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may-contain-nuts:-precautionary-allergen-labels-lead-to-consumer-confusion

May contain nuts: Precautionary allergen labels lead to consumer confusion

Features, food allergies, Science, undark / /

can i eat this or not? —

Some labels suggest allergen cross-contamination that might not exist.

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May contain nuts: Precautionary allergen labels lead to consumer confusion

TopMicrobialStock, Getty Images

When Ina Chung, a Colorado mother, first fed packaged foods to her infant, she was careful to read the labels. Her daughter was allergic to peanuts, dairy, and eggs, so products containing those ingredients were out. So were foods with labels that said they may contain the allergens.

Chung felt like this last category suggested a clear risk that wasn’t worth taking. “I had heard that the ingredient labels were regulated. And so I thought that that included those statements,” said Chung. “Which was not true.”

Precautionary allergen labels like those that say “processed in a facility that uses milk” or “may contain fish” are meant to address the potential for cross-contact. For instance, a granola bar that doesn’t list peanuts as an ingredient could still say they may be included. And in the United States, these warnings are not regulated; companies can use whatever precautionary phrasing they choose on any product. Some don’t bother with any labels, even in facilities where unintended allergens slip in; others list allergens that may pose little risk. Robert Earl, vice president of regulatory affairs at Food Allergy Research & Education, or FARE, a nonprofit advocacy, research, and education group, has even seen such labels that include all nine common food allergens. “I would bet my bottom dollar not all of those allergens are even in the facility,” he said.

So what are the roughly 20 million people with food allergies in the US supposed to do with these warnings? Should they eat the granola bar or not?

Recognizing this uncertainty, food safety experts, allergy advocates, policymakers, and food producers are discussing how to demystify precautionary allergen labels. One widely considered solution is to restrict warnings to cases where visual or analytical tests demonstrate that there is enough allergen to actually trigger a reaction. Experts say the costs to the food industry are minimal, and some food producers across the globe, including in Canada, Australia, Thailand, and the United States, already voluntarily take this approach. But in the US, where there are no clear guidelines to follow, consumers are still left wondering what each individual precautionary allergen label even means.

Pull a packaged food off an American store shelf and the ingredients label should say if the product intentionally contains one of nine recognized allergens. That’s because in 2004, Congress granted the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate labeling of eight major food allergens—eggs, fish, milk, crustaceans, peanuts, tree nuts, soybeans, and wheat. In 2021, sesame was added to the list.

But the language often gets murkier further down the label, where companies may include precautionary allergen labels, also called advisory statements, to address the fact that allergens can unintentionally wind up in foods at many stages of production. Perhaps wheat grows near a field of rye destined for bread, for instance, or peanuts get lodged in processing equipment that later pumps out chocolate chip cookies. Candy manufacturers, in particular, struggle to keep milk out of dark chocolate.

The FDA offers no labeling guidance beyond declaring that “advisory statements should not be used as a substitute for adhering to current good manufacturing practices and must be truthful and not misleading.”

Companies can choose when to use these warnings, which vary widely. For example, a 2017 survey conducted by the FDA and the Illinois Institute of Technology of 78 dark chocolate products found that almost two-thirds contained an advisory statement for peanuts; of those, only about four actually contained the allergen. Meanwhile, of 18 bars that carried no advisory statement for peanuts specifically, three contained the allergen. (One product that was positive for peanuts did warn more generally of nuts, but the researchers noted that this term is ambiguous.) Another product that tested positive included a nut warning on one lot but not on another. Individual companies also select their own precautionary label phrasing.

For consumers, the inconsistency can be confusing, said Ruchi Gupta, a pediatrician and director of the Center for Food Allergy & Asthma Research at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. In 2019, Gupta and colleagues asked around 3,000 US adults who have allergies or care for someone who does about how different precautionary allergen label phrases make a difference when they are considering whether to buy a particular food. About 80 percent never purchase products with a may contain warning. Less than half avoid products with labels suggesting that it was manufactured in a facility that also processes an allergen, even though numerous studies show that the wording of a precautionary allergen label has no bearing on risk level. “People are making their own decisions on what sounds safe,” said Gupta.

When Chung learned that advisory labels were unregulated, she experimented with ignoring them when her then-toddler really wanted a particular food. When her daughter developed a couple of hives after eating a cereal labeled may contain peanuts, Chung went back to heeding warnings of peanut cross-contact but continued ignoring the rest.

“A lot of families just make up their own rules,” she said. “There’s no way to really know exactly what you’re getting.”

May contain nuts: Precautionary allergen labels lead to consumer confusion Read More »

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Ancient Maya DNA shows male kids were sacrificed in pairs at Chichén Itzá

Science / /

Tossed into the sacred sinkhole —

Twins play an auspicious role in Maya mythology, most notably in the Popol Vuh.

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Detail from the reconstructed stone tzompantli, or skull rack, at Chichén Itzá.

Enlarge / Detail from the reconstructed stone tzompantli, or skull rack, at Chichén Itzá, evidence of ritual human sacrifice.

Christina Warinner

Inhabitants of the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá are well-known for their practice of ritual human sacrifice. The most prevalent notion in the popular imagination is that of young Maya women being flung alive into sink holes as offerings to the gods. Details about the cultural context for these sacrifices remain fuzzy, so scientists conduced genetic analysis on ancient remains of some of the sacrificial victims to learn more. That analysis confirmed the prevalence of male sacrifices, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature, often of related children (ages 6 to 12) from the same household—including two pairs of identical twins.

Chichén Itzá (“at the mouth of the well of the Itzá”) is located in Mexico’s eastern Yucatán. It was one of the largest of the Maya cities, quite possibly one of the mythical capital cities (Tollans) that are frequently mentioned in Mesoamerican literature. It’s known for its incredible monumental architecture, such as the Temple of Kukulcán (“El Castillo”), a step pyramid honoring a feathered serpent deity. Around the spring and fall equinoxes, there is a distinctive light-and-shadow effect that creates the illusion of a serpent slithering down the staircase. There is also a well-known acoustical effect: clap your hands at the base of the staircases and you’ll get an echo that sounds eerily like a bird’s chirp—perhaps mimicking the quetzal, a brightly colored exotic bird native to the region and prized for its long, resplendent tail feathers.

The Great Ball Court (one of 13 at the site) is essentially a whispering gallery: even though it is 545 feet long and 225 feet wide, a whisper at one end can be heard clearly at the other. The court features slanted benches with sculpted panels depicting aspects of Maya ball games—which were not just athletic events but also religious ones that often involved ritual sacrifices of players by decapitation.

“Evidence of ritual killing is extensive throughout the site of Chichén Itzá and includes both the physical remains of sacrificed individuals as well as representations in monumental art,” the authors of the new Nature paper wrote. Decapitation was just one method of sacrifice favored by the Maya over various historical periods. The Maya were equally fond of cutting out the still-beating hearts of victims, accessing the organ either from below the diaphragm or through the sternum. There were also rituals that involved binding victims to a stake and shooting arrows at a white target painted on the heart.

The site features underground rivers with natural sinkholes, called cenotes, providing water to the local inhabitants. One of those is known as the Cenote Sagrado (“Sacred Cenote”), or the Well of Sacrifice, some 200 feet (60 meters) wide and surrounded by sheer cliffs. As its name implies, the Maya would regularly sacrifice valuable objects and the occasional human by tossing them into the sinkhole to appease the Maya rain god, Chaac. (If the 89-foot (27-meter) fall didn’t kill them, drowning would.)

We know this from the writings of Friar Diego de Landa, among others, who wrote in 1566 of the Maya custom of throwing men alive into the sinkhole during droughts, as well as other prized objects. Dredging the Sacred Cenote with a bucket-and-pulley system in the early 1900s yielded artifacts made of gold and jade, as well as pottery, incense, and human remains. There were also archaeological excavations in the 1960s that yielded even more such objects, including flint, shell, rubber, cloth, and wood preserved in the water.

El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulcan, is among the largest structures at Chichén Itzá, and its architecture reflects its far-flung political connections.

Enlarge / El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulcan, is among the largest structures at Chichén Itzá, and its architecture reflects its far-flung political connections.

Johannes Krause

Archaeologists also uncovered a full-scale stone representation of a massive tzompantli (skull rack) and a subterranean chamber near the Sacred Cenote, likely a repurposed water cistern (chultún) that had been enlarged to connect to a small cave. The Maya viewed both cenotes and chultúns as connections to the underworld, and this particular chultún housed the remains of over 100 children.

Rodrigo Barquera, an immunogeneticist and postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and his fellow Nature co-authors conducted their in-depth genetic analysis on 64 child remains recovered from the chultún, along with stable isotope analysis of bone collagen and nitrogen and radiocarbon dating. They compared the genetic data to the genomes from blood samples taken from 68 present-day Maya residents of a nearby town (Tixcacaltuyub).

Most of the children had been sacrificed between 800 to 1000 CE, per the radiocarbon and nitrogen dating. Barquera et al. were surprised to find that all of the remains sampled were male and from the local Maya populations. Nearly one-quarter of those were closely related to at least one other child interred in the chultún, and the related children had similar diets, so were likely raised in the same household. The most surprising discovery: two sets of identical male twins. All this suggests that the Maya selected pairs of male children for sacrificial rituals associated with the chultún.

Ancient Maya DNA shows male kids were sacrificed in pairs at Chichén Itzá Read More »

more-seizures,-intubation-from-microdose-candies:-12-sickened,-10-hospitalized

More seizures, intubation from microdose candies: 12 sickened, 10 hospitalized

CDC, chocolates, diamond shruumz, fda, health, microdose, mushrooms, outbreak, poison, psychelics, Science / /

Potent microdoses —

FDA updates alert after the latest case fell ill on June 9.

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Diamond Shruumz's

Enlarge / Diamond Shruumz’s “extremely potent” infused cones in “sprinkles” flavor.

More people have reported severe poisonings in an ongoing outbreak marked by people seizing and needing to be intubated after consuming microdose candies made by Diamond Shruumz, the Food and Drug Administration reported Tuesday.

There are now at least 12 reported cases across eight states. All 12 people were ill enough to seek medical care, and 10 needed to be hospitalized. The symptoms reported so far include seizures, central nervous system depression (loss of consciousness, confusion, sleepiness), agitation, abnormal heart rates, hyper/hypotension, nausea, and vomiting, the FDA reported.

In Tuesday’s update, the FDA also expanded the products linked to the illnesses. In addition to all flavors of Diamond Shruumz’s Microdosing Chocolate Bars, the agency’s warning now covers all flavors of the brand’s Infused Cones and Micro Dose and Macro Dose Gummies.

According to the FDA, the most recent case fell ill on June 9. On June 7, the FDA issued its initial warning on Diamond Shruumz’s chocolates, reporting that eight people had been sickened in four states, with six people hospitalized. The agency advised the public not to sell, serve, buy, or consume the chocolates and instead discard them.

The candies are available nationwide. They are sold online—where they remain available for purchase as of Tuesday evening—and can also be found in various retail locations throughout the US, including smoke/vape shops and retailers that sell hemp-derived products.

The current tally of cases includes one from Alabama, four from Arizona, two from Indiana, one from Kentucky, one from Missouri, one from Nevada, one from Pennsylvania, and one from South Carolina.

Diamond Schruumz has not responded to multiple requests for comment from Ars. The New York Times also reported that the company was unresponsive.

It remains unclear what exactly is in the candies and what could cause such severe toxicity. The company does not provide ingredient lists for its products on its website. The term “microdosing” typically suggests a small amount of psychedelic compound is present, and Diamond Shruumz markets its products as “trippy,” “psychedelic,” and “hallucinogenic.” But lab reports posted on Diamond Shruumz’s website indicate that its candies do not contain the notable mushroom-derived psychedelic compound, psilocybin.

The company only says that its candies contain a “primo proprietary blend of nootropic and functional mushrooms.” Nootropics are compounds said to affect cognition, though supplement makers have used the term dubiously in marketing.

In an April 2023 blog, Diamond Shruumz said its chocolate bars contain a blend of Lion’s mane, Reishi, and Chaga mushrooms, which are all non-hallucinogenic mushrooms used in herbal and traditional medicines and supplements. “Lion’s mane is a natural nootropic that can enhance cognitive function, while Reishi is an adaptogen that helps the body adapt to stress and boosts the immune system,” the company claimed. “Finally, Chaga is rich in antioxidants and can help reduce inflammation in the body.”

The FDA, along with America’s Poison Centers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is still investigating the cases and working to determine the cause. In a response to an inquiry from Ars, the FDA declined to comment on whether it is in contact with the company and if it is recommending a voluntary recall.

6/12/2024 3: 50pm ET: This story was updated to include the response from the FDA. 

More seizures, intubation from microdose candies: 12 sickened, 10 hospitalized Read More »

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Let’s unpack some questions about Russia’s role in North Korea’s rocket program

kim jong-un, launch, North Korea, russia, Science, Space, vladimir putin / /
In this pool photo distributed by Sputnik agency, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur region in 2023. An RD-191 engine is visible in the background.

Enlarge / In this pool photo distributed by Sputnik agency, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur region in 2023. An RD-191 engine is visible in the background.

Vladimir Smirnov/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin will reportedly visit North Korea later this month, and you can bet collaboration on missiles and space programs will be on the agenda.

The bilateral summit in Pyongyang will follow a mysterious North Korean rocket launch on May 27, which ended in a fireball over the Yellow Sea. The fact that this launch fell short of orbit is not unusual—two of the country’s three previous satellite launch attempts failed. But North Korea’s official state news agency dropped some big news in the last paragraph of its report on the May 27 launch.

The Korean Central News Agency called the launch vehicle a “new-type satellite carrier rocket” and attributed the likely cause of the failure to “the reliability of operation of the newly developed liquid oxygen + petroleum engine” on the first stage booster. A small North Korean military spy satellite was destroyed. The fiery demise of the North Korean rocket was captured in a video recorded by the Japanese news broadcaster NHK.

Petroleum almost certainly means kerosene, a refined petroleum fuel used on a range of rockets, including SpaceX’s Falcon 9, United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V, and Russia’s Soyuz and Angara.

“The North Koreans are clearly toying with us,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “They went out of their way to tell us what the propellant was, which is very deliberate because it’s a short statement and they don’t normally do that. They made a point of doing that, so I suspect they want us to be wondering what’s going on.”

Surprise from Sohae

Veteran observers of North Korea’s rocket program anticipated the country’s next satellite launch would use the same Chollima-1 rocket it used on three flights last year. But North Korea’s official statement suggests this was something different, and entirely unexpected, at least by anyone without access to classified information.

Ahead of the launch, North Korea released warning notices outlining the drop zones downrange where sections of the rocket would fall into the sea after lifting off from Sohae Satellite Launching Station on the country’s northwestern coast.

A day before the May 27 launch, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported a “large number of Russian experts” entered North Korea to support the launch effort. A senior South Korean defense official told Yonhap that North Korea staged more rocket engine tests than expected during the run-up to the May 27 flight.

Then, North Korea announced that this wasn’t just another flight of the Chollima-1 rocket but something new. The Chollima 1 used the same mix of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants as North Korea’s ballistic missiles. This combination of toxic propellants has the benefit of simplicity—these liquids are hypergolic, meaning they combust upon contact with one another. No ignition source is needed.

A television monitor at a train station in South Korea shows an image of the launch of North Korea's Chollima-1 rocket last year.

Enlarge / A television monitor at a train station in South Korea shows an image of the launch of North Korea’s Chollima-1 rocket last year.

Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Kerosene and liquid oxygen are nontoxic and more fuel-efficient. But liquid oxygen has to be kept at super-cold temperatures, requiring special handling and insulation to prevent boil-off as it is loaded into the rocket.

Let’s unpack some questions about Russia’s role in North Korea’s rocket program Read More »

polarized-light-yields-fresh-insight-into-mysterious-fast-radio-bursts

Polarized light yields fresh insight into mysterious fast radio bursts

astronomy, astrophysics, CHIME, fast radio bursts, Physics, Science / /

CHIME-ing in —

Scientists looked at how polarization changed direction to learn more about origins

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Artist’s rendition of how the angle of polarized light from an FRB changes as it journeys through space.

Enlarge / Artist’s rendition of how the angle of polarized light from a fast radio burst changes as it journeys through space.

CHIME/Dunlap Institute

Astronomers have been puzzling over the origins of mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) since the first one was spotted in 2007. Researchers now have their first look at non-repeating FRBs, i.e., those that have only produced a single burst of light to date. The authors of a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal looked specifically at the properties of polarized light emitting from these FRBs, yielding further insight into the origins of the phenomenon. The analysis supports the hypothesis that there are different origins for repeating and non-repeating FRBs.

“This is a new way to analyze the data we have on FRBs. Instead of just looking at how bright something is, we’re also looking at the angle of the light’s vibrating electromagnetic waves,” said co-author Ayush Pandhi, a graduate student at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics. “It gives you additional information about how and where that light is produced and what it has passed through on its journey to us over many millions of light years.”

As we’ve reported previously, FRBs involve a sudden blast of radio-frequency radiation that lasts just a few microseconds. Astronomers have over a thousand of them to date; some come from sources that repeatedly emit FRBs, while others seem to burst once and go silent. You can produce this sort of sudden surge of energy by destroying something. But the existence of repeating sources suggests that at least some of them are produced by an object that survives the event. That has led to a focus on compact objects, like neutron stars and black holes—especially a class of neutron stars called magnetars—as likely sources.

There have also been many detected FRBs that don’t seem to repeat at all, suggesting that the conditions that produced them may destroy their source. That’s consistent with a blitzar—a bizarre astronomical event caused by the sudden collapse of an overly massive neutron star. The event is driven by an earlier merger of two neutron stars; this creates an unstable intermediate neutron star, which is kept from collapsing immediately by its rapid spin.

In a blitzar, the strong magnetic fields of the neutron star slow down its spin, causing it to collapse into a black hole several hours after the merger. That collapse suddenly deletes the dynamo powering the magnetic fields, releasing their energy in the form of a fast radio burst.

So the events we’ve been lumping together as FRBs could actually be the product of two different events. The repeating events occur in the environment around a magnetar. The one-shot events are triggered by the death of a highly magnetized neutron star within a few hours of its formation. Astronomers announced the detection of a possible blitzar potentially associated with an FRB last year.

Only about 3 percent of FRBs are of the repeating variety. Per Pandhi, this is the first analysis of the other 97 percent of non-repeating FRBs, using data from Canada’s CHIME instrument (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment). CHIME was built for other observations but is sensitive to many of the wavelengths that make up an FRB. Unlike most radio telescopes, which focus on small points in the sky, CHIME scans a huge area, allowing it to pick out FRBs even though they almost never happen in the same place twice.

Pandhi et al. decided to investigate how the direction of the light polarization from 128 non-repeating FRBs changes to learn more about the environments in which they originated. The team found that the polarized light from non-repeating FRBs changes both with time and with different colors of light. They concluded that this particular sample of non-repeating FRBs is either a separate population or more evolved versions of these kinds of FRBs that are part of a population that originated in less extreme environments with lower burst rates. That’s in keeping with the notion that non-repeating FRBs are quite different from their rarer repeating FRBs.

The Astrophysical Journal, 2024. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad40aa  (About DOIs).

Polarized light yields fresh insight into mysterious fast radio bursts Read More »

as-nasa-watches-starship-closely,-here’s-what-the-agency-wants-to-see-next

As NASA watches Starship closely, here’s what the agency wants to see next

Science, Space / /

Target and Chaser —

“What happens if I don’t have a Human Landing System available to execute a mission?”

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The rocket for SpaceX's fourth full-scale Starship test flight awaits liftoff from Starbase, the company's private launch base in South Texas.

Enlarge / The rocket for SpaceX’s fourth full-scale Starship test flight awaits liftoff from Starbase, the company’s private launch base in South Texas.

SpaceX

Few people were happier with the successful outcome of last week’s test flight of SpaceX’s Starship launch system than a NASA engineer named Catherine Koerner.

In remarks after the spaceflight, Koerner praised the “incredible” video of the Starship rocket and its Super Heavy booster returning to Earth, with each making a soft landing. “That was very promising, and a very, very successful engineering test,” she added, speaking at a meeting of the Space Studies Board.

A former flight director, Koerner now manages development of the “exploration systems” that will support the Artemis missions for NASA—a hugely influential position within the space agency. This includes the Space Launch System rocket, NASA’s Orion spacecraft, spacesuits, and the Starship vehicle that will land on the Moon.

In recent months, NASA officials like Koerner have been grappling with the reality that not all of this hardware is likely to be ready for the planned September 2026 launch date for the Artemis III mission. In particular, the agency is concerned about Starship’s readiness as a “Human Landing System.” While SpaceX is pressing forward rapidly with a test campaign, there is still a lot of work to be done to get the vehicle down to the lunar surface and safely back into lunar orbit.

A spare tire

For these reasons, as Ars previously reported, NASA and SpaceX are planning for the possibility of modifying the Artemis III mission. Instead of landing on the Moon, a crew would launch in the Orion spacecraft and rendezvous with Starship in low-Earth orbit. This would essentially be a repeat of the Apollo 9 mission, buying down risk and providing a meaningful stepping stone between Artemis missions.

Officially, NASA maintains that the agency will fly a crewed lunar landing, the Artemis III mission, in September 2026. But almost no one in the space community regards that launch date as more than aspirational. Some of my best sources have put the most likely range of dates for such a mission from 2028 to 2032. A modified Artemis III mission, in low-Earth orbit, would therefore bridge a gap between Artemis II and an eventual landing.

Koerner has declined interview requests from Ars to discuss this, but during the Space Studies Board, she acknowledged seeing these reports on modifying Artemis III. She was then asked directly whether there was any validity to them. Here is her response in full:

So here’s what I’ll tell you, if you’ll permit me an analogy. I have in my car a spare tire, right? I don’t have a spare steering wheel. I don’t have spare windshield wipers. I have a spare tire. And why? Why do we carry a spare tire? That someone, at some point, did an assessment and said in order for this vehicle to accomplish its mission, there is a certain likelihood that some things may fail and a certain likelihood that other things may not fail, and it’s probably prudent to have a spare tire. I don’t necessarily need to have a spare steering wheel, right?

We at NASA do a lot of those kinds of assessments. Like, what happens if this isn’t available? What happens if that isn’t available? Do we have backup plans for that? We’re always doing those kinds of backup plans. Do we have backup plans? It’s imperative for me to look at what happens if an Orion spacecraft is not ready to do a mission. What happens if I don’t have an SLS ready to do a mission? What happens if I don’t have a Human Landing System available to execute a mission? What happens if I don’t have Gateway that I was planning on to do a mission?

So we look at backup plans all the time. There are lots of different opportunities for that. We have not made any changes to the current plan as I outlined it here today and talked about that. But we have lots of people who are looking at lots of different backup plans so that we are doing due diligence and making sure that we have the spare tire if we need the spare tire. It’s the reason we have, for example, two systems now that we’re developing for the Human Landing System, the one for SpaceX and the other one from Blue Origin. It’s the reason we have two providers that are building spacesuit hardware. Collins as well as Axiom, right? So we always are doing that kind of thing.

That is a long way of saying that if SpaceX’s Starship is not ready in 2026, NASA is actively considering alternative plans. (The most likely of these would be an Orion-Starship docking in low-Earth orbit.) NASA has not made any final plans and is waiting to see how Artemis II progresses and what happens with Starship and spacesuit development.

What SpaceX needs to demonstrate

During her remarks, Koerner was also asked what SpaceX’s next major milestone is and when it would need to be completed for NASA to remain on track for a lunar landing in 2026. “Their next big milestone test, from a contract perspective, is the cryogenic transfer test,” she said. “That is going to be early next year.”

Some details about the Starship propellant transfer test.

Enlarge / Some details about the Starship propellant transfer test.

NASA

This timeline is consistent with what NASA’s Human Landing System program manager, Lisa Watson-Morgan recently told Ars. It provides a useful benchmark to evaluate Starship’s progress in NASA’s eyes. The “prop transfer demo” is a fairly complex mission that involves the launch of a “Starship target” from the Starbase facility in South Texas. Then a second vehicle, the “Starship chaser,” will launch and meet the target in orbit and rendezvous. The chaser will then transfer a quantity of propellant to the target spaceship.

The test will entail a lot of technology, including docking mechanisms, navigation sensors, quick disconnects, and more. If SpaceX completes this test during the first quarter of 2025, NASA will at least theoretically have a path forward to a crewed lunar landing in 2026.

As NASA watches Starship closely, here’s what the agency wants to see next Read More »

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Stoke Space ignites its ambitious main engine for the first time

Science, Space, stoke space / /

Get stoked! —

“This industry is going toward full reusability. To me, that is the inevitable end state.”

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A drone camera captures the hotfire test of Stoke Space's full-flow staged combustion engine at the company's testing facility in early June.

Enlarge / A drone camera captures the hotfire test of Stoke Space’s full-flow staged combustion engine at the company’s testing facility in early June.

Stoke Space

On Tuesday, Stoke Space announced the firing of its first stage rocket engine for the first time earlier this month, briefly igniting it for about two seconds. The company declared the June 5 test a success because the engine performed nominally and will be fired up again soon.

“Data point one is that the engine is still there,” said Andy Lapsa, chief executive of the Washington-based launch company, in an interview with Ars.

The test took place at the company’s facilities in Moses Lake, Washington. Seven of these methane-fueled engines, each intended to have a thrust of 100,000 pounds of force, will power the company’s Nova rocket. This launch vehicle will have a lift capacity of about 5 metric tons to orbit. Lapsa declined to declare a target launch date, but based on historical developmental programs, if Stoke continues to move fast, it could fly Nova for the first time in 2026.

Big ambitions for a small company

Although it remains relatively new in the field of emerging launch companies, Stoke has gathered a lot of attention because of its bold ambitions. The company intends for the two-stage Nova rocket to be fully reusable, with both stages returning to Earth. To achieve a vertical landing, the second stage has a novel design. This oxygen-hydrogen engine is based on a ring of 30 thrusters and a regeneratively cooled heat shield.

Lapsa and Stoke, which now has 125 employees, have also gone for an ambitious design in the first-stage engine tested earlier this month. The engine, with a placeholder name of S1E, is based on full-flow, stage-combustion technology in which the liquid propellants are burned in the engine’s pre-burners. Because of this, they arrive in the engine’s combustion chamber in fully gaseous form, leading to a more efficient mixing.

Such an engine—this technology has only previously been demonstrated in flight by SpaceX’s Raptor engine, on the Starship rocket—is more efficient and should theoretically extend turbine life. But it is also technically demanding to develop, and among the most complex engine designs for a rocket company to begin with. This is not rocket science. It’s exceptionally hard rocket science.

It may seem like Stoke is biting off a lot more than it can chew with Nova’s design. Getting to space is difficult enough for a launch startup, but this company is seeking to build a fully reusable rocket with a brand new second stage design and a first stage engine based on full-flow, staged combustion. I asked Lapsa if he was nuts for taking all of this on.

Are these guys nuts?

“I’ve been around long enough to know that any rocket development program is hard, even if you make it as simple as possible,” he responded. “But this industry is going toward full reusability. To me, that is the inevitable end state. When you start with that north star, any other direction you take is a diversion. If you start designing anything else, it’s not something where you can back into full reusability at any point. It means you’ll have to stop and start over to climb the mountain.”

This may sound like happy talk, but Stoke appears to be delivering on its ambitions. Last September, the company completed a successful “hop” test of its second stage at Moses Lake. This validated its design, thrust vector control, and avionics.

This engine is designed to power the Nova rocket.

Enlarge / This engine is designed to power the Nova rocket.

Stoke Space

After this test, the company turned its focus to developing the S1E engine and put it on the test stand for the first time in April before the first test firing in June. Going from zero to 350,000 horsepower in half a second for the first time had a “pretty high pucker factor,” Lapsa said of the first fully integrated engine test.

Now that this initial test is complete, Stoke will spend the rest of the year maturing the design of the engine, conducting longer test firings, and starting to develop flight stages. After that will come stage tests before the complete Nova vehicle is assembled. At the same time, Stoke is also working with the US Space Force on the regulatory process of refurbishing and modernizing Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Stoke Space ignites its ambitious main engine for the first time Read More »

neutrinos:-the-inscrutable-“ghost-particles”-driving-scientists-crazy

Neutrinos: The inscrutable “ghost particles” driving scientists crazy

Features, neutrinos, Science / /

ghostly experiments —

They hold the keys to new physics. If only we could understand them.

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The Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan.

Enlarge / The Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research), the University of Tokyo

Somehow, neutrinos went from just another random particle to becoming tiny monsters that require multi-billion-dollar facilities to understand. And there’s just enough mystery surrounding them that we feel compelled to build those facilities since neutrinos might just tear apart the entire particle physics community at the seams.

It started out innocently enough. Nobody asked for or predicted the existence of neutrinos, but there they were in our early particle experiments. Occasionally, heavy atomic nuclei spontaneously—and for no good reason—transform themselves, with either a neutron converting into a proton or vice-versa. As a result of this process, known as beta decay, the nucleus also emits an electron or its antimatter partner, the positron.

There was just one small problem: Nothing added up. The electrons never came out of the nucleus with the same energy; it was a little different every time. Some physicists argued that our conceptions of the conservation of energy only held on average, but that didn’t feel so good to say out loud, so others argued that perhaps there was another, hidden particle participating in the transformations. Something, they argued, had to sap energy away from the electron in a random way to explain this.

Eventually, that little particle got a name, the neutrino, an Italian-ish word meaning “little neutral one.” Whatever the neutrino was, it didn’t carry any electric charge and only participated in the weak nuclear force, so we only saw neutrinos at work in radioactive decay processes. But even with the multitude of decays with energies great and small happening all across the Universe every single second, the elusive nature of neutrinos meant we could only occasionally, rarely, weakly see them.

But see them we did (although it took 25 years), and for a while, we could just pretend that nothing was wrong. The neutrino was just another particle the Universe didn’t strictly need to give us but somehow stubbornly insisted on giving us anyway.

And then we discovered there wasn’t just one neutrino but three of them. For reasons the cosmos has yet to divulge to us, it likes to organize its particles into groups of three, known as generations. Take a nice, stable, regular fundamental particle, like an electron or an up or down quark—those particles represent the first generation. The other two generations share the same properties (like spin and electric charge) but have a heavier mass.

For the electron, we have its generational sibling, the muon, which is just like the electron but 200 times heavier, and the tau, which is also just like the electron but 3,500 times heavier (that’s heavier than a proton). For the down quark, we have its siblings, the “strange” and “bottom” quarks. And we call the heavier versions of the up quark the “charm” and “top” quarks. Why does the Universe do this? Why three generations with these masses? As I said, the cosmos has chosen not to reveal that to us (yet).

So there are three generations of neutrinos, named for the kinds of interactions they participate in. Some nuclear reactions involve only the first generation of particles (which are the most common by far), the up and down quarks, and the electrons. Here, electron-neutrinos are involved. When muons play around, muon-neutrinos come out, too. And no points will be awarded for guessing the name of the neutrinos associated with tau particle interactions.

All this is… fine. Aside from the burning mystery of the existence of particle generations in the first place, it would be a bit greedy for one neutrino to participate in all possible reactions. So it has to share the job with two other generations. It seemed odd, but it all worked.

And then we discovered that neutrinos had mass, and the whole thing blew up.

Neutrinos: The inscrutable “ghost particles” driving scientists crazy Read More »

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Planned nuclear fuel has higher proliferation risks than thought

Energy, nuclear power, nuclear proliferation, Science, uranium / /
A lump of rock, next to the periodic table entry for uranium, all against a black background.

High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) has been touted as the go-to fuel for powering next-gen nuclear reactors, which include the sodium-cooled TerraPower or the space-borne system powering Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO). That’s because it was supposed to offer higher efficiency while keeping uranium enrichment “well below the threshold needed for weapons-grade material,” according to the US Department of Energy.

This justified huge government investments in HALEU production in the US and UK, as well as relaxed security requirements for facilities using it as fuel. But now, a team of scientists has published an article in Science that argues that you can make a nuclear bomb using HALEU.

“I looked it up and DRACO space reactor will use around 300 kg of HALEU. This is marginal, but I would say you could make one a weapon with that much,” says Edwin Lyman, the director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author of the paper.

Forgotten threats

“When uranium is mined out of the ground, it’s mostly a mixture of two isotopes: uranium-238 and uranium-235. Uranium 235 concentrations are below one percent,” says Lyman. This is sent through an enrichment process, usually in gas centrifuges, where it is turned into gaseous form and centrifuged till the two isotopes are separated from each other due to their slight difference in their atomic weights. This can produce uranium with various levels of enrichment. Material that’s under 10 percent uranium-235 is called low-enriched uranium (LEU) and is used in power reactors working today. Moving the enrichment level up to between 10 and 20 percent, we get HALEU; above 20 percent, we start talking about highly enriched uranium, which can reach over 90 percent enrichment for uses like nuclear weapons.

“Historically, 20 percent has been considered a threshold between highly enriched uranium and low enriched uranium and, over time, that’s been associated with the limit of what is usable in nuclear weapons and what isn’t. But the truth is that threshold is not really a limit of weapons usability,” says Lyman. And we knew that since long time ago.

A study assessing the weaponization potential of uranium with different enrichment levels was done by the Los Alamos National Laboratory back in 1954. The findings were clear: Uranium enriched up to 10 percent was no good for weapons, regardless of how much of it you had. HALEU, though, was found to be of “weapons significance,” provided a sufficient amount was available. “My sense is that once they established 20 percent is somewhat acceptable, and given the material is weapons-usable only when you have enough of it, they just thought we’d need to limit the quantities and we’d be okay. That sort of got baked into the international security framework for uranium because there was not that much HALEU,” says Lyman. The Los Alamos study recommended releasing 100 kg of uranium enriched to up to 20 percent for research purposes in other countries, as they didn’t think 100 kg could lead to any nuclear threats.

The question that wasn’t answered at the time was how much was too much.

Planned nuclear fuel has higher proliferation risks than thought Read More »

bird-flu-virus-from-texas-human-case-kills-100%-of-ferrets-in-cdc-study

Bird flu virus from Texas human case kills 100% of ferrets in CDC study

animal experiments, bird flu, CDC, dairy cows, Ferrets, H5N1, Infectious disease, respiratory transmission, Science, texas, Transmission / /

Animal study —

H5N1 bird flu viruses have shown to be lethal in ferret model before.

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Bird flu virus from Texas human case kills 100% of ferrets in CDC study

The strain of H5N1 bird flu isolated from a dairy worker in Texas was 100 percent fatal in ferrets used to model influenza illnesses in humans. However, the virus appeared inefficient at spreading via respiratory droplets, according to newly released study results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The data confirms that H5N1 infections are significantly different from seasonal influenza viruses that circulate in humans. Those annual viruses make ferrets sick but are not deadly. They have also shown to be highly efficient at spreading via respiratory droplets, with 100 percent transmission rates in laboratory settings. In contrast, the strain from the Texas man (A/Texas/37/2024) appeared to have only a 33 percent transmission rate via respiratory droplets among ferrets.

“This suggests that A/Texas/37/2024-like viruses would need to undergo changes to spread efficiently by droplets through the air, such as from coughs and sneezes,” the CDC said in its data summary. The agency went on to note that “efficient respiratory droplet spread, like what is seen with seasonal influenza viruses, is needed for sustained person-to-person spread to happen.”

In the CDC’s study, researchers infected six ferrets with A/Texas/37/2024. The CDC’s data summary did not specify how the ferrets were infected in this study, but in other recent ferret H5N1 studies, the animals were infected by putting the virus in their noses. Ars has reached out to the agency for clarity on the inoculation route in the latest study and will update the story with any additional information provided.

All six of the infected ferrets developed severe disease and died. To test how well the virus could spread among the ferrets, the CDC scientists set up experiments to test transmission through direct contact and respiratory droplets. For the direct transmission test, three healthy ferrets were placed in the same enclosures with three experimentally infected ferrets. All three healthy ferrets became infected.

For the respiratory transmission test, three healthy ferrets were placed in enclosures next to enclosures containing the experimentally infected animals. The infected and uninfected ferrets shared air, but did not have direct contact with each other. Of the three healthy ferrets, only one contracted the H5N1 virus (33 percent). Additionally, that one respiratory transmission event seemed to have a one- to two-day delay compared with what’s seen in the same test with seasonal influenza viruses. This suggests further that the virus is inefficient at respiratory transmission.

The CDC called the overall results “not surprising.” Previous ferret experiments with H5N1 isolates—collected prior to the current bird flu outbreak among US dairy cows—have also found that H5N1 is often lethal to ferrets. Likewise, H5N1 isolates collected from Spain and Chile during the current global outbreak also found that the virus was inefficient at spreading via respiratory droplets among ferrets—with rates ranging from 0 percent to 37.5 percent.

For now, the findings don’t affect the CDC’s overall risk assessment for the general public, which is low. However, it does reinforce the risk to those who have contact with infected animals, particularly dairy and poultry farm workers.

To date, there have been four human cases of H5N1 in the US since the current global bird flu outbreak began in 2022—one in a poultry farm worker in 2022 and three in dairy farm workers, all reported between the beginning of April and the end of May this year. So far, the cases have been mild, the CDC noted, but given the results in ferrets, “it is possible that there will be serious illnesses among people,” the agency concluded.

As of June 9, the US Department of Agriculture has confirmed H5N1 in 85 dairy herds and one alpaca farm across 10 states.

Bird flu virus from Texas human case kills 100% of ferrets in CDC study Read More »

the-world’s-largest-fungus-collection-may-unlock-the-mysteries-of-carbon-capture

The world’s largest fungus collection may unlock the mysteries of carbon capture

carbon capture, fungi, Science, syndication / /
Fungus samples are seen on display inside the Fungarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, west London in 2023. The Fungarium was founded in 1879 and holds an estimated 380,000 specimens from the UK.

Enlarge / Fungus samples are seen on display inside the Fungarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, west London in 2023. The Fungarium was founded in 1879 and holds an estimated 380,000 specimens from the UK.

It’s hard to miss the headliners at Kew Gardens. The botanical collection in London is home to towering redwoods and giant Amazonian water lilies capable of holding up a small child. Each spring, its huge greenhouses pop with the Technicolor displays of multiple orchid species.

But for the really good stuff at Kew, you have to look below the ground. Tucked underneath a laboratory at the garden’s eastern edge is the fungarium: the largest collection of fungi anywhere in the world. Nestled inside a series of green cardboard boxes are some 1.3 million specimens of fruiting bodies—the parts of the fungi that appear above ground and release spores.

“This is basically a library of fungi,” says Lee Davies, curator of the Kew fungarium. “What this allows us to do is to come up with a reference of fungal biodiversity—what fungi are out there in the world, where you can find them.” Archivists—wearing mushroom hats for some reason—float between the shelves, busily digitizing the vast archive, which includes around half of all the species known to science.

Fungarium Collections Manager Lee Davies inspects a fungus sample stored within the Fungarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, west London in 2023.

Enlarge / Fungarium Collections Manager Lee Davies inspects a fungus sample stored within the Fungarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, west London in 2023.

In the hierarchy of environmental causes, fungi have traditionally ranked somewhere close to the bottom, Davies says. He himself was brought to the fungarium against his will. Davies was working with tropical plants when a staffing reshuffle brought him to the temperature-controlled environs of the fungarium. “They moved me here in 2014, and it’s amazing. Best thing ever, I love it. It’s been a total conversion.”

Davies’ own epiphany echoes a wider awakening of appreciation for these overlooked organisms. In 2020, mycologist Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures was a surprise bestseller. In the video game and HBO series The Last of Us, it’s a fictional brain-eating fungus from the genus Cordyceps that sends the world into an apocalyptic spiral. (The Kew collection includes a tarantula infected with Cordyceps—fungal tendrils reach out from the soft gaps between the dead insect’s limbs.)

While the wider world is waking up to these fascinating organisms, scientists are getting to grips with the crucial role they play in ecosystems. In a laboratory just above the Kew fungarium, mycologist Laura Martinez-Suz studies how fungi help sequester carbon in the soil, and why some places seem much better at storing soil carbon than others.

Soil is a huge reservoir of carbon. There are around 1.5 trillion tons of organic carbon stored in soils across the world—about twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Scientists used to think that most of this carbon entered the soil when dead leaves and plant matter decomposed, but it’s now becoming clear that plant roots and fungi networks are a critical part of this process. One study of forested islands in Sweden found that the majority of carbon in the forest soil actually came from root-fungi networks, not plant matter fallen from above the ground.

The world’s largest fungus collection may unlock the mysteries of carbon capture Read More »

nasa-is-commissioning-10-studies-on-mars-sample-return—most-are-commercial

NASA is commissioning 10 studies on Mars Sample Return—most are commercial

Mars Sample Return, Science, Space / /

Alternatives —

SpaceX will show NASA how Starship could one day return rock samples from Mars.

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An artist's concept of a Mars Ascent Vehicle orbiting the red planet.

Enlarge / An artist’s concept of a Mars Ascent Vehicle orbiting the red planet.

NASA announced Friday that it will award contracts to seven companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, to study how to transport rock samples from Mars more cheaply back to Earth.

The space agency put out a call to industry in April to propose ideas on how to return the Mars rocks to Earth for less than $11 billion and before 2040, the cost and schedule for NASA’s existing plan for Mars Sample Return (MSR). A NASA spokesperson told Ars the agency received 48 responses to the solicitation and selected seven companies to conduct more detailed studies.

Each company will receive up to $1.5 million for their 90-day studies. Five of the companies chosen by NASA are among the agency’s roster of large contractors, and their inclusion in the study contracts is no surprise. Two other winners are smaller businesses.

Mars Sample Return is the highest priority for NASA’s planetary science division. The Perseverance rover currently on Mars is gathering several dozen specimens of rock powder, soil, and Martian air in cigar-shaped titanium tubes for eventual return to Earth.

“Mars Sample Return will be one of the most complex missions NASA has undertaken, and it is critical that we carry it out more quickly, with less risk, and at a lower cost,” said Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator. “I’m excited to see the vision that these companies, centers and partners present as we look for fresh, exciting, and innovative ideas to uncover great cosmic secrets from the red planet.”

Who’s in?

Lockheed Martin, the only company that has built a spacecraft to successfully land on Mars, will perform “rapid mission design studies for Mars Sample Return,” according to NASA. Northrop Grumman also won a contract for its proposal: “High TRL (Technology Readiness Level) MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) Propulsion Trades and Concept Design for MSR Rapid Mission Design.”

These two companies were partners in developing the solid-fueled Mars Ascent Vehicle for NASA’s existing Mars Sample Return mission. The MAV is the rocket that will propel the capsule containing the rock specimens from the surface of Mars back into space to begin the months-long journey back to Earth. The involvement of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in NASA’s Mars program, along with the study scope suggested in Northrop’s proposal, suggest they will propose applying existing capabilities to solve the program of Mars Sample Return.

Aerojet Rocketdyne, best known as a rocket propulsion supplier, will study a high-performance liquid-fueled Mars Ascent Vehicle using what it says are “highly reliable and mature propulsion technologies, to improve program affordability and schedule.”

SpaceX, a company with a long-term vision for Mars, also won NASA funding for a study contract. Its study proposal was titled “Enabling Mars Sample Return with Starship.” SpaceX is already designing the privately funded Starship rocket with Mars missions in mind, and Elon Musk, the company’s founder, has predicted Starship will land on Mars by the end of the decade.

Musk has famously missed schedule predictions before with Starship, and a landing on the red planet before the end of the 2020s still seems unlikely. However, the giant rocket could enable delivery to Mars and the eventual return of dozens of tons of cargo. A successful test flight of Starship this week proved SpaceX is making progress toward this goal. Still, there’s a long way to go.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, will also receive funding for a study it calls “Leveraging Artemis for Mars Sample Return.”

SpaceX and Blue Origin each have multibillion-dollar contracts with NASA to develop Starship and the Blue Moon lander as human-rated spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface as part of the Artemis program.

Two other small businesses, Quantum Space and Whittinghill Aerospace, will also conduct studies for NASA.

Quantum, which describes itself as a space infrastructure company, was founded in 2021 by entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian, who also founded Intuitive Machines and Axiom Space. No details are known about the scope of its study, known as the “Quantum Anchor Leg Mars Sample Return Study.” Perhaps the “anchor leg” refers to the final stage of returning samples to Earth, like the anchor in a relay race.

Whittinghill Aerospace, based in California, has just a handful of employees. It will perform a rapid design study for a single-stage Mars Ascent Vehicle, NASA said.

Missing from the list of contract winners was Boeing, which has pushed the use of NASA’s super-expensive Space Launch System to do the Mars Sample Return mission with a single launch. Boeing, of course, builds most of the SLS rocket. Most other sample return concepts require multiple launches.

Alongside the seven industry contracts, NASA centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University will also produce studies on how to complete the Mars Sample Return mission more affordablely.

JPL is the lead center in charge of managing NASA’s existing concept for Mars Sample Return in partnership with the European Space Agency. However, cost growth and delays prompted NASA officials to decide in April to take a different approach.

Nicola Fox, head of NASA’s science directorate, said in April that she hopes “out of the box” concepts will allow the agency to get the samples back to Earth in the 2030s rather than in 2040 or later. “This is definitely a very ambitious goal,” she said. “We’re going to need to go after some very innovative new possibilities for a design and certainly leave no stone unturned.”

NASA will use the results of these 10 studies to craft a new approach for Mars Sample Return later this year. Most likely, the architecture NASA ultimately chooses will mix and match various elements from industry, NASA centers, and the European Space Agency, which remains a committed partner on Mars Sample Return with the Earth Return Orbiter.

NASA is commissioning 10 studies on Mars Sample Return—most are commercial Read More »