More details on that report about NASA from the Washington Post: NASA is 66 years old and feeling its age. Brilliant engineers are retiring. Others have fled to higher-paying jobs in the private space industry. The buildings are old, their maintenance deferred. The Apollo era, with its huge taxpayer investment, is a distant memory. The agency now pursues complex missions on inadequate budgets. This may be an unsustainable path for NASA, one that imperils long-term success. That is the conclusion of a sweeping report, titled "NASA at a Crossroads," written by a committee of aerospace experts and published Tuesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report suggests that NASA prioritizes near-term missions and fails to think strategically. In other words, the space agency isn't sufficiently focused on the future.

NASA's intense focus on current missions is understandable, considering the unforgiving nature of space operations, but "one tends to neglect the probably less glamorous thing that will determine the success in the future," the report's lead author, Norman Augustine, a retired Lockheed Martin chief executive, said Tuesday. He said one solution for NASA's problems is more funding from Congress. But that may be hard to come by, in which case, he said, the agency needs to consider canceling or delaying costly missions to invest in more mundane but strategically important institutional needs, such as technology development and workforce training. Augustine said he is concerned that NASA could lose in-house expertise if it relies too heavily on the private industry for newly emerging technologies. "It will have trouble hiring innovative, creative engineers. Innovative, creative engineers don't want to have a job that consists of overseeing other people's work," he said...

The report is hardly a blistering screed. The tone is parental. It praises the agency — with a budget of about $25 billion — for its triumphs while urging more prudent decision-making and long-term strategizing.

NASA pursues spectacular missions. It has sent swarms of robotic probes across the solar system and even into interstellar space. Astronauts have continuously been in orbit for more than two decades. The most ambitious program, Artemis, aims to put astronauts back on the moon in a few short years. And long-term, NASA hopes to put astronauts on Mars. But a truism in the industry is that space is hard. The new report contends that NASA has a mismatch between its ambitions and its budget, and needs to pay attention to fundamentals such as fixing its aging infrastructure and retaining in-house talent. NASA's overall physical infrastructure is already well beyond its design life, and this fraction continues to grow," the report states.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the report "aligns with our current efforts to ensure we have the infrastructure, workforce, and technology that NASA needs for the decades ahead," according to the article.

Nelson added that the agency "will continue to work diligently to address the committee's recommendations."

Ars Technica's Stephen Clark reports: A panel of independent experts reported this week that NASA lacks funding to maintain most of its decades-old facilities, could lose its engineering prowess to the commercial space industry, and has a shortsighted roadmap for technology development. "NASA's problem is it always seems to have $3 billion more program than it has of funds," said Norm Augustine, chair of the National Academies panel chartered to examine the critical facilities, workforce, and technology needed to achieve NASA's long-term strategic goals and objectives. Augustine said a similar statement could sum up two previous high-level reviews of NASA's space programs that he chaired in 1990 and 2009. But the report released Tuesday put NASA's predicament in stark terms.

"In NASA's case, the not-uncommon tendency in a constrained budget environment to prioritize initiating new missions as opposed to maintaining and upgrading existing support assets has produced an infrastructure that would not be viewed as acceptable under most industrial standards," the panel wrote in its report. "In fact, during its inspection tours, the committee saw some of the worst facilities many of its members have ever seen." All of NASA's centers have facilities the agency considers marginal, but Johnson Space Center in Houston has the facilities with the worst average score. Johnson oversees astronaut training and is home to NASA's Mission Control Center for the International Space Station and future Artemis lunar missions. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which develops and operates many of NASA's robotic interplanetary probes, and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, used for rocket engine testing, are the only centers without a poor infrastructure score.

These ratings cover things like buildings and utilities, not the specific test rigs or instruments inside them. "You can have a world-class microscope and materials lab, but if the building goes down, that microscope is useless to you," [Erik Weiser, NASA's director of facilities and real estate] told the National Academies panel in a meeting last year. The panel recommended that Congress direct NASA to establish an annually replenished revolving working capital fund to pay for maintenance and infrastructure upgrades. Other government agencies use similar funds for infrastructure support. "This is something that will require federal legislation," said Jill Dahlburg, a member of the National Academies panel and former superintendent of the space science division at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Longtime Slashdot reader davidwr writes: Winners of the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes included studies on hair swirling (natural, not from grade-school bathroom torture), mammals that breath through their anal orifices, and a study on pigeon-guided missiles. There were also prizes for the study of the swimming abilities of a formerly-living trout. "Honors" were also bestowed for research in coin-flipping (no, it's not 50/50), why cows spew milk, and drunken worms, among other topics. Prizes included $10,000,000,000 (in now-worthless Zimbabwe dollars) and items related to Murphy's Law.

Media coverage includes AP, CNN, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, and by the time you read this, probably much more.

Have you ever been in a high-stakes situation in which you needed to perform but completely bombed? You're not alone. Experiments in monkeys reveal that 'choking' under pressure is linked to a drop in activity in the neurons that prepare for movement. Nature: "You see it across the board, you see it in sports, in all kinds of different sports and outside of sports as well." says Steven Chase, a neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chase and his colleagues investigated what happens in the brain that causes performance to plummet, and published their findings in Neuron on 12 September.

Choking under pressure is not unique to humans. In the same way that a tennis player might miss a match-winning shot, monkeys can also underperform in high-reward situations. The team set up a computer task in which rhesus monkeys received a reward after quickly and accurately moving a cursor over a target. Each trial gave the monkeys cues as to whether the reward would be small, medium-sized, large or 'jackpot'. Jackpot rewards were rare and unusually big, creating a high-stakes, high-reward situation. Using a tiny, electrode-covered chip implanted into the monkeys' brains, the team watched how neuronal activity changed between reward scenarios. The chip was situated on the motor cortex, an area of the frontal lobe that controls movement.

The researchers found that, in jackpot scenarios, the activity of neurons associated with motor preparation decreased. Motor preparation is the brain's way of making calculations about how to complete a movement -- similar to lining up an arrow on a target before unleashing it. The drop in motor preparation meant that the monkey's brains were underprepared, and so they underperformed. The results "help us understand how reward-outcome-mediated behaviour is not linear," says Bita Moghaddam, a behavioural neuroscientist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. To a certain extent, "you just don't perform better as the reward increases," Moghaddam says. It would also be interesting to see how other brain regions respond in jackpot-reward situations, she adds, because multiple regions could be involved.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this year, we got a look at something unusual: the results of an internal investigation conducted by Harvard Business School that concluded one of its star faculty members had committed research misconduct. Normally, these reports are kept confidential, leaving questions regarding the methods and extent of data manipulations. But in this case, the report became public because the researcher had filed a lawsuit that alleged defamation on the part of the team of data detectives that had first identified potential cases of fabricated data, as well as Harvard Business School itself. Now, the court has ruled (PDF) on motions to dismiss the case. While the suit against Harvard will go on, the court has ruled that evidence-backed conclusions regarding fabricated data cannot constitute defamation -- which is probably a very good thing for science.

The researchers who had been sued, Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joe Simmons, run a blog called Data Colada where, among other things, they note cases of suspicious-looking data in the behavioral sciences. As we detailed in our earlier coverage, they published a series of blog posts describing an apparent case of fabricated data in four different papers published by the high-profile researcher Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School. The researchers also submitted the evidence to Harvard, which ran its own investigation that included interviewing the researchers involved and examining many of the original data files behind the paper. In the end, Harvard determined that research misconduct had been committed, placed Gino on administrative leave and considered revoking her tenure. Harvard contacted the journals where the papers were published to inform them that the underlying data was unreliable.

Gino then filed suit alleging that Harvard had breached their contract with her, defamed her, and interfered with her relationship with the publisher of her books. She also added defamation accusations against the Data Colada team. Both Harvard and the Data Colada collective filed a motion to have all the actions dismissed, which brings us to this new decision. Harvard got a mixed outcome. This appears to largely be the result that the Harvard Business School adopted a new and temporary policy for addressing research misconduct when the accusations against Gino came in. This, according to the court, leaves questions regarding whether the university had breached its contract with her. However, most of the rest of the suit was dismissed. The judge ruled that the university informing Gino's colleagues that Gino had been placed on administrative leave does not constitute defamation. Nor do the notices requesting retractions sent to the journals where the papers were published. "I find the Retraction Notices amount 'only to a statement of [Harvard Business School]'s evolving, subjective view or interpretation of its investigation into inaccuracies in certain [data] contained in the articles,' rather than defamation," the judge decided.

More critically, the researchers had every allegation against them thrown out. Here, the fact that the accusations involved evidence-based conclusions, and were presented with typical scientific caution, ended up protecting the researchers. The court cites precedent to note that "[s]cientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation" and concludes that the material sent to Harvard "constitutes the Data Colada Defendants' subjective interpretation of the facts available to them." Since it had already been determined that Gino was a public figure due to her high-profile academic career, this does not rise to the standard of defamation. And, while the Data Colada team was pretty definitive in determining that data manipulation had taken place, its members were cautious about acknowledging that the evidence they had did not clearly indicate Gino was the one who had performed the manipulation. Finally, it was striking that the researchers had protected themselves by providing links to the data sources they'd used to draw their conclusions. The decision cites a precedent that indicates "by providing hyperlinks to the relevant information, the articles enable readers to review the underlying information for themselves and reach their own conclusions."

Two astronauts, billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, completed the world's first private spacewalk outside a SpaceX capsule, testing new spacesuits and procedures in a risky mission that pushes the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Reuters reports: The astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission went one at a time, each spending about 10 minutes outside the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon capsule on a tether, as Elon Musk's company again succeeded in pushing the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Jared Isaacman, a pilot and the founder of electronic payments company Shift4, exited first, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, while crewmates Scott Poteet and Anna Menon watched from inside. The whole process, unfolding about 450 miles (730 km) above Earth, lasted an hour and 46 minutes. The four astronauts have been orbiting Earth since Tuesday's launch from Florida. Isaacman is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

Streamed live on SpaceX's website, the mission tested trailblazing equipment including slim spacesuits and a process to fully depressurize the Crew Dragon cabin - technology that Musk hopes to advance for ambitious future private missions to Mars. "Back at home we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, silhouetted with the half-lit planet glittering below. It was one of the riskiest missions yet for SpaceX, the only private company that has proven to be capable of routinely sending people to and from Earth's orbit. "Today's success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and @NASA's long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

You can watch a livestream recording of the Polaris Dawn Mission here.

The FDA on Thursday approved the first hearing aid software for Apple's latest AirPods Pro earbuds. According to Apple, the feature will be pushed to eligible devices through a software update in the coming weeks. The Washington Post reports: The move, which comes two years after the FDA first approved over-the-counter hearing aids, could help more Americans with hearing loss start getting help, the FDA said in a statement. The feature works by amplifying some sounds, such as voices, while minimizing others, such as ambient noise. Users can take a hearing test in the Apple Health app, and their AirPods will adjust sound level automatically based on the results. The feature is only available on the AirPods Pro 2, which cost $249.

The FDA says it tested Apple's hearing aid feature in a clinical study with 118 subjects who believed they had mild or moderate hearing loss. The study found that people who set up their AirPods using Apple's hearing test noticed similar benefits as people who had a professional set up the earbuds. Over-the-counter hearing aids are best for people with mild to moderate hearing loss, audiologists say, many of whom don't seek treatment. [...] However, consumer earbuds aren't a good solution for people with severe hearing loss, experts maintain, and most over-the-counter hearing devices will still require a trip to the audiologist for some fine tuning.

fjo3 shares a report from NASA: Engineers working on NASA's Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft's thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering. After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft's fuel tank. The clogging reduces how efficiently the thrusters can generate force. After weeks of careful planning, the team switched the spacecraft to a different set of thrusters. [...]

Switching to different thrusters would have been a relatively simple operation for the mission in 1980 or even 2002. But the spacecraft's age has introduced new challenges, primarily related to power supply and temperature. The mission has turned off all non-essential onboard systems, including some heaters, on both spacecraft to conserve their gradually shrinking electrical power supply, which is generated by decaying plutonium. While those steps have worked to reduce power, they have also led to the spacecraft growing colder, an effect compounded by the loss of other non-essential systems that produced heat. Consequently, the attitude propulsion thruster branches have grown cold, and turning them on in that state could damage them, making the thrusters unusable.

The team determined that the best option would be to warm the thrusters before the switch by turning on what had been deemed non-essential heaters. However, as with so many challenges the Voyager team has faced, this presented a puzzle: The spacecraft's power supply is so low that turning on non-essential heaters would require the mission to turn off something else to provide the heaters adequate electricity, and everything that's currently operating is considered essential. Studying the issue, they ruled out turning off one of the still-operating science instruments for a limited time because there's a risk that the instrument would not come back online. After additional study and planning, the engineering team determined they could safely turn off one of the spacecraft's main heaters for up to an hour, freeing up enough power to turn on the thruster heaters. It worked. On Aug. 27, they confirmed that the needed thruster branch was back in action, helping point Voyager 1 toward Earth.

Scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have observed the first neutrino interactions in the Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND), marking a significant milestone in their efforts to explore neutrino oscillations and search for a potential fourth neutrino flavor that could challenge the Standard Model of particle physics. Phys.org reports: SBND is the final element that completes Fermilab's Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program and will play a critical role in solving a decades-old mystery in particle physics. Getting SBND to this point has been an international effort. The detector was built by an international collaboration of 250 physicists and engineers from Brazil, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. [...] The Short Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab will perform searches for neutrino oscillation and look for evidence that could point to this fourth neutrino. SBND is the near detector for the Short Baseline Neutrino Program while ICARUS, which started collecting data in 2021, is the far detector. A third detector called MicroBooNE finished recording particle collisions with the same neutrino beamline that same year.

The Short Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab differs from previous short-baseline measurements with accelerator-made neutrinos because it features both a near detector and far detector. SBND will measure the neutrinos as they were produced in the Fermilab beam and ICARUS will measure the neutrinos after they've potentially oscillated. So, where previous experiments had to make assumptions about the original composition of the neutrino beam, the SBN Program will definitively know. "Understanding the anomalies seen by previous experiments has been a major goal in the field for the last 25 years," said Schmitz. "Together SBND and ICARUS will have outstanding ability to test the existence of these new neutrinos."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A daredevil billionaire rocketed back into orbit Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA's Apollo moonshots. Unlike his previous chartered flight, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman shared the cost with SpaceX this time around, which included developing and testing brand new spacesuits to see how they'll hold up in the harsh vacuum. If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won't venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the U.S. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.

Isaacman, along with a pair of SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot, launched before dawn aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. The spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday, midway through the five-day flight. But first the passengers are shooting for way beyond the International Space Station -- an altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), which would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA's Project Gemini in 1966. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther. The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height -- filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris -- before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles (700 kilometers), the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts flew.

All four wore SpaceX's spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the dangerous environment. Isaacman and SpaceX's Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch. They'll test their white and black-trimmed custom suits by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no dangling at the end of their 12-foot (3.6-meter) tethers and no jetpack showboating. Only NASA's suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A 41-year-old man in New Hampshire died last week after contracting a rare mosquito-borne illness called eastern equine encephalitis virus, also known as EEE or "triple E." It was New Hampshire's first human case of the disease in a decade. Four other human EEE infections have been reported this year, in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Though this outbreak is small, and triple E does not pose a risk to most people living in the United States, public health officials and researchers are concerned about the threat the deadly virus poses to the public, both this year and in future summers. There is no known cure for the disease, which can cause severe flu-like symptoms and seizures in humans four to 10 days after exposure and kills between 30 and 40 percent of the people it infects (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). Half of the people who survive a triple E infection are left with permanent neurological damage. Because of EEE's high mortality rate, state officials have begun spraying insecticide in Massachusetts, where 10 communities have been designated "critical" or "high risk" for triple E. Towns in the state shuttered their parks from dusk to dawn and warned people to stay inside after 6 pm, when mosquitoes are most active.

Like West Nile virus, another mosquito-borne illness that poses a risk to people in the US every summer, triple E is constrained by environmental factors that are changing rapidly as the planet warms. That's because mosquitoes thrive in the hotter, wetter conditions that climate change is producing. "We have seen a resurgence of activity with eastern equine encephalitis virus over the course of the past 10 or so years," said Theodore G. Andreadis, a researcher who studied mosquito-borne diseases at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, a state government research and public outreach outfit, for 35 years. "And we've seen an advancement into more northern regions where it had previously not been detected." Researchers don't know what causes the virus to surge and abate, but Andreadis said it's clear that climate change is one of the factors spurring its spread, particularly into new regions. [...]

Studies have shown that warmer air temperatures up to a certain threshold, around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, shorten the amount of time it takes for C. melanura eggs to hatch. Higher temperatures in the spring and fall extend the number of days mosquitoes have to breed and feed. And they'll feed more times in a summer season if it's warmer -- mosquitoes are ectothermic, meaning their metabolism speeds up in higher temperatures. Rainfall, too, plays a role in mosquito breeding and activity, since mosquito eggs need water to hatch. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which means that even small rainfall events dump more water today than they would have last century. The more standing water there is in roadside ditches, abandoned car tires, ponds, bogs, and potholes, the more opportunities mosquitoes have to breed. And warmer water decreases the incubation period for C. melanura eggs, leading one study to conclude that warmer-than-average water temperatures "increase the probability for amplification of EEE." Climate change isn't the only factor encouraging the spread of disease vectors like mosquitoes. The slow reforestation of areas that were clear-cut for industry and agriculture many decades ago is creating new habitat for insects. At the same time, developers are building new homes in wooded or half-wooded zones in ever larger numbers, putting humans in closer proximity to the natural world and the bugs that live in it. The report notes that the best way to prevent mosquito bites is to "wear long sleeves and pants at dusk and dawn, when mosquitoes are most prone to biting, and regularly apply an effective mosquito spray." Local health departments can also help protect the public by "testing pools of water for mosquito larvae and conducting public awareness and insecticide spraying campaigns when triple E is detected," notes Wired.

A vaccine for the disease exists for horses, but because the illness is so rare "there is little incentive for vaccine manufacturers to develop a preventative for triple E in humans," adds the report.

Apple announced today that it's adding sleep apnea detection to the Apple Watch, including the Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2. The Verge reports: Sleep apnea is a disorder that causes you to stop breathing as you sleep. Sleep apnea is a feature that wearables makers have been working on for some time, with Samsung getting cleared by the FDA for sleep apnea tracking with the Galaxy Watch earlier this year. Apple says it's using the accelerometer on its watches to monitor a new metric that it calls "breathing disturbances." You'll be able to see your nightly breathing disturbance values in the Health app.

The company expects to get FDA clearance for its sleep apnea detection feature soon, and it plans to launch the feature in more than 150 countries and regions. The company says its sleep detection was validated in a study that was "unprecedented" in size for sleep apnea technology.

Apple says AirPods Pro 2 will receive a software feature "soon" that will turn the wireless earbuds into "clinical-grade" hearing aids. "This includes a hearing protection mode being enabled by default, offering passive noise cancellation in loud environments," adds 9to5Mac. From the report: Firstly, users can take a clinically-validated hearing test. The hearing test uses your AirPods and iPhone, and can be conducted by a user in under five times. The result of your hearing test can be viewed securely in the Health app. If hearing loss is detected, the hearing aid mode is then available to use. The AirPods will make it easier to hear sounds from the world around you. A custom hearing profile is automatically applied when listening to audio, like music or podcasts.

The hearing aid feature is currently making its way through the FDA and other regulatory bodies. Apple said the functionality will be available in more than 100 countries. The feature will be enabled through a free software update coming later this year to AirPods Pro 2.

Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) cases have been reported in five U.S. states this year, including a fatal case in New Hampshire last month. The rare mosquito-borne illness, which has no known cure, kills 30-40% of those infected and often causes permanent neurological damage in survivors.

Public health officials are monitoring the situation closely. Massachusetts has implemented insecticide spraying in high-risk areas and issued advisories for residents to limit outdoor activities during peak mosquito hours.

Climate change may be contributing to EEE's spread, as warmer, wetter conditions favor mosquito breeding. Researchers note the virus has advanced into northern regions where it was previously undetected. From 2003 to 2019, the Northeast saw an increase to 4-5 cases per year on average, up from less than one annual case between 1964 and 2002.

"The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years," Elon Musk posted on X.com this weekend.

Musk said the launches will happen when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens, which the science blog NextBigFuture identifies as "about November through December 2026." Musk noted that the 2026 missions "will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars," but "If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years."

"Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet."