Antonio Regaladoarchive, reporting for MIT Technology Review: The gene-editing technology CRISPR has been used to change the genes of human babies, to modify animals, and to treat people with sickle-cell disease. Now scientists are attempting a new trick: using CRISPR to permanently cure people of HIV. In a remarkable experiment, a biotechnology company called Excision BioTherapeutics says it added the gene-editing tool to the bodies of three people living with HIV and commanded it to cut, and destroy, the virus wherever it is hiding. The early-stage study is a probing step toward the company's eventual goal of curing HIV infection with a single intravenous dose of a gene-editing drug. Excision, which is based in San Francisco, says the first patient received treatment about a year ago.

This week, doctors involved in the study reported at a meeting in Brussels that the treatment appeared safe and did not have major side-effects. However, they withheld early data about the treatment's effects, leaving outside experts guessing whether it had worked. "This is an exceptionally ambitious and important trial," says Fyodor Urnov, a genome-editing expert at the University of California, Berkeley, who believes it "would be good to know sooner than later" what the effect was -- "including, potentially, no effect."

A failure wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with HIV. It has proved a devious adversary: there is still no vaccine, even 40 years after the virus was identified in 1983. Still, pharmaceutical companies did develop antiretroviral drugs, which stop the virus from copying itself. Taking these pills lets people with HIV live normal lives. But if they stop, the virus will quickly rebound and, if left unchecked, cause the fatal syndrome of infections and cancers known as AIDS. One reason the virus can't be fully wiped out with drugs alone is that it inserts its genetic material into the DNA of our cells, leaving behind hidden copies that can restart the infection.

A new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine finds that about 22 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous activity may combat the negative effects of prolonged sitting. Furthermore, they researchers found that as a person's activity level increases, the risk of dying prematurely from any cause goes down. NBC News reports: In the study, researchers looked at information from nearly 12,000 people ages 50 and older in four datasets from Norway, Sweden and the United States. In those datasets, the participants wore movement detection devices on their hips for 10 hours a day for at least four days. All of the individuals included in the new study were tracked for at least two years. In the new analysis, the researchers accounted for factors, including medical conditions, that could've affected risk of early death. About half of the participants spent 10 1/2 hours or more sedentary each day.

When the researchers linked the participants' information with death registries in the different countries, they found that over an average of five years, 805 people, or 17%, had died. Of those who died, 357, or 6%, had spent less than 10 1/2 hours a day seated, while 448 averaged 10 1/2 hours or more sedentary. Sitting for more than 12 hours a day, the researchers found, was associated with a 38% increased risk of death as compared to eight hours, but only among those who managed to get less than 22 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a day.

The risk of death went down with increasing amounts of physical activity. An extra 10 minutes a day translated into a 15% lower risk of death among those spending fewer than 10 1/2 hours seated and a 35% lower risk among those who spent more than 10 1/2 hours sedentary each day. Lower intensity activity only made a difference among participants who spent 12 or more hours sitting every day. The study's lead author, Edvard Sagelv, a researcher at The Arctic University of Norway, broke the findings down into manageable terms. "Think of it: only 20 minutes of this a day is enough, meaning, a small stroll of 10 minutes twice a day -- like jumping off the bus one stop before your actual destination to work and then when taking the bus back home, jumping off one stop before."

According to a new study published in iScience, the way pigeons problem-solve matches artificial intelligence. The Guardian reports: In the study, 24 pigeons were given a variety of visual tasks, some of which they learned to categorize in a matter of days, and others in a matter of weeks. The researchers found evidence that the mechanism that pigeons used to make correct choices is similar to the method that AI models use to make the right predictions. "Pigeon behavior suggests that nature has created an algorithm that is highly effective in learning very challenging tasks," said Edward Wasserman, study co-author and professor of experimental psychology at the University of Iowa. "Not necessarily with the greatest speed, but with great consistency."

On a screen, pigeons were shown different stimuli, like lines of different width, placement and orientation, as well as sectioned and concentric rings. Each bird had to peck a button on the right or left to decide which category they belonged to. If they got it correct, they got food, in the form of a pellet; if they got it wrong, they got nothing. "Pigeons don't need a rule," said Brandon Turner, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University. Instead they learn through trial and error. For example, when they were given a visual, say "category A", anything that looked close to that they also classified as "category A", tapping into their ability to identify similarities.

Over the course of the experiments, pigeons improved their ability to make right choices from 55% to 95% of the time when it came to some of the simpler tasks. Presented with a more complex challenge, their accuracy went up from 55% to 68%. In an AI model, the main goal is to recognize patterns and make decisions. Pigeons, as research shows, can do the same. Learning from consequences, when not given a food pellet, pigeons have a remarkable ability to correct their errors. Similarity function is also at play for pigeons, by using their ability to find resemblance between two objects. "With just those two mechanisms alone, you can define a neural network or an artificial intelligent machine to basically solve these categorization problems," said Turner. "It stands to reason that the mechanisms that are present in the AI are also present in the pigeon."

Alexandra Witze reports via Nature: A meteorite that slammed into Mars in September 2021 has rewritten what scientists know about the planet's interior. By analysing the seismic energy that vibrated through the planet after the impact, researchers have discovered a layer of molten rock that envelops Mars's liquid-metal core. The finding, reported today in two papers in Nature, means that the Martian core is smaller than previously thought. It also resolves some lingering questions about how the red planet formed and evolved over billions of years.

The discovery comes from NASA's InSight mission, which landed a craft with a seismometer on Mars's surface. Between 2018 and 2022, that instrument detected hundreds of "marsquakes' shaking the planet. In July 2021, on the basis of the mission's observations of 11 quakes, researchers reported that the liquid core of Mars seemed to have a radius of around 1,830 kilometers3. That was bigger than many scientists were expecting. And it suggested that the core contained surprisingly high amounts of light chemical elements, such as sulfur, mixed with iron. But the September 2021 meteorite impact "unlocked everything," says Henri Samuel, a geophysicist at the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris and lead author of one of today's papers1. The meteorite struck the planet on the side opposite to where InSight was located. That's much more distant than the marsquakes that InSight had previously studied, and allowed the probe to detect seismic energy traveling all the way through the Martian core4. "We were so excited," says Jessica Irving, a seismologist at the University of Bristol, UK, and a co-author of Samuel's paper.

For Samuel, it was an opportunity to test his idea that a molten layer of rock surrounds Mars's core5. The way the seismic energy traversed the planet showed that what scientists had thought was the boundary between the liquid core and the solid mantle, 1,830 kilometers from the planet's centre, was actually a different boundary between liquid and solid. It was the top of the newfound layer of molten rock meeting the mantle (see 'Rethinking the Martian core'). The actual core is buried beneath that molten-rock layer and has a radius of only 1,650 kilometers, Samuel says. The revised core size solves some puzzles. It means that the Martian core doesn't have to contain high amounts of light elements -- a better match to laboratory and theoretical estimates. A second liquid layer inside the planet also meshes better with other evidence, such as how Mars responds to being deformed by the gravitational tug of its moon Phobos.

The second paper in Nature today2, from a team independent of Samuel's, agrees that Mars's core is enveloped by a layer of molten rock, but estimates that the core has a radius of 1,675 kilometers. The work analyzed seismic waves from the same distant meteorite impact, as well as simulations of the properties of mixtures of molten elements such as iron, nickel and sulfur at the high pressures and temperatures in the Martian core. Having molten rock right up against molten iron "appears to be unique," says lead author Amir Khan, a geophysicist at ETH Zurich. "You have this peculiarity of liquid-liquid layering, which is something that doesn't exist on the Earth." The molten-rock layer might be left over from a magma ocean that once covered Mars. As it cooled and solidified into rock, the magma would have left behind a deep layer of radioactive elements that still release heat and keep rock molten at the base of the mantle, Samuel says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Egbert Edelbroek was acting as a sperm donor when he first wondered whether it's possible to have babies in space. Curious about the various ways that donated sperm can be used, Edelbroek, a Dutch entrepreneur, began to speculate on whether in vitro fertilization technology was possible beyond Earth -- or could even be improved by the conditions found there. Could the weightlessness of space be better than a flat laboratory petri dish? Now Edelbroek is CEO of SpaceBorn United, a biotech startup seeking to pioneer the study of human reproduction away from Earth. Next year, he plans to send a mini lab on a rocket into low Earth orbit, where in vitro fertilization, or IVF, will take place. If it succeeds, Edelbroek hopes his work could pave the way for future space settlements.

"Humanity needs a backup plan," he says. "If you want to be a sustainable species, you want to be a multiplanetary species." Beyond future space colonies, there is also a more pressing need to understand the effects of space on the human reproductive system. No one has ever become pregnant in space -- yet. But with the rise of space tourism, it's likely that it will eventually happen one day. Edelbroek thinks we should be prepared. Despite the burgeoning interest in deep space exploration and settlement, prompted in part by billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, we still know very little about what happens to our reproductive biology when we're in orbit. A report released in September by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine points out that almost no research has been done on human reproduction in space, adding that our understanding of how space affects reproduction is "vital to long-term space exploration, but largely unexplored to date."

Some studies on animals have suggested that the various stages of reproduction -- from mating and fertilization to embryo development, implantation, pregnancy, and birth -- can function normally in space. For example, in the very first such experiment, eight Japanese medaka fish developed from egg to hatchling aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1994. All eight survived the return to Earth and seemed to behave normally.Yet other studies have found evidence that points to potential problems. Pregnant rats that spent much of their third trimester -- a total of five days -- on a Soviet satellite in 1983 experienced complications during labor and delivery. Like all astronauts returning to Earth, the rats were exhausted and weak. Their deliveries lasted longer than usual, likely because of atrophied uterine muscles. All the pups in one of the litters died during delivery, the result of an obstruction thought to be due in part to the mother's weakened state.

To Edelbroek, these inconclusive results point to a need to systematically isolate each step in the reproductive process in order to better understand how it is affected by conditions like lower gravity and higher radiation exposure. The mini lab his company developed is designed to do exactly that. It is about the size of a shoebox and uses microfluidics to connect a chamber containing sperm to a chamber containing an egg. It can also rotate at different speeds to replicate the gravitational environment of Earth, the moon, or Mars. It is small enough to fit inside a capsule that can be housed on top of a rocket and launched into space.After the egg has been fertilized in the device, it splits into two cells, each of which divides again to form four cells and so on. After five to six days, the embryo reaches a stage known as a blastocyst, which looks like a hollow ball. At this point, the embryos in the mini lab will be cryogenically frozen for their return to Earth.

NASA is demonstrating laser communications on multiple missions -- showcasing the benefits infrared light can have for science and exploration missions transmitting terabytes of important data. NASA: The International Space Station is getting a "flashy" technology demonstration this November. The ILLUMA-T (Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) payload is launching to the International Space Station to demonstrate how missions in low Earth orbit can benefit from laser communications. Laser communications uses invisible infrared light to send and receive information at higher data rates, providing spacecraft with the capability to send more data back to Earth in a single transmission and expediting discoveries for researchers.

Managed by NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, ILLUMA-T is completing NASA's first bi-directional, end-to-end laser communications relay by working with the agency's LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration). LCRD launched in December 2021 and is currently demonstrating the benefits of laser communications from geosynchronous orbit by transmitting data between two ground stations on Earth in a series of experiments. Some of LCRD's experiments include studying atmospheric impact on laser signals, confirming LCRD's ability to work with multiple users, testing network capabilities like delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) over laser links, and investigating improved navigation capabilities.

Corinne Purtill reports via Phys.Org: Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation. Today we know epilepsy is a disease. By and large, it's accepted that a person who causes a fatal traffic accident while in the grip of a seizure should not be charged with murder. After more than 40 years studying humans and other primates, Sapolsky has reached the conclusion that virtually all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts.

This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane. "The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over," Sapolsky said. "We've got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there."

Sapolsky, a MacArthur "genius" grant winner, is extremely aware that this is an out-there position. Most neuroscientists believe humans have at least some degree of free will. So do most philosophers and the vast majority of the general population. Free will is essential to how we see ourselves, fueling the satisfaction of achievement or the shame of failing to do the right thing. Saying that people have no free will is a great way to start an argument. This is partly why Sapolsky, who describes himself as "majorly averse to interpersonal conflict," put off writing his new book "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will." [...]

Analyzing human behavior through the lens of any single discipline leaves room for the possibility that people choose their actions, he says. But after a long cross-disciplinary career, he feels it's intellectually dishonest to write anything other than what he sees as the unavoidable conclusion: Free will is a myth, and the sooner we accept that, the more just our society will be. "Determined," which comes out today, builds on Sapolsky's 2017 bestseller "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst," which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a slew of other accolades. The book breaks down the neurochemical influences that contribute to human behaviors, analyzing the milliseconds to centuries preceding, say, the pulling of a trigger or the suggestive touch on an arm. "Determined" goes a step further. If it's impossible for any single neuron or any single brain to act without influence from factors beyond its control, Sapolsky argues, there can be no logical room for free will.

Sammy Gecsoyler reports via The Guardian: A research team in Finland, led by Robin Ras, from Aalto University, and aided by researchers from the University of Jyvaskyla, has developed a mechanism to make water droplets slip off surfaces with unprecedented efficacy. Cooking, transportation, optics and hundreds of other technologies are affected by how water sticks to surfaces or slides off them, and adoption of water-resistant surfaces in the future could improve many household and industrial technologies, such as plumbing, shipping and the auto industry. The research team created solid silicon surfaces with a "liquid-like" outer layer that repels water by making droplets slide off surfaces. The highly mobile topcoat acts as a lubricant between the product and the water droplets.

Sakari Lepikko, the lead author of the study, which was published in Nature Chemistry on Monday, said: "Our work is the first time that anyone has gone directly to the nanometer-level to create molecularly heterogeneous surfaces." By carefully adjusting conditions, such as temperature and water content, inside a reactor, the team could fine-tune how much of the silicon surface the monolayer covered. Using the new method, the team ended up creating the slipperiest liquid surface in the world. According to Lepikko, the discovery promises to have implications wherever droplet-repellent surfaces are needed. This covers hundreds of examples from daily life to industrial environments.

One month after an experimental procedure to transplant the heart of a genetically modified pig into a patient with end-stage heart disease, doctors say the heart is functioning on its own and shows no signs of rejection. From a reoport: In September, 58-year-old Lawrence Faucette underwent the surgery, only the second ever performed in a human. Faucette's heart disease and pre-existing conditions made him ineligible for a traditional human heart transplant. "The physicians taking care of him believe his heart function is excellent," said Dr. Bartley Griffith, director of the Cardiac and Lung Transplant Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who performed the surgery. "We've had no evidence of infections and no evidence of rejection right now."

Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, director of UMMC's Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program, said in an update shared on Friday, "we are withdrawing all the drugs that were initially supporting his heart. So now his heart is doing everything on its own." Mohiuddin said the focus now is making sure that Faucette has the strength to perform routine functions. "We are working very hard with our physical therapy team who are spending a lot of time helping him regain the strength that he's lost during last one month of hospital stay," Mohiuddin said.

A Harvard professor on the history of science looks at our response to the pandemic, criticizing "a report that gave the false impression that masking didn't help." From Scientific American: The group's report was published by Cochrane, an organization that collects databases and periodically issues "systematic" reviews of scientific evidence relevant to health care. This year it published a paper addressing the efficacy of physical interventions to slow the spread of respiratory illness such as COVID... The review of studies of masking concluded that the "results were inconclusive..." [and] it was "uncertain whether wearing [surgical] masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses." Still, the authors were also uncertain about that uncertainty, stating that their confidence in their conclusion was "low to moderate." You can see why the average person could be confused... The Cochrane finding was not that masking didn't work but that scientists lacked sufficient evidence of sufficient quality to conclude that they worked...

Cochrane has made this mistake before. In 2016 a flurry of media reports declared that flossing your teeth was a waste of time... The answer demonstrates a third issue with the Cochrane approach: how it defines evidence. The organization states that its reviews "identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria." The problem is what those eligibility criteria are. Cochrane Reviews base their findings on randomized controlled trials (RCTs), often called the "gold standard" of scientific evidence. But many questions can't be answered well with RCTs, and some can't be answered at all...

In fact, there is strong evidence that masks do work to prevent the spread of respiratory illness. It just doesn't come from RCTs. It comes from Kansas. In July 2020 the governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring masks in public places. Just a few weeks earlier, however, the legislature had passed a bill authorizing counties to opt out of any statewide provision. In the months that followed, COVID rates decreased in all 24 counties with mask mandates and continued to increase in 81 other counties that opted out of them... Cochrane ignored this epidemiological evidence because it didn't meet its rigid standard.

I have called this approach "methodological fetishism," when scientists fixate on a preferred methodology and dismiss studies that don't follow it. Sadly, it's not unique to Cochrane. By dogmatically insisting on a particular definition of rigor, scientists in the past have landed on wrong answers more than once.
Vox also points out that while Cochrane's review included 78 studies, "only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic... Instead, most of them looked at flu transmission in normal conditions, and many of them were about other interventions like hand-washing.

"Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular. Furthermore, neither of those studies looked directly at whether people wear masks, but instead at whether people were encouraged or told to wear masks by researchers."

"It's not every day that you get to update the firmware on a device that was produced in the 1970s," writes Hackaday, "and rarely is said device well beyond the boundaries of our solar system.

"This is however exactly what the JPL team in charge of the Voyager 1 & 2 missions are facing, as they are in the process of sending fresh firmware patches over to these amazing feats of engineering."

From NASA's announcement: One effort addresses fuel residue that seems to be accumulating inside narrow tubes in some of the thrusters on the spacecraft. The thrusters are used to keep each spacecraft's antenna pointed at Earth. This type of buildup has been observed in a handful of other spacecraft... In some of the propellant inlet tubes, the buildup is becoming significant. To slow that buildup, the mission has begun letting the two spacecraft rotate slightly farther in each direction [almost 1 degree] before firing the thrusters. This will reduce the frequency of thruster firings... While more rotating by the spacecraft could mean bits of science data are occasionally lost — akin to being on a phone call where the person on the other end cuts out occasionally — the team concluded the plan will enable the Voyagers to return more data over time.

Engineers can't know for sure when the thruster propellant inlet tubes will become completely clogged, but they expect that with these precautions, that won't happen for at least five more years, possibly much longer. "This far into the mission, the engineering team is being faced with a lot of challenges for which we just don't have a playbook," said Linda Spilker, project scientist for the mission as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "But they continue to come up with creative solutions."
But that's not the only issue: The team is also uploading a software patch to prevent the recurrence of a glitch that arose on Voyager 1 last year. Engineers resolved the glitch, and the patch is intended to prevent the issue from occurring again in Voyager 1 or arising in its twin, Voyager 2...

In 2022, the onboard computer that orients the Voyager 1 spacecraft with Earth began to send back garbled status reports, despite otherwise continuing to operate normally... The attitude articulation and control system (AACS) was misdirecting commands, writing them into the computer memory instead of carrying them out. One of those missed commands wound up garbling the AACS status report before it could reach engineers on the ground.

The team determined the AACS had entered into an incorrect mode; however, they couldn't determine the cause and thus aren't sure if the issue could arise again. The software patch should prevent that.

"This patch is like an insurance policy that will protect us in the future and help us keep these probes going as long as possible," said JPL's Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager. "These are the only spacecraft to ever operate in interstellar space, so the data they're sending back is uniquely valuable to our understanding of our local universe."
Since their launch in 1977, NASA's two Voyager probes have travelled more than 12 billion miles (each!), and are still sending back data from beyond our solar system.

"Planetary scientists want to search for biosignatures in what they believe was once a Martian mud lake," reports Space.com: After scientists carefully studied what they believe are desiccated remnants of an equatorial mud lake on Mars, their study of Hydraotes Chaos suggests a buried trove of water surged onto the surface. If researchers are right, then this flat could become prime ground for future missions seeking traces of life on Mars... More generally, scientists suggest surface water on Mars froze over about 3.7 billion years ago as the atmosphere thinned and the surface cooled. But underground, groundwater might still have remained liquid in vast chambers. Moreover, life forms might have abided in those catacombs — leaving behind traces of their existence. Only around 3.4 billion years ago did that system of aquifers break down in Hydraotes Chaos, triggering floods of epic proportions that dumped mountains' worth of sediment onto the surface, the study suggests. Future close-up missions could someday examine that sediment for biosignatures...

Alexis Rodriguez, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, and his colleagues pored over images of Hydraotes Chaos taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in search of more clues. In the midst of the chaos terrain's maelstrom lies a calm circle of relatively flat ground. This plain is pockmarked with cones and domes, with hints of mud bubbling from below — suggesting that sediment did not arrive via a rushing flash flood, but instead rose from underneath. Based on simulations, the authors suggest Hydraotes Chaos overlaid a reservoir of buried biosignature-rich water — potentially in the form of thick ice sheets.

Ultimately — potentially from the Red Planet's internal heat melting the ice — that water bubbled up to the surface and created a muddy lake. As the water dissipated, it would have left behind all those tantalizing biosignatures. Curiously, that water might have remained underground even after those megafloods. In fact, the authors' results suggest the sediment on the surface of this mud lake dates from only around 1.1 billion years ago: long after most of Mars's groundwater ought to have flooded out, and certainly long after Mars was habitable. With that timeline in mind, Rodriguez and colleagues plan to analyze what lies under the surface of the lake. That, Rodriguez tells Space.com, would allow scientists to establish when in Martian history the planet might have hosted life.
Rodriguez tells Space.com that this region is now "under consideration" for testing with an under-development NASA instrument called Extractor for Chemical Analysis of Lipid Biomarkers in Regolith (EXCALIBR) — that could test extraterrestrial rocks for biomarkers like lipids.

An anonymous reader shared this report from SciTechDaily: Since the 1980s, researchers have observed significant periods of unrest in a region of California's Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains characterized by swarms of earthquakes as well as the ground inflating and rising by almost half an inch per year during these periods. The activity is concerning because the area, called the Long Valley Caldera, sits atop a massive dormant supervolcano... What is behind the increased activity in the last few decades? Could it be that the area is preparing to erupt again? Or could the uptick in activity actually be a sign that the risk of a massive eruption is decreasing?

To answer these questions, Caltech researchers have created the most detailed underground images to date of the Long Valley Caldera, reaching depths up to 10 kilometers within the Earth's crust. These high-resolution images reveal the structure of the earth beneath the caldera and show that the recent seismic activity is a result of fluids and gases being released as the area cools off and settles down.

The work was conducted in the laboratory of Zhongwen Zhan (PhD '14), professor of geophysics. A paper describing the research was published on October 18 in the journal Science Advances. "We don't think the region is gearing up for another supervolcanic eruption, but the cooling process may release enough gas and liquid to cause earthquakes and small eruptions," says Zhan. "For example, in May 1980, there were four magnitude 6 earthquakes in the region alone."

Images from the James Webb Space Telescope "don't match scientists' models of how the universe formed," reports the Washington Post.

"But it might not be time to dump the standard model of cosmology yet. " A recent analysis in the Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests an explanation for the surprisingly massive-seeming galaxies: brilliant, extremely bright bursts of newborn stars.

The galaxies photographed by the telescope looked far too mature and large to have formed so fully so soon after the universe began, raising questions about scientists' assumptions of galaxy formation. But when researchers ran a variety of computer simulations of the universe's earliest days, they discovered that the galaxies probably are not as large as they seem. Instead, they attribute their brightness to a phenomenon called "bursty star formation." As clouds of dust and debris collapse, they form dense, high-temperature cores and become stars. Bursty galaxies spit out new stars in intermittent, bright bursts instead of creating stars more consistently. Usually, these galaxies are low in mass and take long breaks between starbursts.

Because the galaxies in question look so bright in photos produced by the Webb telescope, scientists at first thought they were older and more massive. But bursty systems with the ability to produce extremely bright, abundant light may appear more massive than they really are.
"Not only does this finding explain why young galaxies appear deceptively massive, it also fits within the standard model of cosmology," explains the announcement: In the new study, Guochao Sun, who led the study, Northwestern's, Claude-André Faucher-Giguère, the study's senior author, and their team used advanced computer simulations to model how galaxies formed right after the Big Bang. The simulations produced cosmic dawn galaxies that were just as bright as those observed by the JWST...

Although other astrophysicists have hypothesized that bursty star formation could be responsible for the unusual brightness of galaxies at cosmic dawn, the Northwestern researchers are the first to use detailed computer simulations to prove it is possible. And they were able to do so without adding new factors that are unaligned with our standard model of the universe.

Stephen Clark reports via Ars Technica: Earlier this week, SpaceX launched for the 75th time this year, continuing a flight cadence that should see the company come close to 100 missions by the end of December. SpaceX plans to kick its launch rate into a higher gear in 2024. This will be largely driven by launches of upgraded Starlink satellites with the ability to connect directly with consumer cell phones, a service SpaceX calls "Starlink Direct to Cell," a company official told Ars this week. The goal next year is 12 launches per month, for a total of 144 Falcon rocket flights. Like this year, most of those missions will be primarily devoted to launching Starlink broadband satellites. So far in 2023, more than 60 percent of SpaceX's launches have delivered the company's own Starlink satellites into orbit.

Here are some numbers. Last year, SpaceX launched 61 missions. In 2021, the number was 31. In the last 12 months, SpaceX has launched 88 Falcon rockets, plus one test flight of the company's much larger Starship rocket. SpaceX's success in recovering and reusing Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings has been vital to making this possible. SpaceX has gone past the original goal of launching each Falcon 9 booster 10 times before a major overhaul, first to 15 flights, and then recently certifying boosters for up to 20 missions. Technicians can swap out parts like engines, fins, landing legs, and valves that malfunction in flight or show signs of wear. With so many launches planned next year, 20 flights is probably not a stopping point. "We might go a little higher," the SpaceX official said. SpaceX may also see an uptick in missions for external customers, like NASA, the U.S. Space Force, and commercial companies. "External demand for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches is 'steady,' the official said, but some customers that had launches scheduled for this year encountered delays with their satellites, moving them into 2024."

Can you heat up a pan to 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit? That's the burning question at the center of this proposed class action lawsuit, which claims the advertising for SharkNinja's nonstick cookware violates the laws of physics and thermodynamics. From a report: While SharkNinja is the company best known for its Shark robovacs and Ninja kitchen gadget, this lawsuit takes issue with the Ninja NeverStick Premium Cookware collection, a line of pots and pans it advertises as having superior nonsticking and nonflaking qualities thanks to its manufacturing process.

Instead of making its pans at a measly 900-degree temperature that other brands use, SharkNinja says it heats up the cookware to a maximum of 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That process, according to SharkNinja, fuses "plasma ceramic particles" to the surface of the pan, "creating a super-hard, textured surface that interlocks with our exclusive coating for a superior bond." But Patricia Brown, the person who filed this lawsuit, isn't buying it. As cited in Brown's lawsuit, NASA recently said the "surface of the Sun is a blisteringly hot 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit," meaning SharkNinja's manufacturing process reaches about three times that temperature.

Pfizer this week revealed that it raised the list price of a course of Paxlovid -- its lifesaving antiviral drug used to reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 in those most vulnerable -- to nearly $1,400, more than double the roughly $530 the US government has paid for the treatment in the emergency phase of the pandemic. From a report: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had noted in an investor call at the beginning of the week that the company would increase the price of Paxlovid as it moves from government distribution to the commercial market at the end of this year. But, he did not announce the new list price then. Instead, the company revealed the more than twofold increase in a letter to pharmacies and clinics dated Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the list price of $1,390 after viewing the letter.

A Pfizer spokesperson told the Journal that "pricing for Paxlovid is based on the value it provides to patients, providers, and health care systems due to its important role in helping reduce COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths." A cost-effectiveness analysis last year determined the value of Paxlovid at between $563 and $906 per treatment course, according to nonprofit drug-pricing watchdog The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.

Tereza Pultarova reports via Space.com: Light pollution is a growing threat to astronomy, but a new streetlamp technology could restore clear views of the night sky. [...] A study published earlier this year found that stars are disappearing from the sky at an average rate of 10% per year. This trend affects even the world's most remote observatories. Germany-based startup StealthTransit recently tested a solution to this growing issue. "Unfortunately, this problem haunts almost all observatories today," Vlad Pashkovsky, StealthTransit's founder and CEO, told Space.com in an email. "Modern telescopes are highly sensitive and feel the impact of outdoor lighting of cities located at the distance of 50 or even 200 kilometers [30 to 120 miles]. This means that virtually every observatory on Earth either already needs, or will need in the future 10 years, protection from the light of large cities."

StealthTransit's solution relies on three components: A simple device that makes LED lights flicker at a very high frequency that is imperceptible to the human eye, a GPS receiver, and a specially designed shutter on the telescope's camera that can blink in sync with the LED lights. The GPS technology guides the telescope's shutter to open only during the fleeting moments when the LED lights are switched off. The experiments, conducted at an observatory in the Caucasus Mountains in Russia, showed that the technology, dubbed the DarkSkyProtector, could reduce unwanted sky glow in astronomical images by 94%. "We can say that the telescope was seeing almost a dark sky at this time," Pashkovsky said. "The important thing about our technology is that it makes all kinds of lights astronomy-friendly, including outdoor advertising and indoor lighting in apartments, offices and stores."

The technology could filter out lights from nearby towns and villages as well as those surrounding the observatory itself. It might sound impractical to refit an entire town with devices that allow lamps to blink, but Pashkovsky said that most existing LED lights can operate in the blinking mode and that new lamps designed specifically with sky protection in mind would be no costlier than existing LED technology. The most expensive element of the DarkSkyProtector system is the telescope shutter, which needs to be lightweight and agile enough to blink about 150 times per second. StealthTransit tested the prototype shutter on a 24-inch-wide (60 centimeters) telescope and hopes to make the technology available for larger telescopes. Although StealthTransit's technology is not yet ready for commercial use, Pashkovsky said, the firm hopes to have a product fit for the world's best telescopes in five to seven years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people who are addicted to drugs next spring, in a move some drug users and activists are calling "eugenics." The country's medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which first came into effect in 2016, will be expanded next March to give access to people whose sole medical condition is mental illness, which can include substance use disorders. Before the changes take place, however, a special parliamentary committee on MAID will regroup to scrutinize the rollout of the new regulations, according to the Toronto Star.

Currently, people are eligible for MAID if they have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition", such as a serious illness or disability, that has put them in an advanced state of irreversible decline and caused enduring physical or psychological suffering -- excluding mental illness. Anyone who receives MAID must also go through two assessments from independent health care providers, among meeting other criteria. [...] As Canada prepares to legalize MAID for people with mental disorders, each province will have to develop its own protocol for how to assess people. Dr. Simon Colgan, lead physician for the Community Allied Mobile Palliative Partnership which provides palliative care to homeless people, said MAID requests "must be understood within the context of a person's lived experience and this takes time and relationship." He said any MAID protocols for people with substance use disorders should be made with the input of people with lived experiences. "I don't think it's fair, and the government doesn't think it's fair, to exclude people from eligibility because their medical disorder or their suffering is related to a mental illness," said Dr. David Martell, physician lead for Addictions Medicine at Nova Scotia Health. "As a subset of that, it's not fair to exclude people from eligibility purely because their mental disorder might either partly or in full be a substance use disorder. It has to do with treating people equally."

On the flip side, some drug users and harm reduction advocates say they're upset drug users are being given access to MAID, as they feel other public health measures are lacking. "I just think that MAID when it has entered the area around mental health and substance use is really rooted in eugenics. And there are people who are really struggling around substance use and people do not actually get the kind of support and help they need," said Zoe Dodd, a Toronto-based harm reduction advocate.

Karen Ward, a drug user activist in Vancouver, said she considers the expansion of MAID to include people with substance use disorders a "statement in federal law that some people aren't really human." "The government has made death accessible while a better life remains impossible," she said. "Homes for all, guaranteed dignified incomes, access to healthcare, education and employment: these aren't radical demands."

The government of India said on Tuesday that it plans to put an astronaut on the moon by 2040 and build an Earth-orbiting space station by 2035. Space.com reports: On Aug. 23, India became just the fourth nation ever to soft-land a spacecraft -- its Chandrayaan-3 lander-rover duo -- on the surface of the moon. In a recent meeting with the Indian government department that manages the country's space program, Prime Minister Narendra Modi "directed that India should now aim for new and ambitious goals," according to an official statement. India's future moon exploration efforts will include a series of additional robotic Chandrayaan missions, a new launch pad and a heavy-lift launch vehicle, the statement added.

India's delayed Gaganyaan human spaceflight program, now aiming to fly three astronauts to low Earth orbit in 2025, will feature 20 major tests, including three uncrewed missions to test the launch vehicle over the course of the remainder of this year and all of next. [...] By the middle of the 2030s, India hopes to have a 20-ton space station in a fixed orbit 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, with capabilities to host astronauts for 15 to 20 days at a time, K. Sivan, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), has previously said.

Further down the pipeline of missions, ISRO is planning a Venus orbiter called Shukrayaan-1 to study the surface of that hellishly hot planet. The payloads for that mission are currently being developed, current ISRO chairman S. Somanath had said last month. A second orbiter mission to Mars is also on the books, according to the latest statement. The nation's first, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), was launched in 2013 and studied the Red Planet's atmosphere for eight years before it lost contact with Earth in April 2022. The follow-up mission, Mars Orbiter Mission 2 or MOM 2, will likely include cameras to study the planet's crust and may also include a lander, although many of the mission plans are yet to be finalized.