Science

rocket-report:-starship-stacked;-georgia-shuts-the-door-on-spaceport-camden

Rocket Report: Starship stacked; Georgia shuts the door on Spaceport Camden

atlas v, blue origin, Commercial space, human spaceflight, launch, rocket report, Science, Space, spaceport Camden, spacex, starliner, starship, united launch alliance, vulcan / /
On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket's next test flight from South Texas.

Enlarge / On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket’s next test flight from South Texas.

Welcome to Edition 6.44 of the Rocket Report! Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility, says the company expects to receive an FAA launch license for the next Starship test flight shortly after Memorial Day. It looks like this rocket could fly in late May or early June, about two-and-a-half months after the previous Starship test flight. This is an improvement over the previous intervals of seven months and four months between Starship flights.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.

Blue Origin launch on tap this weekend. Blue Origin plans to launch its first human spaceflight mission in nearly two years on Sunday. This flight will launch six passengers on a flight to suborbital space more than 60 miles (100 km) over West Texas. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, has not flown people to space since a New Shepard rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. The company successfully launched New Shepard on another uncrewed suborbital mission in December.

Historic flight … This will be the 25th flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, and the seventh human spaceflight mission on New Shepard. Before Blue Origin’s rocket failure in 2022, the company was reaching a flight cadence of about one launch every two months, on average. The flight rate has diminished since then. Sunday’s flight is important not only because it marks the resumption of launches for Blue Origin’s suborbital human spaceflight business, but also because its six-person crew includes an aviation pioneer. Ed Dwight, 90, almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, piloted military fighter jets and graduated test pilot school, following a familiar career track as many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates the Air Force provided NASA, but the space agency didn’t include him. Dwight will become the oldest person to ever fly in space.

Spaceport Camden is officially no more. With the stroke of a pen, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill that dissolved the Camden County Spaceport Authority, Action News Jax reported. This news follows a referendum in March 2022 where more than 70 percent of voters rejected a plan to buy land for the spaceport on the Georgia coastline between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida. County officials still tried to move forward with the spaceport initiative after the failed referendum, but Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled in February that the county had to abide by the voters’ wishes.

$12 million for what?… The government of Camden County, with a population of about 55,000 people spent $12 million on the Spaceport Camden concept over the course of a decade. The goal of the spaceport authority was to lure small launch companies to the region, but no major launches ever took place from Camden County. State Rep. Steven Sainz, who sponsored the bill eliminating the spaceport authority, said in a statement that the legislation “reflects the community’s choice and opens a path for future collaborations in economic initiatives that are more aligned with local needs.” (submitted by zapman987)

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.

Polaris Spaceplanes moves on to bigger things. German startup Polaris Spaceplanes says it is progressing with construction of its MIRA II and MIRA III spaceplane prototypes after MIRA, a subscale test vehicle, was damaged earlier this year, European Spaceflight reports. The MIRA demonstration vehicle crash-landed on a test flight in February. The incident occurred on takeoff at an airfield in Germany before the vehicle could ignite its linear aerospace engine in flight. The remote-controlled MIRA prototype measured about 4.25 meters long. Polaris announced on April 30 that will not repair MIRA and will instead move forward with the construction of a pair of larger vehicles.

Nearly 16 months without a launch … The MIRA II and MIRA III vehicles will be 5 meters long and will be powered by Polaris’s AS-1 aerospike engines, along with jet engines to power the craft before and after in-flight tests of the rocket engine. Aerospike engines are rocket engines that are designed to operate efficiently at all altitudes. The MIRA test vehicles are precursors to AURORA, a multipurpose spaceplane and hypersonic transporter Polaris says will be capable of delivering up to 1,000 kilograms of payload to low-Earth orbit. (submitted by Jay500001 and Tfargo04)

Rocket Report: Starship stacked; Georgia shuts the door on Spaceport Camden Read More »

ultra-spicy-one-chip-challenge-chip-contributed-to-teen’s-death,-report-says

Ultra-spicy One Chip Challenge chip contributed to teen’s death, report says

capsaicin, Carolina Reaper pepper, death, died, health, heart defect, Naga Viper Pepper, One Chip Challenge, Paqui, Science, teen / /

Tragic —

The high dose of capsaicin paired with a heart defect appear to have contributed.

–

Ultra-spicy One Chip Challenge chip contributed to teen’s death, report says

An autopsy report of a Massachusetts teen who tragically died hours after eating an ultra-spicy tortilla chip suggested that his death was due to the high dose of spice in the chip and a congenital heart defect, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

Harris Wolobah, a previously healthy 14-year-old from Worcester, died September 1, 2023 hours after eating the chip—a 2023 Paqui One Chip Challenge chip—which were sold individually, wrapped in tin foil, and seasoned with two of hottest peppers in the world, the Naga Viper pepper and the Carolina Reaper pepper. Paqui sold the chip with a challenge in which eaters were dared to consume the chip, wait as long as possible before eating or drinking anything, and post the aftermath on social media, where the challenge went viral.

Harris’ mother, Lois Wolobah, immediately suspected the chip was involved in his untimely death. At the time, she reportedly said she picked him up from school after getting a call from the nurse. He was clutching his stomach and, about two hours later, lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital, where he died. She reported that he had no known medical conditions at the time.

According to the autopsy report, Harris died of cardiopulmonary arrest “in the setting of recent ingestion of food substance with high capsaicin concentration,” the AP reported. Capsaicin is the compound in peppers that gives them their heat.

The report also noted that Harris had an enlarged heart and a congenital anomaly called “myocardial bridging.” This is a common and generally benign condition in which one or more of the arteries delivering blood to the heart go through the heart’s muscle instead of lying on its surface, according to Stanford Medicine. In Harris’ case, the condition involved his left anterior descending coronary artery. An analysis on the American Academy of Cardiology’s website noted that myocardial bridging is “clinically silent” in the majority of cases.

Dr. James Udelson, chief of cardiology at Tufts Medical Center, confirmed to the AP that the chip could have played a role in the teen’s death. “It is possible that with significant stimulation of the heart, the muscle beyond the bridge suddenly had abnormal blood flow (‘ischemia’) and could have been a cause of a severe arrhythmia,” Udelson told the AP in an email. “There have been reports of acute toxicity with capsaicin causing ischemia of the heart muscle.”

A second expert, Dr. Syed Haider, a cardiologist at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, added to the AP that the large doses of capsaicin can increase how the heart squeezes, putting extra pressure on the artery.

Even if Harris’ heart defect made him more vulnerable to the effects of the chip, other case studies have found dangerous and life-threatening effects of high doses of capsaicin in people without heart anomalies. Ultra-hot peppers have also been linked to conditions in which arteries in the brain constrict, causing thunderclap headaches and neurological symptoms.

Paqui, a subsidiary of Hershey, pulled the chip from the market shortly after Harris’ death.

Ultra-spicy One Chip Challenge chip contributed to teen’s death, report says Read More »

europe-is-uncertain-whether-its-ambitious-mercury-probe-can-reach-the-planet

Europe is uncertain whether its ambitious Mercury probe can reach the planet

Science, Space / /

Hear me bepi, hold together —

“We are working hard on resolving these uncertainties.”

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An artist's rendering of the BepiColombo mission, a joint ESA/JAXA project, which will take two spacecraft to the harsh environment of Mercury.

An artist’s rendering of the BepiColombo mission, a joint ESA/JAXA project, which will take two spacecraft to the harsh environment of Mercury.

ESA

This week the European Space Agency posted a slightly ominous note regarding its BepiColombo spacecraft, which consists of two orbiters bound for Mercury.

The online news release cited a “glitch” with the spacecraft that is impairing its ability to generate thrust. The problem was first noted on April 26, when the spacecraft’s primary propulsion system was scheduled to undertake an orbital maneuver. Not enough electrical power was delivered to the solar-electric propulsion system at the time.

According to the space agency, a team involving its own engineers and those of its industrial partners began working on the issue. By May 7 they had made some progress, restoring the spacecraft’s thrust to about 90 percent of its original level. But this is not full thrust, and the root cause of the problem is still poorly understood.

This is an ambitious mission, with an estimated cost of $2 billion. Undertaken jointly with the Japanese space agency, JAXA, BepiColombo launched on an Ariane 5 rocket in October 2018. So there is a lot riding on these thrusters. The critical question is, at this power level, can BepiColombo still perform its primary task of reaching orbit around Mercury?

The answer to this question is not so clear.

A three-part spacecraft

The spacecraft consists of three components. The “transfer module” is where the current problems are occurring. It was built by the European Space Agency and is intended to power the other two components of the spacecraft until October 2025. It is essential for positioning the spacecraft for entry into orbit around Mercury. The other two elements of the mission are a European orbiter, MPO, and a Japanese orbiter, Mio. After their planned arrival in orbit around Mercury in December 2025, the two orbiters will separate and make at least one year’s worth of observations, including the characterization of the small planet’s magnetic field.

The news release is ambiguous about the fate of BepiColombo if full power cannot be restored to its propulsion system.

Ars reached out to the European Space Agency and asked whether BepiColombo can still reach orbit around Mercury in this state. The response, a statement from Elsa Montagnon, the head of mission operations at the space agency, is not entirely clear.

“Thanks for your legitimate questions on the current uncertainty,” Montagnon said. “We are working hard on resolving these uncertainties.”

Gotta have that delta-V

What is clear, she said, is that the current thrust level can support the next critical milestone, BepiColombo’s fourth Mercury swing-by, which is due to occur on September 5 of this year. This is the first of three swing-bys scheduled to happen in rapid succession from September to January that will slow the spacecraft down relative to Mercury.

“This swing-by sequence provides a braking delta-V of 2.4 km/s and provides a change of velocity vector direction with respect to the Sun as required for the trajectory end game in 2025,” Montagnon said.

At present, a team of experts is working on the implications of reduced thrusters for the other two parts of this swing-by sequence and other propulsion needs in 2025.

This transfer module is scheduled to be jettisoned from the rest of the stack in October 2025, and after that the remaining Mercury approach and orbit insertion maneuvers will be carried out with the chemical propulsion subsystem of the European MPO spacecraft.

Europe is uncertain whether its ambitious Mercury probe can reach the planet Read More »

it-could-soon-be-illegal-to-publicly-wear-a-mask-for-health-reasons-in-nc

It could soon be illegal to publicly wear a mask for health reasons in NC

cancer, health, house bill, immunocompromised, Infectious disease, masks, North Carolina, pandemic, public health, Science / /

Freedumb —

Senators skeptical of legal trouble for harmless masking after moving to make it illegal.

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It could soon be illegal to publicly wear a mask for health reasons in NC

The North Carolina State Senate on Wednesday voted 30–15, along party lines, in favor of a Republican bill that would make it illegal for people in the state to wear a mask in public for health reasons. The bill is now moving to the House, where it could potentially see changes.

The proposed ban on health-based masking is part of a larger bill otherwise aimed at increasing penalties for people wearing masks to conceal their identity while committing a crime or impeding traffic. The bill was largely spurred by recent protests on university and college campuses across the country, including North Carolina-based schools, against the war in Gaza. In recent months, there have been demonstrations in Raleigh and Durham that have blocked roadways, as well as clashes on the nearby campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some demonstrators were seen wearing masks in those events.

But the bill, House Bill 237, goes a step further by making it illegal to wear a mask in public for health and safety reasons, either to protect the wearer, those around them, or both. Specifically, the bill repeals a 2020 legal exemption enacted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed for public health-based masking for the first time in decades.

Prior to 2020, laws dating back to 1953 largely prohibited public masking. The prohibition was part of a crackdown on “secret societies” at the time, or more specifically, an attempt to curtail the activities of the Ku Klux Clan in the state. Exemptions only existed for things like holiday costumes, theater productions, gas masks, and members of public parades or ceremonies that had obtained permits.

On Wednesday, North Carolina residents with compromised immune systems spoke—while masked—during a public comment section. Simone Hetherington told lawmakers that masking was the only way to protect herself in public from illness and feared passage of the bill would prevent her from doing so, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

But, according to The News & Observer, Republicans were dismissive of that possibility, arguing that in the decades prior to the pandemic, when public masking was largely illegal, they couldn’t recall anyone being prosecuted for wearing a mask for health reasons.

Raleigh-based news outlet WRAL quoted Sen. Sydney Batch, a Democrat from Wake, who criticized the bill along with fellow Democratic colleagues. Batch, a cancer survivor, spoke of how her husband and children wore masks to protect her while she underwent cancer treatments that weakened her immune system. “This bill criminalizes their behavior and mine,” she said. “We talk a lot about freedoms in this chamber. I hear it all the time. I should have the freedom—my children and my husband should have the freedom—to wear masks in order to protect and save my life, without fear of being arrested and charged.”

It could soon be illegal to publicly wear a mask for health reasons in NC Read More »

how-do-you-pronounce-“hockey”?-us-players-say-it-with-“fake-canadian”-accent.

How do you pronounce “hockey”? US players say it with “fake Canadian” accent.

acoustics, Hockey, hockey culture, Linguistics, Science, slang, sociolinguistics, sports / /

Seriously, what’s that aboot, eh? —

They don’t want to sound Canadian, but like a hockey player—a “linguistic persona.”

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hockey player in yellow jersey front and center, surrounded by players in red jerseys, all on the ice

University of Rochester linguist Andrew Bray started out studying the evolution of the trademark sports jargon used in hockey for his master’s thesis. For instance, a hockey arena is a “barn,” while the puck is a “biscuit.” When he would tell people about the project, however, they kept asking if he was trying to determine why American hockey players sound like “fake Canadians.” Intrigued, Bray decided to shift his research focus to find out if hockey players did indeed have distinctively Canadian speech patterns and, if so, why this might be the case.

He discovered that US hockey players borrow certain aspects of the Canadian English accent, particularly when it comes to hockey jargon. But they don’t follow the typical rules of pronunciation. In short, “American hockey players are not trying to shift their speech to sound more Canadian,” Bray said during a press briefing. “They’re trying to sound more like a hockey player. That’s why it’s most evident in hockey-specific terms.”

It’s a concept known as a “linguistic persona,” a means of communicating how one identifies—in this case, as a hockey player— through speech. Bray gave a talk about his research today at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Ottawa, Canada, held in conjunction with the Canadian Acoustical Association.

Bray first had to figure out how to design a study to examine this question. “What does it even mean to sound like a ‘fake’ Canadian?” he said. The stereotypical Canadian speech patterns are well-known: pronouncing “out” as “oot,” for example, or “about” as “aboot,” not to mention adding a questioning “eh?” at the end of sentences. According to Bray, there are three common linguistic variables typical of Canadian English.

One is called the lower back merger shift, which involves lowering the tongue to pronounce the vowels in words like “bit” (ih), “bet” (eh), and “bat” (ah). The second is called Canadian raising, in which the body of the tongue is raised to pronounce the vowels in words like “tight” and “doubt.” Finally, there are the vowels in words like “bait” and “boat.” Canadians pronounce these vowels with only one configuration of the tongue, known as a monophthongal pronunciation. (If the tongue moves to a secondary configuration, that would be a diphthongal pronunciation.)

Bray thought the American players might be exhibiting some Canadian English variables in their speech but to different degrees, such that their pronunciations sounded just a wee bit off—i.e., “fake.” He opted to focus on the monophthongal component since he thought those pronunciations were likely to be the most prevalent in “fake Canadian” speech among US hockey players.

Bray used to play hockey for the University of Georgia Ice Dawgs, shown here in 2016.

Enlarge / Bray used to play hockey for the University of Georgia Ice Dawgs, shown here in 2016.

University of Georgia Ice Dawgs

Next, Bray had to build his own “corpus of hockey player speech” focused on American-born hockey players. That required extensive interviews with players. Professional National League Hockey (NHL) players might not have the time to participate, so he focused on the American Hockey League (AHL) and East Coast Hockey League (ECHL), narrowing his pool to four teams: the Charlotte Checkers, the Greenville Swamp Rabbits, the Rochester Americans, and the South Carolina Stingrays.

Bray played hockey for the University of Georgia Ice Dawgs, which helped him quickly establish a rapport with his subjects over their shared interest and get them talking at length about their hockey career trajectories. Among other benefits, it helped him avoid the dreaded “observer’s paradox,” in which asking someone to talk about their speech makes them self-conscious and subtly changes how they would normally talk. He collected data from 20 such interviews, conducted between 2017 and 2019, each lasting about 30 minutes.

He then turned those interviews into a database of “formants”—resonant frequencies that amplify some groups of harmonics above others in speech. Bray’s ASA presentation focused on two common vowel formants. The first formant (F1) roughly corresponds to tongue height, while the second (F2) corresponds to how far forward or retracted the tongue is during pronunciation.

In the case of “bait”-like vowel sounds, Bray found some evidence among his US hockey players of a monophthongal pronunciation (minimal tongue movement), as one would expect in Canadian English and perhaps parts of the upper Midwest, but which would not otherwise be present in American English dialects. “Boat”-like vowel sounds seemed more “pseudo-monophthongal” in nature. But when these were compared with benchmark expectations for Canadian English F1 and F2 formants, US hockey players came close but fell just a bit short of the mark. Nor are their pronunciations in line with standard American English dialects.

“This might be why they sound ‘fake,'” said Bray. “I’m arguing that this is the construction of a linguistic variant uniquely linked to hockey. It’s influenced by Canadian English, but it’s not entirely Canadian.” And the way the US players in his dataset pronounced “hockey” seems to be “an entirely novel pronunciation of a word linked to this community.” Bray suspects this influence will be relevant to his initial research on hockey slang, expecting to find that “hockey slang terms are pronounced differently than you’d expect for the other non-hockey related terms.”

Bray suspects this happens via some sort of “lexical diffusion.” At the junior league level (around 14 to 20 years of age), US players might not have these distinctive speech patterns, but their pronunciations may gradually shift over time the longer they play and pick up hockey slang terms. The more strongly they self-identify as hockey players, the more they will sound like “fake Canadians.”

How do you pronounce “hockey”? US players say it with “fake Canadian” accent. Read More »

mixup-of-drinking-and-irrigation-water-sparks-dangerous-outbreak-in-children

Mixup of drinking and irrigation water sparks dangerous outbreak in children

CDC, children, E. coli, hemolytic uremic syndrome, irrigation water, outbreak, Science, Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7, Utah / /

fearsome faucets —

Of 13 children sickened, 7 hospitalized and 2 had life-threatening complications.

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A child cools off under a water sprinkler.

Enlarge / A child cools off under a water sprinkler.

In 1989, a city in Utah upgraded its drinking water system, putting in a whole new system and repurposing the old one to supply cheap untreated water for irrigating lawns and putting out fires. That meant that the treated water suitable for drinking flowed from new spigots, while untreated water gushed from the old ones. Decades went by with no apparent confusion; residents seemed clear on the two different water sources. But, according to an investigation report published recently by state and county health officials, that local knowledge got diluted as new residents moved into the area. And last summer, the confusion over the conduits led to an outbreak of life-threatening illnesses among children.

In July and August of 2023, state and local health officials identified 13 children infected with Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7. The children ranged in age from 1 to 15, with a median age of 4. Children are generally at high risk of severe infections with this pathogen, along with older people and those with compromised immune systems. Of the 13 infected children, seven were hospitalized and two developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a life-threatening complication that can lead to kidney failure.

Preliminary genetic analyses of STEC O157:H7 from two of the children suggested that the children’s infections were linked to a common source. So, health officials quickly developed a questionnaire to narrow down the potential source. It soon became clear that the irrigation water—aka untreated, pressurized, municipal irrigation water (UPMIW)—was a commonality among the children. Twelve of 13 infected children reported exposure to it in some form: Two said they drank it; five played with UPMIW hoses; three used the water for inflatable water toys; two used it for a water table; and one ran through sprinklers. None reported eating fruits or vegetables from home (noncommercial) gardens irrigated with the UPMIW.

The report on the investigation, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, did not name the city in Utah. But press releases from a county health department identified the affected city as Lehi, about 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City.

Further genetic testing of STEC O157:H7 isolates linked all of the children’s infections together, as well as to water from five of nine UPMIW exposure sites and samples from the reservoir where the irrigation water is sourced. Microbial source tracking indicated that the contamination could have come from the feces of birds or ruminants.

The county health department and the city put out press releases and informational mailers. They warned residents about the risks of UPMIW, telling them not to drink it or let children play in it. “Do not use irrigation water for bounce houses, pools, slip-n-slides, or any other recreational activities. It is common for children to swallow or get water in their mouths while playing.”

The notices also said that the CDC recommended against watering lawns with the water, though the county advised residents to merely “use caution” when allowing children to play on grass irrigated with UPMIW. “Keep an eye on them,” the advisers warned, and try to prevent them from putting their hands or anything from the lawn in their mouths. “E. coli is hardy and can stick.”

This is not the first time that irrigation water has been linked to outbreaks. In 2010 and 2015, two other Utah cities reported campylobacteriosis outbreaks linked to cross-connections between UPMIW and drinking water lines.

The researchers say such outbreaks can be avoided by efforts to prevent contamination in irrigation water, such as treating water, cleaning reservoirs, and covering them. And, of course, clearly labeling irrigation water and keeping residents informed about its dangers are key to preventing infections.

Mixup of drinking and irrigation water sparks dangerous outbreak in children Read More »

daily-telescope:-i-spy,-with-my-little-eye,-the-iss

Daily Telescope: I spy, with my little eye, the ISS

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

living long and prospering —

What is black and white and constantly in flight?

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The International Space Station as seen from 69 km away.

Enlarge / The International Space Station as seen from 69 km away.

HEO on X

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s May 16, and today’s image comes from an on-demand satellite imagery company named HEO. Only this image is not of the Earth, but rather the International Space Station.

According to the company, which is headquartered in Australia, one of its cameras imaged the space station at a distance of 69.06 km away, over the Indian Ocean. HEO flies its sensors as hosted payloads on satellites in Earth orbit. However, HEO’s focus is not on Earth; it’s on other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit to assess their status and identify anomalous behavior.

As for the space station, it remains in good health after a quarter of a century of operations. NASA is currently working with its international partners to extend the station’s operations through 2030. After that, the space agency would like to retire the vehicle and transition to commercially operated space stations.

Source: HEO on X.

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

Daily Telescope: I spy, with my little eye, the ISS Read More »

raw-milk-fans-plan-to-drink-up-as-experts-warn-of-high-levels-of-h5n1-virus

Raw-milk fans plan to drink up as experts warn of high levels of H5N1 virus

avian influenza, bird flu, CDC, cows, fda, H5N1, health, mammary glands, milk, raw milk, Science / /

facepalm —

Raw milk fans called warnings “fear mongering,” despite 52% fatality rate in humans.

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A glass of fresh raw milk in the hand of a farmer.

Enlarge / A glass of fresh raw milk in the hand of a farmer.

To drink raw milk at any time is to flirt with dangerous germs. But, amid an unprecedented outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in US dairy cows, the risks have ratcheted up considerably. Health experts have stepped up warnings against drinking raw milk during the outbreak, the scope of which is still unknown.

Yet, raw milk enthusiasts are undaunted by the heightened risk. The California-based Raw Milk Institute called the warnings “clearly fearmongering.” The institute’s founder, Mark McAfee, told the Los Angeles Times this weekend that his customers are, in fact, specifically requesting raw milk from H5N1-infected cows. According to McAfee, his customers believe, without evidence, that directly drinking high levels of the avian influenza virus will give them immunity to the deadly pathogen.

Expert Michael Payne told the LA Times that the idea amounts to “playing Russian roulette with your health.” Payne, a researcher and dairy outreach coordinator at the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at UC Davis, added, “Deliberately trying to infect yourself with a known pathogen flies in the face of all medical knowledge and common sense.”

Much remains unknown about the biology of avian influenza in cattle. Until March 25, when the US Department of Agriculture confirmed the virus in a dairy herd in Texas, cattle were generally considered virtually resistant to H5N1. But since then, the USDA has tallied 42 herds in nine states that have contracted the virus. Epidemiological data so far suggests that there has been cow-to-cow transmission following a single spillover event and that the 42 outbreak herds are connected by the movement of cattle between farms.

The limited data on the cows so far suggests that the animals largely develop mild illness from the infection and recover in a few weeks. Their mammary glands are the primary target of the virus. A preprint published earlier this month found that cows’ udders are rife with the molecular receptors that bird flu viruses latch onto to spark an infection. Moreover, the glands contain multiple types receptors, including ones targeted by human flu viruses as well as those targeted by bird flu viruses. Thus, dairy cows could potentially act as a mixing vessel for the different types of flu viruses to reassemble into new, outbreak-sparking variants.

With the virus apparently having a field day in cows’ udders, researchers have found raw milk to be brimming with high levels of H5N1 viral particles—and those particles appear readily capable of spilling over to other mammals. In a case study last month, researchers reported that a group of about two dozen farm cats developed severe illness after drinking milk from H5N1-infected cows. Some developed severe neurological symptoms. More than half the cats died in a matter of days.

Deadly virus

Data on flu receptors in the two animals may explain the difference between cows and cats. While the cow’s mammary gland had loads of multiple types of flu receptors, those receptors were less common in other parts of the cow, including the respiratory tract and brain. This may explain why they tend to have a mild infection. Cats, on the other hand, appear to have receptors more widely distributed, with infected cats showing viral invasion of the lungs, hearts, eyes, and brains.

Raw milk devotees—who claim without evidence that drinking raw milk provides health benefits over drinking pasteurized milk—dismiss the risk of exposure to H5N1. They confidently argue—also without evidence—that the human digestive system will destroy the virus. And they highlight that there is no documented evidence of a human ever becoming infected with H5N1 from drinking tainted milk.

The latter point on the lack of evidence of milkborne H5N1 transmission is true. However, the current outbreak is the first known spillover of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) to dairy cow mammary glands. As such, it presents the first known opportunity for such milk-based transmission to occur.

Before pasteurization became routine for commercial milk production, raw milk was a common source of infections, serving up a cornucopia of germs. According to the FDA, in 1938, milkborne outbreaks accounted for 25 percent of all foodborne disease outbreaks. In more recent times, milk has been linked to less than 1 percent of such outbreaks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that areas where raw milk was sold legally between 1998 and 2018 had 3.2 times more outbreaks than areas where the sale of raw milk was illegal.

In a Q&A document, the Food and Drug Administration notes that it does “not know at this time if HPAI A (H5N1) viruses can be transmitted through consumption of unpasteurized (raw) milk and products (such as cheese) made from raw milk from infected cows.” However, the agency goes on, because of that lack of data and the potential for infection, the FDA recommends halting all sales of raw milk and raw milk products from H5N1 infected or exposed cattle. In general, the agency recommends against consuming raw milk.

Globally, as of March 28, there have been 888 cases of H5N1 reported in humans in 23 countries. Of those 888 cases, 463 were fatal. That represents a 52 percent fatality rate; however, it’s possible that there are asymptomatic or undiagnosed cases that could alter that rate. In the US, only one human so far is known to have been infected with H5N1 in connection with the dairy cow outbreak—a farm worker who developed pink eye. The man had no respiratory symptoms and recovered. He did not consent to further follow-up, and researchers did not get consent to test the man’s household contacts to see if they, too, were infected.

Raw-milk fans plan to drink up as experts warn of high levels of H5N1 virus Read More »

air-force-is-“growing-concerned”-about-the-pace-of-vulcan-rocket-launches

Air Force is “growing concerned” about the pace of Vulcan rocket launches

Science, Space / /

Where are my rockets? —

US military seeks an “independent review” to determine if Vulcan can scale.

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The business end of the Vulcan rocket performed flawlessly during its debut launch in January 2024.

Enlarge / The business end of the Vulcan rocket performed flawlessly during its debut launch in January 2024.

United Launch Alliance

It has been nearly four years since the US Air Force made its selections for companies to launch military payloads during the mid-2020s. The military chose United Launch Alliance, and its Vulcan rocket, to launch 60 percent of these missions; and it chose SpaceX, with the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters, to launch 40 percent.

Although the large Vulcan rocket was still in development at the time, it was expected to take flight within the next year or so. Upon making the award, an Air Force official said the military believed Vulcan would soon be ready to take flight. United Launch Alliance was developing the Vulcan rocket in order to no longer be reliant on RD-180 engines that are built in Russia and used by its Atlas V rocket.

“I am very confident with the selection that we have made today,” William Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, said at the time. “We have a very low-risk path to get off the RD-180 engines.”

As part of the announcement, Roper disclosed the first two missions that would fly on Vulcan. The USSF-51 mission was scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2022, and the USSF-106 mission was scheduled for launch in the third quarter of 2022.

“I am growing concerned”

It turned out to not be such a low-risk path. The Vulcan rocket’s development, of course, has since been delayed. It did not make its debut in 2020 or 2021 and only finally took flight in January of this year. The mission was completely successful—an impressive feat for a new rocket with new engines—but United Launch Alliance still must complete a second flight before the US military certifies Vulcan for its payloads.

Due to these delays, the USSF-51 mission was ultimately moved off of Vulcan and onto an Atlas V rocket. It is scheduled to launch no earlier than next month. The USSF-106 mission remains manifested on a Vulcan as that rocket’s first national security mission, but its launch date is uncertain.

For several years there have been rumblings about Air Force and Space Force officials being unhappy with the delays by United Launch Alliance, as well as with Blue Origin, which is building the BE-4 rocket engines that power Vulcan’s first stage. However, these concerns have rarely broken into public view.

That changed Monday when The Washington Post reported on a letter from Air Force Assistant Secretary Frank Calvelli to the co-owners of United Launch Alliance, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. In the letter sent on May 10, a copy of which was obtained by Ars, Calvelli urges the two large aerospace contractors to get moving on certification and production of the Vulcan rocket.

“I am growing concerned with ULA’s ability to scale manufacturing of its Vulcan rocket and scale its launch cadence to meet our needs,” Calvelli wrote. “Currently there is military satellite capability sitting on the ground due to Vulcan delays. ULA has a backlog of 25 National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Vulcan launches on contract.”

These 25 launches, Calvelli notes, are due to be completed by the end of 2027. He asked Boeing and Lockheed to complete an “independent review” of United Launch Alliance’s ability to scale manufacturing of its Vulcan rockets and meet its commitments to the military. Calvelli also noted that Vulcan has made commitments to launch dozens of satellites for others over that period, a reference to a contract between United Launch Alliance and Amazon for Project Kuiper satellites.

It’s difficult to scale

Calvelli’s letter comes at a dynamic moment for United Launch Alliance. This week the company is set to launch the most critical mission in its 20-year history: two astronauts flying inside Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. This mission may take place as early as Friday evening from Florida on an Atlas V vehicle.

In addition, the company is for sale. Ars reported in February that Blue Origin, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, is the leading candidate to buy United Launch Alliance. It is plausible that Calvelli’s letter was written with the intent of signaling to a buyer that the government would not object to a sale in the best interests of furthering Vulcan’s development.

But the message here is unequivocally that the government wants United Launch Alliance to remain competitive and get Vulcan flying safely and frequently.

That may be easier said than done. Vulcan’s second certification mission was supposed to be the launch of the Dream Chaser spacecraft this summer. However, as Ars reported last month, that mission will no longer fly before at least September, if not later, because the spacecraft is not ready for its debut. As a result, Space News reported on Monday that United Launch Alliance is increasingly likely to fly a mass simulator on the rocket’s second flight later this year.

According to this analysis, some recent rockets launched an average of 2.75 times a year during their first five years.

According to this analysis, some recent rockets launched an average of 2.75 times a year during their first five years.

Quilty Space

After certification, United Launch Alliance can begin to fly military missions. However, it is one thing to build one or two rockets, it is quite another to build them at scale. The company’s goal is to reach a cadence of two Vulcan launches a month by the end of 2025. In his letter, Calvelli mentioned that United Launch Alliance has averaged fewer than six launches a year during the last five years. This indicates a concern that such a goal may be unreasonable.

“History shows that new rockets struggle to scale their launch cadence in their early years,” Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, told Ars. “Based on the number of missions the Department of Defense requires of ULA between now and 2027, precedent says Calvelli’s concerns are justified.”

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Beethoven likely didn’t die from lead poisoning, new DNA analysis reveals

Biology, DNA analysis, forensic DNA, human genetics, Ludwig von Beethoven, Science / /

get the lead out —

There was also mercury and arsenic but none of the toxins likely caused composer’s death.

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(7) Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820

Enlarge / Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820. Toxocology analysis of the composer’s locks of hair showed high levels of lead.

Beethoven-Haus Bonn

Last year, researchers sequenced the genome of famed composer Ludwig van Beethoven for the first time, based on authenticated locks of hair. The same team has now analyzed two of the locks for toxic substances and found extremely high levels of lead, as well as arsenic and mercury, according to a recent letter published in the journal Clinical Chemistry.

“It definitely shows Beethoven was exposed to high concentrations of lead,” Paul Janetto, co-author and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, told The New York Times. “These are the highest values in hair I’ve ever seen. We get samples from around the world, and these values are an order of magnitude higher.” That said, the authors concluded that the lead exposure was not sufficient to actually kill the composer, although Beethoven very likely did suffer adverse health effects because of it.

As previously reported, Beethoven was plagued throughout his life by myriad health problems. The composer began losing his hearing in his mid- to late 20s, experiencing tinnitus and the loss of high-tone frequencies in particular. He claimed the onset began with a fit in 1798 induced by a quarrel with a singer. By his mid-40s, he was functionally deaf and unable to perform public concerts, although he could still compose music.

Beethoven on his deathbed: lithograph by Josef Danhauser after his own drawing.

Enlarge / Beethoven on his deathbed: lithograph by Josef Danhauser after his own drawing.

Beethoven-Haus Bonn

Beethoven also had lifelong chronic gastric ailments, including persistent abdominal pains and prolonged stretches of diarrhea. By 1821, the composer showed signs of liver disease, marked by the first of two severe attacks of jaundice. These issues certainly affected his career and emotional state, so much so that Beethoven requested—via a letter addressed to his brothers—that his favorite physician examine his body after his death to determine the cause of all his suffering.

By December 1826, Beethoven was quite ill, suffering from a second bout of jaundice and swollen limbs, fever, dropsy, and labored breathing. His doctor performed several operations to remove excess fluid from the composer’s abdomen. On March 24, 1827, he purportedly said to visitors, “Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est” (“Applaud, friends, the comedy is over”). Two days later, he died. According to his good friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who was present, lightning and a loud clap of thunder briefly woke Beethoven, who “opened his eyes, lifted his right hand and looked up for several seconds with his fist clenched… not another breath, not a heartbeat more.”

An autopsy identified severe liver damage (evidence of cirrhosis) as the likely cause of death and significant dilation of the auditory nerve. But what caused that liver damage or his hearing loss—or his chronic stomach complaints, for that matter? Medical detectives have been debating possible causes for nearly two centuries, drawing on the composer’s letters, diaries, and physicians’ notes for evidence, as well as reports on skeletal remains from when his body was exhumed in 1863 and 1888. But no general consensus emerged.

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in-the-race-for-space-metals,-companies-hope-to-cash-in

In the race for space metals, companies hope to cash in

Science, Space / /

space truckin’ —

Mining asteroids could reduce the burden on Earth’s resources. Will it live up to its promise?

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An illustration depicts a NASA spacecraft approaching the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. Though there are no plans to mine Psyche, such asteroids are being eyed for their valuable resources

Enlarge / An illustration depicts a NASA spacecraft approaching the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. Though there are no plans to mine Psyche, such asteroids are being eyed for their valuable resources

In April 2023, a satellite the size of a microwave launched to space. Its goal: to get ready to mine asteroids. While the mission, courtesy of a company called AstroForge, ran into problems, it’s part of a new wave of would-be asteroid miners hoping to cash in on cosmic resources.

Potential applications of space-mined material abound: Asteroids contain metals like platinum and cobalt, which are used in electronics and electric vehicle batteries, respectively. Although there are plenty of these materials on Earth, they can be more concentrated on asteroids than mountainsides, making them easier to scrape out. And scraping in space, advocates say, could cut down on the damaging impacts that mining has on this planet. Space-resource advocates also want to explore the potential of other substances. What if space ice could be used for spacecraft and rocket propellant? Space dirt for housing structures for astronauts and radiation shielding?

Previous companies have rocketed toward similar goals before but went bust about a half-decade ago. In the years since that first cohort left the stage, though, “the field has exploded in interest,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.

A lot of the attention has focused on the Moon, since nations plan to set up outposts there and will need supplies. NASA, for instance, has ambitions to build astronaut base camps within the next decade. China, meanwhile, hopes to found an international lunar research station.

Still, the pull of space rocks remains powerful and the new crop of companies hopeful. The economic picture has improved with the cost of rocket launches decreasing, as has the regulatory environment, with countries creating laws specifically allowing space mining. But only time will tell if this decade’s prospectors will cash in where others have drilled into the red or be buried by their business plans.

An asteroid-mining company needs one major ingredient to get started: optimism. A hope that they could start a new industry, one not of this world. “Not a lot of humans are built to work like that,” said Matt Gialich, co-founder and CEO of AstroForge. Since the company’s April 2023 demo mission, it has yet to come close to mining anything.

What he and colleagues hope to extract, though, are platinum-group metals, some of which are used in devices like catalytic converters, which reduce gas emissions. Substances like platinum and iridium, meanwhile, are used in electronics. There are also opportunities in green technology, and new pushes to produce platinum-based batteries with better storage that could end up in electric vehicles and energy storage systems.

To further the company’s goals, AstroForge’s initial mission was loaded with simulated asteroid material and a refinery system designed to extract platinum from the simulant, to show that metal-processing could happen in space.

Things didn’t go exactly as planned. After the small craft got to orbit, it was hard to identify and communicate with among the dozens of other newly launched satellites. The solar panels, which provide the spacecraft with power, wouldn’t deploy at first. And the satellite was initially beset with a wobble that prevented communication. They have not been able to do the simulated extraction.

The company will soon embark on a second mission, with a different goal: to slingshot to an asteroid and take a picture — a surveying project which may help the company understand which valuable materials exist on a particular asteroid.

Another company, called TransAstra, is selling a telescope and software designed to detect objects like asteroids moving through the sky; Chinese corporation Origin Space has an asteroid-observing satellite in orbit around Earth, and is testing out its mining-relevant technology there. Meanwhile, Colorado company Karman+ plans to go straight to an asteroid in 2026 and test out excavation equipment.

To achieve the ultimate goal of pulling metals from space rocks, TransAstra, Karman+, and AstroForge have received a combined tens of millions of dollars in venture-capital funding to date.

Another company with similar aims, simply called Asteroid Mining Corporation Ltd., doesn’t want to rely much on outside investment in the long term. Such reliance, in fact, helped sink earlier companies. Instead, founder and CEO Mitch Hunter-Scullion is focusing his company’s early work on terrestrial applications that pay up immediately so he can fund future work in the broader universe. In 2021, the company partnered with Tohoku University Space Robotics Laboratory, based in Japan, to work on space robots.

Together, they have built a six-legged robot called the Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorer, or SCAR-E. Designed to operate in microgravity, it can crawl around a rugged surface and take data on, and samples of, what’s there. In 2026, the company plans to do a demonstration mission analyzing soil on the Moon.

For now, though, SCAR-E will stay on Earth and inspect ship hulls. According to one market research platform, this is a nearly $13 billion dollar market globally — as compared to the asteroid-mining market, currently $0, as no one has yet mined an asteroid.

Such grounded work may give the company a revenue stream before, and during, their time in space. “I think every asteroid-mining company has this realization that money runs out, investors get tired, and you have to do something,” said Hunter-Scullion.

“My opinion is that unless you’ve built something which makes sense on Earth,” he added, “you’re never going to be able to mine an asteroid.”

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monster-galactic-outflow-powered-by-exploding-stars

Monster galactic outflow powered by exploding stars

astronomy, astrophysics, galaxy evolution, Science / /

A big burp —

Star death and birth both contribute to driving material out of a galaxy.

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Image of a galaxy showing lots of complicated filaments of gas.

Enlarge / All galaxies have large amounts of gas that influence their star-formation rates.

Galaxies pass gas—in the case of galaxy NGC 4383, so much so that its gas outflow is 20,000 light-years across and more massive than 50 million Suns.

Yet even an outflow of this immensity was difficult to detect until now. Observing what these outflows are made of and how they are structured demands high-resolution instruments that can only see gas from galaxies that are relatively close, so information on them has been limited. Which is unfortunate, since gaseous outflows ejected from galaxies can tell us more about their star formation cycles.

The MAUVE (MUSE and ALMA Unveiling the Virgo Environment) program is now changing things. MAUVE’s mission is to understand how the outflows of galaxies in the Virgo cluster affect star formation. NGC 4383 stood out to astronomer Adam Watts, of the University of Australia and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), and his team because its outflow is so enormous.

The elements it releases into space can reveal the galaxy’s potential to form (or stop forming) stars. “Understanding the physics of stellar feedback-driven outflows… is essential to completing our picture of galaxy evolution,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Star potential

Stellar feedback, which is all the radiation, particle winds, and other materials that stars blast into the interstellar medium, is what forms outflows as huge as that in NGC 4383. Much of this material comes from either bursts of star formation or the insides of massive stars when they die and go supernova. It includes heavier elements that escape into space with the outflow and float there for an indefinite amount of time, sometimes ending up in other galaxies.

Star formation in a galaxy depends on several processes. There has to be the right balance of gas accretion (growth from added gas), consumption (the burning of hydrogen and helium by stars), and ejection (when interstellar gas is blown out of the galaxy) between the intergalactic medium and circumgalactic medium, the gas surrounding galaxies. Some of the gas and other materials, such as iron and other heavy elements, that form stars can be recycled from supernova explosions.

The supply of gas is key because large amounts of gas eventually collapse in on themselves because of their immense gravity, eventually forming stars. A deficit of gas can squelch the formation of potential stars.

Watts and his team think that one source of the stellar feedback pushing star-forming gas out of NGC 4383 is multiple supernovae that occurred relatively close together. Supernovae can form gargantuan bubbles of scorching gas that eventually break out of a galactic disk vertically, extending from the top and bottom of the galaxy.

Hot gas continues into cooler regions of the interstellar medium, with its gravity pulling in more gas on the way out of the galaxy and increasing the total mass of the outflow (known as mass loading). The loss of so much gas decreases the chances of star formation even further.

Lost in space

Outflows can be observed at many different wavelengths. Emissions of X-rays from elements such as hydrogen and compounds such as carbon monoxide can be detected. It is also possible to observe outflows using UV, optical, and infrared. Some of the region’s emissions had already been observed with other telescopes, which was combined with MAUVE imaging of the Virgo Cluster and NGC 4383 at different wavelengths.

The problem with observing outflows accurately is that the scattered materials are notoriously difficult to spatially resolve, which means figuring out the distance of the entire outflow based on pixels. MAUVE, NGC 4383, and the Virgo Cluster were observed at a spatial resolution of about 261 light-years, so each pixel represented a square in space that measured 261 light-years on every side. Clumps of ionized gas that showed up in these pixels told the research team there was a bipolar outflow leaving the galaxy from the top and bottom.

So, does NGC 4383 have reduced star formation because of its massive outflow of star stuff? It turns out that stars are actually forming at the galaxy’s edge. While no stars form in the stream escaping the galaxy, there are still areas where there is enough accreted gas to give birth to them.

These starbursts, or areas of rapid star formation, are also providing stellar feedback—it’s not just supernovae. “There is an extension of blue knots that are much brighter in the near-UV and are clear evidence of star formation occurring outside the main body of the galaxy,” the researchers said in the same study.

Something that remains unclear about NGC 4383 is whether the gas outflow was set off by stellar feedback alone or whether a gravitational interaction with another galaxy intensified existing outflows. There is possibly evidence for this on the eastern side, where a disturbance in the gas suggests that a nearby dwarf galaxy might have interacted with it. For now, the research team is confident that the outflow is primarily driven by starbursts and supernovae.

There is still more that the researchers want to find out about NGC 4383 and its outflow. As telescopes become more advanced and spatial resolution improves, maybe something else will be revealed inside those clouds of gas.

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