Andrew Tarantola writes via Engadget: It's been six years since Tesla, SpaceX (and now Twitter) CEO Elon Musk co-founded brain-control interfaces (BCI) startup, Neuralink. It's been three years since the company first demonstrated its "sewing machine-like" implantation robot, two years since the company stuck its technology into the heads of pigs -- and just over 19 months since they did the same to primates, an effort that allegedly killed 15 out of 23 test subjects. After a month-long delay in October, Neuralink held its third "show and tell" event on Wednesday where CEO Elon Musk announced, "we think probably in about six months, we should be able to have a Neuralink installed in a human."

Neuralink has seen tumultuous times in the previous April 2021 status update: The company's co-founder, Max Hodak, quietly quit just after that event, though he said was still a "huge cheerleader" for Neuralink's success. That show of confidence was subsequently shattered this past August after Musk reportedly approached Neuralink's main rival, Synchron, as an investment opportunity. Earlier in February, Neuralink confirmed that monkeys had died during prototype testing of its BCI implants at the University of California, Davis Primate Center but rejected accusations by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine of animal cruelty. Musk responded indirectly to those charges on Wednesday. "Before we would even think of putting a device in an animal, we do everything possible we with rigorous benchtop testing, We're not cavalier about putting these devices into animals," he said. "We're extremely careful and we always want the device, whenever we do the implant -- whether into a sheep, pig or monkey -- to be confirmatory, not exploratory."

Neuralink is still working towards gaining FDA approval for its implant, though the company was awarded the agency's Breakthrough Device Designation in July 2020. This program allows patients and caregivers more "timely access" to promising treatments and medical devices by fast tracking their development and regulatory testing. As of September, 2022 the FDA has granted that designation to 728 medical devices. The FDA has also updated its best practices guidance regarding clinical and nonclinical BCI testing in 2021. "The field of implanted BCI devices is progressing rapidly from fundamental neuroscience discoveries to translational applications and market access," the agency asserted in its May guidance. "Implanted BCI devices have the potential to bring benefit to people with severe disabilities by increasing their ability to interact with their environment, and consequently, providing new independence in daily life."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Scientists have long pursued a deeper understanding of wormholes and now appear to be making progress. Researchers announced on Wednesday that they forged two miniscule simulated black holes -- those extraordinarily dense celestial objects with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape -- in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time. It was a "baby wormhole," according to Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, a co-author of the research published in the journal Nature. But scientists are a long way from being able to send people or other living beings through such a portal, she said.

"Experimentally, for me, I will tell you that it's very, very far away. People come to me and they ask me, 'Can you put your dog in the wormhole?' So, no," Spiropulu told reporters during a video briefing. "...That's a huge leap." [...] Spiropulu said the researchers found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole but was small enough to implement on existing quantum hardware. The researchers said no rupture of space and time was created in physical space in the experiment, though a traversable wormhole appeared to have emerged based on quantum information teleported using quantum codes on the quantum processor. "There's a difference between something being possible in principle and possible in reality," added physicist and study co-author Joseph Lykken of Fermilab, America's particle physics and accelerator laboratory. "So don't hold your breath about sending your dog through the wormhole. But you have to start somewhere. And I think to me it's just exciting that we're able to get our hands on this at all."

"It looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck. So that's what we can say at this point -- that we have something that in terms of the properties we look at, it looks like a wormhole," Lykken said.

Longtime Slashdot reader Amiga Trombone shares a report from Phys.Org: A team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with a colleague from Syngenta Jealott's Hill International Research Centre in the U.K., has developed a way to synthesize cocaine using a tobacco plant. The group describes how they synthesized the notorious drug and possible uses for their process in their paper published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.

In studying the coca plant, the researchers discovered that the cocaine that winds up in its leaves is not produced by elements in the plant converting 4-(1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinyl)-3-oxobutanoic acid to hyoscyamine, as has been thought. They found that it is instead produced by the two enzymes, EnMT4 and EnCYP81AN15. To prove their discovery, the group genetically engineered a tobacco plant to produce the two enzymes in its leaves, which resulted in the production of small amounts of cocaine (with assistance from a substance also produced in the plant called ornithine, which is similar to the precursor in the coca plant). [...] Not mentioned in the paper is the possibility of synthesizing the two enzymes produced by both the coca and engineered tobacco plant as a more direct way to synthesize cocaine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The first drug to slow the destruction of the brain in Alzheimer's has been heralded as momentous and historic. The research breakthrough ends decades of failure and shows a new era of drugs to treat Alzheimer's -- the most common form of dementia -- is possible. Yet the medicine, lecanemab, has only a small effect and its impact on people's daily lives is debated. And the drug works in the early stages of the disease, so most would miss out without a revolution in spotting it. [...] Lecanemab is an antibody -- like those the body makes to attack viruses or bacteria -- that has been engineered to tell the immune system to clear amyloid from the brain. Amyloid is a protein that clumps together in the spaces between neurons in the brain and forms distinctive plaques that are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's.

The large-scale trial involved 1,795 volunteers with early stage Alzheimer's. Infusions of lecanemab were given every fortnight. The results, presented at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease conference in San Francisco and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, are not a miracle cure. The disease continued to rob people of their brain power, but that decline was slowed by around a quarter over the course of the 18 months of treatment. The data is already being assessed by regulators in the US who will soon decide whether lecanemab can be approved for wider use. The developers -- the pharmaceutical companies Eisai and Biogen -- plan to begin the approval process in other countries next year.

There is debate among scientists and doctors about the "real world" impact of lecanemab. The slower decline with the drug was noticed using ratings of a person's symptoms. It's an 18-point scale, ranging from normal through to severe dementia. Those getting the drug were 0.45 points better off. [Prof Tara Spires-Jones, from the University of Edinburgh] said that was a "small effect" on the disease, but "even though it is not dramatic, I would take it." Dr Susan Kohlhaas, from Alzheimer's Research UK, said it was a "modest effect... but it gives us a little bit of a foothold" and the next generation of drugs would be better. There are also risks. Brain scans showed a risk of brain bleeds (17% of participants) and brain swelling (13%). Overall, 7% of people given the drug had to stop because of side effects. A crucial question is what happens after the 18 months of the trial, and the answers are still speculation. [Dr Elizabeth Coulthard, who treats patients at North Bristol NHS Trust] says that people have, on average, six years of living independently once mild cognitive impairment starts. Slow that decline by a quarter and it could equate to an extra 19 months of independent life, "but we don't know that yet", she says. It is even scientifically plausible that the effectiveness could be greater in longer trials.

Two minerals that have never been seen before on Earth have been discovered inside a massive meteorite in Somalia. They could hold important clues to how asteroids form. Live Science reports: The two brand new minerals were found inside a single 2.5 ounce (70 gram) slice taken from the 16.5 ton (15 metric tons) El Ali meteorite, which was found in 2020. Scientists named the minerals elaliite after the meteor and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton(opens in new tab), the managing director of the Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative and principal investigator of NASA's upcoming Psyche mission, which will send a probe to investigate the mineral-rich Psyche asteroid for evidence of how our solar system's planets formed.

The researchers classified El Ali as an Iron IAB complex meteorite, a type made of meteoric iron flecked with tiny chunks of silicates. While investigating the meteorite slice, details of the new minerals caught the scientists' attention. By comparing the minerals with versions of them that had been previously synthesized in a lab, they were able to rapidly identify them as newly recorded in nature. The researchers plan to investigate the meteorites further in order to understand the conditions under which their parent asteroid formed. The team is also looking into material science applications of the minerals. However, future scientific insights from the El Ali meteorite could be in peril. The meteorite has now been moved to China in search of a potential buyer, which could limit researchers' access to the space rock for investigation. "Whenever you find a new mineral, it means that the actual geological conditions, the chemistry of the rock, was different than what's been found before," Chris Herd, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, said in a statement. "That's what makes this exciting: In this particular meteorite you have two officially described minerals that are new to science."

Three Chinese astronauts arrived on Wednesday at China's space station for the first in-orbit crew rotation in Chinese space history, launching operation of the second inhabited outpost in low-Earth orbit after the NASA-led International Space Station. Reuters reports: The spacecraft Shenzhou-15, or "Divine Vessel", and its three passengers lifted off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre at 11:08 p.m. (1508 GMT) on Tuesday in sub-freezing temperatures in the Gobi Desert in northwest China, according to state television. Shenzhou-15 was the last of 11 missions, including three previous crewed missions, needed to assemble the "Celestial Palace", as the multi-module station is known in Chinese. The first mission was launched in April 2021.

The spacecraft docked with the station more than six hours after the launch, and the three Shenzhou-15 astronauts were greeted with warm hugs from the previous Shenzhou crew from whom they were taking over. The Shenzhou-14 crew, who arrived in early June, will return to Earth after a one-week handover that will establish the station's ability to temporarily sustain six astronauts, another record for China's space program. The Shenzhou-15 mission offered the nation a rare moment to celebrate, at a time of widespread unhappiness over China's zero-COVID policies, while its economy cools amid uncertainties at home and abroad.

Tall as a 20-story building, a rocket carrying the Shenzhou 15 mission roared into the night sky of the Gobi Desert on Tuesday, carrying three astronauts toward a rendezvous with China's just-completed space station. From a report: The rocket launch was a split-screen event for China, the latest in a long series of technological achievements for the country, even as many of its citizens have been angrily lashing out in the streets against stringent pandemic controls.The air shook as the huge white rocket leaped into a starry, bitterly cold night sky shortly before the setting of a waxing crescent moon. The expedition to the new space station is a milestone for China's rapidly advancing space program. It is the first time a team of three astronauts already aboard the Tiangong outpost will be met by a crew arriving from Earth. The Chinese space station will now be continuously occupied, like the International Space Station, another marker laid down by China in its race to catch up with the United States and surpass it as the dominant power in space.

With a sustained presence in low-Earth orbit aboard Tiangong, Chinese space officials are preparing to put astronauts on the moon, which NASA also intends to revisit before the end of the decade as part of its Artemis program. "It will not take a long time; we can achieve the goal of manned moon landing," Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's crewed space program, said in an interview at the launch center. China has been developing a lunar lander, he added, without giving a date when it might be used. The launch of Shenzhou 15 comes less than two weeks after NASA finally launched its Artemis I mission following many delays. That flight has put its uncrewed Orion capsule into orbit around the moon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The US space agency's Orion capsule has reached a key milestone on its demonstration mission around the Moon. On Monday, it moved some 430,000km (270,000 miles) beyond the Earth -- the furthest any spacecraft designed to carry humans has travelled. The ship is uncrewed on this occasion, but if it completes the current flight without incident, astronauts will be on the next outing in two years' time. [...] The previous record for the most distant point reached by a human-rated spacecraft was set by the Apollo-13 mission in April 1970. It went out to 400,171km (248,655 miles) from Earth as its crew fought to navigate their way home following an explosion in their capsule's service module. Monday's milestone marks the middle point of the mission. "This halfway point teaches us to number our days so that we can get a heart of wisdom," said Mike Sarafin, Nasa's Artemis mission manager.

"The halfway point affords us an opportunity to step back and then look at what our margins are and where we could be a little smarter to buy down risk and understand the spacecraft's performance for crewed flight on the very next mission."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) says a team of researchers fabricated the results of an experiment, led by one of its astronauts, that sought to simulate daily life on board the International Space Station (ISS). JAXA stated that it would subject astronaut Satoshi Furukawa to disciplinary action over data tampering, Japanese media reported. The experiment in question, conducted between 2016 and 2017, involved 40 participants who were confined to closed environments to simulate what astronauts experience during spaceflight.

The participants spent about two weeks at a facility in Tsukuba, a city northeast of Tokyo, after which time their stress levels and mental well-being were to be assessed by the overseeing researchers. Or at least, that was the plan. Instead, the two researchers responsible for conducting the interviews fabricated the data, compiling psychological assessments without actually having done the interviews and rewriting the diagnosis of the participants, according to NHK World-Japan. The researchers also claimed that three of them had conducted the interviews, when in fact it was just the two.

JAXA began investigating the results of the research in November 2020 upon noticing that something wasn't quite right with the data, and subsequently suspending the 190 million yen ($1.4 million) experiment. The researchers involved claimed that they were too busy to dedicate enough time towards the data gathering for the experiment, according to to JAXA vice president Hiroshi Sasaki and as reported in Kyoto News. The Japanese space agency will reprimand 58-year-old astronaut Furukawa, who was overseeing the experiment as project supervisor. However, since Furukawa was not personally involved in fabricating the data, his upcoming mission to the ISS in 2023 will not be affected. JAXA also stated that it would look into returning the grant it had received from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for the experiment.

"The powerful Webb telescope doesn't need to take pretty pictures to revolutionize our grasp of the cosmos," notes Mashable.

It's "a game changer," says one of the researchers. They're part of what the Webb telescope's web site calls "an international team numbering in the hundreds" that "independently analysed data from four of the Webb telescope's finely calibrated instrument modes." And their ground-breaking first results? The James Webb Space Telescope "just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world's skies."

The European Space Agency's page for the telescope explains why revealing a "broad swath of the infrared spectrum and a panoply of chemical fingerprints" is so groundbreaking: While Webb and other space telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this heated planet's atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds.... The telescope's array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of WASP-39 b, a "hot Saturn" (a planet about as massive as Saturn but in an orbit tighter than Mercury) orbiting a star some 700 light-years away.... Webb's exquisitely sensitive instruments have provided a profile of WASP-39 b's atmospheric constituents and identified a plethora of contents, including water, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, sodium and potassium.
Earlier Mashable explained that the researchers "wait for planets to travel in front of their bright stars. This starlight passes through the exoplanet's atmosphere, then through space, and ultimately into instruments called spectrographs aboard Webb... essentially hi-tech prisms, which separate the light into a rainbow of colors. Here's the big trick: Certain molecules, like water, in the atmosphere absorb specific types, or colors, of light."

From the Webb Telescope's site: The findings bode well for the capability of Webb's instruments to conduct the broad range of investigations of exoplanets — planets around other stars — hoped for by the science community. That includes probing the atmospheres of smaller, rocky planets like those in the TRAPPIST-1 system.... Among the unprecedented revelations is the first detection in an exoplanet atmosphere of sulphur dioxide, a molecule produced from chemical reactions triggered by high-energy light from the planet's parent star.... "This is the first time we have seen concrete evidence of photochemistry — chemical reactions initiated by energetic stellar light — on exoplanets," said Shang-Min Tsai, a researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and lead author of the paper explaining the origin of sulphur dioxide in WASP-39 b's atmosphere. "I see this as a really promising outlook for advancing our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres...."

This led to another first: scientists applying computer models of photochemistry to data that require such physics to be fully explained. The resulting improvements in modelling will help build the technological know-how needed to interpret potential signs of habitability in the future.... The planet's proximity to its host star — eight times closer than Mercury is to our Sun — also makes it a laboratory for studying the effects of radiation from host stars on exoplanets. Better knowledge of the star-planet connection should bring a deeper understanding of how these processes affect the diversity of planets observed in the galaxy.

Other atmospheric constituents detected by the Webb telescope include sodium (Na), potassium (K), and water vapour (H2O), confirming previous space- and ground-based telescope observations as well as finding additional fingerprints of water, at these longer wavelengths, that haven't been seen before. Webb also saw carbon dioxide (CO2) at higher resolution, providing twice as much data as reported from its previous observations....

By precisely revealing the details of an exoplanet atmosphere, the Webb telescope's instruments performed well beyond scientists' expectations — and promise a new phase of exploration of the broad variety of exoplanets in the galaxy. "We are going to be able to see the big picture of exoplanet atmospheres," said Laura Flagg, a researcher at Cornell University and a member of the international team. "It is incredibly exciting to know that everything is going to be rewritten. That is one of the best parts of being a scientist."
Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency.

"News from Mars," CNN reported Friday. "Not just that water was there, perhaps millions of years ago, but also these organic compounds."

In an interview with the head of Earth Sciences collections at the UK's Natural History Musem, CNN asked the million-dollar question. "How much more likely, if you believe so, that that makes it that there was life on Mars at some time." A: So what we've found with data that's come back from the Rover and has been studied over the last few months is that we see igneous rocks -- so these are rocks that have been formed through volcanic processes -- which have also been affected by the action of liquid water.

And that's really really interesting and exciting, because liquid water is one of the key ingredients you need for life to start. So if you've got the chances of life ever being on Mars, you'd need to have somewhere that had liquid water for at least a period of time. And we've got good evidence for that.

Now that's combined with the fact that we're seeing, using instruments like SHERLOCK, which is an instrument that I'm involved with, also the presence of organic molecules. And organic molecules are chemical molecules made of the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sometimes bits of sulfur, sometimes bits of phosphorous, and maybe some added-up things. And those are really really important, because you need organic molecules for life to start.

And the other thing that's really interesting about organic molecules is they can actually be sort of fossil chemical evidence of potential past life.

"Rice University researchers have engineered a key light-activated nanomaterial for the hydrogen economy," the University announced this week.

"Using only inexpensive raw materials, a team from Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics, Syzygy Plasmonics Inc. and Princeton University's Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment created a scalable catalyst that needs only the power of light to convert ammonia into clean-burning hydrogen fuel...." The research follows government and industry investment to create infrastructure and markets for carbon-free liquid ammonia fuel that will not contribute to greenhouse warming. Liquid ammonia is easy to transport and packs a lot of energy, with one nitrogen and three hydrogen atoms per molecule. The new catalyst breaks those molecules into hydrogen gas, a clean-burning fuel, and nitrogen gas, the largest component of Earth's atmosphere. And unlike traditional catalysts, it doesn't require heat. Instead, it harvests energy from light, either sunlight or energy-stingy LEDs....

"This discovery paves the way for sustainable, low-cost hydrogen that could be produced locally rather than in massive centralized plants," said Peter Nordlander, also a Rice co-author.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for submitting the story (via Phys.org.

About an hour ago SpaceX began tweeting video highlights of their latest launch — a NASA-commissioned resupply mission for the International Space Station.

- "Liftoff!"

- "Falcon 9's first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship"

- "Dragon separation confirmed; autonomous docking to the Space Station on Sunday, November 27 at ~7:30 a.m. ET"

You can watch the whole launch on SpaceX's web site. But CNN explains that SpaceX "has launched more than two dozen resupply missions to the space station over the past decade as part of a multibillion-dollar deal with NASA. This launch comes amid SpaceX's busiest year to date, with more than 50 operations so far, including two astronaut missions."

And yet this one carries something unique. (And it's not just the Thanksgiving-themed treats and solar arrays to boost the space station's power...) Nutrients are a key component of maintaining good health in space. But fresh produce is in short supply on the space station compared with the prepackaged meals astronauts eat during their six-month stays in low-Earth orbit. "It is fairly important to our exploration goals at NASA to be able to sustain the crew with not only nutrition but also to look at various types of plants as sources for nutrients that we would be hard-pressed to sustain on the long trips between distant destinations like Mars and so forth," said Kirt Costello, chief scientist at NASA's International Space Station Program and a deputy manager of the ISS Research Integration Office.

Astronauts have grown and tasted different types of lettuce, radishes and chiles on the International Space Station. Now, the crew members can add some dwarf tomatoes — specifically, Red Robin tomatoes — to their list of space-grown salad ingredients. The experiment is part of an effort to provide continuous fresh food production in space.... The space tomatoes will be grown inside small bags called plant pillows installed in the Vegetable Production System, known as the Veggie growth chamber, on the space station. The astronauts will frequently water and nurture the plants....

The hardware is still in development for larger crop production on the space station and eventually other planets, but scientists are already planning what plants might grow best on the moon and Mars. Earlier this year, a team successfully grew plants in lunar soil that included samples collected during the Apollo missions. "Tomatoes are going to be a great crop for the moon," Massa said. "They're very nutritious, very delicious, and we think the astronauts will be really excited to grow them there."

A universal flu vaccine that protects against all strains of the virus could be available in the next two years, according to a leading scientist. From a report: An experimental vaccine based on the same mRNA technology used in the highly successful Covid jabs was found to protect mice and ferrets against severe influenza, paving the way for clinical trials in humans. Prof John Oxford, a neurologist at Queen Mary University in London, who was not involved in the work, said the vaccine developed at the University of Pennsylvania could be ready for use the winter after next.

"I cannot emphasise enough what a breakthrough this paper is," Oxford told the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme. "The potential is huge, and I think sometimes we underestimate these big respiratory viruses." Researchers have been working on universal flu vaccines for more than a decade, but the latest breakthrough, published in Science, is seen as a major step towards a jab that could help protect humans from a potentially devastating flu pandemic. Seasonal flu vaccines, which protect against up to four strains of the virus, are updated every year to ensure they are a good match for flu viruses in circulation. The new vaccine is designed to prime the immune system against all 20 subtypes of influenza A and B, potentially arming the body to tackle any flu virus that arises.

U.S. health regulators this week approved the first gene therapy for hemophilia, a $3.5 million one-time treatment for the blood-clotting disorder. From a report: The Food and Drug Administration cleared Hemgenix, an IV treatment for adults with hemophilia B, the less common form of the genetic disorder which primarily affects men. Currently, patients receive frequent, expensive IVs of a protein that helps blood clot and prevent bleeding. Drugmaker CSL Behring, based in Pennsylvania, announced the $3.5 million price tag shortly after the FDA approval, saying its drug would ultimately reduce health care costs because patients would have fewer bleeding incidents and need fewer clotting treatments.

According to a study cited by the National Library of Medicine, the price makes Hemgenix the most expensive medicine in the world, easily topping Novartis' Zolgensma gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which costs right around $2 million per dose and is also a single-dose medicine. Like most medicines in the U.S., most of the cost of the new treatment will be paid by insurers, not patients, including private plans and government programs. After decades of research, gene therapies have begun reshaping the treatment of cancers and rare inheritable diseases with medicines that can modify or correct mutations embedded in people's genetic code. Hemgenix is the first such treatment for hemophilia and several other drugmakers are working on gene therapies for the more common form of the disorder, hemophilia A.

The European Space Agency on Wednesday named the first ever "parastronaut" in a major step towards allowing people with physical disabilities to work and live in space. Reuters reports: The 22-nation agency said it had selected former British Paralympic sprinter John McFall as part of a new generation of 17 recruits picked for astronaut training. He will take part in a feasibility study designed to allow ESA to assess the conditions needed for people with disabilities to take part in future missions. He will join five new career astronauts and 11 reserves in training after ESA replenished its astronaut ranks for the first time since 2009.

Following a motorcycle accident that led to his right leg being amputated at the age of 19, McFall went on to win the 100-metres Bronze Medal at the Beijing Paralympic Games in 2008. The 31-year-old doctor will help ESA engineers design changes in hardware needed to open professional spaceflight to a wider group of qualified candidates, the agency said. "It's been quite a whirlwind experience, given that as an amputee, I'd never thought that being an astronaut was a possibility, so excitement was a huge emotion," McFall said in an interview posted on ESA's website.

"I think the message that I would give to future generations is that science is for everyone and space travel hopefully can be for everyone," McFall said.

Can a change in the weather trigger a landslide? Sometimes, yes, according to research. From a report: Most landslides are set in motion by an earthquake or torrential rain, but some have no obvious trigger. In 2009, scientists were stunned to discover that the stop-start Slumgullion landslide in the Rocky Mountains -- which has been inching down the hillside for 700 years -- is triggered by changes in atmospheric pressure. So is Slumgullion a rare exception? To find out, scientists fed weather and landslide data from Taiwan -- whose typhoons and steep hills create a perfect natural landslide laboratory -- into a landslide model. Their results, which are published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, demonstrate that when the eye of a storm passes over a hillside, the change in atmospheric pressure can provide the final push, but its ability to do this depends upon the weather over the preceding months.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In April 1992, Vanessa Williams' "Save the Best for Last" topped the Billboard 100, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was running for the White House, "Who's the Boss?" aired its final episode, and the babies born to Rachel and Philip Ridgeway a couple of weeks ago were frozen as embryos. Born on October 31, Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born from what may be the longest-frozen embryos to ever result in a live birth, according to the National Embryo Donation Center. The previous known record holder was Molly Gibson, born in 2020 from an embryo that had been frozen for nearly 27 years. Molly took the record from her sister Emma, who was born from an embryo that had been frozen for 24 years. It's possible an older frozen embryo may have been used; although the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks success rates and data around reproductive technologies, it does not track how long embryos have been frozen. But there's no evidence of an older embryo resulting in a live birth.

"There is something mind-boggling about it," Philip Ridgeway said as he and his wife cradled their newborns in their laps at their home outside Portland, Oregon. "I was 5 years old when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy, and he's been preserving that life ever since. In a sense, they're our oldest children, even though they're our smallest children," Ridgeway added. The Ridgeways have four other children, ages 8, 6, 3 and almost 2, none conceived via IVF or donors. The embryos were created for an anonymous married couple using in-vitro fertilization. The husband was in his early 50s, and they used a 34-year-old egg donor. The embryos were frozen on April 22, 1992.

Longtime Slashdot reader BenFenner writes: While Chromium recently abandoned the JPEG-XL format (to much discussion on the feature request), it seems the Pale Moon browser quietly became the first to release support for the much-awaited image format. For those unfamiliar with Pale Moon, it is a Goanna-based web browser available for Windows, Linux and Android, focusing on efficiency and ease of use. Pale Moon 31.4.0 also adds support for MacOS 13 "Ventura" and addresses a number of performance- and security-related issues. A full list of the changes/fixes are available in the release notes.

Support for JPEG-XL was confirmed on GitHub.

SonicSpike shares a report from Futurism: It appears that NASA's Artemis 1 rocket launch pad caught way more damage than expected when it finally took off from Kennedy Space Center last week. As Reuters space reporter Joey Roulette tweeted, a source within the agency said that damage to the launchpad "exceeded mission management's expectations," and per his description, it sounds fairly severe.

"Elevator blast doors were blown right off, various pipes were broken, some large sheets of metal left laying around," the Reuters reporter noted in response to SpaceNews' Jeff Foust, who on Friday summarized a NASA statement conceding that the launchpad's elevators weren't working because a "pressure wave" blew off the blast doors. Shortly after the launch, NASA acknowledged that debris was seen falling off the rocket, though officials maintain that it caused "no additional risk" to the mission. In spite of those sanguine claims, however, reporters revealed that NASA seemed very intent on them not photographing the Artemis launch tower -- and now, with these preliminary reports about how messed up it seems to have gotten, we may know why.