An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: After asking both SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop cargo landers for its Artemis missions, NASA has announced plans to use those landers to deliver heavy equipment to the Moon. The agency wants Elon Musk's SpaceX to use its Starship cargo lander to deliver a pressurized rover to the Moon "no earlier" than 2032, while Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin will be tasked with delivering a lunar surface habitat no sooner than 2033. Both launches will support NASA's Artemis missions, which aim to bring humans back to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.

Both companies are developing human landing systems for Artemis missions -- SpaceX for Artemis III and Blue Origin for Artemis V. NASA later asked both companies to develop cargo-hauling variants of those landers, capable of carrying 26,000 to 33,000 pounds of equipment and other materials to the Moon. NASA says it will issue proposals to SpaceX and Blue Origin at the beginning of next year.

Space.com's Julian Dossett writes: For twelve years, we've watched Curiosity crawl its way over the rocky surface of Mars, decoding mysteries of the Red Planet and broadcasting back home pictures and data from the strange Martian environment. The Mars rover, built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has slowly scaled Mount Sharp since 2014. This mountain, officially monikered "Aeolis Mons," was discovered in the 1970s; cut into its alien landscape is the boulder-packed Gediz Vallis channel, which some scientists believe to be an ancient river bed.

Curiosity crossed into Gediz Vallis earlier this year -- and, yesterday, JPL released a real treat for Mars lovers: a 360-degree panorama view of the Gediz Vallis channel. You can play the YouTube video and move your phone around for the nifty interactive feature. Or, if you're using a desktop PC, you can shift the video around with a mouse. The panorama showcases features like Kukenan Butte and Gale Crater Rim, with scientists debating whether water, wind, or landslides shaped the boulder-laden terrain. Another interesting observation is the presence of mysterious sulfur stones with yellow crystals. Scientists are unsure about their origin since such formations on Earth are linked to hot springs and volcanoes -- neither of which are known to exist on Mars.

Curiosity is now heading toward a location called "the boxwork," a mineral-rich area potentially formed by ancient water flows.

Scientists unveiled on Wednesday the first blueprint of human skeletal development as they make progress toward the goal of completing a biological atlas of every cell type in the body to better understand human health and diagnose and treat disease. From a report: The work is part of the ongoing Human Cell Atlas project that was begun in 2016 and involves researchers around the world. The human body comprises roughly 37 trillion cells, with each cell type having a unique function. The researchers aim to have a first draft of the atlas done in the next year or two.

Aviv Regev, founding co-chair of the project and currently executive vice president and head of research and early development at U.S. biotech company Genentech, said the work is important on two levels. "First of all, it's our basic human curiosity. We want to know what we're made of. I think humans have always wanted to know what they're made of. And, in fact, biologists have been mapping cells since the 1600s for that reason," Regev said. "The second and very pragmatic reason is that this is essential for us in order to understand and treat disease. Cells are the basic unit of life, and when things go wrong, they go wrong with our cells, first and foremost," Regev said.

SpaceX's Starship rocket successfully completed its sixth launch today. Not only did it carry the first-ever payload but it also briefly re-lit one of its six Raptor engines about 38 minutes into flight, a crucial milestone for future space missions. Space Magazine reports: SpaceX landed Starship's huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, back at the launch tower on the vehicle's most recent flight, which occurred on Oct. 13. The company aimed to repeat that feat -- which the tower achieved with its "chopstick" arms -- today, but the flight data didn't support an attempt. "We tripped a commit criteria," SpaceX's Dan Huot said during the company's Flight 6 webcast. So Super Heavy ended up coming down for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead, hitting the waves seven minutes after liftoff.

Today's mission aimed to do far more than just bring Super Heavy back to Earth in one piece. SpaceX also wanted to put Starship's upper stage -- a 165-foot-tall (50 m) spacecraft called Starship, or simply "Ship" -- through its paces. The launch sent Ship on the same semi-orbital trajectory that it took on Flight 5, targeting a splashdown in the Indian Ocean off the northwestern coast of Australia about 65 minutes after liftoff. But Ship also achieved some new milestones along the way this time. For example, Flight 6 carried the first-ever Starship payload -- a plush banana onboard Ship, which served as a zero-gravity indicator. (It was not deployed into space.) In addition, Ship briefly re-lit one of its six Raptor engines about 38 minutes into the flight. (Super Heavy also employs Raptors -- a whopping 33 of them.)

This burn helped show that Ship can perform the maneuvers needed to come back to Earth safely during orbital missions. Indeed, Ship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, just like Super Heavy; SpaceX eventually intends to catch it with the chopstick arms as well, and will likely try to do so on a test flight in the near future. Flight 6 also tested modifications to Ship's heat shield, which protects the vehicle during reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

Ranga Dias, a physics professor who made headlines with claims that he had discovered a room-temperature superconductor and then was found to have engaged in research misconduct, is no longer employed by the University of Rochester. WSJ: A spokeswoman for the university confirmed on Monday that Dias is out but declined to comment on the terms of his departure. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Rochester President Sarah Mangelsdorf had called for terminating his position in an August letter to the chair and vice chair of the university's Board of Trustees.

Dias leaves the university after years of accusations that he had misrepresented data in multiple papers. He is a senior author on at least five papers retracted in just over two years. One of those, which identified a material that functioned as a superconductor at room temperature, was pulled by the journal Nature after several co-authors told the journal that Dias had misrepresented information in the paper. Dias didn't respond to requests for comment. He has previously denied manipulating or misrepresenting data.

His departure follows a monthslong university investigation completed in February that was led by three outside experts who reviewed documents and data from Dias's laboratory computers and interviewed Dias and his collaborators. The investigative panel found evidence of misconduct in four papers in which Dias is a senior author and in a grant proposal he submitted to the National Science Foundation. Then-provost David Figlio accepted the conclusions and referred his case to a faculty committee "for potential removal." Dias sued the university in February claiming that the probe into his work was biased and didn't follow university policies.

India plans to build a moon-orbiting space station by 2040 that will support crewed missions to the moon and serve as a hub for scientific research. Space Magazine reports: If all goes according to plan, the lunar space station will be completed around the same time the nation's astronauts land on the moon, with construction of a permanent base on the surface before 2050. The lunar space station appears to be the third and final phase of India's moon exploration efforts. [...]

The lunar space station may be similar to the one India plans to build in Earth orbit, known as the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, or BAS. The development of this station's first module, BAS-1, was greenlit by the Indian government in September. Officials have said the first module will be launched to low Earth orbit by 2028, and the entire station will be operational by 2035.

Dr. Adam Rodman, a Boston-based internal medicine expert, helped design a study testing 50 licensed physicians to see whether ChatGPT improved their diagnoses, reports the New York TImes. The results? "Doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot.

"And, to the researchers' surprise, ChatGPT alone outperformed the doctors." [ChatGPT-4] scored an average of 90 percent when diagnosing a medical condition from a case report and explaining its reasoning. Doctors randomly assigned to use the chatbot got an average score of 76 percent. Those randomly assigned not to use it had an average score of 74 percent.

The study showed more than just the chatbot's superior performance. It unveiled doctors' sometimes unwavering belief in a diagnosis they made, even when a chatbot potentially suggests a better one.

And the study illustrated that while doctors are being exposed to the tools of artificial intelligence for their work, few know how to exploit the abilities of chatbots. As a result, they failed to take advantage of A.I. systems' ability to solve complex diagnostic problems and offer explanations for their diagnoses. A.I. systems should be "doctor extenders," Dr. Rodman said, offering valuable second opinions on diagnoses.
"The results were similar across subgroups of different training levels and experience with the chatbot," the study concludes. "These results suggest that access alone to LLMs will not improve overall physician diagnostic reasoning in practice.

"These findings are particularly relevant now that many health systems offer Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant chatbots that physicians can use in clinical settings, often with no to minimal training on how to use these tools."

Nyx is a new reusable space capsule that "safely and affordably carries cargo to and from space stations," according to the web page of its European-based manufacturer, The Exploration Company, "launching from any heavy launcher worldwide."

And the company "just closed a large funding round to further its mission of building Europe's first reusable space capsule," reports TechCrunch — pointing out that right now, "Only two companies currently provide cargo delivery to and from the International Space Station, and both are based in the United States." The $160 million Series B round will fund the continued development of the Nyx spacecraft, which will be capable of carrying 3,000 kilograms of cargo to and from Earth. The company, which was founded three years ago by aerospace engineers Hélène Huby, Sebastien Reichstat, and Pierre Vine, is aiming to conduct Nyx's maiden flight to and from the International Space Station in 2028.

"We are the first company in the world where this is for the first time mainly funded by private investors," Huby said in a recent interview. This is in contrast to SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which she said was "mainly funded by NASA." The new funding, which was led by Balderton Capital and Plural, brings the startup's total funding to date to over $208 million. The Series B also included participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, NGP Capital, and two sovereign European funds, French Tech Souveraineté and DeepTech & Climate Fonds. "We've been able to deliver on promises in the past three years," Huby said. "We've been able to meet our cash target ever quarter ... The investors, they could see that we basically can deliver on time, on cost, on quality."

The startup has made traction with the European Space Agency, which has recognized the need to foster native space launch and transportation capabilities... It's a promising start, but equally promising is the traction The Exploration Company is seeing on the commercial side. Around 90% of the startup's $770 million contract backlog has come from private station developers Vast, Axiom Space, and Starlab, according to recent reporting...

The second sub-scale demonstrator mission, called Mission Possible, is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 next year.
TechCrunch quotes Huby as saying "I highly respect what SpaceX has been able to achieve.We are trying to learn as much as possible from that, we are inspired by what they have achieved."

In a CNBC interview, Huby says "It's a big market, and it's growing about a bit more than 10% per year because more nations want to fly their astronauts and more nations want to go to the moon. So there is an increased demand for sending people to stations, sending cargo to stations."

"Join us on our mission to democratize access to space," says a home-page link to the company's recruiting page — with a link further down titled "Book a mission."

A reusable uncrewed spaceplane was unveiled this week for delivering and returning cargo from the Chinese Tiangong space station. It was built by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute (part of the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China). (See YouTube footage here...)

Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes: Like the Sierra Space "Dream Chaser" [still under development], the vehicle is to be launched as a payload on a separate launch vehicle, and land horizontally on Earth on a runway. The design is aerodynamically a hybrid, incorporating features of both winged and lifting-body designs. A model of the Haolong will make its debut at the 15th "Airshow China", November 12 to 17 in Zhuhai.
"The China Manned Space Agency shortlisted the spacecraft as one of two proposed affordable cargo spacecraft designs," reports Aviation Week.

Chances of intelligent life emerging in our Universe "and in any hypothetical ones beyond it" can be estimated by a new theoretical model, reports the Royal Astronomical Society.

Since stars are a precondition for the emergence of life, the new research predicts that a typical observer [i.e., intelligent life] should experience a substantially larger density of dark energy than is seen in our own Universe... The approach presented in the paper involves calculating the fraction of ordinary matter converted into stars over the entire history of the Universe, for different dark energy densities. The model predicts this fraction would be approximately 27% in a universe that is most efficient at forming stars, compared to 23% in our own Universe. Dark energy makes the Universe expand faster, balancing gravity's pull and creating a universe where both expansion and structure formation are possible. However, for life to develop, there would need to be regions where matter can clump together to form stars and planets, and it would need to remain stable for billions of years to allow life to evolve.

Crucially, the research suggests that the astrophysics of star formation and the evolution of the large-scale structure of the Universe combine in a subtle way to determine the optimal value of the dark energy density needed for the generation of intelligent life. Professor Lucas Lombriser, Université de Genève and co-author of the study, added: "It will be exciting to employ the model to explore the emergence of life across different universes and see whether some fundamental questions we ask ourselves about our own Universe must be reinterpreted."
The study was funded by the EU's European Research Council, and published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Remember those 43 monkeys that escaped from a U.S. research lab? They've caught 35 of them — but haven't yet caught the other eight.

But even worse... The Independent reports that now another animal escape has led to "reports of two large emus running riot..." The birds' owner, Sam Morace, took to social media to plead with locals for their patience, saying: "For everyone that keeps seeing an emu, yes it is mine. There are 2 of them out." Morace said their two flightless birds broke loose three months ago.... "They are feral and not trained like the ones we have at the house."
This provoked some discussion on Facebook. ("Does nobody learn to lasso anymore?") But Morace responded that you "can't lasso a bird you have to grab them by their feet. Their necks are super long and fragile." In another post Morace detailed efforts to capture their birds. "Local law enforcement has already been at my house, we are trying to get a tranquilizer approved so we can bring them home.

"Thank you for all the concerns and questions. But if the emus were that easy to catch they would be home already.

If you're wondering how the escaped monkeys are doing out in the wild, someone who photographed them earlier this week said they appeared "playful, curious and jumping from tree to tree." The Guardian reports local officials have now "requested that the public avoid using drones near the facility. Earlier in the week, they reported that a drone incident 'spooked' the monkeys, increasing their stress levels and complicating efforts to recapture them."

Their article also notes reports that the facility houses 7,000 monkeys. And this isn't the first time some have escaped... In 2016, 19 monkeys escaped from the same facility, according to the Post and Courier newspaper, but were returned after six hours. Earlier, in 2014, 26 macaques reportedly escaped and were captured within two days. Documents from federal regulators from previous years revealed other incidents at the facility, as reported by the New York Times. One involved a primate escaping while being transported to the medical clinic and subsequently disappearing into the woods. Another involved two monkeys breaking out of their outdoor chain-link enclosure, which reportedly resulted in one monkey being lured back inside and the other dying shortly after being recaptured. In 2017, the Department of Agriculture fined the company more than $12,000 partly due to failures to contain the animals, according to the New York Times.
The Guardian also links to a related read from February: "Plan for US 'mini-city' of 30,000 monkeys for medical research faces backlash." Over the next 20 years, the facility will assemble a mega-troop of about 30,000 long-tailed macaques, a species native to south-east Asia, in vast barn-like structures in Bainbridge, Georgia, which has a human population of just 14,000... But the plan faces fierce opposition, with some Bainbridge residents calling on local authorities to block the construction of the proposed primate manse. "They're an invasive species and 30,000 of them, we'd just be overrun with monkeys," claimed Ted Lee, a local man. "I don't think anybody would want 30,000 monkeys next door," added David Barber, who would live just 400ft from the new facility.

"NASA has emphasized the ISS crew is in no immediate danger," reports Space.com. "The leaking area in the Russian segment of the orbital complex has been ongoing for five years," and "there was a temporary increase in the leak rate that was patched earlier this year..."

Former astronaut Bob Cabana emphasized that troubleshooting is ongoing during a brief livestreamed meeting on Wednesday. But NASA and Roscosmos "don't have a common understanding of what the likely root causes or the severity of the consequences of these leaks." "The Russian position is that the most probable cause of the cracks is high cycling caused by micro-vibrations," Cabana said, referring to flexing of metal and similar components that heat and cool as the ISS orbits in and out of sunlight. "NASA believes the PrK cracks are likely multi-causal — including pressure and mechanical stress, residual stress, material properties and environmental exposures," Cabana continued.

NASA and Russia disagree about whether "continued operations are safe", he added, but the remedy for now is to keep the hatch closed between the U.S. and Russian side as investigations continue.

The two agencies will continue meeting to seek "common understanding of the structural integrity", Cabana pledged, but he did not provide a timeline. Academic and industry experts will also be consulted.

Slashdot reader jjslash brings word that Casio "has reintroduced its iconic calculator watch featuring a retro design with green text on a negative LCD and a classic keypad layout."

TechSpot reports that the watch was based on the Casio Mini personal calculator first released in the early 1970s — even offering a keypad using the original fonts (with numbers separated by grid lines): Even the mode button, colored red, is a nod to the calculator's power indicator. The watches' calculator function can add, subtract, multiply, and divide up to eight digits. As for watch functions, you get dual time, an alarm, stopwatch functionality, and more...

Casio's original personal calculator debuted in 1972, and cost $59.95. It featured a six-digit display, was a quarter the size of its competitors, and cost just a third of rival products. The calculator was an instant hit for Casio, selling a million units in the first 10 months on the market and more than six million units over the span of the series.
Long-time Slashdot reader antdude says "I still wear one! Casio Data Bank 150 model...!"

Share your own vintage calculator memories in the comments...

China's Chang'e-6 mission made history by retrieving the first surface samples from the moon's far side, revealing evidence of volcanic activity spanning 1.4 billion years. Reuters reports: Researchers said on Friday the soil brought back from the Chang'e-6 landing site contained fragments of volcanic rock - basalt - dating to 4.2 billion years ago and to 2.8 billion years ago. This points to a long period of volcanic activity - at least 1.4 billion years - on the far side during the first half of the moon's history, when it was a more dynamic world than it is today. The moon, like Earth, formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Volcanism on the moon, Earth and other planetary bodies involves the eruption of molten rock from the mantle - the layer just under the outer crust - onto the surface. The landing site in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater, is an area with the thinnest crust on the moon, helpful for finding evidence of volcanism.

The samples contained various volcanic rock fragments, and the researchers used a method called radioisotope dating to determine their age. Lunar basalt samples previously were obtained from the moon's near side, which perpetually faces Earth, during U.S. Apollo, Soviet Luna and Chinese Chang'e-5 missions. These showed that volcanism on the near side had occurred as long ago as 4.0 billion years ago and continued for at least two billion years, Li said. "The exact timing and duration of lunar volcanism is elusive and maybe varied across different regions. Some small-scale volcanism may have also occurred on the near side as late as about 120 million years ago as recorded by volcanic glass beads from Chang'e-5 samples" collected in 2020, Li said.

The new study also found that the basalt dating to 4.2 billion years ago differed in composition from the basalt dating to 2.8 billion years ago, meaning they originated from different sources of molten rock - magma - in the mantle, Li said. The Chang'e-6 samples, Li said, also differ in composition compared with previously collected lunar samples from the near side.

"NASA has squandered $27 billion on the SLS moon rocket -- $6 billion over budget and 5 years late," writes longtime Slashdot reader schwit1. "The SLS isn't reusable so even if they finished it -- it is already obsolete. It is clear to everyone that the boondoggle has failed but the newest plan is to find a way to blame Trump. There is a big desire for big changes." Futurism reports: According to Ars Technica senior space reporter Eric Berger's insider sources, there's an "at least 50-50" chance that the rocket "will be canceled." "Not Block 1B. Not Block 2," he added, referring to the variant that was used during NASA's uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022 and a more powerful design with a much higher translunar injection payload capacity, respectively. "All of it." To be clear, as Berger himself points out, we're still far "from anything being settled." Nonetheless, the reporter's sources have historically been highly reliable, suggesting the space agency may indeed be getting cold feet about continuing to pour billions of dollars into the non-reusable rocket. [...] "Honestly the people who will ultimately make this decision aren't even in place yet," Berger wrote in a followup tweet, likely referring to the incoming Trump administration. "But there is a big desire for big changes."

Rocket Lab says it has signed the first customer for its Neutron launch vehicle, with a launch planned for mid-2025. SpaceNews reports: The company announced Nov. 12 that it signed a contract with an undisclosed "commercial satellite constellation operator" for two launches of Neutron, one in mid-2026 and the other in 2027, a deal that could lead to additional launches for the same customer. "We see this agreement as an important opportunity that signifies the beginning of a productive collaboration that could see Neutron deploy this particular customer's entire constellation," Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an earnings call Nov. 12 to discuss the company's third quarter financial results. [...]

Beck said Rocket Lab is "deep into the qualification testing" of flight hardware, including vehicle structures and the Archimedes engine, which was hotfired for the first time in August at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. "Our engine test cadence in Mississippi has doubled over the quarter, and we've bought multiple engines to the test stand," he said. Neutron is a key part of the company's ambitions to deploy its own constellation, something that Beck has hinted at in some previous earnings calls. His presentation called that constellation the third pillar for Rocket Lab, after launch services and spacecraft production, both of which support the constellation.

"We're not ready to reveal details on what this constellation or application may be," he said, "but I think it's important to understand the strong foundation we've built up across launch and space systems to enable it in due course." That includes Neutron, with Beck citing SpaceX's use of Falcon 9 to deploy its Starlink constellation. "Everything is irrelevant without a reusable high cadence launch. So, Neutron is really the key to unlocking that."

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: What if, rather than scouring the internet, ChatGPT could search all of the DNA on Earth? That future just got a bit closer with Evo, an AI model reported today in Science. The program -- trained on billions of lines of genetic sequences -- can design new proteins and even whole genomes. Previous AIs could only interpret and predict relatively short sections of DNA, and they could only work with groups of nucleotides -- the A, C, G, T alphabet of DNA -- not individual nucleotides. To take things to the next level, researchers trained Evo on 300 billion nucleotides of sequence information.

In a first test, Evo bested other AI models on predicting the impact of mutations on protein performance. The team then had Evo design new versions of the CRISPR genome editor; the best designs were as good at cutting DNA as a commercial version. And in what study author Brian Hie, a computational biologist at Stanford University, calls the "most futuristic and crazy" part of the study, the researchers asked Evo to generate DNA sequences that are long enough to serve as genomes for bacteria -- a step toward AI-designed synthetic genomes.

Much of the work on AI occurs in secret at companies. But the researchers have released Evo publicly so that other researchers can use it, and Hie says the team has no plans to commercialize its creation. "For now, I see this as a research project."

An academic journal has retracted two papers because it determined their authors used unlicensed software. The Register: Elsevier's Ain Shams Engineering Journal withdrew two papers exploring dam failures after complaints from Flow Science, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based maker of a computational fluid dynamics application called FLOW-3D.

"Following an editorial investigation as a result of a complaint from the software distributor, the authors admitted that the use of professional software, FLOW-3D program for the results published in the article, was made without a license from the developer," a note from the journal's editor-in-chief explains.

"One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that the article does not violate any intellectual property rights of any person or entity and that the use of any software is made under a license or permission from the software owner."

South Korean researchers have developed a "morphing" wheel that can navigate stairs and obstacles up to 1.3 times its radius, potentially revolutionizing mobility devices and robotics.

The wheel, created by the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM), features a chain-based outer hoop and sensor-controlled spoke wires that adjust stiffness based on terrain. Inspired by water droplet mechanics, it transitions between solid and fluid states when encountering impediments.

Public trust in scientists is showing signs of recovery, according to a new Pew Research Center survey, though levels remain below pre-pandemic highs. The October 2024 study, which surveyed 9,593 U.S. adults, reveals that 76% of Americans have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence in scientists' commitment to public interests -- a modest increase from 73% in 2023, but still short of the 87% recorded in early 2020.

The survey -- whose results were released Thursday [PDF] -- also highlights persistent partisan differences, with 88% of Democrats expressing trust in scientists compared to 66% of Republicans. However, Republican trust increased by 5% points since 2023, marking the first uptick since the pandemic's onset. On scientists' policy engagement, Americans remain divided: 51% support scientists' active participation in policy debates concerning scientific matters, while 48% prefer they maintain focus on research and empirical findings.

An anonymous reader writes: JPL in California announced this week a layoff of 325 workers, about 5% of its workforce, the third major layoff imposed this year.

The JPL press release indicates the layoffs are because of NASA budget cutbacks, but does not provide any specificity. The cause centers mostly around NASA's decision to pause its Mars Sample Return project, which JPL was leading. From this report:

This is the third round of layoffs at JPL this year, a reduction spurred primarily by major budgetary cuts to the Mars Sample Return mission, which is managed by JPL. NASA directed $310 million this year to the effort to bring Mars rocks back to Earth, a steep drop from the $822.3 million it spent on the program the previous year.

A new study reveals that late work is judged more negatively than on-time submissions, even if delays are minimal or pre-communicated. "The findings suggest that, while you might be tempted to take the maximum allotted time to put the finishing touches to a report, submission or piece of work, the extra effort might not be appreciated by colleagues if it comes at the expense of punctual delivery," reports The Guardian. From the report: The study surveyed thousands of people in the US and UK, including managers, executives, human resources personnel and others whose jobs included an element of evaluating others. Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles. But first, they were told it was either submitted early, on deadline or late. "Late" work was consistently rated as worse in quality than when people were told the same work was completed early or on time. The difference was equivalent to including an objective shortcoming such as not meeting a word count.

A missed deadline led evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and they reported they would be less willing to work with or assign tasks to that person in the future. "Everyone saw the exact same art contest entry, school submission or business proposal, but they couldn't help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was," said Maglio, who co-authored the study with David Fang of Stanford University.

Those who eagerly submit work early should be advised that this does not appear to earn a boost in opinion, according to the report in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. It also didn't matter how late the work was submitted, with one day or one week delays viewed just as negatively -- and that remained the case if the employee gave their manager advance warning. The latest study suggests that it is this inability to plan realistically that is frowned on, with factors beyond an employee's control, such as jury duty, not viewed as negatively. "If the reason why you missed the deadline was beyond your control, you as the employee should let your manager know," said Maglio. "That seems to be one of the few instances in which people cut you a break."

Amazon has discontinued its secretive "Encore" project to develop an at-home fertility tracker, resulting in layoffs for around 100 employees. The project, part of Amazon's Grand Challenge division, aimed to launch a device and app that would predict fertility through saliva testing but was ultimately terminated to control costs. CNBC reports: The project was born out of the company's 2020 acquisition of Wisconsin-based startup bluDiagnostics, the sources said. BluDiagnostics was founded in 2015 by Weibel, Katie Brenner and Jodi Schroll, all of whom joined Grand Challenge. The startup had developed a thermometer-like device, called FertilityFinder, to help women track their fertility from home by testing their saliva and measuring two key hormones, estradiol and progesterone. The results of the test were viewable through a corresponding app. Business Insider reported on aspects of the fertility device in 2022, when its codename was Project Tiberius.

The team was working to develop its own saliva collection device and mobile app, which could predict when a user might be in the fertile window. Users could also log their period symptoms, sexual activity and other data to assist with tracking their fertility. There are similar offerings on the market from companies including Inne, Oova, Ava and Mira, along with fertility and ovulation tracking apps such as Flo, Clue and Max Levchin's Glow. Amazon initially aimed to release the product this year, but the timing was pushed out after the team encountered technical issues with the device, one of the people said. It was a costly endeavor and required significant upfront investments for lab research and development, in addition to the high salaries for scientists and engineers, the sources said, adding that the team's weekly overhead was roughly $1.5 million. Amazon didn't comment on the figure. Only one project now remains active within Grand Challenge. Its focus is on health tech, the people said. "We regularly review our businesses to ensure we focus on areas where we can make the biggest difference for customers," said Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan. "Following a recent review, we've decided to discontinue this project within Grand Challenge, and we're working directly with employees whose roles are impacted to support them through the transition and help them find other opportunities within Amazon."

Leading AI systems are solving less than 2% of problems in a new advanced mathematics benchmark, revealing significant limitations in their reasoning capabilities, research group Epoch AI reported this week.

The benchmark, called FrontierMath, consists of hundreds of original research-level mathematics problems developed in collaboration with over 60 mathematicians, including Fields Medalists Terence Tao and Timothy Gowers. While top AI models like GPT-4 and Gemini 1.5 Pro achieve over 90% accuracy on traditional math tests, they struggle with FrontierMath's problems, which span computational number theory to algebraic geometry and require complex reasoning.

"These are extremely challenging. [...] The only way to solve them is by a combination of a semi-expert like a graduate student in a related field, maybe paired with some combination of a modern AI and lots of other algebra packages," Tao said. The problems are designed to be "guessproof," with large numerical answers or complex mathematical objects as solutions, making it nearly impossible to solve without proper mathematical reasoning.

Further reading: New secret math benchmark stumps AI models and PhDs alike.

AmiMoJo writes: The climate-damaging vapors left behind by jet planes could be easily tackled, aviation experts say, with a new study suggesting they could be eliminated for a few pounds per flight. Jet condensation trails, or contrails, have spawned wild conspiracy theories alleging mind control and the spreading of disease, but scientists say the real problem is their warming effect.

"They create an artificial layer of clouds, which traps the heat from the Earth that's trying to escape to outer space," said Carlos Lopez de la Osa, from the Transport & Environment campaign group, which has carried out a new study on the solutions to contrails. "The scale of the warming that's associated with them is roughly having a similar impact to that of aviation carbon emissions."

Tweaking the flight paths of a handful of aircraft could reduce contrail warming by more than half by 2040, at a cost of less than $5.1 per flight. Geography and a flight's latitude have a strong influence on whether a contrail is warming. Time of day also influences the climate effects of contrails. Those formed by evening and night flights have the largest warming contribution. Seasonality is also important -- the most warming contrails tend to occur in winter. "Planes are already flying around thunderstorms and turbulence areas," Mr Lopez de la Osa said. "We will need to add one more constraint to flight planning, which is avoiding areas of contrail formation."

A new analysis of data from NASA's Voyager 2 mission reveals that the planet Uranus and its five largest moons might harbor subsurface oceans and potential conditions for life. The BBC reports: Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa's Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years ago. But a new analysis shows that Voyager's visit coincided with a powerful solar storm, which led to a misleading idea of what the Uranian system is really like. [...] So, for 40 years we have had an incorrect view of what Uranus and its five largest moons are normally like, according to Dr William Dunn of University College London. "These results suggest that the Uranian system could be much more exciting than previously thought. There could be moons there that could have the conditions that are necessary for life, they might have oceans below the surface that could be teeming with fish!".

It has been nearly 40 years since Voyager 2 last flew past the icy world and its moons. Nasa has plans to launch a new mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, to go back for a closer look in 10 years' time. According to Nasa's Dr Jamie Jasinski, whose idea it was to re-examine the Voyager 2 data, the mission will need to take his results into account when designing its instruments and planning the scientific survey. "Some of the instruments for the future spacecraft are very much being designed with ideas from what we learned from Voyager 2 when it flew past the system when it was experiencing an abnormal event. So we need to rethink how exactly we are going to design the instruments on the new mission so that we can best capture the science we need to make discoveries." Nasa's Uranus probe is expected to arrive by 2045, which is when scientists hope to find out whether these far-flung icy moons, once thought of as being dead worlds, might have the possibility of being home to life. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The genetic testing company 23andMe announced it will cut 40% of its workforce, or 200 jobs, and halt the work on therapies it was developing. As the BBC notes, the company is fighting for survival after hackers gained access to personal information of millions of its users, causing the stock to crater by more than 70%. All seven of its independent directors also resigned in September, following a protracted negotiation with founder and Chief Executive Anne Wojcicki over her plan to take the company private. The BBC reports: On Tuesday, the company warned investors of "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue operating, as it reported that revenue had fallen to $44 million between July and September compared to $50 million in the same period last year. Losses fell to $59 million from $75 million. The job cuts are expected to lead to one-off costs of $12 million, including severance pay, for the plan that will result in savings of $35 million. "We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships," Ms Wojcicki said.

The company also said it is considering what to do with the therapies it had in development, including licensing or selling them. 23andMe is a giant of the growing ancestor-tracing industry. It offers genetic testing from DNA, with ancestry breakdown and personalised health insights. Its customers include famous names, from rapper Snoop Dogg to multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett. The company was valued at roughly $3.5 billion when it listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2021 and its share price peaked at $17.65. But they have since tumbled and are currently trading at less than $5.

SpaceX plans an ambitious in-orbit refueling test between two Starships in March 2025. "The orbital demonstration is a major step for Starship, and a crucial part of SpaceX's capability of delivering NASA's Artemis mission to the Moon," reports Gizmodo. The plans were unveiled during Spaceflight Now's recent interview (source: YouTube) with Kent Chojnacki, the deputy manager for NASA's Human Landing System program. Gizmodo reports: SpaceX is under a $53.2 million contract with NASA, signed in 2020, to use Starship tankers for in-orbit propellant transfer. During its third test flight, SpaceX transferred around 10 metric tons of liquid oxygen from Starship's header tank to its main tank while it was in space. The upcoming demonstration, however, requires a lot more of the launch vehicle. Two Starships will launch to low Earth orbit around three to four weeks apart, the spacecraft will meet and dock in orbit, and one will transfer propellant to another. After the demonstration, the two Starships will undock from one another and deorbit.

"Once you've done that, you've really cracked open the opportunity to move massive amounts of payload and cargo outside of the Earth's sphere," Chojnacki said during the interview. The in-flight propellant transfer tests are set to conclude in the summer. With in-flight refueling, NASA is aiming to develop technologies to "enable long-term cryogenic fluid management, which is essential for establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon and enabling crewed missions to Mars," the space agency stated when the contract was signed.

SpaceX is developing a version of Starship to land humans on the Moon in September 2026 as part of NASA's Artemis 3 mission. To prepare for the Moon mission, SpaceX is expected to launch between eight and 16 propellant tanker Starships into low Earth orbit in rapid succession. Each of the tankers will carry around 100 to 150 tons of liquid oxygen and liquid methane and will dock with a larger fuel depot. The orbiting depot will then connect with the Human Landing System Starship, filling its massive 1,200-ton fuel tanks. Once refueled, the Starship lander will continue its journey toward the Moon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A trend has emerged among a small group of climate tech founders who start with their eyes fixed on space and soon realize their technology would do a lot more good here on Earth. Halen Mattison and Luke Neise fit the bill. Mattison spent time at SpaceX, while Neise worked at Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory and Varda Space Industries. The pair originally wanted to sell reactors to SpaceX that could turn carbon dioxide into methane for use on Mars. Today, they're building them to replace natural gas that's pumped from underground. Their company, General Galactic, which emerged from stealth in April, has built a pilot system that can produce 2,000 liters of methane per day. Neise, General Galactic's CTO, told TechCrunch that he expects that figure to rise as the company replaces off-the-shelf components with versions designed in-house.

"We think that's a big missing piece in the energy mix right now," said Mattison, the startup's CEO. "Being able to own our supply chains, to be able to fully control all of the parameters, to challenge the requirements between components, all of that unlocks some real elegance in the engineering solution." At commercial scale, the company's reactors will be assembled using mass production techniques. It's a contrast to how most petrochemical and energy facilities are built today. General Galactic is focused on producing methane. However, Mattison said the company isn't necessarily looking to displace the fuel from heating and energy. "Those are generally going toward electrification," he said. Instead, it intends to sell its methane to companies that use it as an ingredient or to power a process, like in chemical or plastic manufacturing. The company isn't ruling out transportation entirely either. Mattison hinted that General Galactic is working on other hydrocarbons that could be used for transportation, like jet fuel. "Stay tuned," he said. General Galactic plans to deploy its first modules next year. The startup "hopes its modules will be able to plug into existing infrastructure, speeding its adoption relative to other fuels like hydrogen," notes TechCrunch.

A University of Zagreb virologist treated her own recurring breast cancer by injecting laboratory-grown viruses into her tumor, sparking debate about self-experimentation in medical research. Beata Halassy discovered her stage 3 breast cancer in 2020 at age 49, recurring at the site of a previous mastectomy. Rather than undergo another round of chemotherapy, she developed an experimental treatment using oncolytic virotherapy (OVT).

Over two months, Halassy administered measles and vesicular stomatitis viruses directly into the tumor. The treatment caused the tumor to shrink and detach from surrounding tissue before surgical removal. Post-surgery analysis showed immune cell infiltration, suggesting the viruses had triggered an immune response against the cancer. Halassy has been cancer-free for four years. OVT remains unapproved for breast cancer treatment worldwide. Nature adds: Halassy felt a responsibility to publish her findings. But she received more than a dozen rejections from journals -- mainly, she says, because the paper, co-authored with colleagues, involved self-experimentation. "The major concern was always ethical issues," says Halassy. She was particularly determined to persevere after she came across a review highlighting the value of self-experimentation.

That journals had concerns doesn't surprise Jacob Sherkow, a law and medicine researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has examined the ethics of researcher self-experimentation in relation to COVID-19 vaccines. The problem is not that Halassy used self-experimentation as such, but that publishing her results could encourage others to reject conventional treatment and try something similar, says Sherkow. People with cancer can be particularly susceptible to trying unproven treatments. Yet, he notes, it's also important to ensure that the knowledge that comes from self-experimentation isn't lost. The paper emphasizes that self-medicating with cancer-fighting viruses "should not be the first approach" in the case of a cancer diagnosis.

When a volcano erupted in 1980 about 70 miles from Portland, "lava incinerated anything living for miles around," remembers an announcement from the University of California at Riverside. But "As an experiment, scientists later dropped gophers onto parts of the scorched mountain for only 24 hours.

"The benefits from that single day were undeniable — and still visible 40 years later." Once the blistering blast of ash and debris cooled, scientists theorized that, by digging up beneficial bacteria and fungi, gophers might be able to help regenerate lost plant and animal life on the mountain. Two years after the eruption, they tested this theory. "They're often considered pests, but we thought they would take old soil, move it to the surface, and that would be where recovery would occur," said UC Riverside microbiologist Michael Allen.

They were right. But the scientists did not expect the benefits of this experiment would still be visible in the soil today, in 2024. A paper out this week in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes details an enduring change in the communities of fungi and bacteria where gophers had been, versus nearby land where they were never introduced. "In the 1980s, we were just testing the short-term reaction," said Allen. "Who would have predicted you could toss a gopher in for a day and see a residual effect 40 years later?"

In 1983, Allen and Utah State University's James McMahon helicoptered to an area where the lava had turned the land into collapsing slabs of porous pumice. At that time, there were only about a dozen plants that had learned to live on these slabs. A few seeds had been dropped by birds, but the resulting seedlings struggled. After scientists dropped a few local gophers on two pumice plots for a day, the land exploded again with new life. Six years post-experiment, there were 40,000 plants thriving on the gopher plots. The untouched land remained mostly barren.
All this was possible because of what isn't always visible to the naked eye. Mycorrhizal fungi penetrate into plant root cells to exchange nutrients and resources. They can help protect plants from pathogens in the soil, and critically, by providing nutrients in barren places, they help plants establish themselves and survive.
Mycorrhizal fungi also helped an old-growth forest survive, accoridng to the researchers — even after volcano ash had caused them to drop their needles...

Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this report from Science magazine: Elephants love showering to cool off, and most do so by sucking water into their trunks and spitting it over their bodies. But an elderly pachyderm named Mary has perfected the technique by using a hose as a showerhead, much in the way humans do. The behavior is a remarkable example of sophisticated tool use in the animal kingdom. But the story doesn't end there.

Mary's long, luxurious baths have drawn so much attention that an envious elephant at the Berlin Zoo has figured out how to shut the water off on her supersoaking rival—a type of sabotage rarely seen among animals.

Both behaviors, reported today in Current Biology, further cement elephants as complex thinkers, says Lucy Bates, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Portsmouth not involved in the study. The work, she says, 'suggests problem solving or even 'insight.''

NASA hopes to stimulate in-space manufacturing through a multi-year "laser beam welding collaboration" with Ohio State University. The project "seeks to understand the physical processes of welding on the lunar surface," according to NASA.gov, "such as investigating the effects of laser beam welding in a combined vacuum and reduced gravity environment." The goal is to increase the capabilities of manufacturing in space to potentially assemble large structures or make repairs on the Moon, which will inform humanity's next giant leap of sending astronauts to Mars and beyond. "For a long time, we've used fasteners, rivets, or other mechanical means to keep structures that we assemble together in space," said Andrew O'Connor, a Marshall materials scientist who is helping coordinate the collaborative effort and is NASA's technical lead for the project. "But we're starting to realize that if we really want strong joints and if we want structures to stay together when assembled on the lunar surface, we may need in-space welding."

The ability to weld structures in space would also eliminate the need to transport rivets and other materials, reducing payloads for space travel. That means learning how welds will perform in space. To turn the effort into reality, researchers are gathering data on welding under simulated space conditions, such as temperature and heat transfer in a vacuum; the size and shape of the molten area under a laser beam; how the weld cross-section looks after it solidifies; and how mechanical properties change for welds performed in environmental conditions mimicking the lunar surface. "Once you leave Earth, it becomes more difficult to test how the weld performs, so we are leveraging both experiments and computer modeling to predict welding in space while we're still on the ground," said O'Connor.

In August 2024, a joint team from Ohio State's Welding Engineering and Multidisciplinary Capstone Programs and Marshall's Materials & Processes Laboratory performed high-powered fiber laser beam welding aboard a commercial aircraft that simulated reduced gravity. The aircraft performed parabolic flight maneuvers that began in level flight, pulled up to add 8,000 feet in altitude, and pushed over at the top of a parabolic arc, resulting in approximately 20 seconds of reduced gravity to the passengers and experiments. While floating in this weightless environment, team members performed laser welding experiments in a simulated environment similar to that of both low Earth orbit and lunar gravity. Analysis of data collected by a network of sensors during the tests will help researchers understand the effects of space environments on the welding process and welded material.
They performed that laser-beam welding in a vacuum chamber during the parabolic flight (on a Boeing 727), according to the article — and successfully completed 69 out of 70 welds in microgravity and lunar gravity conditions. "The last time NASA performed welding in space was during the Skylab mission in 1973...

"Practical welding and joining methods and allied processes, including additive manufacturing, will be required to develop the in-space economy."

This week Discover magazine looks at evidence — both old and new — for a ninth planet in our solar system: "Orbits of the most distant small bodies — comets or asteroids — seem to be clustered on one half or one side of the solar system," says Amir Siraj [an astrophysicist with Princeton University]. "That's very weird and something that can't be explained by our current understanding of the solar system." A 2014 study in Nature first noted these orbits. A 2021 study in The Astronomical Journal examined the clustering in the orbit and concluded that "Planet Nine" was likely closer and brighter than expected.

Astrophysicists don't agree whether the clustering in the orbit is a real effect. Some have argued it is biased because the view that scientists currently have is limited, Siraj says. "This debate for the last decade has a lot of scientists confused, including myself. I decided to look at the problem from scratch," he says.

In a 2024 paper, Siraj and his co-authors ran simulations of the solar system, including an extra planet beyond Neptune. "We did it 300 times, about 2.5 times more than what was done previously," Siraj says. "In each simulation, you try different parameters for the extra planet. A different mass, a different tilt, a different shape of the orbit. You run these for millions of years, and then you compare the distribution to what we see in our solar system...." They found that the perimeters for this possible planet were different than what has been previously discussed in the scientific literature, and they supported the possibility of an unseen planet beyond Neptune.

Scientists hope a new telescope will have the potential to see deeper into the solar system. In 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón — a mountain in Chile, is expected to go online. The observatory boasts that in the time it takes a person to open up their phone and pose for a selfie, their new telescope will be able to snap an image of 100,000 galaxies, many of which have never been seen by scientists. The telescope will have the largest digital camera ever built, the LSST. Siraj says he expects it will take "the deepest, all-sky survey that humanity has ever conducted." So, what might the Rubin Observatory find past Neptune? Based on the current literature, Siraj sees a few possibilities. One is that the Rubin Observatory, with its increased capabilities, might be able to see a planet beyond Neptune... "Next year is going to be an enormous year for solar system science," he says.
NASA points out that the Hawaii-based Keck and Subaru telescopes are also searching for Planet X, while "a NASA-funded citizen science project called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, encourages the public to help search using images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

And starting next year the Rubin observatory will also "search for more Kuiper Belt objects. If the orbits of these objects are systematically aligned with each other, it may give more evidence for the existence of Planet X (Planet Nine), or at least help astronomers know where to search for it.

"Another possibility is that Planet X (Planet Nine) does not exist at all. Some researchers suggest the unusual orbit of those Kuiper Belt objects can be explained by their random distribution."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Tablizer for sharing the news.

"The majority of strokes could be prevented," reports the Associated Press, according to the first new guidelines in 10 years from the American Stroke Association, which are "aimed at helping people and their doctors do just that." Stroke was the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year. But up to 80% of strokes may be preventable with better nutrition, exercise and identification of risk factors... The good news is that the best way to reduce your risk for stroke is also the best way to reduce your risk for a whole host of health problems — eat a healthy diet, move your body and don't smoke...

Eating healthy can help control several factors that increase your risk for stroke, including high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and obesity, according to the heart association. The group recommends foods in the so-called Mediterranean diet such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and olive oil, which can help keep cholesterol levels down. It suggests limiting red meat and other sources of saturated fat. Instead, get your protein from beans, nuts, poultry, fish and seafood. Limit highly processed foods and foods and drinks with a lot of added sugar. This can also reduce your calorie intake, which helps keep weight in check.

Getting up and walking around for at least 10 minutes a day can "drastically" reduce your risk, said Dr. Cheryl Bushnell, a neurologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who was part of the group that came up with the new guidelines. Among the many benefits: Regular exercise can help reduce blood pressure, a major risk factor for stroke. Of course, more is better: The heart association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic or 75 minutes of vigorous activity — or some combination — per week. How you do it doesn't matter so much, experts said: Go to the gym, take a walk or run in your neighborhood or use treadmills or stepper machines at home. Diet and exercise can help control weight, another important risk factor for strokes.
But in addition, the guidelines now recommend that doctors consider new weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound for people with obesity or diabetes. (Though "people still need to eat well and get exercise, cautions Dr. Fadi Nahab, a stroke expert at Emory University Hospital.")

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Police are on the hunt for 43 monkeys who escaped from a research facility in South Carolina, after a keeper left their pen open. The rhesus macaque fugitives broke out of Alpha Genesis, a company that breeds primates for medical testing and research, and are on the loose in a part of the state known as the Lowcountry. Authorities have urged residents to keep their doors and windows securely closed and to report any sightings immediately. The escaped monkeys are young females, weighing about 7lbs (3.2kg) each, according to the Yemassee Police Department. Police said on Thursday that the company had located the "skittish" group, and "are working to entice them with food."

"Please do not attempt to approach these animals under any circumstances," police said. The statement added that traps had been set in the area, and police were on-site "utilizing thermal-imaging cameras in an attempt to locate the animals". Police say the research company has told them that because of their size, the monkeys have not yet been tested on and "are too young to carry disease." In an update Friday, the local police department said the monkeys are still staying around the perimeter of the facility. "The primates are exhibiting calm and playful behavior, which is a positive indication," the department noted.

"They're just being goofy monkeys jumping back and forth playing with each other," Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard told CBS News Thursday. "It's kind of like a playground situation here."

The article points out that all the escaped monkeys "carry no contagious viruses because they were too young to test, according to the lab. "

The James Webb Space Telescope has made groundbreaking discoveries, detecting the most distant galaxy yet and capturing an image of the closest directly-imaged exoplanet. "Judging by astronomers' interest in using Webb, there are many more to come," writes Ars Technica's Stephen Clark. With immense demand for observation time, Webb is set to explore a vast array of cosmic targets -- from early galaxies to exoplanet atmospheres -- offering insights that extend far beyond Hubble's reach. From the report: The Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Webb on behalf of NASA and its international partners, said last week that it received 2,377 unique proposals from science teams seeking observing time on the observatory. The institute released a call for proposals earlier this year for the so-called "Cycle 4" series of observations with Webb. This volume of proposals represents around 78,000 hours of observing time with Webb, nine times more than the telescope's available capacity for scientific observations in this cycle. The previous observing cycle had a similar "oversubscription rate" but had less overall observing time available to the science community.

More than 600 scientists will review the proposals and select the most promising ones for time on Webb. The largest share of proposals would involve observing "high-redshift" galaxies among the first generation of galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. Galaxies this old and distant have their light stretched to longer wavelengths due to the expansion of the Universe. Research involving exoplanet atmospheres and stars and stellar populations were the second- and third-most popular science categories in this cycle. [...] It seems astronomers have no shortage of ideas about where to look. Maybe one day, new super heavy-lift rockets or advancements in in-space assembly will make it possible to deploy space telescopes even more sensitive than Webb. Until then, we can be thankful that Webb is performing well and has a good shot of far outliving its original five-year design life. Let's continue enjoying the show.

SpaceX has launched the world's first wood-paneled satellite into space "to test the suitability of timber as a renewable building material in future exploration of destinations like the Moon and Mars," reports the BBC. From the report: Made by researchers in Japan, the tiny satellite weighing just 900g is heading for the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission. It will then be released into orbit above the Earth. Named LignoSat, after the Latin word for wood, its panels have been built from a type of magnolia tree, using a traditional technique without screws or glue. Researchers at Kyoto University who developed it hope it may be possible in the future to replace some metals used in space exploration with wood.

"Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there's no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it," Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata told Reuters news agency. "Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood," Prof Murata said. "A wooden satellite should be feasible, too." If trees could one day be planted on the Moon or Mars, wood might also provide material for colonies in space in the future, the researchers hope. Along with its wood panels, LignoSat also incorporates traditional aluminium structures and electronic components. It has sensors on board to monitor how its wood reacts to the extreme environment of space during the six months it will orbit the Earth. You can watch the launch on YouTube.

Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole in the early Universe devouring matter at over 40 times the Eddington limit. ScienceAlert reports: Led by astronomer Hyewon Suh of Gemini Observatory and NSF's NOIRLab, a team of researchers used JWST to take follow-up observations of a smattering of galaxies identified by the Chandra X-ray Observatory that were bright in X-rays but dim in other wavelengths. When they got to LID-568, they were having trouble identifying its distance across space-time. The galaxy was very faint and very hard to see; but, using the integral field spectrograph on JWST's NIRSpec instrument, the team homed in on the galaxy's exact position. LID-568's far-off location is surprising. Although the object is faint from our position in the Universe, its distance means it must be incredibly intrinsically bright. Detailed observations revealed powerful outflows from the supermassive black hole, a signature of accretion as some of the material is being diverted and blasted into space.

A painstaking analysis of the data revealed that the supermassive black hole is a relatively small one, as supermassive black holes go; just 7.2 million times the mass of the Sun. And the amount of light being produced by the material around the disk was much, much higher than a black hole of this mass should be capable of producing. It suggests an accretion rate some 40 times higher than the Eddington limit. At this rate, the period of super-Eddington accretion should be extremely brief, which means Suh and her team were extremely lucky to catch it in action. And we expect that LID-568 will become a popular observation target for black hole scientists, allowing us a rare glimpse into super-Eddington processes. The research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

The clash between law's need for finality and science's evolving nature is creating serious justice problems, an opinion piece on Scientific American argued on Monday. Two recent cases highlight this: Robert Roberson faces execution based on now-discredited shaken baby syndrome science, while the Menendez brothers' life sentences are being questioned due to improved understanding of childhood trauma's effects on violence.

Scientific understanding in criminal justice has repeatedly proven wrong. Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 based on invalidated arson science. The FBI found errors in 90% of their reviewed hair analysis cases. Courts still accept bite mark evidence despite experts failing to distinguish human from animal bites. The legal system fails in two critical ways, the story argues: Judges don't properly screen out bad science despite their "gatekeeper" role established in Daubert v. Merrell Dow, and courts resist reopening cases when scientific understanding changes.

While some states like Texas and California have laws allowing appeals based on updated science, implementation remains weak. Roberson has spent 20 years on death row and the Menendez brothers 28 years in prison while courts drag their feet on reviewing their cases with current scientific knowledge. The piece argues that constitutional due process requires allowing convicts to challenge their cases when the science underlying their convictions proves faulty. The system can reform by enforcing stricter scientific evidence standards and creating clear paths to challenge convictions based on outdated science.

Our bodies divest themselves of 60 billion cells every day through a natural process called "apoptosis". So Stanford medicine researchers are developing a new approach to cancer therapy that could "trick cancer cells into disposing of themselves," according to announcement from Stanford's medical school: Their method accomplishes this by artificially bringing together two proteins in such a way that the new compound switches on a set of cell death genes... One of these proteins, BCL6, when mutated, drives the blood cancer known as diffuse large cell B-cell lymphoma... [It] sits on DNA near apoptosis-promoting genes and keeps them switched off, helping the cancer cells retain their signature immortality.

The researchers developed a molecule that tethers BCL6 to a protein known as CDK9, which acts as an enzyme that catalyzes gene activation, in this case, switching on the set of apoptosis genes that BCL6 normally keeps off. "The idea is, Can you turn a cancer dependency into a cancer-killing signal?" asked Nathanael Gray, PhD, co-senior author with Crabtree, the Krishnan-Shah Family Professor and a chemical and systems biology professor. "You take something that the cancer is addicted to for its survival and you flip the script and make that be the very thing that kills it...."

When the team tested the molecule in diffuse large cell B-cell lymphoma cells in the lab, they found that it indeed killed the cancer cells with high potency. They also tested the molecule in healthy mice and found no obvious toxic side effects, even though the molecule killed off a specific category of of the animals' healthy B cells, a kind of immune cell, which also depend on BCL6. They're now testing the compound in mice with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma to gauge its ability to kill cancer in a living animal. Because the technique relies on the cells' natural supply of BCL6 and CDK9 proteins, it seems to be very specific for the lymphoma cells — the BCL6 protein is found only in this kind of lymphoma cell and in one specific kind of B cell. The researchers tested the molecule in 859 different kinds of cancer cells in the lab; the chimeric compound killed only diffuse large cell B-cell lymphoma cells.
Scientists have been trying to shut down cancer-driving proteins, one of the researchers says, but instead, "we're trying to use them to turn signaling on that, we hope, will prove beneficial for treatment."

The two researchers have co-founded the biotech startup Shenandoah Therapeutics, which "aims to further test this molecule and a similar, previously developed molecule," according to the article, "in hopes of gathering enough pre-clinical data to support launching clinical trials of the compounds.

"They also plan to build similar molecules that could target other cancer-driving proteins..."

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from the blog Interesting Engineering: A team of students made history this month by performing Europe's first rocket hop test.

Those who have followed SpaceX's trajectory will know hop tests are a vital stepping stone for a reusable rocket program, as they allow engineers to test their rocket's landing capabilities.

Impressively, no private company or space agency in Europe had ever performed a rocket hop test before. Essentially, a group of students performed one of the most important rocket tests in the history of European rocketry.

However, the remarkable nature of this story doesn't end there. Amazingly, the whole thing was almost derailed by a piece of cheese. A slice of Gruyère the team strapped to their rocket's landing legs almost caused the rocket to spin out of control.

Thankfully, disaster was averted, and the historic hopper didn't end up as rocket de-Brie.

Slashdot reader samleecole shared this report from 404 Media: Northwell Health, New York State's largest healthcare provider, recently launched a large language model tool that it is encouraging doctors and clinicians to use for translation, sensitive patient data, and has suggested it can be used for diagnostic purposes, 404 Media has learned. Northwell Health has more than 85,000 employees.

An internal presentation and employee chats obtained by 404 Media shows how healthcare professionals are using LLMs and chatbots to edit writing, make hiring decisions, do administrative tasks, and handle patient data. In the presentation given in August, Rebecca Kaul, senior vice president and chief of digital innovation and transformation at Northwell, along with a senior engineer, discussed the launch of the tool, called AI Hub, and gave a demonstration of how clinicians and researchers—or anyone with a Northwell email address—can use it... AI Hub can be used for "clinical or clinical adjacent" tasks, as well as answering questions about hospital policies and billing, writing job descriptions and editing writing, and summarizing electronic medical record excerpts and inputting patients' personally identifying and protected health information.

The demonstration also showed potential capabilities that included "detect pancreas cancer," and "parse HL7," a health data standard used to share electronic health records.

The leaked presentation shows that hospitals are increasingly using AI and LLMs to streamlining administrative tasks, and shows that some are experimenting with or at least considering how LLMs would be used in clinical settings or in interactions with patients.

Somewhere off in interstellar space, 15.4 billion miles away from Earth, NASA's 47-year-old Voyager "recently went quiet," reports Mashable.

The probe "shut off its main radio transmitter for communicating with mission control..." Voyager's problem began on October 16, when flight controllers sent the robotic explorer a somewhat routine command to turn on a heater. Two days later, when NASA expected to receive a response from the spacecraft, the team learned something tripped Voyager's fault protection system, which turned off its X-band transmitter. By October 19, communication had altogether stopped.

The flight team was not optimistic. However, Voyager 1 was equipped with a backup that relies on a different, albeit significantly fainter, frequency. No one knew if the second radio transmitter could still work, given the aging spacecraft's extreme distance.

Days later, engineers with the Deep Space Network, a system of three enormous radio dish arrays on Earth, found the signal whispering back over the S-band transmitter. The device hadn't been used since 1981, according to NASA.

"The team is now working to gather information that will help them figure out what happened and return Voyager 1 to normal operations," NASA said in a recent mission update.
It's been more than 12 years since Voyager entered interstellar space, the article points out. And interstellar space "is a high-radiation environment that nothing human-made has ever flown in before.

"That means the only thing the teams running the old probes can count on are surprises."

Long-time Slashdot reader yet-another-lobbyist writes: Phys.org has an article on the recent discovery of super stretchy nanofibers in natural spider silk! The thinnest natural spider silk nanofibrils ever seen are only a few molecular layers thin, about 5 nm. They are too thin to be seen even with a very powerful optical microscope. Researchers used atomic force microscopy (AFM) not only to visualize them, but also to probe their stretchiness and strength.

Even the original article is available without a paywall. Mechanical tests of molecularly thin materials — pretty cool!
The doctoral candidate's advisor thought it would be impossible to perform the measurements, according to the article, which quotes him as saying "It's actually kind of crazy to think that it's even possible.... We humans think we're so great and we can invent things, but if you just take a step outside, you find so many things that are more exciting."

That advisor — long term spider-silk researcher of Hannes Schniepp (also a co-author on the paper) — adds that the tip of the needle was so sharp, its end was only a few atoms thick. "You would not see the end of it in the best optical microscope. It will just disappear because it's so small that you can't even see it. It's probably one of the highest developed technologies on the planet." If humans find a way to replicate the structure of spider silk, it could be manufactured for use in practical applications. "You could make a super bungee cord from it," said Schniepp. "Or a shield around a structure where you have something incoming at high velocity and you need to absorb a lot of energy. Things like that."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 50 US lawmakers are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to join dozens of other countries in banning a widely used weedkiller linked to Parkinson's disease and other health dangers. In a October 31 letter (PDF) to the agency, seven US senators said that paraquat, a weedkiller commonly applied on US farms, was a "highly toxic pesticide whose continued use cannot be justified given its harms to farmworkers and rural communities". The call for a ban from the senators came after 47 members of the US House of Representatives sent a similar letter (PDF) to the EPA calling for a ban earlier in October.

The lawmakers cite scientific links between paraquat use and development of Parkinson's and other "life threatening diseases" as well as "grave impacts on the environment". "Health risks include a higher risk of Parkinson's disease, with some studies finding a 64% increase in the likelihood of developing Parkinson's, non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, thyroid cancer, and other thyroid issues," they wrote. The New Jersey senator Cory Booker, organizer of the Senate letter, said the risks of paraquat exposure were "well documented" and that it was "irresponsible" for the EPA to continue to allow its use. "I hope the EPA will follow the science and ban paraquat," Booker said. The EPA has long maintained that there is no "clear link" between paraquat exposure and Parkinson's disease, though the agency does have a number of restrictions on use of the chemical due to its acute toxicity. The agency issued a draft report earlier this year affirming its position. Still, the agency said at that time that it would be reviewing more scientific studies and would issue a final report by January 17, 2025.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new global inventory has catalogued air pollution from space activities from 2020 to 2022. The inventory includes time, position and pollution from 446 launchers as they ascended and the tracks of re-entries as objects are heated to extreme temperatures and break up or burn up in the upper atmosphere. It catalogues the pollution from 63,000 tons of rocket propellants used in 2022 and from 3,622 objects, including rocket parts and satellites, that re-entered the atmosphere between 2020 and 2023, amounting to about 12,000 tons. [...]

Types of launch pollutants depend on the propellent but can include particles of soot and aluminum oxides as well as nitrogen oxides, chlorine and water vapour and carbon dioxide. Extreme heat on re-entry causes atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen to combine to form more nitrogen oxides and also produces tiny metal-oxide particles as the objects break and burn up. Soot emitted high in the atmosphere can persist for several years, with a resulting climate warming impact that is up to 500 times greater than the same amount of soot from aviation or ground-level sources. Aluminum oxide particles, nitrogen oxides and chloride can consume the ozone in the stratosphere that protects us from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. These can remain in the atmosphere for decades. Dr Connor Barker, of the UCL team, said: "Many rocket manufacturers and space agencies keep this information tightly controlled. We had to be creative about the different sources we consulted, from launch live streams on YouTube to online databases maintained by space enthusiasts in their spare time."

Australian mathematicians have proven the famous "infinite monkey theorem" impossible within the universe's lifespan. The theorem suggests monkeys typing randomly would eventually produce Shakespeare's complete works. Scientists Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta calculated that even 200,000 chimpanzees typing one character per second until the universe's heat death would fail to reproduce Shakespeare's writings.

A single chimp has only a 5% chance of typing "bananas" in its lifetime, with more complex phrases facing astronomically lower odds. "This finding places the theorem among other probability puzzles and paradoxes... where using the idea of infinite resources gives results that don't match up with what we get when we consider the constraints of our universe," Associate Prof Woodcock was quoted as saying by BBC.

A new study suggests Uranus' moon Miranda may harbor a vast subsurface ocean, challenging previous assumptions about its frozen state and positioning it as a potential ocean world alongside other icy moons. Phys.Org reports: Among the moons in the solar system, Miranda stands out. The few images Voyager 2 captured in 1986 show Miranda's southern hemisphere (the only part we've seen) is a Frankenstein-like hodgepodge of grooved terrain quartered off by rough scarps and cratered areas, like squares on a quilt. Most researchers suspect these bizarre structures are the result of tidal forces and heating within the moon. Caleb Strom, a graduate student at the University of North Dakota who worked with Nordheim and Alex Patthoff of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, revisited the Voyager 2 images. The team set out to explain Miranda's enigmatic geology by reverse engineering the surface features, working backward to uncover what the moon's interior structure must have been to shape the moon's geology in response to tidal forcing.

After first mapping the various surface features like cracks, ridges and Miranda's unique trapezoidal coronae, the team developed a computer model to test several possible structures of the moon's interior, matching the predicted stress patterns to the actual surface geology. The setup that produced the best match between predicted stress patterns and observed surface features required the existence of vast ocean beneath Miranda's icy surface some 100-500 million years ago. This subsurface ocean was at least 62 miles (100 kilometers) deep, according to the study, and hidden beneath an icy crust no more than 19 miles (30 kilometers) thick. Given Miranda has a radius of just 146 miles (235 kilometers), the ocean would have filled almost half of the moon's body. "That result was a big surprise to the team," Strom said.

Key to creating that ocean, the researchers believe, were tidal forces between Miranda and nearby moons. These regular gravitational tugs can be amplified by orbital resonances -- a configuration where each moon's period around a planet is an exact integer of the others' periods. Jupiter's moons Io and Europa, for example, have a 2:1 resonance: For every two orbits Io makes around Jupiter, Europa makes exactly one, leading to tidal forces that are known to sustain an ocean beneath Europa's surface. These orbital configurations and the resulting tidal forces deform the moons like rubber balls, leading to friction and heat that keeps interiors warm. This also creates stresses that crack the surface, creating a rich tapestry of geologic features. Numerical simulations have suggested that Miranda and its neighboring moons likely had such a resonance in the past, offering a potential mechanism that could have warmed Miranda's interior to produce and maintain a subsurface ocean.

At some point, the moons' orbital ballet desynchronized, slowing the heating process so that the moon's insides started to cool and solidify. But the team doesn't think Miranda's interior has fully frozen yet. If the ocean had completely frozen, Nordheim explained, it would have expanded and caused certain telltale cracks on the surface, which aren't there. This suggests that Miranda is still cooling -- and may have an ocean beneath its surface even now. Miranda's modern-day ocean is probably relatively thin, Strom noted. "But the suggestion of an ocean inside one of the most distant moons in the solar system is remarkable," he said. Miranda wasn't predicted to have an ocean. With its small size and old age, scientists thought it would likely be a frozen ball of ice. Any leftover heat from its formation was assumed to have dissipated long ago. But as Patthoff pointed out, predictions about ice moons can be wrong, as evidenced by Saturn's moon Enceladus. The study has been published in The Planetary Science Journal.

A new study examining a large sample of privately insured patients with obesity found that use of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy as anti-obesity medications more than doubled from 2022 to 2023. During that same period, there was a 25.6% decrease in patients undergoing metabolic bariatric surgery to treat obesity. From a report: The study, by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Brown School of Public Health, is published in JAMA Network Open. "Our study provides one of the first national estimates of the decline in utilization of bariatric metabolic surgery among privately insured patients corresponding to the rising use of blockbuster GLP-1 RA drugs," said senior author Thomas C. Tsai, a metabolic bariatric surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Using a national sample of medical insurance claims data from more than 17 million privately insured adults, the researchers identified patients with a diagnosis of obesity without diabetes in 2022-2023. The study found a sharp increase in the share of patients who received glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, or GLP-1 RAs, during the study period, with GLP-1 RA use increasing 132.6% from the last six months of 2022 to the last six months of 2023 (from 1.89 to 4.41 patients per 1,000 patients).

Meanwhile, there was a 25.6% decrease in use of bariatric metabolic surgery during the same period (from 0.22 to 0.16 patients per 1,000 patients). Among the sample of patients with obesity, 94.7% received neither form of treatment during the study period (while 5% received GLP-1 RAs and 0.3% received surgery). Compared to patients who were prescribed GLP-1 RAs, patients who underwent surgery tended to be more medically complex.