Science

study:-cats-in-little-crocheted-hats-shed-light-on-feline-chronic-pain

Study: Cats in little crocheted hats shed light on feline chronic pain

animals, Biology, chronic pain, domestic cats, EEG, feline osteoarthitis, Neuroscience, Science / /

For the fashion-forward cat —

The custom-made caps hold electrodes in place and reduce motion artifacts during EEGs.

–

A cat wearing a crocheted hat custom-made to record brain activity

Enlarge / “When you spend more time putting electrodes back on than you do actually recording the EEGs, you get creative.”

Alienor Delsart

Our feline overlords aren’t particularly known for obeying commands from mere humans, which can make it difficult to study their behaviors in controlled laboratory settings. So a certain degree of ingenuity is required to get usable results—like crocheting adorable little hats for kitties taking part in electroencephalogram (EEG) experiments. That’s what researchers at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, did to learn more about assessing chronic pain in cats—and they succeeded. According to their recent paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods, it’s the first time scientists have recorded the electrical activity in the brains of conscious cats.

According to the authors, one-quarter of adult cats suffer from osteoarthritis and chronic pain that worsens with age. There are currently limited treatment options, namely, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which can have significant side effects for the cats. An injectable monoclonal antibody tailored for cats has recently been developed to neutralize excessive nerve growth factor, but other alternative treatment options like supplements and regenerative medicine have yet to be tested. Nor has the effectiveness of certain smells or lighting in altering pain perception in felines been tested.

That was the Montreal team’s primary objective for their experiments. Initially, they tried to place electrodes on the heads of 11 awake adult cats with osteoarthritis, but the cats kept shaking off the electrodes.

“When you spend more time putting electrodes back on than you do actually recording the EEGs, you get creative,” co-author Aliénor Delsart of the University of Montreal told New Scientist. So he and his co-authors tapped a graduate student with crocheting skills to make the little hats. Not only did the hats hold the electrodes in place, but the cats also stopped trying to chew the wires.

With that problem solved, the real experiments could begin, designed to record brain activity of cats in response to smelling certain substances or seeing different wavelengths of colored light. The kitty subjects were housed as a group in an environment with lighting, temperature, and humidity controls, along with perches, beds, scratching posts, and cat toys.

Electrodes were attached with no need to shave the cats’ hair, thanks to a conductive paste to improve electrode/skin contact. First they recorded the basal activity before moving to exposure to sensory stimuli: a grapefruit smell for olfactory stimulation, and red, blue, and green lighting in a darkened room for visual stimulation.

Granted, there were still a few motion artifacts in that data; two cats were excluded from the data analysis for that reason. And the authors acknowledged the small sample size and largely descriptive nature of their analysis, which they deemed appropriate for what is essentially a test of the feasibility of their approach. The study met the group’s primary objectives: to assess whether the EEG method was feasible with conscious cats and whether the resulting analytical methods were an efficient means to characterize how the cats responded to specific sensory stimuli. “This opens new avenues for investigating chronic pain mechanisms and developing novel therapeutic strategies,” the authors concluded.

Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2024.110254  (About DOIs).

Study: Cats in little crocheted hats shed light on feline chronic pain Read More »

the-war-of-words-between-spacex-and-the-faa-keeps-escalating

The war of words between SpaceX and the FAA keeps escalating

Commercial space, Federal Aviation Administration, launch, Science, Space, spacex, starship, texas / /
Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, has called for the resignation of the FAA administrator.

Enlarge / Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, has called for the resignation of the FAA administrator.

The clash between SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration escalated this week, with Elon Musk calling for the head of the federal regulator to resign after he defended the FAA’s oversight and fines levied against the commercial launch company.

The FAA has said it doesn’t expect to determine whether to approve a launch license for SpaceX’s next Starship test flight until late November, two months later than the agency previously communicated to Musk’s launch company. Federal regulators are reviewing changes to the rocket’s trajectory necessary for SpaceX to bring Starship’s giant reusable Super Heavy booster back to the launch pad in South Texas. This will be the fifth full-scale test flight of Starship but the first time SpaceX attempts such a maneuver on the program.

This week, SpaceX assembled the full Starship rocket on its launch pad at the company’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. “Starship stacked for Flight 5 and ready for launch, pending regulatory approval,” SpaceX posted on X.

Apart from the Starship regulatory reviews, the FAA last week announced it is proposing more than $633,000 in fines on SpaceX due to alleged violations of the company’s launch license associated with two flights of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. It is rare for the FAA’s commercial spaceflight division to fine launch companies.

Michael Whitaker, the FAA’s administrator, discussed the agency’s ongoing environmental and safety reviews of SpaceX’s Starship rocket in a hearing before a congressional subcommittee in Washington Tuesday. During the hearing, which primarily focused on the FAA’s oversight of Boeing’s commercial airplane business, one lawmaker asked Whitaker the FAA’s relationship with SpaceX.

Public interest

“I think safety is in the public interest and that’s our primary focus,” said Michael Whitaker, the FAA administrator, in response to questions from Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican. “It’s the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters,” he said, referring to the FAA’s fines.

The stainless-steel Super Heavy booster is larger than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. SpaceX says the flight path to return the first stage of the rocket to land will mean a “slightly larger area could experience a sonic boom,” and a stainless-steel ring that jettisons from the top of the booster, called the hot-staging ring, will fall in a different location in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore from the rocket’s launch and landing site.

The FAA, which is primarily charged with ensuring rocket launches don’t endanger the public, is consulting with other agencies on these matters, along with issues involving SpaceX’s discharge of water into the environment around the Starship launch pad in Texas. The pad uses water to cool a steel flame deflector that sits under the 33 main engines of Starship’s Super Heavy booster.

SpaceX says fines levied against it this year by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) related to the launch pad’s water system were “entirely tied to disagreements over paperwork” and not any dumping of pollutants into the environment around the Starship launch site.

SpaceX installed the water-cooled flame deflector under the Starship launch mount after the engine exhaust rocket’s first test flight excavated a large hole in the ground. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, summed up her view of the issue in a hearing with Texas legislators in Austin on Tuesday.

“To protect that from happening again, we built this kind of upside-down shower head to basically cool the flame as the rocket was lifting off,” she said. “That was licensed and permitted by TCEQ. The EPA came in afterwards and didn’t like the license or the permit that we had for that, and wanted to turn it into a federal permit, which we are working on now.”

“We work very closely with organizations such as TCEQ,” Shotwell said. “You may have read a little bit of nonsense in the papers recently about that, but we’re working quite well with them.”

The war of words between SpaceX and the FAA keeps escalating Read More »

these-3d-printed-pipes-inspired-by-shark-intestines-outperform-tesla-valves

These 3D-printed pipes inspired by shark intestines outperform Tesla valves

Biology, biophysics, fluid dynamics, Physics, Science, shark intestines / /

“You don’t get to beat Tesla every day” —

Prototypes control fluid flow in a preferred direction with no need for moving parts.

–

some of the research team’s 3D-printed pipes alongside a plastic toy shark.

Enlarge / Shark intestines are naturally occurring Tesla valves; scientists have figured out how to mimic their unique structure.

Sarah L. Keller/University of Washington

Scientists at the University of Washington have re-created the distinctive spiral shapes of shark intestines in 3D-printed pipes in order to study the unique fluid flow inside the spirals. Their prototypes kept fluids flowing in one preferred direction with no need for flaps to control that flow and performed significantly better than so-called “Tesla valves,” particularly when made of soft polymers, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As we’ve reported previously, in 1920, Serbian-born inventor Nikola Tesla designed and patented what he called a “valvular conduit“: a pipe whose internal design ensures that fluid will flow in one preferred direction, with no need for moving parts, making it ideal for microfluidics applications, among other uses. The key to Tesla’s ingenious valve design is a set of interconnected, asymmetric, tear-shaped loops.

In his patent application, Tesla described this series of 11 flow-control segments as being made of “enlargements, recessions, projections, baffles, or buckets which, while offering virtually no resistance to the passage of fluid in one direction, other than surface friction, constitute an almost impassable barrier to its flow in the opposite direction.” And because it achieves this with no moving parts, a Tesla valve is much more resistant to the wear and tear of frequent operation.

Tesla claimed that water would flow through his valve 200 times slower in one direction than another, which may have been an exaggeration. A team of scientists at New York University built a working Tesla valve in 2021, in accordance with the inventor’s design, and tested that claim by measuring the flow of water through the valve in both directions at various pressures. The scientists found the water only flowed about two times slower in the nonpreferred direction.

Flow rate proved to be a critical factor. The valve offered very little resistance at slow flow rates, but once that rate increased above a certain threshold, the valve’s resistance would increase as well, generating turbulent flows in the reverse direction, thereby “plugging” the pipe with vortices and disruptive currents. So it actually works more like a switch and can also help smooth out pulsing flows, akin to how AC/DC converters turn alternating currents into direct currents. That may even have been Tesla’s original intent in designing the valve, given that his biggest claim to fame is inventing both the AC motor and an AC/DC converter.

It helps to be a shark

Different kinds of sharks have intestines with different spiral patterns that favor fluid flow in one direction.

Enlarge / Different kinds of sharks have intestines with different spiral patterns that favor fluid flow in one direction.

Ido Levin

The Tesla valve also provides a useful model for how food moves through the digestive system of many species of shark. In 2020, Japanese researchers reconstructed micrographs of histological sections from a species of catshark into a three-dimensional model, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the anatomy of a scroll-type spiral intestine. The following year, scientists took CT scans of shark intestines and concluded that the intestines are naturally occurring Tesla valves.

That’s where the work of UW postdoc Ido Levin and his co-authors comes in. They had questions about the 2021 research in particular. “Flow asymmetry in a pipe with no moving flaps has tremendous technological potential, but the mechanism was puzzling,” said Levin. “It was not clear which parts of the shark’s intestinal structure contributed to the asymmetry and which served only to increase the surface area for nutrient uptake.”

Levin et al. 3D-printed several pipes with an internal helical structure mimicking that of shark intestines, varying certain geometrical parameters like the number of turns or the pitch angle of the helix. It was admittedly an idealized structure, so the team was delighted when the first batch, made from rigid materials, produced the hoped-for flow asymmetry. After further fine-tuning of the parameters, the rigid printed pipes produced flow asymmetries that matched or exceeded Tesla valves.

Eight of the team’s 3D-printed prototypes with various interior helices.

Enlarge / Eight of the team’s 3D-printed prototypes with various interior helices.

Ido Levin/University of Washington

But the researchers weren’t done yet. “[Prior work] showed that if you connect these intestines in the same direction as a digestive tract, you get a faster flow of fluid than if you connect them the other way around. We thought this was very interesting from a physics perspective,” said Levin last year while presenting preliminary results at the 67th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting. “One of the theorems in physics actually states that if you take a pipe, and you flow fluid very slowly through it, you have the same flow if you invert it. So we were very surprised to see experiments that contradict the theory. But then you remember that the intestines are not made out of steel—they’re made of something soft, so while fluid flows through the pipe, it deforms it.”

That gave Levin et al. the idea to try making their pipes out of soft deformable polymers—the softest commercially available ones that could also be used for 3D printing. That batch of pipes performed seven times better on flow asymmetry than any prior measurements of Tesla valves. And since actual shark intestines are about 100 times softer than the polymers they used, the team thinks they can achieve even better performance, perhaps with hydrogels when they become more widely available as 3D printing continues to evolve. The biggest challenge, per the authors, is finding soft materials that can withstand high deformations.

Finally, because the pipes are three-dimensional, they can accommodate larger fluid volumes, opening up applications in larger commercial devices. “Chemists were already motivated to develop polymers that are simultaneously soft, strong and printable,” said co-author Alshakim Nelson, whose expertise lies in developing new types of polymers. “The potential use of these polymers to control flow in applications ranging from engineering to medicine strengthens that motivation.”

PNAS, 2024. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2406481121 (About DOIs).

These 3D-printed pipes inspired by shark intestines outperform Tesla valves Read More »

spread-of-deadly-eee-virus-explodes-5-fold-in-new-york;-one-death-reported

Spread of deadly EEE virus explodes 5-fold in New York; one death reported

CDC, eee, health, Infectious disease, mosquitoes, Science, virus / /

Viral spread —

Normally only 2 or 3 counties have EEE-positive mosquitoes; there’s 15 this year.

–

An entomologist for the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness in a swampland area on August 25, 2021 in Louisville, Kentucky collecting various mosquito species, and testing the samples for mosquito-borne diseases, such as EEE.

Enlarge / An entomologist for the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness in a swampland area on August 25, 2021 in Louisville, Kentucky collecting various mosquito species, and testing the samples for mosquito-borne diseases, such as EEE.

New York is facing an unusual boom in mosquitoes toting the deadly eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) virus, which has already led to one rare death in the state and a declaration of an “imminent threat” by officials.

While the state’s surveillance system typically picks up EEE-positive mosquitoes in two or three counties each year, this year there have been 15 affected counties, which are scattered all across New York, State Health Commissioner James McDonald said this week.

“Eastern equine encephalitis is different this year,” McDonald said, noting the deadly nature of the infection, which has a mortality rate of between 30 and 50 percent. “Mosquitoes, once a nuisance, are now a threat,” McDonald added. “I urge all New Yorkers to prevent mosquito bites by using insect repellents, wearing long-sleeved clothing, and removing free-standing water near their homes. Fall is officially here, but mosquitoes will be around until we see multiple nights of below-freezing temperatures.”

On Monday, McDonald issued a Declaration of an Imminent Threat to Public Health for EEE, and Governor Kathy Hochul announced statewide actions to prevent infections. At the same time as the declaration, the officials reported the death of a New Yorker who developed EEE. The case, which was confirmed in Ulster County on September 20, is the state’s first EEE case since 2015.

The disease is very rare in New York. Between 1971 and 2024, there were only 12 cases of EEE reported in the state; seven cases were fatal.

Rare but deadly

EEE is generally rare in the US, with an average of only 11 cases reported per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus lurks in wild birds and spreads to people and other animals via mosquitoes. The virus is particularly deadly in horses—as its name suggests—with mortality rates up to 90 percent. In people, most bites from a mosquito carrying the EEE virus do not lead to EEE. In fact, the CDC estimates that only about 4–5 percent of infected people develop the disease; most remain asymptomatic.

Fo those who develop EEE, the virus travels from the mosquito bite into the lymph system and spreads from there to cause a systemic infection. Initial symptoms are unspecific, including fever, headache, malaise, chills, joint pain, nausea, and vomiting. This can progress to inflammation of the brain and neurological symptoms, including altered mental state and seizures. Children under the age of 15 and adults over the age of 50 are most at risk.

The CDC estimates that about 30 percent of people who develop severe EEE die of the disease. But, with small numbers of cases over time, the reported mortality rates can vary. In Massachusetts, for instance, about 50 percent of the cases have been fatal. Among those who survive neuro-invasive disease, many are left severely disabled, and some die within a few years due to complications. There is no vaccine for EEE and no specific treatments.

Overall numbers

While New York seems to be experiencing an unusual surge of EEE-positive mosquitoes, the country as a whole is not necessarily seeing an uptick in cases. Only 10 cases from six states have been reported to the CDC this year. That count does not include the New York case, which would bring the total to 11, around the country’s average number of cases per year.

In addition to New York, the states that have reported cases are Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire. Most cases have been in the Northeast, where cases are typically reported between mid-June and early October before freezing temperatures kill off mosquito populations.

The death in New York is at least the second EEE death this year. In August, New Hampshire’s health department reported the death of an EEE case, and local media reports identified the person as a previously healthy 41-year-old man from Hampstead.

EEE gained attention last month when a small town in Massachusetts urged residents to follow an evening curfew to avoid mosquito bites.  The move came after the state announced its first EEE case this year (the state’s case count is now at four) and declared a “critical risk level” in four communities.

Between 2003 and 2023, the highest tally of cases in a year was in 2019, when states reported 38 EEE cases.

Spread of deadly EEE virus explodes 5-fold in New York; one death reported Read More »

radiation-should-be-able-to-deflect-asteroids-as-large-as-4-km-across

Radiation should be able to deflect asteroids as large as 4 km across

asteroids, astronomy, Nuclear weapons, planetary defense, planetary science, radiation, Science, z-machine / /
Image of a large, circular chamber covered filled with a lot of mechanical equipment, all of which is lit by blue internal glows and covered with massive, branching trails of lightning.

Enlarge / Sandia National Labs’ Z machine in action.

The old joke about the dinosaurs going extinct because they didn’t have a space program may be overselling the need for one. It turns out you can probably divert some of the more threatening asteroids with nothing more than the products of a nuclear weapons program. But it doesn’t work the way you probably think it does.

Obviously, nuclear weapons are great at destroying things, so why not asteroids? That won’t work because a lot of the damage that nukes generate comes from the blast wave as it propagates through the atmosphere. And the environment around asteroids is notably short on atmosphere, so blast waves won’t happen. But you can still use a nuclear weapon’s radiation to vaporize part of the asteroid’s surface, creating a very temporary, very hot atmosphere on one side of the asteroid. This should create enough pressure to deflect the asteroid’s orbit, potentially causing it to fly safely past Earth.

But will it work? Some scientists at Sandia National Lab have decided to tackle a very cool question with one of the cooler bits of hardware on Earth: the Z machine, which can create a pulse of X-rays bright enough to vaporize rock. They estimate that a nuclear weapon can probably impart enough force to deflect asteroids as large as 4 kilometers across.

No nukes! (Just a nuclear simulation)

The Z machine is at the heart of Sandia’s Z Pulsed Power Facility. It’s basically a mechanism for storing a whole lot of electrical energy—up to 22 megajoules—and releasing it nearly instantaneously. Anything in the immediate vicinity experiences extremely intense electromagnetic fields. Among other things, this can be used to heavily ionize materials, like the argon gas used here, generating intense X-rays. These served as a stand-in for the radiation generated by a nuclear weapon.

For an asteroid, the researcher used disks of rock, either quartz or fused silica. (Notably, they only did one sample of each but got reasonably consistent results from them.) Mere mortals might have stuck the disk on a device that could register the force it experienced and left it at that. But these scientists were made of sterner stuff and decided that this wouldn’t really replicate the asteroid experience of floating freely in space.

To mimic that, the researchers held the rock disks in place using thin pieces of foil. These would vaporize almost instantly as the X-ray burst arrives, leaving the rock briefly suspended in the air. While gravity would have its way, the events triggered by the radiation evaporating away a bunch of the rock would be over before the sample experienced any significant downward acceleration. Its movement during this time, and thus the force imparted to it by the evaporation of its surface, was tracked by a laser interferometer placed on the far side of the disk from the X-ray source.

With all that set, all that was left was to fire up the Z machine and vaporize some rock.

Radiation should be able to deflect asteroids as large as 4 km across Read More »

nasa-is-ready-to-start-buying-vulcan-rockets-from-united-launch-alliance

NASA is ready to start buying Vulcan rockets from United Launch Alliance

launch, military space, NASA, Science, Space, united launch alliance, US Space Force, vulcan / /

Full stack —

The second test flight of the Vulcan rocket is scheduled for liftoff on October 4.

–

The first stage of ULA's second Vulcan rocket was raised onto its launch platform August 11 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / The first stage of ULA’s second Vulcan rocket was raised onto its launch platform August 11 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

United Launch Alliance is free to compete for NASA contracts with its new Vulcan rocket after a successful test flight earlier this year, ending a period where SpaceX was the only company competing for rights to launch the agency’s large science missions.

For several years, ULA was unable to bid for NASA launch contracts after the company sold all of its remaining Atlas V rockets to other customers, primarily for Amazon’s Project Kuiper Internet network. ULA could not submit its new Vulcan rocket, which will replace the Atlas V, for NASA to consider in future launch contracts until the Vulcan completed at least one successful flight, according to Tim Dunn, senior launch director at NASA’s Launch Services Program.

The Vulcan rocket’s first certification flight on January 8, called Cert-1, was nearly flawless, demonstrating the launcher’s methane-fueled BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin and an uprated twin-engine Centaur upper stage. A second test flight, known as Cert-2, is scheduled to lift off no earlier than October 4 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Assuming the upcoming launch is as successful as the first one, the US Space Force aims to launch its first mission on a Vulcan rocket by the end of the year.

The Space Force has already booked 25 launches on ULA’s Vulcan rocket for military payloads and spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. But these missions won’t launch until Vulcan completes its second test flight, clearing the way for the Space Force to certify ULA’s new rocket for national security missions.

Back in the game

NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP) is responsible for selecting and overseeing launch providers for the agency’s robotic science missions. NASA’s near-term options for launching large missions include SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, ULA’s Vulcan, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher.

However, only SpaceX’s rockets have been available for NASA bids since 2021, when ULA sold all of its remaining Atlas V rockets to Amazon. For example, ULA did not submit proposals for the launch of a GOES weather satellite or NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, two of the more lucrative launch contracts the agency has awarded in the last couple of years. NASA selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, the only eligible rocket, for both missions.

This is a notable role reversal for SpaceX and ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that was the sole launch provider for large NASA science missions and military satellites for nearly a decade. SpaceX launched its first mission for NASA’s Launch Services Program in January 2016.

The situation changed with the first flight of the Vulcan rocket in January.

“They certainly demonstrated a huge success earlier this year flying Cert-1,” Dunn told Ars in an interview. “They needed a successful flight to then bid for future missions, so that allowed them to be in a position to bid on our missions.”

NASA has not yet formally certified the Vulcan rocket to launch one of the agency’s science missions, but that would not stop NASA from selecting Vulcan for a contract. Some of NASA’s next big science missions up for launch contract awards include the nuclear-powered Dragonfly mission to explore Saturn’s moon Titan and an asteroid-hunting telescope named NEO Surveyor.

The second Vulcan flight next month will move ULA’s rocket toward certification by the Space Force and NASA.

“A second Cert flight that will then demonstrate a few other capabilities of the rocket allows more data for our certification team that is working in concert with the US Space Force’s certification team,” Dunn said. “We’re doing a lot of shared, intergovernmental collaborations in the certification work, so it allows us all more data, more confidence in that launch vehicle to meet all the needs that we believe we will have in the coming decade-plus.”

Two strap-on solid-fueled boosters and twin BE-4 main engines on ULA's second Vulcan rocket.

Enlarge / Two strap-on solid-fueled boosters and twin BE-4 main engines on ULA’s second Vulcan rocket.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn could also compete for contracts to launch NASA’s larger, more expensive missions after it completes at least one successful flight. Blue Origin is currently eligible for bids to launch NASA’s smaller missions, such as the ESCAPADE mission to Mars already assigned to New Glenn. NASA is willing to accept more risk for launching these types of lower-cost missions.

ULA capped off the assembly of its second Vulcan rocket at Cape Canaveral on Saturday when technicians lifted the launcher’s payload fairing atop Vulcan’s first-stage booster and Centaur upper stage. For its second launch, Vulcan will carry a dummy payload instead of a real satellite. The second Vulcan flight was initially supposed to launch Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane to the International Space Station, but Dream Chaser isn’t ready, and the Space Force is eager for ULA to get moving and finish the certification process.

The head of Space Systems Command, Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, told Ars last week that he is “optimistic” ULA will be in a position to launch its first Space Force missions with the Vulcan rocket by the end of this year. ULA has already delivered Vulcan rocket parts for the next two missions to Cape Canaveral, but the Cert-2 launch needs to go off without a hitch.

“We’re working very closely with ULA on that, as well as the manifest for the following missions,” Garrant said. “All of the rocket parts are at the launch locations, ready to go, but clearly the priority is the certification flight and making sure that the launch vehicle is certified. But we are optimistic that we’re going to get those launches off.”

NASA is ready to start buying Vulcan rockets from United Launch Alliance Read More »

satellite-images-suggest-test-of-russian-“super-weapon”-failed-spectacularly

Satellite images suggest test of Russian “super weapon” failed spectacularly

Military, nuclear, Plesetsk Cosmodrome, russia, Sarmat, Science, Space / /

  • The Sarmat missile silo seen before last week’s launch attempt.

    Maxar Technologies

  • A closer view of the Sarmat missile silo before last week’s launch attempt.

    Maxar Technologies

  • Fire trucks surround the Sarmat missile silo in this view from space on Saturday, September 21.

    Maxar Technologies

Late last week, Russia’s military planned to launch a Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on a test flight from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Imagery from commercial satellites captured over the weekend suggest the missile exploded before or during launch.

This is at least the second time an RS-28 Sarmat missile has failed in less than two years, dealing a blow to the country’s nuclear forces days after the head of the Russian legislature issued a veiled threat to use the missile against Europe if Western allies approved Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons against Russia.

Commercial satellite imagery collected by Maxar and Planet show before-and-after views of the Sarmat missile silo at Plesetsk, a military base about 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow. The view from one of Maxar’s imaging satellites Saturday revealed unmistakable damage at the launch site, with a large crater centered on the opening to the underground silo.

The crater is roughly 200 feet (62 meters) wide, according to George Barros, a Russia and geospatial intelligence analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “Extensive damage in and around the launch pad can be seen which suggests that the missile exploded shortly after ignition or launch,” Barros wrote on X.

“Additionally, small fires continue to burn in the forest to the east of the launch complex and four fire trucks can be seen near the destroyed silo,” Barros added.

An RS-28 Sarmat missile fires out of its underground silo on its first full-scale test flight in April 2022.

Enlarge / An RS-28 Sarmat missile fires out of its underground silo on its first full-scale test flight in April 2022.

Russian Ministry of Defense

The Sarmat missile is Russia’s largest ICBM, with a height of 115 feet (35 meters). It is capable of delivering nuclear warheads to targets more than 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) away, making it the longest-range missile in the world. The three-stage missile burns hypergolic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants, and is built by the Makeyev Design Bureau. The Sarmat, sometimes called the Satan II, replaces Russia’s long-range R-36M missile developed during the Cold War.

“According to Russian media, Sarmat can reportedly load up to 10 large warheads, 16 smaller ones, a combination of warheads and countermeasures, or hypersonic boost-glide vehicle,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies writes on its website.

The secret is out

Western analysts still don’t know exactly when the explosion occurred. Russia issued warnings last week for pilots to keep out of airspace along the flight path of a planned missile launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Russia published similar notices before previous Sarmat missile tests, alerting observers that another Sarmat launch was imminent. The warnings were canceled Thursday, two days before satellite imagery showed the destruction at the launch site.

“It is possible that the launch attempt was undertaken on September 19th, with fires persisting for more than 24 hours,” wrote Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, on his Russian Nuclear Forces blog site. “Another possibility is that the test was scrubbed on the 19th and the incident happened during the subsequent defueling of the missile. The character of destruction suggests that the missile exploded in the silo.”

James Acton, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on X that the before-and-after imagery of the Sarmat missile silo was “very persuasive that there was a big explosion.”

Satellite images suggest test of Russian “super weapon” failed spectacularly Read More »

vaporizing-plastics-recycles-them-into-nothing-but-gas

Vaporizing plastics recycles them into nothing but gas

chemistry, plastics, recycling, Science, Sustainability / /

Breakdown —

Polypropylene and polyethylene can be broken down simultaneously.

–

A man stands next to piles of compressed plastic bottles.

Our planet is choking on plastics. Some of the worst offenders, which can take decades to degrade in landfills, are polypropylene—which is used for things such as food packaging and bumpers—and polyethylene, found in plastic bags, bottles, toys, and even mulch.

Polypropylene and polyethylene can be recycled, but the process can be difficult and often produces large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane. They are both polyolefins, which are the products of polymerizing ethylene and propylene, raw materials that are mainly derived from fossil fuels. The bonds of polyolefins are also notoriously hard to break.

Now, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have come up with a method of recycling these polymers that uses catalysts that easily break their bonds, converting them into propylene and isobutylene, which are gasses at room temperature. Those gasses can then be recycled into new plastics.

“Because polypropylene and polyethylene are among the most difficult and expensive plastics to separate from each other in a mixed waste stream, it is crucial that [a recycling] process apply to both polyolefins,” the research team said in a study recently published in Science.

Breaking it down

The recycling process the team used is known as isomerizing ethenolysis, which relies on a catalyst to break down olefin polymer chains into their small molecules. Polyethylene and polypropylene bonds are highly resistant to chemical reactions because both of these polyolefins have long chains of single carbon-carbon bonds. Most polymers have at least one carbon-carbon double bond, which is much easier to break.

While isomerizing ethenolysis had been tried by the same researchers before, the previous catalysts were expensive metals that did not remain pure long enough to convert all of the plastic into gas. Using sodium on alumina followed by tungsten oxide on silica proved much more economical and effective, even though the high temperatures required for the reaction added a bit to the cost

In both plastics, exposure to sodium on alumina broke each polymer chain into shorter polymer chains and created breakable carbon-carbon double bonds at the ends. The chains continued to break over and over. Both then underwent a second process known as olefin metathesis. They were exposed to a stream of ethylene gas flowing into a reaction chamber while being introduced to tungsten oxide on silica, which resulted in the breakage of the carbon-carbon bonds.

The reaction breaks all the carbon-carbon bonds in polyethylene and polypropylene, with the carbon atoms released during the breaking of these bonds ending up attached to molecules of ethylene.“The ethylene is critical to this reaction, as it is a co-reactant,” researcher R.J. Conk, one of the authors of the study, told Ars Technica. “The broken links then react with ethylene, which removes the links from the chain. Without ethylene, the reaction cannot occur.”

The entire chain is catalyzed until polyethylene is fully converted to propylene, and polypropylene is converted to a mixture of propylene and isobutylene.

This method has high selectivity—meaning it produces a large amount of the desired product. That means propylene derived from polyethylene, and both propylene and isobutylene derived from polypropylene. Both of these chemicals are in high demand, since propylene is an important raw material for the chemical industry, while isobutylene is a frequently used monomer in many different polymers, including synthetic rubber and a gasoline additive.

Mixing it up

Because plastics are often mixed at recycling centers, the researchers wanted to see what would happen if polypropylene and polyethylene underwent isomerizing ethenolysis together. The reaction was successful, converting the mixture into propylene and isobutylene, with slightly more propylene than isobutylene.

Mixtures also typically include contaminants in the form of additional plastics. So the team also wanted to see whether the reaction would still work if there were contaminants. So they experimented with plastic objects that would otherwise be thrown away, including a centrifuge and a bread bag, both of which contained traces of other polymers besides polypropylene and polyethylene. The reaction yielded only slightly less propylene and isobutylene than it did with unadulterated versions of the polyolefins.

Another test involved introducing different plastics, such as PET and PVC, to polypropylene and polyethylene to see if that would make a difference. These did lower the yield significantly. If this approach is going to be successful, then all but the slightest traces of contaminants will have to be removed from polypropylene and polyethylene products before they are recycled.

While this recycling method sounds like it could prevent tons upon tons of waste, it will need to be scaled up enormously for this to happen. When the research team increased the scale of the experiment, it produced the same yield, which looks promising for the future. Still, we’ll need to build considerable infrastructure before this could make a dent in our plastic waste.

“We hope that the work described…will lead to practical methods for…[producing] new polymers,” the researchers said in the same study. “By doing so, the demand for production of these essential commodity chemicals starting from fossil carbon sources and the associated greenhouse gas emissions could be greatly reduced.”

Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adq731

Vaporizing plastics recycles them into nothing but gas Read More »

nasa-has-a-fine-plan-for-deorbiting-the-iss—unless-russia-gets-in-the-way

NASA has a fine plan for deorbiting the ISS—unless Russia gets in the way

human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, roscosmos, russia, Science, Space / /
This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft.

Enlarge / This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft.

NASA/Roscosmos

A little more than two years ago, Dmitry Rogozin, the bellicose former head of Russia’s space agency, nearly brought the International Space Station partnership to its knees.

During his tenure as director general of Roscosmos, Rogozin was known for his bombastic social media posts and veiled threats to abandon the space station after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin tersely dismissed Rogozin in July 2022 and replaced him with Yuri Borisov, a former deputy prime minister.

While the clash between Russia and Western governments over the war in Ukraine has not cooled, the threats against the International Space Station (ISS) ended. The program remains one of the few examples of cooperation between the US and Russian governments. Last year, Russia formally extended its commitment to the ISS to at least 2028. NASA and space agencies in Europe, Japan, and Canada have agreed to maintain the space station through 2030.

It’s this two-year disparity that concerns NASA officials plotting the final days of the ISS. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract in June to develop a deorbit vehicle based on the company’s Dragon spacecraft to steer the more than 450-ton complex toward a safe reentry over a remote stretch of ocean.

“We do have that uncertainty, 2028 through 2030, with Roscosmos,” said Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS program at NASA Headquarters, in a meeting of the agency’s advisory council this week. “We expect to hear from them over the next year or two as far as their follow-on plans, hoping that they also extend through 2030.”

Fighting through the tension

Roscosmos works in four-year increments, so Russia’s decision last year extended the country’s participation in the space station program from 2024 until 2028. Russian space officials know the future of the country’s space program is directly tied to the ISS. If Russia pulls out of the space station in 2028, Roscosmos will be left without much of a human spaceflight program.

There’s no chance Russia will have its own space station in low-Earth orbit in four years, so abandoning its role on the ISS would leave Russia’s Soyuz crew ferry spacecraft without a destination. Russian and Chinese leaders have fostered closer ties in space in recent years, but China’s Tiangong space station is inaccessible from Russia’s launch sites.

The US and Russian segments of the ISS depend on one another for critical functions. The US section generates most of the space station’s electricity and maintains the lab’s orientation without using precious rocket fuel. Russia is responsible for maintaining the station’s altitude and maneuvering the complex out of the path of space junk, although Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo craft has also demonstrated an ability to boost the station’s orbit.

While Russia’s space program would feel the pain if Roscosmos made an early exit from the space station, the relationship between Russia and the West is volatile. US and European leaders may soon give Ukraine the green light to use Western-supplied weapons for attacks deep inside Russian territory. Putin said last week that this would be tantamount to war. “This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia,” he said.

NASA has a fine plan for deorbiting the ISS—unless Russia gets in the way Read More »

grid-scale-batteries:-they’re-not-just-lithium

Grid-scale batteries: They’re not just lithium

batteries, chemistry, Science / /
A shipping container labeled with a battery symbol, set among wind turbines and solar panels.

As power utilities and industrial companies seek to use more renewable energy, the market for grid-scale batteries is expanding rapidly. Alternatives to lithium-ion technology may provide environmental, labor, and safety benefits. And these new chemistries can work in markets like the electric grid and industrial applications that lithium doesn’t address well.

“I think the market for longer-duration storage is just now emerging,” said Mark Higgins, chief commercial officer and president of North America at Redflow. “We have a lot of… very rapid scale-up in the types of projects that we’re working on and the size of projects that we’re working on. We’ve deployed about 270 projects around the world. Most of them have been small off-grid or remote-grid systems. What we’re seeing today is much more grid-connected types of projects.”

“Demand… seems to be increasing every day,” said Giovanni Damato, president of CMBlu Energy. Media projections of growth in this space are huge. “We’re really excited about the opportunity to… just be able to play in that space and provide as much capacity as possible.”

New industrial markets are also becoming active. Chemical plants, steel plants, and metal processing plants have not been able to deploy renewable energy well so far due to batteries’ fire hazards, said Mukesh Chatter, co-founder and CEO of Alsym Energy. “When you already are generating a lot of heat in these plants and there’s a risk of fire to begin with, you don’t want to deploy any battery that’s flammable.”

Chatter said that the definition of long-duration energy storage is not agreed upon by industry organizations. Still, there are a number of potential contenders developing storage for this market. Here, we’ll look at Redflow, CMBlu Energy, and BASF Stationary Energy Storage.

Zinc-bromine batteries

Redflow has been manufacturing zinc-bromine flow batteries since 2010, Higgins said. These batteries do not require the critical minerals that lithium-ion batteries need, which are sometimes from parts of the world that have unsafe labor practices or geopolitical risks. The minerals for these zinc-bromine batteries are affordable and easy to obtain.

Flow batteries contain liquid or gaseous electrolytes that flow through cells from tanks, according to the International Flow Battery Forum website:

The interconversion of energy between electrical and stored chemical energy takes place in the electrochemical cell. This consists of two half cells separated by a porous or an ion-exchange membrane. The battery can be constructed of low-cost and readily available materials, such as thermoplastics and carbon-based materials. Many parts of the battery can be recycled. Electrolytes can be recovered and reused, leading to low cost of ownership.

Building these can be quite different from other batteries. “I would say that our manufacturing process is much more akin to… an automotive manufacturing process than to [an] electronics manufacturing process… like [a] lithium-ion battery,” Higgins said. “Essentially, it is assembling batteries that are made out of plastic tanks, pumps, fans, [and] tubing. It’s a flow battery, so it’s a liquid that flows through the system that goes through an electrical stack that has cells in it, which is where most of Redflow’s intellectual property resides. The rest of the battery is all… parts that we can obtain just about anywhere.”

The charging and discharging happen inside an electrical stack. In the stack, zinc is plated onto a carbon surface during the charging process. It is then dissolved into the liquid during the discharging process, Higgins said.

The zinc-bromine electrolyte is derived from an industrial chemical that has been used in the oil and gas sector for a long time, Higgins added.

This battery cannot catch fire, and all of its parts are recyclable, Higgins told Ars. “You don’t have any of the toxic materials that you do in a lithium-ion battery.” The electrolyte liquid can be reused in other batteries. If it’s contaminated, it can be used by the oil and gas industry. If the battery leaks, the contents can be neutralized quickly and are subsequently not hazardous.

“Right now, we manufacture our batteries in Thailand,” Higgins said. “The process and wages are all fair wages and we follow all relevant environmental and labor standards.” The largest sources of bromine come from the Dead Sea or within the United States. The zinc comes from Northern Europe, the United States, or Canada.

The batteries typically use an annual maintenance program to replace components that wear out or fail, something that’s not possible with many other battery types. Higgins estimated that two to four years down the road, this technology will be “completely competitive with lithium-ion” from a cost perspective. Some government grants have helped with the commercialization process.

Grid-scale batteries: They’re not just lithium Read More »

human-cases-of-raccoon-parasite-may-be-your-best-excuse-to-buy-a-flamethrower

Human cases of raccoon parasite may be your best excuse to buy a flamethrower

Baylisascaris procyonis, eggs, health, infectious diseases, larvae, parasite, raccoon, roundworm, Science / /

kill it with fire —

The infection is very rare, but it’s definitely one you want to avoid.

–

Young raccoon looking out from a tree.

Enlarge / Young raccoon looking out from a tree.

If you were looking for a reason to keep a flamethrower around the house, you may have just found one.

This week, the Los Angeles County health department reported that two people were infected with a raccoon parasite that causes severe, frequently fatal, infections of the eyes, organs, and central nervous system. Those who survive are often left with severe neurological outcomes, including blindness, paralysis, loss of coordination, seizures, cognitive impairments, and brain atrophy.

The parasitic roundworm behind the infection, called Baylisascaris procyonis, spreads via eggs in raccoons feces. Adult worms live in the intestines of the masked trash scavengers, and each female worm can produce nearly 200,000 eggs per day. Once in the environment, those eggs can remain infectious for years. They can survive drying out as well as most chemical treatments and disinfectants, including bleach.

Humans get infected if they inadvertently eat soil or other material that has become contaminated with egg-laden feces. Though infections are rare—there were 29 documented cases between 1973 and 2015—younger children and people with developmental disabilities are most at risk.

For instance, an 18-month-old boy with Downs syndrome in Illinois died from the infection after he chewed and sucked on pieces of contaminated firewood bark. An autopsy later found three worm larvae per gram of his brain tissue, with a total estimated burden of 3,027 parasitic larvae, according to a 2016 report.

Burn it down

In a news release this week, the LA health department said the risk to the general public is “low” but that the two cases are “concerning because a large number of raccoons live near people, and the infection rate in raccoons is likely high. The confirmed cases of this rare infection are an important reminder for all Los Angeles County residents to take precautions to prevent the spread of disease from animals to people, also known as zoonotic disease.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the best prevention methods for raccoon roundworms is to kill it with fire. While chemicals stand little chance of killing off infectious eggs, extreme heat destroys them instantly.

If you have raccoons around your property, you might need to employ this method. Raccoons tend to poop in communal, pungent latrines, which are often at the base of trees, on raised surfaces—such as tree stumps, woodpiles, decks, and patios—as well as in attics and garages.

If you suspect you have an outdoor raccoon latrine on your property, the CDC recommends dousing the area in boiling water or setting it ablaze. While the CDC recommends a propane torch, specifically, a personal flamethrower could also do the trick. The agency does caution that flaming a latrine site “could cause a fire, burn injury, or surface damage.”

“Before flaming any latrine site, call your local fire department for details on local regulations and safety practices,” the CDC says. “Concrete pads, bricks, and metal shovels or garden implements can be flamed without damage. Do not attempt to flame surfaces that can melt or catch fire.”

For indoor latrines, the CDC advises not to use fire. Instead, it outlines a cautious cleaning method with hot, soapy water. However, if you want, any removed feces or contaminated material can be flamed outside, if not buried or put in the trash.

Human cases of raccoon parasite may be your best excuse to buy a flamethrower Read More »

one-company-appears-to-be-thriving-as-part-of-nasa’s-return-to-the-moon

One company appears to be thriving as part of NASA’s return to the Moon

artemis, intuitive machines, Science, Space, Uncategorized / /

Talking to the Moon —

“This has really been a transformational year for us.”

–

The second Intuitive Machines lander is prepared for hot-fire testing this week.

Enlarge / The second Intuitive Machines lander is prepared for hot-fire testing this week.

Intuitive Machines

One of the miracles of the Apollo Moon landings is that they were televised, live, for all the world to see. This transparency diffused doubts about whether the lunar landings really happened and were watched by billions of people.

However, as remarkable a technical achievement as it was to broadcast from the Moon in 1969, the video was grainy and black and white. As NASA contemplates a return to the Moon as part of the Artemis program, it wants much higher resolution video and communications with its astronauts on the lunar surface.

To that end, NASA announced this week that it had awarded a contract to Houston-based Intuitive Machines for “lunar relay services.” Essentially this means Intuitive Machines will be responsible for building a small constellation of satellites around the Moon that will beam data back to Earth from the lunar surface.

“One of the requirements is a 4K data link,” said Steve Altemus, co-founder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, in an interview. “That kind of high fidelity data only comes from a data relay with a larger antenna than can be delivered to the surface of the Moon.”

About the plan

This is part of NASA’s plan to build a more robust “Near Space Network” for communications within 1 million miles of Earth (the Moon is about 240,000 miles from Earth). Intuitive Machines’ contract is worth as much as $4.82 billion over the next decade, depending on the level of communication services that NASA chooses to purchase.

The space agency is also expected to award a ground-based component of this network for large dishes to receive signals from near space, taking some of this burden off the Deep Space Network. Altemus said Intuitive Machines has also bid on this ground component contract.

The Houston company, with its IM-1 mission, made a largely successful landing on the Moon in February. A second lunar landing mission, IM-2, is scheduled to take place in late December or January, a few months from now. Funded largely by NASA, the IM-2 mission will carry a small drill to the South Pole of the Moon to search for water ice in Shackleton Crater.

Then, approximately 15 months from now, the company is planning to launch another lander, IM-3. This mission is likely to carry the first data-relay satellite—each is intended to be about 500 kg, Altemus said, but the final design of the vehicles is still being finalized—to lunar orbit. Assuming this first satellite works well, the two following IM missions will each carry two relay satellites, making for a constellation of five spacecraft orbiting the Moon.

Two of the satellites will go into polar orbits and serve NASA’s Artemis needs at the South Pole, Altemus said. Two more are likely to go into halo orbits, and a fifth satellite will be placed into an equatorial orbit. This will provide full coverage of the Moon not just for communications, but also for position, navigation, and timing.

Intuitive Machines rising

A former deputy director of Johnson Space Center, Altemus founded Intuitive Machines in 2013 along with an investor, Kam Ghaffarian, and an aerospace engineer named Tim Crain. It hasn’t always been easy. Development of Intuitive Machines’ Nova C lander took years longer than anticipated; there were setbacks such as a propellant tank failure, and money was at times tight.

In part to address these financial difficulties, the company went public in 2023, at the tail end of the mania in which space companies were becoming publicly traded via special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Many space companies that went public this way have struggled mightily, and Intuitive Machines has also faced similar pressures.

“It’s been a challenge,” Altemus said. “We went public in 2023, and navigating that was the story of last year, as well as getting to the launch pad.”

But then good things started happening. Despite some technical troubles, including the failure of its altimeter, the company’s first lander managed a soft touchdown on the Moon on its side. Even with this untinended orientation, the Intuitive Machines-1 mission still managed to complete the vast majority of its science objectives. In August, the company won its fourth task order from NASA—essentially a lunar delivery mission—under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

And then the company won the massive data relay contract this week.

“This has really been a transformational year for us,” Altemus said. “The vision for the company is finally coming together.”

One company appears to be thriving as part of NASA’s return to the Moon Read More »