Science

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China begins launching a megaconstellation, and it sounds a lot like Starlink

broadband, china, launch, Science, Space, starlink, telecom, thousand sails / /

Sailing in LEO —

Like Starlink, China’s Qianfan satellites have an easy-to-pack flat-panel design.

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A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China's Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.

Enlarge / A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.

Chinese officials have long signaled their interest in deploying a satellite network, or maybe several, to beam broadband Internet signals across China and other nations within its sphere of influence.

Two serious efforts are underway in China to develop a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink network, which the Chinese government has banned in its territory. The first batch of 18 satellites for one of those Chinese networks launched into low-Earth orbit Tuesday.

A Long March 6A rocket delivered the 18 spacecraft into a polar orbit following liftoff at 2: 42 am EDT (06: 42 UTC) from the Taiyuan launch base in northern China’s Shanxi province. The Long March 6A is one of China’s newest rockets—and the country’s first to employ strap-on solid rocket boosters—with the ability to deploy a payload of up to 4.5 metric tons (9,900 pounds) into a 700-kilometer (435-mile) Sun-synchronous orbit.

The rocket placed its payload of 18 Qianfan satellites into the proper orbit, and the launch mission was a complete success, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the largest state-owned contractor for the Chinese space program.

Qianfan translates to “Thousand Sails,” and the 18 satellites launched Tuesday are the first of potentially thousands of spacecraft planned by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), a company backed by Shanghai’s municipal government. The network developed by SSST is also called the “Spacesail Constellation.”

Shanghai officials only began releasing details of this constellation last year. A filing with the International Telecommunication Union suggests the developers of Shanghai-based megaconstellation initially plan to deploy 1,296 satellites at an altitude of about 1,160 kilometers (721 miles).

Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, said the constellation “will provide global users with low-latency, high-speed and ultra-reliable satellite broadband Internet services.”

Opening the floodgates?

SSST’s network was previously known as G60 Starlink, referencing a major cross-country highway in China and the project’s intent to imitate SpaceX’s broadband service.

Thousand Sails may eventually consist of more than 14,000 satellites, but like other Internet megaconstellations, the size of the fleet will likely grow at a rate commensurate with demand. It will take many years for SSST to deploy a 14,000-satellite constellation, if it ever does. SpaceX has rolled out several generations of Starlink satellites to offer new services and more capacity to meet customer uptake.

Chinese officials have released few details about the Qianfan satellites. But the project’s backers have said the spacecraft has a “standardized and modular” flat-panel design. “It meets the needs of stacking multiple satellites with one rocket,” said Shanghai Gesi Aerospace Technology, a joint venture set up by SSST and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to oversee manufacturing of Qianfan satellites.

This sounds a lot like the design of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which are flat-packed for launch on Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX pioneered this way of launching and deploying large numbers of satellites. The approach used for Starlink, and apparently for Qianfan, streamlines the integration of multiple satellites with their launcher on the ground. It also simplifies their separation from the rocket once in orbit.

The new Qianfan satellite factory in Shanghai can produce up to 300 spacecraft per year, project officials said in December. Officials previously said the first 108 satellites for the Thousand Sails constellation would launch this year.

SSST announced in February it had raised more than $900 million from Chinese state-backed investment funds, Shanghai’s municipal government, and sources of venture capital. SSST’s origin is linked to a Chinese joint venture with a Germany-based company called KLEO Connect, which intended to develop a smaller constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites for data relay services.

China launched four technology demonstration satellites, purportedly related to the KLEO Connect venture, to test telecom hardware and electric propulsion systems in orbit. The joint venture fell apart with a flurry of lawsuits, and the German government last year blocked a complete takeover of KLEO Connect by its Chinese investors.

Now, SSST is going it alone with the Thousand Sails network. It has rapidly scaled up satellite manufacturing capacity in Shanghai. But outside of Starlink, companies with ideas for megaconstellations have run into serious headwinds.

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in 2020 before eventually launching its entire first-generation network of 633 Internet satellites. Amazon has pushed back the full-scale deployment of its Project Kuiper megaconstellation, and the launch of the first operational Kuiper Internet satellites may be delayed again to 2025. The future of the European Union’s IRIS² satellite Internet network is in doubt after disagreements among European governments on funding the project.

The Thousand Sails constellation is less well-known than another planned Chinese satellite Internet network known as Guowang, or “national network,” which is supported by China’s central government. Guowang is owned by a state-backed company called SatNet, and its architecture will consist of 13,000 satellites. However, China has not yet launched any spacecraft for the Guowang project.

It’s unclear if the Thousand Sails network and the Guowang constellation will be direct competitors. They could be geared to different segments of the broadband market. In either case, China’s restrictive Internet policies with terrestrial networks will likely spill over into the satellite segment.

Chinese officials recognize the military utility of satellite Internet services like Starlink, which has supported Ukrainian military forces fighting Russian troops since 2022. A homegrown Starlink-like service would, no doubt, prove useful for China’s military.

Alongside potential domestic civilian users, China could use its satellite Internet networks as a diplomatic tool to build on existing partnerships between the Chinese government and developing countries. This could “lead to a leapfrogging moment, where African countries opt for the Chinese Internet constellation over Western providers due to the fact that much of their infrastructure is already Chinese-built,” the Royal United Services Institute, a UK think tank, wrote in a report last year.

While there are open questions about how China will use its satellite megaconstellations, their deployment will require a significant increase in the country’s launch capacity, driving the development of new commercial rockets, including reusable boosters, to lower costs and increase their flight rate.

China begins launching a megaconstellation, and it sounds a lot like Starlink Read More »

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After 190 bodies found rotting, funeral home owners ordered to pay $950M

abuse of corpse, covid relief funds, fraud, funeral home, Science / /

Unbelievable —

The owners do not have nearly a billion dollars, so the order is largely symbolic.

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An urn with ashes and a numbered cremation stone that is placed in the coffin of the deceased before the cremation.

Enlarge / An urn with ashes and a numbered cremation stone that is placed in the coffin of the deceased before the cremation.

A Colorado judge has ordered a couple to pay more than $950 million for allegedly giving grieving families urns full of fake ashes and running a bug-infested funeral home facility where 190 improperly stored bodies were found in various states of decay.

The judgment was issued in a civil class-action lawsuit against Jon and Carie Hallford, who owned the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado. It is the first high-profile case against the couple to return a ruling.

The bodies and the extent of the couple’s alleged fraud were discovered late last year after area residents reported a putrid stench emanating from the Penrose facility. The discovery sparked a massive investigation that came to include local, state, and federal investigators and responders. The FBI deployed a team of agents trained to respond to mass casualty events, such as airline crashes.

In addition to the class-action suit, the Hallfords face hundreds of state and federal criminal charges over their allegedly fraudulent funeral services. Specifically, the couple faces 286 charges at the state level, including felony charges of abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering, and forgery, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

At the federal level, they face 13 counts of wire fraud and two additional counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The US Department of Justice alleges that the pair defrauded grieving customers by not providing the cremation and burial services for the deceased as promised, despite collecting more than $130,000 in payments.

“Frustrating”

Further, federal prosecutors also accuse the couple of lying to the US Small Business Administration to obtain nearly $900,000 in COVID relief funds. The false information provided included “misrepresenting the fact that Jon Hallford owed back child support,” the DOJ noted. And the couple allegedly used the ill-gotten business funds to pay for vacations, cosmetic surgery, and jewelry, among other personal expenses, according to unsealed court documents. If convicted on the federal counts, they could both face around seven years in prison.

Last month, the Gazette reported that state authorities offered the Hallfords a plea deal, in which they would plead guilty to 190 counts of abuse of a corpse, Jon would then serve a mandatory sentence of 20 years in prison, and Carie would serve between 15 and 20 years. Affected family members were reportedly upset by the offer, saying they were not informed of the proposed deal ahead of time and did not feel it reflected the egregiousness of the alleged crimes. It’s unclear if the Hallfords have or will take the deal.

As for the nearly $1 billion payout in the class-action case, the judgment is largely symbolic with the expectation that the Hallfords do not have such money.

“I’m never going to get a dime from them, so, I don’t know, it’s a little frustrating,” Crystina Page told the Associated Press. Page paid the Hallfords to cremate her son’s remains in 2019 and received an urn they claimed held his ashes. She carried the urn around the country until his body was discovered in the Penrose location amid the investigation late last year.

On top of the financial disappointment, affected families did not get the opportunity to face the Hallfords in court as they had hoped. Both Hallfords refused to cooperate with the case or show up for hearings.

Jon Hallford is currently in custody pending the outcome of his federal case. Carie Hallford is out on a $100,000 bond.

After 190 bodies found rotting, funeral home owners ordered to pay $950M Read More »

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Indonesia’s tiny hobbits descended from even smaller ancestors

evolution, H. Erectus, H. Florensis, Hobbits, human evolution, paleontology, Science / /

Hobbit erectus? —

A 700,000-year-old humerus suggests small hominins have a long history on Flores.

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Image of a small fossil bone in the palm of a person's hand.

Enlarge / Half of the upper arm bone of this species can fit comfortably in the palm of a modern human hand.

Yousuke Kaifu

The discovery of Homo floresiensis, often termed a hobbit, confused a lot of people. Not only was it tiny in stature, but it shared some features with both Homo erectus and earlier Australopithecus species and lived well after the origin of modern humans. So, its precise position within the hominin family tree has been the subject of ongoing debate—one that hasn’t been clarified by the discovery of the similarly diminutive Homo luzonensis in the Philippines.

Today, researchers are releasing a paper that describes bones from a diminutive hominin that occupied the island of Flores much earlier than the hobbits. And they argue that, while it still shares an odd mix of features, it is most closely related to Homo erectus, the first hominin species to spread across the globe.

Remarkably small

The bones come from a site on Flores called Mata Menge, where the bones were found in a large layer of sediment. Slight wear suggests that many of them were probably brought to the site by a gentle flood. Dating from layers above and below where the fossils were found limits their age to somewhere between 650,000 and 775,000 years ago. Most of the remains are teeth and fragments of jaw bone, which can be suggestive of body size, but not definitive. But the new finds include a fragment of the upper arm bone, the humerus, which is more directly proportional to body size.

The researchers argue that the bone is broken at roughly the mid-point of the humerus, meaning that the full-sized bone was twice its length. Based on the relationship between humerus length and body size, they estimate that the individual it came from was only a bit above a meter tall.

They also took a slice from the center of the sample and imaged the cells present in the bone when it fossilized. These suggest that the fossil came from a fully mature adult. That makes its dimensions, including the diameter of the bone, the smallest yet found. It is, to quote the paper, “smaller than LB1 (H. floresiensis) and any other adult individuals of small-bodied fossil hominins (Australopithecus and H. naledi.” So, even by the standards of small species, the new fossils belong to an extremely small individual.

As for what these individuals are related to, the answers are (once again) complicated. The morphology of the humerus is most closely related to the H. floresiensis individuals who resided on Flores hundreds of thousands of years later. Beyond that, it’s most similar to H. naledi. From there, its shape appears to be equally distant from various species, including both H. erectus and various species of Australopithecus. The teeth show a variety of affinities but are generally closest to members of the Homo genus.

So, the authors make two arguments. One is that the fossils come from the ancestors of the hobbits and belong to the same species, indicating that they inhabited Flores for at least half a million years. The second is that it’s a branch off the population of H. erectus, a species that was similar in stature to modern humans. The population would have evolved a shorter stature once isolated on Flores.

Nothing makes a lot of sense

That’s the argument, at least. There will undoubtedly be different opinions among paleontologists, however. Some had already argued that H. floresiensis was an offshoot of H. erectus and will be happy to accept this as new evidence. But the species is such a hodge-podge of features of earlier and contemporary species that it has been easy for others to make contrary arguments.

Even if those arguments were settled, there’s the issue of how it got there. Even at times of significantly lower sea levels, Flores would have required a significant ocean crossing from what is now Java, where H. erectus is known to have been present, and which was connected to Asia at the time. There’s no indication that any species that came before modern humans had developed boating technology, and some have suggested that the population was established on Flores after being swept there on tsunami debris. Once present, the island environment could have selected for a smaller body size.

But then there’s the issue of Homo luzonensis, which shared a similar body size but inhabited a very different island. That would seem to require a second event that was also unlikely: either a second ocean passage involving individuals from Flores or another ocean trip by H. erectus followed by similar evolution of smaller body size, despite a potentially different environment.

It’s clear that, while the new finds tell us something about the Flores population, they’re not going to settle any arguments.

Nature Communications, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50649-7  (About DOIs).

Indonesia’s tiny hobbits descended from even smaller ancestors Read More »

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NASA likely to significantly delay the launch of Crew 9 due to Starliner issues

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Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is lifted to be placed atop an Atlas V rocket for its first crewed launch.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is lifted to be placed atop an Atlas V rocket for its first crewed launch.

United Launch Alliance

NASA is planning to significantly delay the launch of the Crew 9 mission to the International Space Station due to ongoing concerns about the Starliner spacecraft currently attached to the station.

While the space agency has not said anything publicly, sources say NASA should announce the decision this week. Officials are contemplating moving the Crew-9 mission from its current date of August 18 to September 24, a significant slip.

Nominally, this Crew Dragon mission will carry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, spacecraft commander; Nick Hague, pilot; and Stephanie Wilson, mission specialist; as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, for a six-month journey to the space station. However, NASA has been considering alternatives to the crew lineup—possibly launching with two astronauts instead of four—due to ongoing discussions about the viability of Starliner to safely return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth.

As of late last week, NASA still had not decided whether the Starliner vehicle, which is built and operated by Boeing, should be used to fly its two crew members home. During its launch and ascent to the space station two months ago, five small thrusters on the Starliner spacecraft failed. After extensive ground testing of the thrusters, as well as some brief in-space firings, NASA had planned to make a decision last week on whether to return Starliner with crew. However, a Flight Readiness Review planned for last Thursday was delayed after internal disagreements at NASA about the safety of Starliner.

At issue is the performance of the small reaction control system thrusters in proximity to the space station. If the right combination of them fail before Starliner has moved sufficiently far from the station, Starliner could become uncontrollable and collide with the space station. The thrusters are also needed later in the flight back to Earth to set up the critical de-orbit burn and entry in Earth’s atmosphere.

Software struggles

NASA has quietly been studying the possibility of crew returning in a Dragon for more than a month. As NASA and Boeing engineers have yet to identify a root cause of the thruster failure, the possibility of Wilmore and Williams returning on a Dragon spacecraft has increased in the last 10 days. NASA has consistently said that ‘crew safety’ will be its No. 1 priority in deciding how to proceed.

The Crew 9 delay is relevant to the Starliner dilemma for a couple of reasons. One, it gives NASA more time to determine the flight-worthiness of Starliner. However, there is also another surprising reason for the delay—the need to update Starliner’s flight software. Three separate, well-placed sources have confirmed to Ars that the current flight software on board Starliner cannot perform an automated undocking from the space station and entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

At first blush, this seems absurd. After all, Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test 2 mission in May 2022 was a fully automated test of the Starliner vehicle. During this mission, the spacecraft flew up to the space station without crew on board and then returned to Earth six days later. Although the 2022 flight test was completed by a different Starliner vehicle, it clearly demonstrated the ability of the program’s flight software to autonomously dock and return to Earth. Boeing did not respond to a media query about why this capability was removed for the crew flight test.

NASA likely to significantly delay the launch of Crew 9 due to Starliner issues Read More »

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Path to precision: Targeted cancer drugs go from table to trials to bedside

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Path to precision: Targeted cancer drugs go from table to trials to bedside

Aurich Lawson

In 1972, Janet Rowley sat at her dining room table and cut tiny chromosomes from photographs she had taken in her laboratory. One by one, she snipped out the small figures her children teasingly called paper dolls. She then carefully laid them out in 23 matching pairs—and warned her kids not to sneeze.

The physician-scientist had just mastered a new chromosome-staining technique in a year-long sabbatical at Oxford. But it was in the dining room of her Chicago home where she made the discovery that would dramatically alter the course of cancer research.

Rowley's 1973 partial karyotype showing the 9;22 translocation

Enlarge / Rowley’s 1973 partial karyotype showing the 9;22 translocation

Looking over the chromosomes of a patient with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), she realized that segments of chromosomes 8 and 21 had broken off and swapped places—a genetic trade called a translocation. She looked at the chromosomes of other AML patients and saw the same switch: the 8;21 translocation.

Later that same year, she saw another translocation, this time in patients with a different type of blood cancer, called chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Patients with CML were known to carry a puzzling abnormality in chromosome 22 that made it appear shorter than normal. The abnormality was called the Philadelphia chromosome after its discovery by two researchers in Philadelphia in 1959. But it wasn’t until Rowley pored over her meticulously set dining table that it became clear why chromosome 22 was shorter—a chunk of it had broken off and traded places with a small section of chromosome 9, a 9;22 translocation.

Rowley had the first evidence that genetic abnormalities were the cause of cancer. She published her findings in 1973, with the CML translocation published in a single-author study in Nature. In the years that followed, she strongly advocated for the idea that the abnormalities were significant for cancer. But she was initially met with skepticism. At the time, many researchers considered chromosomal abnormalities to be a result of cancer, not the other way around. Rowley’s findings were rejected from the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. “I got sort of amused tolerance at the beginning,” she said before her death in 2013.

The birth of targeted treatments

But the evidence mounted quickly. In 1977, Rowley and two of her colleagues at the University of Chicago identified another chromosomal translocation—15;17—that causes a rare blood cancer called acute promyelocytic leukemia. By 1990, over 70 translocations had been identified in cancers.

The significance mounted quickly as well. Following Rowley’s discovery of the 9;22 translocation in CML, researchers figured out that the genetic swap creates a fusion of two genes. Part of the ABL gene normally found on chromosome 9 becomes attached to the BCR gene on chromosome 22, creating the cancer-driving BCR::ABL fusion gene on chromosome 22. This genetic merger codes for a signaling protein—a tyrosine kinase—that is permanently stuck in “active” mode. As such, it perpetually triggers signaling pathways that lead white blood cells to grow uncontrollably.

Schematic of the 9;22 translocation and the creation of the BCR::ABL fusion gene.

Enlarge / Schematic of the 9;22 translocation and the creation of the BCR::ABL fusion gene.

By the mid-1990s, researchers had developed a drug that blocks the BCR-ABL protein, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) called imatinib. For patients in the chronic phase of CML—about 90 percent of CML patients—imatinib raised the 10-year survival rate from less than 50 percent to a little over 80 percent. Imatinib (sold as Gleevec or Glivec) earned approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 2001, marking the first approval for a cancer therapy targeting a known genetic alteration.

With imatinib’s success, targeted cancer therapies—aka precision medicine—took off. By the early 2000s, there was widespread interest among researchers to precisely identify the genetic underpinnings of cancer. At the same time, the revolutionary development of next-generation genetic sequencing acted like jet fuel for the soaring field. The technology eased the identification of mutations and genetic abnormalities driving cancers. Sequencing is now considered standard care in the diagnosis, treatment, and management of many cancers.

The development of gene-targeting cancer therapies skyrocketed. Classes of TKIs, like imatinib, expanded particularly fast. There are now over 50 FDA-approved TKIs targeting a wide variety of cancers. For instance, the TKIs lapatinib, neratinib, tucatinib, and pyrotinib target human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which runs amok in some breast and gastric cancers. The TKI ruxolitinib targets Janus kinase 2, which is often mutated in the rare blood cancer myelofibrosis and the slow-growing blood cancer polycythemia vera. CML patients, meanwhile, now have five TKI therapies to choose from.

Path to precision: Targeted cancer drugs go from table to trials to bedside Read More »

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Historic flooding possible as TS Debby bears down on southeastern United States

flood storm, hurricanes, Science, tropical storm debby / /

Not so little Debby —

Tropical rainfall and training bands, it’s going to be a soggy mess.

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Satellite image of Tropical Storm Debby on Sunday morning.

Enlarge / Satellite image of Tropical Storm Debby on Sunday morning.

NOAA

As often happens during the month of July, the Atlantic tropics entered a lull after Hurricane Beryl struck Texas and short-lived Tropical Storm Chris moved into Mexico. But now, with African dust diminishing from the atmosphere and August well under way, the oceans have awoken.

Tropical Storm Debby formed this weekend, and according to forecasters with the National Hurricane Center, the system is likely to reach Category 1 hurricane status before making landfall along the coastal bend of western Florida on Monday.

As hurricanes go, this is not the most threatening storm the Sunshine State has seen in recent years. Yes, no one likes a hurricane, or the storm surge it brings. But Debby is likely to strike a relatively unpopulated area of Florida, venting much of its fury on preserves and wildlife areas. This won’t be pleasant by any means, but as hurricanes go this one should be fairly manageable from a wind and surge standpoint.

Major flood storm expected

But there is a far larger threat from Debby that will unfold well into next week over the southeastern United States—a major flood storm. Historic flooding is likely in areas of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

Debby is motoring along to the north-northwest at a fairly good clip as of Sunday morning, at 13 mph. This is a fairly common path for hurricanes as they skirt around the edge of high-pressure systems. Then, when they gain a sufficient amount of latitude—as Debby is now doing—they turn poleward and eventually move toward the northeast.

Debby is expected to meander next week.

Debby is expected to meander next week.

National Hurricane Center

And this is just what Debby is likely to do through about Monday. However, after this time it appears that high pressure building over the central Atlantic Ocean will strengthen enough to block an escape path for Debby to the northeast. Should this occur, it will bottle up the storm in the vicinity of the Georgia and Carolina coasts for two or three days.

There remains a lot of uncertainty about just where Debby will go after striking Florida. Most likely it crosses Georgia on Tuesday and, then its center may reemerge into the Atlantic Ocean. Regardless, its center will likely be near, or just offshore. From there it will be able to tap into very warm seas, in the vicinity of 83 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

In such a pattern, with a nearly stationary storm, rainfall bands can be continually replenished by moisture drawn in from the ocean. This produces intense tropical rainfall and “training” in which a band of rainfall more or less comes to rest over a given area, fed by offshore moisture.

Because we are still a few days from this pattern setting up, and due to the uncertainty in Debby’s path, we cannot say precisely where the heaviest rains will occur. However the Weather Prediction Center, the arm of the National Weather Service tasked with predicting rainfall amounts, is forecasting some pretty staggering totals for the period of now through Friday.

Rainfall accumulation forecast for next week from NOAA.

Enlarge / Rainfall accumulation forecast for next week from NOAA.

WeatherBell

From Savannah, Georgia, north through Hilton Head Island and Charleston, South Carolina, the Weather Prediction Center is calling for accumulations of 20 to 25 inches, with higher totals possible in some areas. Moreover, it is possible that these high rainfall totals extend dozens of miles inland.

The African wave train gets rolling

Parts of Florida and North Carolina may also see extremely high rainfall totals over the next several days, due to the uncertainty in Debby’s motion.

And that is not all. As we get deeper into August, tropical waves are starting to fire off of the west coast of Africa. One of these is now approaching the Windward Islands, and should move into the Caribbean Sea next week. There, it has a chance of developing into a tropical storm, or more. This is likely the beginning of a period of frenetic activity characteristic of August, September, and the first half of October in the Atlantic tropics.

All of this is in line with expectations from forecasters for an exceptionally busy Atlantic hurricane season. This is due both to an anomalously warm Atlantic Ocean—seas fueled by climate change are at all-time highs in the modern era—and the imminent development of La Niña in the Pacific Ocean, which creates conditions favorable for the development of hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

Historic flooding possible as TS Debby bears down on southeastern United States Read More »

data-centers-demand-a-massive-amount-of-energy-here’s-how-some-states-are-tackling-the-industry’s-impact.

Data centers demand a massive amount of energy. Here’s how some states are tackling the industry’s impact.

data centers, Policy, Science, syndication / /

rethinking incentives —

States that offer tax exemptions to support the industry are reconsidering their approach.

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A Google data center in Douglas County, Georgia.

A Google data center in Douglas County, Georgia.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Seattle Times. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

When lawmakers in Washington set out to expand a lucrative tax break for the state’s data center industry in 2022, they included what some considered an essential provision: a study of the energy-hungry industry’s impact on the state’s electrical grid.

Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed that provision but let the tax break expansion go forward. As The Seattle Times and ProPublica recently reported, the industry has continued to grow and now threatens Washington’s effort to eliminate carbon emissions from electricity generation.

Washington’s experience with addressing the power demand of data centers parallels the struggles playing out in other states around the country where the industry has rapidly grown and tax breaks are a factor.

Virginia, home to the nation’s largest data center market, once debated running data centers on carbon-emitting diesel generators during power shortages to keep the lights on in the area. (That plan faced significant public pushback from environmental groups, and an area utility is exploring other options.)

Dominion Energy, the utility that serves most of Virginia’s data centers, has said that it intends to meet state requirements to decarbonize the grid by 2045, but that the task would be more challenging with rising demands driven largely by data centers, Inside Climate News reported. The utility also has indicated that new natural gas plants will be needed.

Some Virginia lawmakers and the state’s Republican governor have proposed reversing or dramatically altering the clean energy goals.

A northern Virginia lawmaker instead proposed attaching strings to the state’s data center tax break. This year, he introduced legislation saying data centers would only qualify if they maximized energy efficiency and found renewable resources. The bill died in Virginia’s General Assembly. But the state authorized a study of the industry and how tax breaks impact the grid.

“If we’re going to have data centers, which we all know to be huge consumers of electricity, let’s require them to be as efficient as possible,” said state Delegate Richard “Rip” Sullivan Jr., the Democrat who sponsored the original bill. “Let’s require them to use as little energy as possible to do their job.”

Inslee’s 2022 veto of a study similar to Virginia’s cited the fact that Northwest power planners already include data centers in their estimates of regional demand. But supporters of the legislation said their goal was to obtain more precise answers about Washington-specific electricity needs.

Georgia lawmakers this year passed a bill to halt the state’s data center tax break until data center power use could be analyzed. In the meantime, according to media reports, the state’s largest utility said it would use fossil fuels to make up an energy shortfall caused in part by data centers. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp then vetoed the tax break pause in May.

Lawmakers in Connecticut and South Carolina have also debated policies to tackle data center power usage in the past year.

“Maybe we want to entice more of them to come. I just want to make sure that we understand the pros and the cons of that before we do it,” South Carolina’s Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said in May, according to the South Carolina Daily Gazette.

Countries such as Ireland, Singapore, and the Netherlands have at times forced data centers to halt construction to limit strains on the power grid, according to a report by the nonprofit Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. The report’s recommendations for addressing data center power usage include encouraging the private sector to invest directly in renewables.

Sajjad Moazeni, a University of Washington professor who studies artificial intelligence and data center power consumption, said states should consider electricity impacts when formulating data center legislation. Moazeni’s recent research found that in just one day, ChatGPT, a popular artificial intelligence tool, used roughly as much power as 33,000 U.S. households use in a year.

“A policy can help both push companies to make these data centers more efficient and preserve a cleaner, better environment for us,” Moazeni said. “Policymakers need to consider a larger set of metrics on power usage and efficiency.”

Eli Sanders contributed research while a student with the Technology, Law and Public Policy Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law.

Data centers demand a massive amount of energy. Here’s how some states are tackling the industry’s impact. Read More »

memo-to-the-supreme-court:-clean-air-act-targeted-co2-as-climate-pollutant,-study-says

Memo to the Supreme Court: Clean Air Act targeted CO2 as climate pollutant, study says

air pollution, climate change, Massachusetts v. EPA, Policy, Science, syndication / /
The exterior of the US Supreme Court building during daytime.

Getty Images | Rudy Sulgan

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for its newsletter here. 

Among the many obstacles to enacting federal limits on climate pollution, none has been more daunting than the Supreme Court. That is where the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate power plant emissions met their demise and where the Biden administration’s attempts will no doubt land.

A forthcoming study seeks to inform how courts consider challenges to these regulations by establishing once and for all that the lawmakers who shaped the Clean Air Act in 1970 knew scientists considered carbon dioxide an air pollutant, and that these elected officials were intent on limiting its emissions.

The research, expected to be published next week in the journal Ecology Law Quarterly, delves deep into congressional archives to uncover what it calls a “wide-ranging and largely forgotten conversation between leading scientists, high-level administrators at federal agencies, members of Congress” and senior staff under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. That conversation detailed what had become the widely accepted science showing that carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels was accumulating in the atmosphere and would eventually warm the global climate.

The findings could have important implications in light of a legal doctrine the Supreme Court established when it struck down the Obama administration’s power plant rules, said Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University and the study’s lead author. That so-called “major questions” doctrine asserted that when courts hear challenges to regulations with broad economic and political implications, they ought to consider lawmakers’ original intent and the broader context in which legislation was passed.

“The Supreme Court has implied that there’s no way that the Clean Air Act could really have been intended to apply to carbon dioxide because Congress just didn’t really know about this issue at that time,” Oreskes said. “We think that our evidence shows that that is false.”

The work began in 2013 after Oreskes arrived at Harvard, she said, when a call from a colleague prompted the question of what Congress knew about climate science in the 1960s as it was developing Clean Air Act legislation. She had already co-authored the book Merchants of Doubt, about the efforts of industry-funded scientists to cast doubt about the risks of tobacco and global warming, and was familiar with the work of scientists studying climate change in the 1950s. “What I didn’t know,” she said, “was how much they had communicated that, particularly to Congress.”

Oreskes hired a researcher to start looking, and what they both found surprised her. The evidence they uncovered includes articles cataloged by the staff of the act’s chief architect, proceedings of scientific conferences attended by members of Congress, and correspondence with constituents and scientific advisers to Johnson and Nixon. The material included documents pertaining not only to environmental champions but also to other prominent members of Congress.

“These were people really at the center of power,” Oreskes said.

When Sen. Edmund Muskie, a Maine Democrat, introduced the Clean Air Act of 1970, he warned his colleagues that unchecked air pollution would continue to “threaten irreversible atmospheric and climatic changes.” The new research shows that his staff had collected reports establishing the science behind his statement. He and other senators had attended a 1966 conference featuring discussion of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. At that conference, Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned about carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuel combustion, which he said “is believed to have drastic effects on climate.”

The paper also cites a 1969 letter to Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington from a constituent who had watched the poet Allen Ginsberg warning of melting polar ice caps and widespread global flooding on the Merv Griffin Show. The constituent was skeptical of the message, called Ginsberg “one of America’s premier kooks” and sought a correction of the record from the senator: “After all, quite a few million people watch this show, people of widely varying degrees of intelligence, and the possibility of this sort of charge—even from an Allen Ginsberg—being accepted even in part, is dangerous.”

Memo to the Supreme Court: Clean Air Act targeted CO2 as climate pollutant, study says Read More »

buying-shady-weight-loss-drugs-online-is-a-bad-idea,-in-case-you-were-wondering

Buying shady weight loss drugs online is a bad idea, in case you were wondering

counterfeit drugs, diabetes, fda, JAMA, obesity, Ozempic, Science, wegovy, weight loss / /

buyer beware —

Risk assessment study of illegal online pharmacies offers some unsurprising data.

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Buying shady weight loss drugs online is a bad idea, in case you were wondering

Buying counterfeit weight loss drugs from illegal online pharmacies that don’t require prescriptions is, in fact, a very bad idea, according to a study published Friday in JAMA Network Open.

The counterfeit drugs are sold as equivalents to the blockbuster semaglutide drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy, which are prescription only. When researchers got their hands on three illegal versions, they found that the counterfeit drugs had low-purity semaglutide, had dosages that exceeded the labeled amount, and one had signs of bacterial contamination.

The three substandard drugs tested came from three different illegal online pharmacies, which sold them as generic semaglutide drugs for weight loss, appetite suppression, diabetes, and cardiovascular health. However, the researchers, led by scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Pécs in Hungary, had initially tried purchasing counterfeit drugs from six such sellers.

Three of the illegal pharmacies, which specifically sold Ozempic knockoffs, never delivered the drugs after researchers paid for them. Instead, the researchers were hit with “nondelivery” scams, in which the sellers requested additional, hefty payments, supposedly needed to get through customs. These extra fees ranged from $650 to $1,200—much more than what the researchers paid for small dosages of the counterfeit drugs, which ranged from $113 to $360 across the six sellers.

Rogue pharmacies

The Ozempic scams were run out of the rogue online pharmacies: weightcrunchshop.com, puremedsonline.com, and genius-pharmacy.com. The three pharmacies that delivered dubious drugs included semaspace.com, uschemlabs.com, and biotechpeptides.com.

Two of the sellers—semaspace.com and uschemlabs.com—have already received warning letters from the Food and Drug Administration for selling unapproved, misbranded drugs. At the time of publication, the Semaspace website was no longer reachable. The US Chem Labs site was still available, but their semaglutide vials were all listed as out of stock.

The study’s findings, while unsurprising, highlight the risk people may take in efforts to get hold of the popular drugs. Steep prices, lack of insurance coverage, and drug shortages have kept the drugs out of reach for many who could benefit from them. Compounding pharmacies have stepped in to make copycat versions. While these are legal and can come from legitimate pharmacies—ones that are properly registered and require prescriptions—they also carry risks. Compounded drugs are not approved by the FDA and may pose safety and efficacy risks. Last week, the FDA warned of increasing reports of people overdosing on semaglutide products made in compounding pharmacies, leading some patients to be hospitalized.

Buying shady weight loss drugs online is a bad idea, in case you were wondering Read More »

rocket-report:-falcon-9-is-back;-starship-could-be-recovered-off-australia

Rocket Report: Falcon 9 is back; Starship could be recovered off Australia

atlas v, european space agency, falcon 9, launch, NASA, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship, united launch alliance / /

Starship down under —

Elon Musk doesn’t expect the next Starship test flight to occur before late August.

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Welcome to Edition 7.05 of the Rocket Report! The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket for 15 days after a rare failure of its upper stage earlier this month. The FAA gave the green light for Falcon 9 to return to flight July 25, and within a couple of days, SpaceX successfully launched three missions from three launch pads. There’s a lot on Falcon 9’s to-do list, so we expect SpaceX to quickly return to form with several flights per week.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Big delay for a reusable rocket testbed. The French space agency, CNES, has revealed that the inaugural test flight of its Callisto reusable rocket demonstrator will not take place until late 2025 or early 2026, European Spaceflight reports. CNES unveiled an updated website for the Callisto rocket program earlier this month, showing the test rocket has been delayed from a debut launch later this year to until late 2025 or early 2026. The Callisto rocket is designed to test techniques and technologies required for reusable rockets, such as vertical takeoff and vertical landing, with suborbital flights from the Guiana Space Center in South America.

Cooperative action … Callisto, which stands for Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage Toss-back Operations, is a joint project between CNES, German space agency DLR, and JAXA, the Japanese space agency. It will stand 14 meters (46 feet) tall and weigh about 4 metric tons (8,800 pounds), with an engine supplied by Japan. Callisto is one of several test projects in Europe aiming to pave the way for a future reusable rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Small step for Themis. Another European project established to demonstrate reusable rocket tech is making slow progress toward a first flight. The Themis project, funded by the European Space Agency, is similar in purpose to the Callisto testbed discussed above. This week, the German aerospace manufacturing company MT Aerospace announced it has begun testing a demonstrator of the landing legs that will be used aboard the Themis reusable booster, European Spaceflight reports. The landing legs for Themis are made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites, and the initial test demonstrated good deployment and showed it would withstand the impact energy of landing.

Also delayed … Like Callisto, Themis is facing delays in getting to the launch pad. ArianeGroup, the ESA-selected Themis prime contractor, had been expected to conduct an initial hop test of the demonstrator before the end of 2024. However, officials have announced the initial hop tests won’t happen until sometime next year. The Themis booster is intended to eventually become the first stage booster for an orbital-class partially reusable rocket being developed by MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9 is flying again. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket returned to flight on July 27, barely two weeks after an upper stage failure ended a streak of more than 300 consecutive successful launches, Ars reports. By some measures this was an extremely routine mission—it was, after all, SpaceX’s 73rd launch of this calendar year. And like many other Falcon 9 launches this year, the “Starlink 10-9” mission carried 23 of the broadband Internet satellites into orbit. However, after a rare failure earlier this month, this particular Falcon 9 rocket was making a return-to-flight for the company and attempting to get the world’s most active booster back into service.

Best part is no part … The Falcon 9 successfully deployed its payload of Starlink satellites about an hour after lifting off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Later in the weekend, SpaceX launched two more Starlink missions on Falcon 9 rockets from Florida and California, notching three flights in less than 28 hours. The launch failure on the previous Falcon 9 launch was caused by a liquid oxygen leak on the upper stage, which led to a “hard start” on the upper stage engine when it attempted to reignite in flight. Engineers and technicians were quickly able to pinpoint the cause of the leak, a crack in a “sense line” for a pressure sensor attached to the vehicle’s liquid oxygen system.

Atlas V’s NSSL era is over. United Launch Alliance delivered a classified US military payload to orbit Tuesday for the last time with an Atlas V rocket, ending the Pentagon’s use of Russian rocket engines as national security missions transition to all-American launchers, Ars reports. This was the 101st launch of an Atlas V rocket since its debut in 2002, and the 58th and final Atlas V mission with a US national security payload since 2007. The Atlas V is powered by an RD-180 main engine made in Russia, and with a little prodding from SpaceX (via a lawsuit) and Congress, the Pentagon started making moves to end its reliance on the RD-180 a decade ago.

Other options available … The RD-180 never failed on a National Security Space Launch (NSSL) mission using the Atlas V rocket, but its use became politically untenable after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, which predated Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later. SpaceX began launching US military missions in 2018, and ULA debuted its new Vulcan rocket in January. Assuming a successful second test flight of Vulcan in September, ULA’s next-generation rocket has a good shot at launching its first national security mission by the end of the year. The Space Force’s policy is to maintain at least two independent launch vehicles capable of flying military payloads into orbit. Vulcan and SpaceX’s Falcon rocket family fulfill that requirement, so the military no longer needs the Atlas V. However, 15 more Atlas V rockets remain in ULA’s inventory for future commercial flights.

Crackdown at the Cape. While this week’s landmark launch of the Atlas V rocket is worthy of celebration, there’s a new ULA policy that deserves ridicule, Ars reports. Many of the spectacular photos of rocket launches shared on social media come from independent photographers, who often make little to no money working for an established media organization. Instead, they rely on sales of prints to recoup at least some of their expenses for gas, food, and camera equipment needed to capture these images, which often serve as free publicity for launch providers like ULA. Last month, ULA announced it will no longer permit these photographers to set up remote cameras at their launch pads if they sell their images independently. This new policy was in place for the Atlas V launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Tuesday morning.

But why? … “ULA will periodically confirm editorial publication for media participating in remote camera placement,” ULA stated in an email distributed to photographers last month. “If publication does not occur, or photos are sold outside of editorial purposes, privileges to place remote cameras may be revoked.” To the photographers who spend many hours preparing their equipment, waiting to set up and remove cameras, and persevering through scrubs and more, it seemed like a harsh judgment. And nobody knows why it happened. ULA has offered no public comment about the new policy, and the company did not respond to questions from Ars about the agreement.

Astroscale achieves a first in orbit. There are more than 2,000 mostly intact dead rockets circling the Earth, but until this year, no one ever launched a satellite to go see what one looked like after many years of tumbling around the planet, Ars reports. A Japanese company named Astroscale launched a small satellite in February to chase down the derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft arrived near the H-IIA upper stage in April, and the company announced this week that its satellite has now completed two 360-degree fly-arounds of the rocket. This is the first time a satellite has maneuvered around an actual piece of space junk, and it offers an unprecedented snapshot of how an abandoned rocket holds up to 15 years in the harsh environment of space.

Prepping for the future … Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission is partially funded by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Astroscale and JAXA also have a contract for a follow-up mission named ADRAS-J2, which will attempt to link up with the same H-IIA rocket and steer it on a trajectory to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. This would be the first demonstration of active debris removal, a concept pursued by Astroscale and other companies to help clear space junk out of low-Earth orbit.

An update on Ariane 6. The European Space Agency has released its first update on the results from the first flight of the Ariane 6 rocket since its launch July 9. Europe’s new flagship rocket had a mostly successful inaugural test flight. Its first stage, solid rocket boosters, and upper stage performed as expected for the first phase of the flight, delivering eight small satellites into an on-target orbit. The launch pad at the Guiana Space Center in South America also held up to the violent environment of launch, ESA said.

Still investigating … However, the final phase of the mission didn’t go according to plan. The upper stage’s Vinci engine was supposed to reignite for a third time on the test flight to deorbit the rocket, which would have released two small reentry capsules on technology demonstration missions to test heat shield technologies. This didn’t happen. An Auxiliary Propulsion Unit, which is a small engine to provide additional bursts of thrust and pressurize the upper stage’s propellant tanks, shut down shortly after startup ahead of the third burn of the primary Vinci engine. “This meant the Vinci engine’s third boost could not take place,” ESA said. “Analysis of the APU’s behavior is ongoing and further information will be made available as soon as possible, while the next task force update is expected in September.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Room to grow at Starbase. SpaceX has since launched Starship four times from its launch site in South Texas, known as Starbase, and is planning a fifth launch within the next two months, Ars reports. However, as it continues to test Starship and make plans for regular flights, SpaceX will need a higher flight rate. This is especially true as the company is unlikely to activate additional launch pads for Starship in Florida until at least 2026. To that end, SpaceX has asked the FAA for permission for up to 25 flights a year from South Texas, as well as the capability to land both the Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster stage back at the launch site.

The answer is probably yes … On Monday, the FAA signaled that it is inclined to grant this request. The agency released a draft assessment indicating that its extensive 2022 analysis of Starship launch activities on the environment, wildlife, local communities, and more was sufficient to account for SpaceX’s proposal for more launches. There is more to do for this conclusion to become official, including public meetings and a public comment period this month.

SpaceX eyes Australia. SpaceX is in talks with US and Australian officials to land and recover one of its Starship rockets off Australia’s coast, a possible first step toward a bigger presence for Elon Musk’s company in the region as the two countries bolster security ties, Reuters reports. At the end of SpaceX’s fourth Starship test flight in June, the rocket made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean hundreds of miles off the northwest coast of Australia. The discussions now underway are focused on the possibility of towing a future Starship vehicle from its splashdown point in the ocean to a port in Australia, where SpaceX engineers could inspect it and learn more about how it performed.

Eventually, it’ll come back to land … On the next Starship flight, currently planned for no earlier than late August, SpaceX plans to attempt to recover Starship’s giant Super Heavy booster using catch arms on the launch pad tower in Texas. On Sunday, Elon Musk told SpaceX and Tesla enthusiasts at an event called the “X Takeover” that it will take a few more flights for engineers to get comfortable returning the Starship itself to a landing onshore. “We want to be really confident that the ship heat shield is super robust and lands at the exact right location,” he said. “So before we try to bring the ship back to the launch site, we probably want to have at least three successful landings of the ship [at sea].” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

August 2: Electron | “Owl for One, One for Owl” | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 16: 39 UTC

August 3: Falcon 9 | NG-21 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 15: 28 UTC

August 4: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-1 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 07: 00 UTC

Listing image by SpaceX

Rocket Report: Falcon 9 is back; Starship could be recovered off Australia Read More »

“screaming-woman”-mummy-may-have-died-in-agony-3,500-years-ago,-study-finds

“Screaming Woman” mummy may have died in agony 3,500 years ago, study finds

ancient egypt, Archaeology, archaeometry, CT scanning, Egyptian mummification, forensic archaeology, paleoradiology, Science, screaming woman mummy / /

why is this mummy screaming? —

Scientists performed a “virtual autopsy” but could not determine exact cause of death.

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The Screaming Woman mummy, closeup of head/skull surrounded by elaborate wig

Enlarge / CT scans and other techniques allowed scientists to “virtually dissect” this 3,500-year-old “Screaming Woman” mummy.

There have been a handful of ancient Egyptian mummies discovered with their mouths wide open, as if mid-scream. This has puzzled archaeologists because Egyptian mummification typically involved bandaging the mandible to the skull to keep the mouth closed. Scientists have “virtually dissected” one such “Screaming Woman” mummy and concluded that the wide-open mouth is not the result of poor mummification, according to a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. There was no clear cause of death, but the authors suggest the mummy’s expression could indicate she died in excruciating pain.

“The Screaming Woman is a true ‘time capsule’ of the way that she died and was mummified,” said co-author Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology at Cairo University in Egypt. “Here we show that she was embalmed with costly, imported embalming material. This, and the mummy’s well-preserved appearance, contradicts the traditional belief that a failure to remove her inner organs implied poor mummification.”

Saleem has long been involved in paleoradiology and archaeometry of “screaming”  Egyptian mummies. For instance, she co-authored a 2020 paper applying similar techniques to the study of another “Screaming Woman” mummy, dubbed Unknown Woman A by the then-head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, Gaston Maspero, and one of two such mummies discovered in the Royal Cache at Deir el Bahari near Luxor in 1881. This was where 21st and 22nd Dynasty priests would hide the remains of royal members from earlier dynasties to thwart grave robbers.

The male mummy, which also had a screaming expression, was identified in a 2012 study (also co-authored by Saleem) as Pentawer, son of 20th Dynasty pharaoh Ramses III (1186–1155 BCE), thanks to CT scans and DNA testing. Prince Pentawer was involved in the “harem conspiracy,” resulting in the assassination of his father, although the attempted coup failed in its objective of placing Pentawer on the throne. (The 2012 CT scans of Ramses III’s mummy revealed that the pharaoh’s throat had been cut to the bone, severing the trachea, esophagus, and blood vessels.)

The prince was forced to commit suicide by hanging as punishment. His body was not properly mummified; his organs were not removed (evisceration), and no embalming fluids were placed inside his body cavity. Instead, he was ignominiously wrapped in a goat’s skin (deemed ritually “impure”) and placed in an unmarked coffin.

  • “Screaming Mummy” of a man identified as Prince Pentawer, son of Ramesses III.

    Public domain

  • Picture of the head and upper torso of the “Screaming Woman” mummy known as Unknown Woman A, possibly Meritamun, daughter of 17th Dynasty Pharaoh Seqenenre Taa.

    Zahi Hawass and Sahar N. Saleem

Maspero noted that Unknown Woman A’s wraps included inscriptions that translated into “Royal daughter, royal sister Meritamun,” but there were several princesses of that name, so this “screaming woman” mummy was officially declared unknown. The two most likely candidates were the daughter of late 17th Dynasty pharaoh Seqenenre Taa II (1558–1553 BCE) or the daughter of Nefertiti and Ramses II (1279–1213 BCE), aka Ramses the Great. Maspero thought that the unusual wide-open mouth may have been the result of improper mummification (or no mummification, like Pentawer.)

Saleem and her 2020 co-author, archaeologist Zahi Hawass, took CT scans of the mummy to learn more about who she might have been and how she died. They identified her as an older woman who likely died in her 50s and was just under 5 feet tall. The scans revealed high calcification in many of her arteries (severe atherosclerosis), indicating serious heart disease. This likely led to her sudden death from a heart attack or stroke; the authors suggest the woman was not discovered right away, so her muscles and joints stiffened—hence the unusual body position (bent legs) and the wide open mouth. In addition, or alternatively, some kind of cadaveric spasm at the moment of death may have occurred.

Unlike the remains of the patricidal Pentawer, this woman had been eviscerated; her body cavity was filled with resin and scents, and she had been wrapped in pure linen. Her brain, however, was still in the skull, desiccated and shifted to the right. Based on that detail—brain removal was more common during the 19th Dynasty, and leaving it intact was more common during the 17th Dynasty—Saleem et al. concluded that the mummy is most likely that of Meritanum, daughter of Seqenenre Taa.

“Screaming Woman” mummy may have died in agony 3,500 years ago, study finds Read More »

troubling-bird-flu-study-suggests-human-cases-are-going-undetected

Troubling bird flu study suggests human cases are going undetected

bird flu, CDC, dairy, H5N1, health, human infections, Infectious disease, outbreak, poultry, Science, vaccine / /

Poor surveillance —

A small sample of farm workers is enough to confirm fears about H5N1 outbreak.

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Troubling bird flu study suggests human cases are going undetected

Tony C. French/Getty

A small study in Texas suggests that human bird flu cases are being missed on dairy farms where the H5N1 virus has taken off in cows, sparking an unprecedented nationwide outbreak.

The finding adds some data to what many experts have suspected amid the outbreak. But the authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, went further, stating bluntly why the US is failing to fully surveil, let alone contain, a virus with pandemic potential.

“Due to fears that research might damage dairy businesses, studies like this one have been few,” the authors write in the topline summary of their study, which was posted online as a pre-print and had not been peer-reviewed.

The study authors, led by Gregory Gray, were invited to two undisclosed dairy farms in Texas that experienced H5N1 outbreaks in their herds starting in early and late March, respectively. The researchers had a previously approved research protocol to study novel respiratory viruses on dairy farms, easing the ability to quickly begin the work.

Rare study

“Farm A” had 7,200 cows and 180 workers. Illnesses began on March 6, and nearly 5 percent of the herd was estimated to be affected during the outbreak. “Farm B” had 8,200 cows and 45 workers. After illnesses began on March 20, an estimated 14 percent of the herd was affected.

The researchers first visited Farm A on April 3 and Farm B on April 4, collecting swabs and samples at each. Based on the previously approved protocol, they were limited to taking nasal swabs and blood samples from no more than 10 workers per farm. On Farm A, 10 workers provided nasal swabs and blood samples. On Farm B, only seven agreed to give nasal swabs, and four gave blood samples.

While swabs from cows, milk, a dead bird, and a sample of fecal slurry showed signs of H5N1, all of the nasal swabs from the 14 humans were negative. However, when researchers looked for H5N1-targeting antibodies in their blood—an indicator that they were previously infected—two of the 14, about 14 percent, were positive.

Both of the workers with previous infections, a man and a woman, were from Farm A. And both reported having flu-like symptoms. The man worked inside cattle corrals, close to the animals, and he reported having a cough at the time the samples were taken. The woman, meanwhile, worked in the cafeteria on the farm and reported recently recovering from an illness that included fever, cough, and sore throat. She noted that other people on the farm had similar respiratory illnesses around when she did.

The finding suggests human cases of H5N1 are going undetected. Moreover, managing to find evidence of two undetected infections in a sample of just 14 workers suggests it may not be hard to find more. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that around 200,000 people work with livestock in the US.

A “compelling case”

To date, the virus has infected at least 175 dairy farms in 13 states. The official tally of human cases in the dairy outbreak is 14: four in dairy farm workers and 10 in workers on poultry farms with infections linked to the dairy outbreak.

“I am very confident there are more people being infected than we know about,” Gray told KFF, which first reported on the study. “Largely, that’s because our surveillance has been so poor.”

Known infections in humans have all been mild so far. But experts are anxious that with each new infection, the wily H5N1 virus is getting new opportunities to adapt further to humans. If the virus evolves to cause more severe disease and spread from human to human, it could spark another pandemic.

Federal officials are also worried about this potential threat. In a press briefing Tuesday, Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, announced a $5 million effort to vaccinate farm workers—but against seasonal flu.

Shah explained that the CDC is concerned that if farm workers are infected with H5N1 and the seasonal flu at the same time, the viruses could exchange genetic segments—a process called reassortment. This could give rise to the pandemic threat experts are worried about. By vaccinating the workers against the seasonal flu, it could potentially prevent the viruses from comingling in one person, Shah suggested.

The US does have a bird flu-specific vaccine available. But in the briefing, Shah said that the use of that vaccine in farm workers is not planned for now, though there’s still active discussion on the possibility. The lack of severe disease and no documented human-to-human transmission from H5N1 infections both argue against deploying a new vaccine, Shah said. “There has to be a strong and compelling case,” he added. Shah also suggested that the agency expects vaccine uptake to be low among farm workers.

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