they be directly linked to a health condition. There are also currently no approved medical treatments available to reduce PFAS in the body, according to the CDC. "A PFAS level is one piece of data that needs to be taken in a broader context. We need to understand the individual's health history, their family history, what other exposures they may have that might increase the risk of diseases that can also be associated with PFAS," Bernstein said.

"What is clear is that this is an evolving landscape [...] we are at a point in time that both the science around PFAS, the accessibility of testing, and what is being tested for is changing. We are committed at CDC to stay on top of it and update this information as needed."

Japan has become the fifth country in the world to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon, using precision technology that allowed it to touch down closer to its target landing site than any mission has before. However the spacecraft might have survived on the lunar surface for just a few hours due to power failure. Nature: Telemetry showed that the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, touched down in its target area near Shioli crater, south of the lunar equator early Saturday morning, four months after lifting off from the Tanegashima Space Centre, off the south coast of Japan. [...] According to [Hitoshi] Kuninaka (VP of Kanegawa-based Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), SLIM has very likely achieved its primary goal -- to land on the Moon with an unprecedented accuracy of 100 metres, which is a big leap from previous ranges of a few to dozens of kilometres. SLIM carried vision-based navigation technology, which was intended to image the surface as it flew over the Moon, and locate itself quickly by matching the images with onboard maps.

It remains unclear if the car-sized, 200-kilogram spacecraft actually touched down in the planned, two-step manner with its five legs. Unlike previous Moon landers, which used four legs to simultaneously reach a relatively flat area, SLIM was designed to hit a 15-degree slope outside Shioli crater first with one leg at the back, and then tip forward to stabilize on the four front legs. Observers suggest that SLIM might have rolled during its touch-down, preventing its solar cells from facing the Sun. Kuninaka said not enough data were available to establish the probe's posture or orientation. However, if some sunlight is able to reach the solar cells there is a chance that SLIM could come back to life.

The world's first routine vaccine programme against malaria has started in Cameroon, in a move projected to save thousands of children's lives across Africa. From a report: The symbolic first jab was given to a baby girl named Daniella at a health facility near Yaounde on Monday. Every year 600,000 people die of malaria in Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Children under five make up at least 80% of those deaths. Cameroon is offering the RTS,S vaccine free of charge to all infants up to the age of six months old.

Patients require a total of four doses. Health officials say these will be given at the same time as other routine childhood vaccines to make it easier for parents. It comes after successful pilot campaigns in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi - where the vaccine caused a 13% drop in malaria deaths in children of eligible age, says Unicef. The jab is known to be effective in at least 36% of cases, according to US researchers, meaning it could save over one in three lives. While the rollout is undoubtedly a relief and a life-saver, its relatively low efficacy rate means that it is not a "silver bullet," argues Willis Akhwale at End Malaria Council Kenya.

Slashdot reader quonset writes: After decades of study and testing, a potential vaccine for cancer may be on the horizon. Dr. Thomas Wagner, founder of Orbis Health Solutions, is using the body's own immune system to fight the disease, with each shot personalized to the patient, according to ABC News.
From the article: Typically, cancer cells evade a person's immune system because it is recognized as that person's cells. Wagner developed a tumor lysate particle only (TLPO) vaccine that uses a person's tumor cells to identify particular parts that are then presented back in the body using the vaccine in a way that can stimulate their immune system to gain the ability to detect these cancer cells like an infection, allowing the immune system to fight the cancer itself.

"People used to ask me the question, 'When will there be a cure for cancer?' And I've been doing this for 60 years and I could never answer that question," Wagner said. "Until recently, until the last three or four or five years." Wagner believes this type of cancer treatment could be a key to finding the long-awaited cure for cancer, all cancers, if paired with early detection.

Wagner's TLPO cancer vaccine has been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma in Phase 2 clinical trials. The most recent data presented at an academic conference showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group. Disease-free survival for those with stage IV disease was about 68% in the vaccine-only group, and zero in the placebo group.

The most common side effects were redness or pain at the injection site, fever and fatigue after the injection – similar to other vaccines that stimulate an immune response.

Based on this data and other studies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has greenlit Wagner's vaccine to start a Phase 3 clinical trial. It will be a three-year endeavor with a goal to enroll 500 people and is planned to launch sometime this year, Riley Polk, president of Orbis Health Solutions, told WLOS, an ABC News affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina.
Polk's own father was told there were no treatment options left for his lung cancer, according to the article. That was more than 10 years ago, and "His father opted to try Wagner's cancer vaccine and lived 10 more years before dying from something unrelated to cancer." Polk gives ABC News this quote.

"You can tell me a lot of things, but you can't tell me [the vaccine] doesn't work."

"Good news..." NASA posted Saturday night on X. "We've reestablished contact with the Mars Helicopter..."

After a two-day communications blackout, NASA had instructed its Perseverance Mars rover "to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity's signal" — and apparently they did the trick. "The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout" during the helicopter's record-breaking 72nd flight.

Slashdot reader Thelasko shared this report from NPR: Communications broke down on Thursday, when the little autonomous rotorcraft was sent on a "quick pop-up vertical flight," to test its systems after an unplanned early landing during its previous flight, the agency said in a status update on Friday night. The Perseverance rover, which relays data between the helicopter and Earth during the flights, showed that Ingenuity climbed to its assigned maximum altitude of 40 feet, NASA said.

During its planned descent, the helicopter and rover stopped communicating with each other...
Even before it came back online, RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) pointed out that the Mars copter has done this before. "Batteries dieing, resulting in a communications re-set, If I remember correctly."

Space.com also noted additional alternatives: "Perseverance is currently out of line-of-sight with Ingenuity, but the team could consider driving closer for a visual inspection," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages both robots' missions, said via X on Friday.

Ingenuity has stayed aloft for more than 128 minutes and covered a total of 11 miles (17.7 kilometers) during its 72 Mars flights, according to the mission's flight log.