Remember those researchers who generated electricity from the energy in air humidity?

"To be frank, it was an accident," the study's lead author, Prof Jun Yao, tells the Guardian: "We were actually interested in making a simple sensor for humidity in the air. But for whatever reason, the student who was working on that forgot to plug in the power." The UMass Amherst team were surprised to find that the device, which comprised an array of microscopic tubes, or nanowires, was producing an electrical signal regardless. Each nanowire was less than one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, wide enough that an airborne water molecule could enter, but so narrow it would bump around inside the tube. Each bump, the team realised, lent the material a small charge, and as the frequency of bumps increased, one end of the tube became differently charged from the other. "So it's really like a battery," says Yao. "You have a positive pull and a negative pull, and when you connect them the charge is going to flow..."

"The beauty is that the air is everywhere," says Yao. "Even though a thin sheet of the device gives out a very tiny amount of electricity or power, in principle, we can stack multiple layers in vertical space to increase the power." That's exactly what another team, Prof Svitlana Lyubchyk and her twin sons, Profs Andriy and Sergiy Lyubchyk, are trying to do. Svitlana Lyubchyk and Andriy are part of the Lisbon-based Catcher project, whose aim is "changing atmospheric humidity into renewable power", and along with Sergiy they have founded CascataChuva, a startup intended to commercialise the research... Catcher and related projects [received] nearly €5.5m (£4.7m) in funding from the European Innovation Council. The result is a thin grey disc measuring 4cm (1.5in) across. According to the Lyubchyks, one of these devices can generate a relatively modest 1.5 volts and 10 milliamps. However, 20,000 of them stacked into a washing machine-sized cube, they say, could generate 10 kilowatt hours of energy a day — roughly the consumption of an average UK household. Even more impressive: they plan to have a prototype ready for demonstration in 2024...

The Lyubchyks estimate that the levelised cost of energy — the average net present cost of electricity generation for a generator over its lifetime — from these devices will indeed be high at first, but by moving into mass production, they hope to lower it significantly, ultimately making this hygroelectric power competitive with solar and wind... The team accept that it may take years to optimise a prototype and scale up production, but if they're successful, the benefits are clear. Unlike solar or wind, hygroelectric generators could work day and night, indoors and out, and in many places.
Yao explains to the Guardian that "Lots of energy is stored in water molecules in the air. That's where we get the lightning effect during a thunderstorm.

"The existence of this type of energy isn't in doubt. It's about how we collect it."

Thanks to Slashdot reader j3x0n for sharing the article.

"The flow of lifesaving organs to 63 U.S. transplant centers could be disrupted..." reported the Washington Post on Monday, "by a dispute over the use of data."

Or, as a local news station WRIC puts it, "Two entities dedicated to fighting to save lives through organ transplant operations are now fighting with each other." Buckeye Transplant Services filed a lawsuit against the United Network for Organ Sharing — or UNOS — on July 3 after the Richmond-based non-profit accused the transplant screening service of putting donor and patient privacy at risk.

UNOS claimed Buckeye did so by using technology to gain unauthorized, improper access to a DonorNet database. Buckeye denied any wrongdoing and insisted that the company has always complied with data accessibility protocol... This isn't UNOS's first controversy, but the reason this particular debate has become high-profile is due to rumors that it could impact transplant operations. Prior to the lawsuit, UNOS threatened to cut off Buckeye's access to data necessary for its operation. UNOS still insists that no transplant program will experience any interruptions in receiving organ offers as a result of the dispute. However, Buckeye warned that if it loses access to crucial data, 63 hospitals across the country — two in Virginia — could have to take on extra burdens.

One of those healthcare systems, the University of Virginia's Transplant Center, told 8News that its team is closely monitoring the situation and is already coming up with plans to prevent any legal hiccups from interrupting the lifesaving organ donation process.
Buckeye was involved in over 13% of America's organ transplants in 2022, according to figures cited by the Washington Post. "Buckeye said it is doing nothing wrong," according to the article, "and that other organizations across the transplant system act similarly." Meanwhile, UNOS's general counsel "stressed that cutting off Buckeye is a last resort in a negotiation that has been underway for two months," the Washington Post reported. "Certain features of Buckeye's electronic systems are capable of and have collected from UNOS systems various large volumes of patient-specific and facility-specific information related to transplant services," a UNOS attorney wrote to Buckeye on June 21. Livingston, the UNOS general counsel, said in an interview that the data belongs to UNOS and that transplant centers are able to obtain it from the organization if they want it. But Buckeye is not allowed to collect it in bulk and sell it to its customers. He said if Buckeye retrieves and "scrapes" the data, UNOS does not know how well it is secured, whether it is being "misused or mishandled" and how it is being stored. He also said Buckeye could create an alternate database with the information.
On Tuesday the Washington Post reported that UNOS had issued a two-week extension (through July 19): Anne Paschke, a spokesperson for UNOS, said the group provided the extension to "allow the court an appropriate amount of time" to consider the company's request for a temp restraining order. "We are confident in our position," Paschke said... Buckeye sued UNOS in federal court on Monday seeking an injunction that would stop the nonprofit group from blocking its access to the national transplant database system...

[The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration] unveiled plans in March to overhaul the transplant system, including changes to the 37-year monopoly UNOS has held as manager of the organ database... Buckeye is potentially interested in bidding for a part of the contract UNOS now holds, according to company representatives. Its lawsuit contends UNOS "has monopolistic intent to squash the development of technology that could eventually supplant" the UNOS transplant system.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader belmolis for sharing the article.

Long-time Slashdot reader hpickens writes: Richard A. Muller Has an interesting op-ed in the WSJ that asserts that World War III may not be what you expect (Source paywalled; alternative source) and that a two-front biological and cyberattack could lead to a U.S. defeat before we know what hit us. Muller paints a picture of what such a dual attack would look like. "The great value to the attacker of a two-pronged biological and cyber attack is the possibility of achieving destructive goals while keeping the whole operation covert," writes Muller. "Covid wasn't a deliberate attack, but it quickly and successfully damaged the American economy. Any nation thinking of using a deadly virus as a weapon of war would first need to immunize its own people, perhaps under the guise of a flu vaccination. Long-term population-level immunity would require the virus be sufficiently optimized, before release, to reduce the probability of further mutation."

The second prong of the attack would target hospitals with ransomware viruses. "Ransomware could simultaneously target energy grids, power plants, factories, refineries, trains, airlines, shipping, banking, water supplies, sewage-treatment plants and more. But hospitals would be the most salient targets. Avoiding obvious military targets would enhance the illusion that World War III hadn't begun."

"Deterring such an attack will require a clear, credible and articulated promise to respond to aggression. It can't be covert. If China, Russia or both attacked the U.S. this way, how would we react? Policy makers need to come up with an answer. An economic embargo seems suboptimal. Many would interpret nuclear retaliation as disproportionate. Developing a retaliatory virus would take time, and responding this way would clearly violate the Biological Weapons Convention."

Harvard professor Avi Loeb believes he may have found fragments of alien technology from a meteor that landed in the waters off of Papua, New Guinea in 2014. CBS News reports: Loeb and his team just brought the materials back to Harvard for analysis. The U.S. Space Command confirmed with almost near certainty, 99.999%, that the material came from another solar system. The government gave Loeb a 10 km (6.2 mile) radius of where it may have landed. "That is where the fireball took place, and the government detected it from the Department of Defense. It's a very big area, the size of Boston, so we wanted to pin it down," said Loeb. "We figured the distance of the fireball based off the time delay between the arrival of blast wave, the boom of explosion, and the light that arrived quickly."

Their calculations allowed them to chart the potential path of the meteor. Those calculations happened to carve a path right through the same projected 10 km range that came from the U.S. government. Loeb and his crew took a boat called the Silver Star out to the area. The ship took numerous passes along and around the meteor's projected path. Researchers combed the ocean floor by attaching a sled full of magnets to their boat. "We found ten spherules. These are almost perfect spheres, or metallic marbles. When you look at them through a microscope, they look very distinct from the background," explained Loeb, "They have colors of gold, blue, brown, and some of them resemble a miniature of the Earth."

An analysis of the composition showed that the spherules are made of 84% iron, 8% silicon, 4% magnesium, and 2% titanium, plus trace elements. They are sub-millimeter in size. The crew found 50 of them in total. "It has material strength that is tougher than all space rock that were seen before, and catalogued by NASA," added Loeb, "We calculated its speed outside the solar system. It was 60 km per second, faster than 95% of all stars in the vicinity of the sun. The fact that it was made of materials tougher than even iron meteorites, and moving faster than 95% of all stars in the vicinity of the sun, suggested potentially it could be a spacecraft from another civilization or some technological gadget." He likens the situation to any of the Voyager spacecrafts launched by NASA.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Harvard Medical School: Scientists have designed an AI tool that can rapidly decode a brain tumor's DNA to determine its molecular identity during surgery -- critical information that under the current approach can take a few days and up to a few weeks. Knowing a tumor's molecular type enables neurosurgeons to make decisions such as how much brain tissue to remove and whether to place tumor-killing drugs directly into the brain -- while the patient is still on the operating table. A report on the work, led by Harvard Medical School researchers, is published July 7 in the journal Med.

The tool, called CHARM (Cryosection Histopathology Assessment and Review Machine), is freely available to other researchers. It still has to be clinically validated through testing in real-world settings and cleared by the FDA before deployment in hospitals, the research team said. [...] CHARM was developed using 2,334 brain tumor samples from 1,524 people with glioma from three different patient populations. When tested on a never-before-seen set of brain samples, the tool distinguished tumors with specific molecular mutations at 93 percent accuracy and successfully classified three major types of gliomas with distinct molecular features that carry different prognoses and respond differently to treatments.

Going a step further, the tool successfully captured visual characteristics of the tissue surrounding the malignant cells. It was capable of spotting telltale areas with greater cellular density and more cell death within samples, both of which signal more aggressive glioma types. The tool was also able to pinpoint clinically important molecular alterations in a subset of low-grade gliomas, a subtype of glioma that is less aggressive and therefore less likely to invade surrounding tissue. Each of these changes also signals different propensity for growth, spread, and treatment response. The tool further connected the appearance of the cells -- the shape of their nuclei, the presence of edema around the cells -- with the molecular profile of the tumor. This means that the algorithm can pinpoint how a cell's appearance relates to the molecular type of a tumor.

An artificial-intelligence tool has shown promise at helping doctors fight aggressive brain tumors by identifying characteristics that help guide surgery. From a report: The tool -- called the Cryosection Histopathology Assessment and Review Machine, or CHARM -- studies images to quickly pick out the genetic profile of a kind of tumor called glioma, a process that currently takes days or weeks, said Kun-Hsing Yu, senior author of a report released Friday in the journal Med. Surgeons use detailed diagnoses to guide them while they operate, Yu said, and the ability to get them rapidly could improve patients' outcomes and spare them from multiple surgeries. While glioma varies in severity, an aggressive form called glioblastoma can lead to death in less than six months if untreated. Only 17% of people with glioblastoma survive their second year after being diagnosed, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

Surgeons use information about the genetic profile of a glioma tumor when deciding how much tissue to remove from a patient's brain, as well as whether to implant wafers coated in a cancer-fighting drug. Getting that information, however, currently requires time-consuming testing. Yu and his team of researchers trained a machine-learning algorithm to do the work by showing it pictures of samples gathered during brain surgery, and then checking its work against those patients' diagnoses. CHARM learned to match or outperform other AI systems at identifying the genetic profile of a tumor.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The FDA on Thursday granted traditional approval to an Alzheimer's drug for the first time in more than two decades. Now, the question becomes how many people will be able to access the drug, which is targeted at patients in the early stages of the debilitating disease. Medicare has said that it will reimburse the drug's costs -- more than $26,000 annually -- only for beneficiaries enrolled in a nationwide registry that tracks patient side effects and outcomes over time. Patient advocacy groups and some clinicians fear this means that few of the hundreds of thousands of Alzheimer's patients eligible for the treatment will be able to access it.

The agency previously granted Leqembi, developed and manufactured by Eisai and Biogen, accelerated approval before evaluating late-stage clinical trial data earlier this year. The drug moderately slowed trial participants' cognitive decline compared to a placebo, according to the data, but had potentially serious side effects, including brain swelling and bleeding. Under accelerated approval, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it would cover Leqembi only for those participating in a randomized clinical trial, of which none were enrolling. Medicare's coverage determination was contrary to the Veterans Health Administration, which said it would cover the drug for its beneficiaries without restriction.

Roughly 6.7 million people in the U.S. have Alzheimer's, and there are few treatments for the disease. Aduhelm, a drug from Biogen that received accelerated approval in 2021, works similarly to Leqembi by targeting proteins thought to be one of the causes of the disease. But both drugs have received little uptake due to Medicare coverage restrictions, and patient and caregiver concerns over the evidence of its modest benefits. There are five existing treatments for Alzheimer's that treat some of the disease's symptoms, but do not slow progression of the disease.

Stephen Clark writes via Ars Technica: When India's ambassador to the US signed up his country to the Artemis Accords last month, it signaled the world's most populous nation -- with a growing prowess in spaceflight -- could be turning toward the United States as a partner in space exploration. India became the 27th country to sign the Artemis Accords, a non-binding set of principles among like-minded nations guiding a vision for peaceful and transparent exploration of space. The accords cover the international registration of human-made space objects, the open release of scientific data, and an agreement for nations not to claim territory on the Moon or other planetary bodies, among other tenets.

Details about future cooperation between the US and India remain scarce. Nelson plans to travel to India later this year for meetings and discussions with Indian space officials. One objective of Nelson's trip will be to hammer out broad objectives for a "strategic framework" for human spaceflight cooperation. Despite the name of the Artemis Accords, there's no guarantee that India will play a significant role in NASA's Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon and eventually send humans to Mars. "There's no implication of a signatory to the Artemis accords also being part of the Artemis program," Nelson told Ars.

But none of the other 26 signatories to the Artemis Accords -- a list that includes European space powers and Japan -- has their own human spaceflight program. India is developing a human-rated spacecraft called Gaganyaan that could be ready to fly people into low-Earth orbit in 2025, several years later than originally planned. "The fact that they are a nation that intends in the future to fly own their own astronauts, is that significant? The answer is yes," Nelson said. "I think it's of significance that a major country that's not considered aligned with the US (is) a signatory." "I've described India as a sleeping giant and one that is quickly awakening," Gold told Ars. "India is absolutely vital to global space development, and Artemis in particular, since the country is active with lunar programs, Martian programs, and now even human spaceflight." "Where India might fit into the Artemis program is still to be determined," writes Clark. "The partnership between the US and India in space could take a step forward next year with the flight of an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station. NASA has agreed to provide advanced training to Indian astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston before a flight opportunity to the space station in low-Earth orbit."

India's space program has "held closer ties with Russia in the past," notes Clark. "Russia provided upper-stage engines for India's GSLV Mk.II rocket until India developed its own engine for the job. And four Indian astronauts slated for the Gaganyaan program completed more than a year of training at Russia's Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow in 2021, according to Indian media."

"Despite India's overture toward a closer relationship with NASA, the Asian power remains linked with Russia," adds Clark. "India still imports significant amounts of Russian oil and has not officially condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Virtual reality (VR) headsets are now being used on hospital wards to help keep patients calm during procedures. A trial at Kidderminster Hospital saw soothing sounds and visuals from them used to cut stress and anxiety. In one case, VR was used in place of sedation when a tube was inserted into a child's vein for blood sampling, staff said.

The Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust says they are now a permanent feature in its hospitals. Dawn Forbes, a nurse specialist, used the technology ahead of a blood test and MRI scan for a patient with a phobia of needles. She said it enabled a cannula to be placed "quickly without causing any pain or distress."

July 3 was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction. From a report: The average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 Fahrenheit), surpassing the August 2016 record of 16.92C (62.46F) as heatwaves sizzled around the world. The southern U.S. has been suffering under an intense heat dome in recent weeks. In China, an enduring heatwave continued, with temperatures above 35C (95F). North Africa has seen temperatures near 50C (122F). And even Antarctica, currently in its winter, registered anomalously high temperatures. Ukraine's Vernadsky Research Base in the white continent's Argentine Islands recently broke its July temperature record with 8.7C (47.6F).

JoeRobe writes: After 63 days of agonizing silence, NASA's Martian chopper finally phoned home. The Ingenuity helicopter reestablished communication with mission control on June 28, officially logging its 52nd flight as a success, NASA recently announced. The space agency lost contact with Ingenuity as the helicopter was descending towards the surface of the Red Planet following its most recent flight on April 26.

The reason behind the communication drop was that a hill was inconveniently positioned between Ingenuity and its rover pal Perseverance, preventing the Martian pair from communicating with one another. Ingenuity relies on Perseverance to deliver its messages to Earth, using shiny antennas to exchange data at about 100 kilobits per second. The data is routed from the Ingenuity-facing antenna to the rover's main computer before being transferred to Earth by way of an orbiting spacecraft.

According to the Financial Times, Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin has announced plans to expand its operations to "Europe and beyond." Engadget reports: Part of this growth hinges on finding a site for an international launch facility -- the company has already put down roots in Texas, Washington, Florida and Alabama -- but the new location hasn't been chosen yet. It's also actively looking for fresh acquisitions and partnerships outside of the US in areas such as manufacturing and software.

Though Blue Origin was the first to launch, land and reuse a rocket successfully, it has fallen behind its rival due to hold-ups with building its launchers. Blue Origin's plans for a more global footprint might help them catch up with SpaceX's progress. Amazon's Project Kuiper also plans to use Blue Origin's rocket New Glenn for at least 12 launches between 2024 and 2029 after a few years of delays. "We're looking for anything we can do to acquire, to scale up to better serve our customers," Bob Smith, Blue Origin CEO, said. "It's not a function of size -- rather how much it accelerates our road map of what we're trying to get done."

Scientists have achieved a breakthrough by observing the early universe in extreme slow motion, confirming Einstein's theory of an expanding universe. The research is published in Nature Astronomy. Phys.Org reports: Einstein's general theory of relativity means that we should observe the distant -- and hence ancient -- universe running much slower than the present day. However, peering back that far in time has proven elusive. Scientists have now cracked that mystery by using quasars as "clocks." "Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower," said lead author of the study, Professor Geraint Lewis from the School of Physics and Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney. "If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second -- but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag."

Professor Lewis and his collaborator, Dr. Brendon Brewer from the University of Auckland, used observed data from nearly 200 quasars -- hyperactive supermassive black holes at the centers of early galaxies -- to analyze this time dilation. Previously, astronomers have confirmed this slow-motion universe back to about half the age of the universe using supernovae -- massive exploding stars -- as "standard clocks." But while supernovae are exceedingly bright, they are difficult to observe at the immense distances needed to peer into the early universe. By observing quasars, this time horizon has been rolled back to just a tenth the age of the universe, confirming that the universe appears to speed up as it ages.

Professor Lewis worked with astro-statistician Dr. Brewer to examine details of 190 quasars observed over two decades. Combining the observations taken at different colors (or wavelengths) -- green light, red light and into the infrared -- they were able to standardize the "ticking" of each quasar. Through the application of Bayesian analysis, they found the expansion of the universe imprinted on each quasar's ticking. "With these exquisite data, we were able to chart the tick of the quasar clocks, revealing the influence of expanding space," Professor Lewis said. These results further confirm Einstein's picture of an expanding universe but contrast earlier studies that had failed to identify the time dilation of distant quasars.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Ariane 5 rocket has had a long run, with nearly three decades of service launching satellites and spacecraft. Over that time, the iconic rocket, with a liquid hydrogen-fueled core stage and solid rocket boosters, has come to symbolize Europe's guaranteed access to space. But now, the road is coming to an end for the Ariane 5. As soon as Tuesday evening, the final Ariane 5 rocket will lift off from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying a French military communications satellite and a German communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. A 90-minute launch window opens at 5:30 pm ET (21:30 UTC). The launch will be webcast on ESA TV. And after this? Europe's space agency faces some difficult questions.

A new article in the Washington Post reports that even internally, "Space Force officials are still debating its priorities, analysts say: Is it to support warfighters on the ground? Or should it focus primarily on protecting assets in space? Or both?"

In April, the Washington Post reported that space would likely be a key part of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and one possible Space Force counter-measure would "ensure that the United States avoids 'operational surprise,' by keeping track of other countries' satellites and movements in space while also being able to 'identify behaviors that become irresponsible or even hostile.'"

To address the possibility of enemies shooting down satellites, the Space Force is also "pivoting, relying on constellations of small satellites that can be easily replaced and, to an increasing degree, maneuver." That's just one example of how the Space Force intends to ensure the U.S. maintains "space superiority," as its leaders often say, to protect the satellites the Defense Department relies on for warnings of incoming missiles, steering precision-guided munitions and surveilling both friendly and hostile forces. It also could deter conflict in space — why strike a satellite if there are backups that would easily carry on the mission...?

[Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the commander of the 45th Space Wing] gave a tour of some of the roles the Space Force could play, offering a glimpse into its future. Soldiers and Marines already pre-position supplies and equipment on the ground, he said. Could the Space Force start storing supplies in space and then fly them to hot spots on Earth as well? "In theory, we could have huge racks of stuff in orbit and then somebody can call those in, saying. 'I need X, Y, Z delivered to me now on this random island.' And then, boom, they shoot out and they parachute in and they land with GPS assistance," he said. "It's a fascinating thought exercise for emergency response — you know if a type of tidal wave or tsunami comes in and wipes out a whole area."

The military is also working to harness solar energy in space, and then beam it to ground stations. Could the Space Force use that technology to beam power to remote areas to support soldiers on the ground? Another idea: If the cadence of launches really does double or triple and the costs continue to come down, could the Space Force start using rockets to deliver cargo across the globe at a moment's notice? Soon there could be commercial space stations floating around in orbit. "Can we lease a room?" Purdy said. "Can we lease a module?"
A former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff believes the U.S. Space Force is misunderstood — at least partly because much of what it does is classified. "We fundamentally need to normalize the classification," he tells the Washington Post, "so we can have a conversation with the public, with the American people."