Science

radioactive-drugs-strike-cancer-with-precision

Radioactive drugs strike cancer with precision

cancer, cancer drugs, radioactive drugs, radiopharmaceuticals, Science / /
Pharma interest and investment in radiotherapy drugs is heating up.

Enlarge / Pharma interest and investment in radiotherapy drugs is heating up.

Knowable Magazine

On a Wednesday morning in late January 1896 at a small light bulb factory in Chicago, a middle-aged woman named Rose Lee found herself at the heart of a groundbreaking medical endeavor. With an X-ray tube positioned above the tumor in her left breast, Lee was treated with a torrent of high-energy particles that penetrated into the malignant mass.

“And so,” as her treating clinician later wrote, “without the blaring of trumpets or the beating of drums, X-ray therapy was born.”

Radiation therapy has come a long way since those early beginnings. The discovery of radium and other radioactive metals opened the doors to administering higher doses of radiation to target cancers located deeper within the body. The introduction of proton therapy later made it possible to precisely guide radiation beams to tumors, thus reducing damage to surrounding healthy tissues—a degree of accuracy that was further refined through improvements in medical physics, computer technologies and state-of-the-art imaging techniques.

But it wasn’t until the new millennium, with the arrival of targeted radiopharmaceuticals, that the field achieved a new level of molecular precision. These agents, akin to heat-seeking missiles programmed to hunt down cancer, journey through the bloodstream to deliver their radioactive warheads directly at the tumor site.

Use of radiation to kill cancer cells has a long history. In this 1915 photo, a woman receives “roentgenotherapy”—treatment with X-rays—directed at an epithelial-cell cancer on her face.

Use of radiation to kill cancer cells has a long history. In this 1915 photo, a woman receives “roentgenotherapy”—treatment with X-rays—directed at an epithelial-cell cancer on her face.

Wikimedia Commons

Today, only a handful of these therapies are commercially available for patients—specifically, for forms of prostate cancer and for tumors originating within hormone-producing cells of the pancreas and gastrointestinal tract. But this number is poised to grow as major players in the biopharmaceutical industry begin to invest heavily in the technology.

AstraZeneca became the latest heavyweight to join the field when, on June 4, the company completed its purchase of Fusion Pharmaceuticals, maker of next-generation radiopharmaceuticals, in a deal worth up to $2.4 billion. The move follows similar billion-dollar-plus transactions made in recent months by Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) and Eli Lilly, along with earlier takeovers of innovative radiopharmaceutical firms by Novartis, which continued its acquisition streak—begun in 2018—with another planned $1 billion upfront payment for a radiopharma startup, as revealed in May.

“It’s incredible how, suddenly, it’s all the rage,” says George Sgouros, a radiological physicist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and the founder of Rapid, a Baltimore-based company that provides software and imaging services to support radiopharmaceutical drug development. This surge in interest, he points out, underscores a wider recognition that radiopharmaceuticals offer “a fundamentally different way of treating cancer.”

Treating cancer differently, however, means navigating a minefield of unique challenges, particularly in the manufacturing and meticulously timed distribution of these new therapies, before the radioactivity decays. Expanding the reach of the therapy to treat a broader array of cancers will also require harnessing new kinds of tumor-killing particles and finding additional suitable targets.

“There’s a lot of potential here,” says David Nierengarten, an analyst who covers the radiopharmaceutical space for Wedbush Securities in San Francisco. But, he adds, “There’s still a lot of room for improvement.”

Atomic advances

For decades, a radioactive form of iodine stood as the sole radiopharmaceutical available on the market. Once ingested, this iodine gets taken up by the thyroid, where it helps to destroy cancerous cells of that butterfly-shaped gland in the neck—a treatment technique established in the 1940s that remains in common use today.

But the targeted nature of this strategy is not widely applicable to other tumor types.

The thyroid is naturally inclined to absorb iodine from the bloodstream since this mineral, which is found in its nonradioactive form in many foods, is required for the synthesis of certain hormones made by the gland.

Other cancers don’t have a comparable affinity for radioactive elements. So instead of hijacking natural physiological pathways, researchers have had to design drugs that are capable of recognizing and latching onto specific proteins made by tumor cells. These drugs are then further engineered to act as targeted carriers, delivering radioactive isotopes—unstable atoms that emit nuclear energy—straight to the malignant site.

Radioactive drugs strike cancer with precision Read More »

researchers-describe-how-to-tell-if-chatgpt-is-confabulating

Researchers describe how to tell if ChatGPT is confabulating

AI, Computer science, confabulation, large language models, Science / /
Researchers describe how to tell if ChatGPT is confabulating

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

It’s one of the world’s worst-kept secrets that large language models give blatantly false answers to queries and do so with a confidence that’s indistinguishable from when they get things right. There are a number of reasons for this. The AI could have been trained on misinformation; the answer could require some extrapolation from facts that the LLM isn’t capable of; or some aspect of the LLM’s training might have incentivized a falsehood.

But perhaps the simplest explanation is that an LLM doesn’t recognize what constitutes a correct answer but is compelled to provide one. So it simply makes something up, a habit that has been termed confabulation.

Figuring out when an LLM is making something up would obviously have tremendous value, given how quickly people have started relying on them for everything from college essays to job applications. Now, researchers from the University of Oxford say they’ve found a relatively simple way to determine when LLMs appear to be confabulating that works with all popular models and across a broad range of subjects. And, in doing so, they develop evidence that most of the alternative facts LLMs provide are a product of confabulation.

Catching confabulation

The new research is strictly about confabulations, and not instances such as training on false inputs. As the Oxford team defines them in their paper describing the work, confabulations are where “LLMs fluently make claims that are both wrong and arbitrary—by which we mean that the answer is sensitive to irrelevant details such as random seed.”

The reasoning behind their work is actually quite simple. LLMs aren’t trained for accuracy; they’re simply trained on massive quantities of text and learn to produce human-sounding phrasing through that. If enough text examples in its training consistently present something as a fact, then the LLM is likely to present it as a fact. But if the examples in its training are few, or inconsistent in their facts, then the LLMs synthesize a plausible-sounding answer that is likely incorrect.

But the LLM could also run into a similar situation when it has multiple options for phrasing the right answer. To use an example from the researchers’ paper, “Paris,” “It’s in Paris,” and “France’s capital, Paris” are all valid answers to “Where’s the Eiffel Tower?” So, statistical uncertainty, termed entropy in this context, can arise either when the LLM isn’t certain about how to phrase the right answer or when it can’t identify the right answer.

This means it’s not a great idea to simply force the LLM to return “I don’t know” when confronted with several roughly equivalent answers. We’d probably block a lot of correct answers by doing so.

So instead, the researchers focus on what they call semantic entropy. This evaluates all the statistically likely answers evaluated by the LLM and determines how many of them are semantically equivalent. If a large number all have the same meaning, then the LLM is likely uncertain about phrasing but has the right answer. If not, then it is presumably in a situation where it would be prone to confabulation and should be prevented from doing so.

Researchers describe how to tell if ChatGPT is confabulating Read More »

microdosing-candy-linked-illnesses-double;-possible-recall-in-“discussions”

Microdosing candy-linked illnesses double; possible recall in “discussions”

CDC, chocolate, cones, diamond shruumz, fda, gummies, intubation, microdosing, outbreak, psychedelic, recall, Science, seizures / /

No recall —

Of the 26 cases identified so far, 25 sought medical care and 16 were hospitalized.

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Microdosing candy-linked illnesses double; possible recall in “discussions”

Cases of illnesses linked to microdosing candies have more than doubled, with reports of seizures and the need for intubation, mechanical ventilation, and intensive care stays. But, there remains no recall of the products—microdosing chocolates, gummies, and candy cones by Diamond Shruumz—linked to the severe and life-threatening illnesses. In the latest update from the Food and Drug Administration late Tuesday, the agency said that it “has been in contact with the firm about a possible voluntary recall, but these discussions are still ongoing.”

In the update, the FDA reported 26 cases across 16 states, up from 12 cases in eight states last week. Of the 26 reported cases, 25 sought medical care and 16 were hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a health alert about the candies. The agency noted that as of June 11, the people sickened after eating Diamond Shruumz candies presented to health care providers with a host of severe symptoms. Those include: central nervous system depression with sedation, seizures, muscle rigidity, clonus (abnormal reflex responses), tremor, abnormal heart rate (bradycardia or tachycardia), abnormal blood pressure (hypotension or hypertension), gastrointestinal effects (nausea, vomiting, or abdominal pain), skin flushing, diaphoresis (excessive sweating), and metabolic acidosis with increased anion gap (an acid-based disorder linked to poisonings).

At the time of the CDC alert, 10 patients had been hospitalized, and “several required intubation, mechanical ventilation, and admission to an intensive care unit,” the agency reported.

It remains unclear what ingredient in the candies could be causing the poisonings. The FDA reports that it has worked with state partners to collect multiple samples of Diamond Shruumz products so they can be analyzed for potential toxic components. That analysis is still ongoing, the agency said.

Diamond Shruumz has not responded to multiple requests for comment from Ars.

Untold toxic ingredients

Diamond Shruumz does not list the ingredients of its products on its website. They are sold as “microdosing” candies, a term that typically suggests a small amount of a psychedelic compound is present. The company describes its chocolates, gummies, and cones as “trippy,” “psychedelic,” and “hallucinogenic,” and also claims they contain a “primo proprietary blend of nootropic and functional mushrooms.” But, it’s unclear what, if any, psychoactive compound is present in the candies.

The CDC notes that products like these “might contain undisclosed ingredients, including illicit substances, other adulterants, or potentially harmful contaminants that are not approved for use in food.”

Diamond Shruumz posted documents on its website from third-party laboratories claiming to indicate that the candies do not contain the most notable mushroom-derived psychedelic compound, psilocybin. The reports also indicate that some of the products do not contain cannabinoids or compounds from the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom. Additionally, the company said in a blog post that its products contain a blend of Lion’s mane, Reishi, and Chaga mushrooms, but these are all non-hallucinogenic mushrooms used in herbal and traditional medicines and supplements.

In recent decades, hundreds of new synthetic psychoactive substances have hit the market in such products, including many new phenethylamines and tryptamines, which are chemically related to LSD and psilocybin. Some experts and members of the psychedelic community have speculated that Diamond Shruumz products could potentially contain one of the more popular tryptamines, 4-AcO-DMT, often pronounced  “4-akko-DMT,” and also known as 4- acetoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, O-acetylpsilocin, or psilacetin. According to a qualitative 2020 study, users describe 4-AcO-DMT as producing effects similar to psilocybin, but without some of the unpleasant side effects noted with natural mushrooms, such as nausea. Animal experiments have confirmed that 4-AcO-DMT appears to produce psilocybin-like effects.

Still, it’s unclear if such ingredients could explain the symptoms seen in the current outbreak. Though clinical data on 4-AcO-DMT is scant, it has not been linked to such severe symptoms. On the other hand, some novel synthetic compounds, such as Dox and NBOMe, often misrepresented as LSD, are considered dangerous. For instance, NBOMe compounds (N-methoxybenzyl, also called N-bombs or 251), first discovered in 2003, have been linked to overdoses and deaths. In the scientific literature, they’ve been linked to “unpleasant hallucinations, panic, agitation, hypertension, seizures, acute psychosis, and/or excited delirium that can result in cardiac arrest,” according to the 2020 study.

Microdosing candy-linked illnesses double; possible recall in “discussions” Read More »

cleaning-up-cow-burps-to-combat-global-warming

Cleaning up cow burps to combat global warming

agriculture, cows, methane, Science / /
Cleaning up cow burps to combat global warming

Tony C. French/Getty

In the urgent quest for a more sustainable global food system, livestock are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, by converting fibrous plants that people can’t eat into protein-rich meat and milk, grazing animals like cows and sheep are an important source of human food. And for many of the world’s poorest, raising a cow or two—or a few sheep or goats—can be a key source of wealth.

But those benefits come with an immense environmental cost. A study in 2013 showed that globally, livestock account for about 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world’s cars and trucks combined. And about 40 percent of livestock’s global warming potential comes in the form of methane, a potent greenhouse gas formed as they digest their fibrous diet.

That dilemma is driving an intense research effort to reduce methane emissions from grazers. Existing approaches, including improved animal husbandry practices and recently developed feed additives, can help, but not at the scale needed to make a significant global impact. So scientists are investigating other potential solutions, such as breeding low-methane livestock and tinkering with the microbes that produce the methane in grazing animals’ stomachs. While much more research is needed before those approaches come to fruition, they could be relatively easy to implement widely and could eventually have a considerable impact.

Knowable Magazine

The good news—and an important reason to prioritize the effort—is that methane is a relatively short-lived greenhouse gas. Whereas the carbon dioxide emitted today will linger in the atmosphere for more than a century, today’s methane will wash out in little more than a decade. So tackling methane emissions now can lower greenhouse gas levels and thus help slow climate change almost immediately.

“Reducing methane in the next 20 years is about the only thing we have to keep global warming in check,” says Claudia Arndt, a dairy nutritionist working on methane emissions at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.

The methane dilemma

The big challenge in lowering methane is that the gas is a natural byproduct of what makes grazing animals uniquely valuable: their partnership with a host of microbes. These microbes live within the rumen, the largest of the animals’ four stomachs, where they break down the fibrous food into smaller molecules that the animals can absorb for nutrition. In the process, they generate large amounts of hydrogen gas, which is converted into methane by another group of microbes called methanogens.

The microbes that digest fiber—and those that produce methane—live mostly in the rumen, the first and largest of a cow’s four stomachs.

Enlarge / The microbes that digest fiber—and those that produce methane—live mostly in the rumen, the first and largest of a cow’s four stomachs.

Knowable Magazine

Most of this methane, often referred to as enteric methane, is belched or exhaled out by the animals into the atmosphere—just one cow belches out around 220 pounds of methane gas per year, for example. (Contrary to popular belief, very little methane is expelled in the form of farts. Piles of manure that accumulate in feedlots and dairy barns account for about a quarter of US livestock methane, but aerating the piles or capturing the methane for biogas can prevent those emissions; the isolated cow plops from pastured grazing animals generate little methane.)

Cleaning up cow burps to combat global warming Read More »

how-hagfish-burrow-into-deep-sea-sediment

How hagfish burrow into deep-sea sediment

animal behavior, animals, Biology, hagfish, Science / /

Thrash and wriggle —

Understanding burrowing mechanisms could aid in design of soft burrowing robots.

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Sixgill Hagfish (Eptatretus hexatrema) in False Bay, South Africa

Enlarge / A Sixgill Hagfish (Eptatretus hexatrema) in False Bay, South Africa.

The humble hagfish is an ugly, gray, eel-like creature best known for its ability to unleash a cloud of sticky slime onto unsuspecting predators, clogging the gills and suffocating said predators. That’s why it’s affectionately known as a “snot snake.” Hagfish also love to burrow into the deep-sea sediment, but scientists have been unable to observe precisely how they do so because the murky sediment obscures the view. Researchers at Chapman University built a special tank with transparent gelatin to overcome this challenge and get a complete picture of the burrowing behavior, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

“For a long time we’ve known that hagfish can burrow into soft sediments, but we had no idea how they do it,” said co-author Douglas Fudge, a marine biologist who heads a lab at Chapman devoted to the study of hagfish. “By figuring out how to get hagfish to voluntarily burrow into transparent gelatin, we were able to get the first ever look at this process.”

As previously reported, scientists have been studying hagfish slime for years because it’s such an unusual material. It’s not like mucus, which dries out and hardens over time. Hagfish slime stays slimy, giving it the consistency of half-solidified gelatin. That’s due to long, thread-like fibers in the slime, in addition to the proteins and sugars that make up mucin, the other major component. Those fibers coil up into “skeins” that resemble balls of yarn. When the hagfish lets loose with a shot of slime, the skeins uncoil and combine with the salt water, blowing up more than 10,000 times its original size.

From a materials standpoint, hagfish slime is fascinating stuff that might one day prove useful for biomedical devices, or weaving light-but-strong fabrics for natural Lycra or bulletproof vests, or lubricating industrial drills that tend to clog in deep soil and sediment. In 2016, a group of Swiss researchers studied the unusual fluid properties of hagfish slime, specifically focusing on how those properties provided two distinct advantages: helping the animal defend itself from predators and tying itself in knots to escape from its own slime.

Hagfish slime is a non-Newtonian fluid and is unusual in that it is both shear-thickening and shear-thinning in nature. Most hagfish predators employ suction feeding, which creates a unidirectional shear-thickening flow, the better to clog the gills and suffocate said predators. But if the hagfish needs to get out of its own slime, its body movements create a shear-thinning flow, collapsing the slimy network of cells that makes up the slime.

Fudge has been studying the hagfish and the properties of its slime for years. For instance, way back in 2012, when he was at the University of Guelph, Fudge’s lab successfully harvested hagfish slime, dissolved it in liquid, and then “spun” it into a strong-yet-stretchy thread, much like spinning silk. It’s possible such threads could replace the petroleum-based fibers currently used in safety helmets or Kevlar vests, among other potential applications. And in 2021, his team found that the slime produced by larger hagfish contains much larger cells than slime produced by smaller hagfish—an unusual example of cell size scaling with body size in nature.

A sedimentary solution

This time around, Fudge’s team has turned their attention to hagfish burrowing. In addition to shedding light on hagfish reproductive behavior, the research could also have broader ecological implications. According to the authors, the burrowing is an important factor in sediment turnover, while the burrow ventilation changes the chemistry of the sediment such that it could contain more oxygen. This in turn would alter which organisms are likely to thrive in that sediment. Understanding the burrowing mechanisms could also aid in the design of soft burrowing robots.

Burrowing sequences for a hagfish digging through transparent gelatin.

Enlarge / Burrowing sequences for a hagfish digging through transparent gelatin.

D.S. Fudge et al., 2024

But first Fudge’s team had to figure out how to see through the sediment to observe the burrowing behavior. Other scientists studying different animals have relied on transparent substrates like mineral cryolite or hydrogels made of gelatin, the latter of which has been used successfully to observe the burrowing behavior of polychaete worms. Fudge et al. opted for gelatin as a sediment replacement housed in three custom transparent acrylic chambers. Then they filmed the gelatin-burrowing behavior of 25 randomly selected hagfish.

This enabled Fudge et al. to identify two distinct phases of movement that the hagfish used to create their u-shaped burrows. First there is the “thrash” stage, in which the hagfish swims vigorously while moving its head from side to side. This not only serves to propel the hagfish forward, but also helps chop up the gelatin into pieces. This might be how hagfish overcome the challenge of creating an opening in the sediment (or gelatin substrate) through which to move.

Next comes the “wriggle” phase, which seems to be powered by an “internal concertina” common to snakes. It involves the shortening and forceful elongation of the body, as well as exerting lateral forces on the walls to brace and widen the burrow. “A snake using concertina movements will make steady progress through a narrow channel or burrow by alternating waves of elongation and shortening,” the authors wrote, and the loose skin of the hagfish is well suited to such a strategy. The wriggle phase lasts until the burrowing hagfish pops its head out of the substrate. The hagfish took about seven minutes or more on average to complete their burrows.

Naturally there are a few caveats. The walls of the acrylic containers may have affected the burrowing behavior in the lab, or the final shape of the burrows. The authors recommend repeating the experiments using sediments from the natural habitat, implementing X-ray videography of hagfish implanted with radio markers to capture the movements. Body size and substrate type may also influence burrowing behavior. But on the whole, they believe their observations “are an accurate representation of how hagfish are creating and moving within burrows in the wild.”

DOI: Journal of Experimental Biology, 2024. 10.1242/jeb.247544  (About DOIs).

How hagfish burrow into deep-sea sediment Read More »

natgeo-documents-salvage-of-tuskegee-airman’s-lost-wwii-plane-wreckage

NatGeo documents salvage of Tuskegee Airman’s lost WWII plane wreckage

aviation, history, maritime archaeology, Science, Tuskegee Airmen, World War II / /

Remembering a hero this Juneteenth —

The Real Red Tails investigates the fatal crash of 2nd Lt. Frank Moody in 1944.

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Michigan's State Maritime Archaeologist Wayne R. Lusardi takes notes underwater at the wreckage.

Enlarge / Michigan’s State Maritime Archaeologist Wayne R. Lusardi takes notes underwater at the Lake Huron WWII wreckage of 2nd Lt. Frank Moody’s P-39 Airacobra. Moody, one of the famed Tuskagee Airmen, fatally crashed in 1944.

National Geographic

In April 1944, a pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen, Second Lieutenant Frank Moody, was on a routine training mission when his plane malfunctioned. Moody lost control of the aircraft and plunged to his death in the chilly waters of Lake Huron. His body was recovered two months later, but the airplane was left at the bottom of the lake—until now. Over the last few years, a team of divers working with the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum in Detroit has been diligently recovering the various parts of Moody’s plane to determine what caused the pilot’s fatal crash.

That painstaking process is the centerpiece of The Real Red Tails, a new documentary from National Geographic narrated by Sheryl Lee Ralph (Abbot Elementary). The documentary features interviews with the underwater archaeologists working to recover the plane, as well as firsthand accounts from Moody’s fellow airmen and stunning underwater footage from the wreck itself.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black military pilots in the US Armed Forces and helped pave the way for the desegregation of the military. The men painted the tails of their P-47 planes red, earning them the nickname the Red Tails. (They initially flew Bell P-39 Airacobras like Moody’s downed plane, and later flew P-51 Mustangs.) It was then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who helped tip popular opinion in favor of the fledgling unit when she flew with the Airmen’s chief instructor, C. Alfred Anderson, in March 1941. The Airmen earned praise for their skill and bravery in combat during World War II, with members being awarded three Distinguished Unit Citations, 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 14 Bronze Stars, 60 Purple Hearts, and at least one Silver Star.

  • 2nd Lt. Frank Moody’s official military portrait.

    National Archives and Records Administration

  • Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. (Ret.) Harry T. Stewart.

    National Geographic/Rob Lyall

  • Stewart’s official portrait as a US Army Air Force pilot.

    National Archives and Records Administration

  • Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. (Ret.) James H. Harvey.

    National Geographic/Rob Lyall

  • Harvey’s official portrait as a US Army Air Force pilot.

    National Archives and Records Administration

  • Stewart and Harvey (second and third, l-r).

    James Harvey

  • Stewart stands next to a restored WWII Mustang airplane at the Tuskegee Airmen National Museum in Detroit.

    National Geographic/Rob Lyall

A father-and-son team, David and Drew Losinski, discovered the wreckage of Moody’s plane in 2014 during cleanup efforts for a sunken barge. They saw what looked like a car door lying on the lake bed that turned out to be a door from a WWII-era P-39. The red paint on the tail proved it had been flown by a “Red Tail” and it was eventually identified as Moody’s plane. The Losinskis then joined forces with Wayne Lusardi, Michigan’s state maritime archaeologist, to explore the remarkably well-preserved wreckage. More than 600 pieces have been recovered thus far, including the engine, the propeller, the gearbox, machine guns, and the main 37mm cannon.

Ars caught up with Lusardi to learn more about this fascinating ongoing project.

Ars Technica: The area where Moody’s plane was found is known as Shipwreck Alley. Why have there been so many wrecks—of both ships and airplanes—in that region?

Wayne Lusardi: Well, the Great Lakes are big, and if you haven’t been on them, people don’t really understand they’re literally inland seas. Consequently, there has been a lot of maritime commerce on the lakes for hundreds of years. Wherever there’s lots of ships, there’s usually lots of accidents. It’s just the way it goes. What we have in the Great Lakes, especially around some places in Michigan, are really bad navigation hazards: hidden reefs, rock piles that are just below the surface that are miles offshore and right near the shipping lanes, and they often catch ships. We have bad storms that crop up immediately. We have very chaotic seas. All of those combined to take out lots of historic vessels. In Michigan alone, there are about 1,500 shipwrecks; in the Great Lakes, maybe close to 10,000 or so.

One of the biggest causes of airplanes getting lost offshore here is fog. Especially before they had good navigation systems, pilots got lost in the fog and sometimes crashed into the lake or just went missing altogether. There are also thunderstorms, weather conditions that impact air flight here, and a lot of ice and snow storms.

Just like commercial shipping, the aviation heritage of the Great Lakes is extensive; a lot of the bigger cities on the Eastern Seaboard extend into the Great Lakes. It’s no surprise that they populated the waterfront, the shorelines first, and in the early part of the 20th century, started connecting them through aviation. The military included the Great Lakes in their training regimes because during World War I, the conditions that you would encounter in the Great Lakes, like flying over big bodies of water, or going into remote areas to strafe or to bomb, mimicked what pilots would see in the European theater during the first World War. When Selfridge Field near Detroit was developed by the Army Air Corps in 1917, it was the farthest northern military air base in the United States, and it trained pilots to fly in all-weather conditions to prepare them for Europe.

NatGeo documents salvage of Tuskegee Airman’s lost WWII plane wreckage Read More »

when-did-humans-start-social-knowledge-accumulation?

When did humans start social knowledge accumulation?

Biology, evolution, Human behavior, Science, social learning / /
Two worked pieces of stone, one an axe head, and one a scraper.

A key aspect of humans’ evolutionary success is the fact that we don’t have to learn how to do things from scratch. Our societies have developed various ways—from formal education to YouTube videos—to convey what others have learned. This makes learning how to do things far easier than learning by doing, and it gives us more space to experiment; we can learn to build new things or handle tasks more efficiently, then pass information on how to do so on to others.

Some of our closer relatives, like chimps and bonobos, learn from their fellow species-members. They don’t seem to engage in this iterative process of improvement—they don’t, in technical terms, have a cumulative culture where new technologies are built on past knowledge. So, when did humans develop this ability?

Based on a new analysis of stone toolmaking, two researchers are arguing that the ability is relatively recent, dating to just 600,000 years ago. That’s roughly the same time our ancestors and the Neanderthals went their separate ways.

Accumulating culture

It’s pretty obvious that a lot of our technology builds on past efforts. If you’re reading this on a mobile platform, then you’re benefitting from the fact that smartphones were derived from personal computers and that software required working hardware to happen. But for millions of years, human technology lacked the sort of clear building blocks that would help us identify when an archeological artifact is derived from earlier work. So, how do you go about studying the origin of cumulative culture?

Jonathan Paige and Charles Perreault, the researchers behind the new study, took a pretty straightforward approach. To start with, they focused on stone tools since these are the only things that are well-preserved across our species’ history. In many cases, the styles of tools remained constant for hundreds of thousands of years. This gives us enough examples that we’ve been able to figure out how these tools were manufactured, in many cases learning to make them ourselves.

Their argument in the paper they’ve just published is that the sophistication of these tools provides a measure of when cultural accumulation started. “As new knapping techniques are discovered, the frontiers of the possible design space expand,” they argue. “These more complex technologies are also more difficult to discover, master, and teach.”

The question then becomes one of when humans made the key shift: from simply teaching the next generation to make the same sort of tools to using that knowledge as a foundation to build something new. Paige and Perreault argue that it’s a matter of how complex it is to make the tool: “Generations of improvements, modifications, and lucky errors can generate technologies and know-how well beyond what a single naive individual could invent independently within their lifetime.”

When did humans start social knowledge accumulation? Read More »

ars-live-recap:-is-spacex-a-launch-company-or-a-satellite-communications-company?

Ars Live Recap: Is SpaceX a launch company or a satellite communications company?

Science, Space / /

Starlink Live —

“They’re the largest satellite operator in the world.”

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Produced by Michael Toriello and Billy Keenly. Click here for transcript.

Last week, during our inaugural Ars Live event, Quilty Space director of research Caleb Henry joined Ars space editor Eric Berger for a discussion of SpaceX’s Starlink and other satellite internet systems. We discussed Starlink’s rapid road to profitability—it took just five years from the first launch of operational satellites—and the future of the technology.

One of the keys to Starlink’s success is its vertical integration as a core business at SpaceX, which operates the world’s only reusable rocket, the Falcon 9. This has allowed the company not just to launch a constellation of 6,000 satellites—but to do so at relatively low cost.

“At one point, SpaceX had publicly said that it was $28 million,” Henry said of the company’s target for a Falcon 9 launch cost. “We believe today that they are below $20 million per launch and actually lower than that… I would put it in the mid teens for how much it costs them internally. And that’s going down as they increase the reuse of the vehicle. Recently, they’ve launched their 20th, maybe 21st, use of a first-stage rocket. And as they can amortize the cost of the booster over a greater number of missions, that only helps them with their business case.”

SpaceX was founded as a launch company in 2002, first with the Falcon 1 and then the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. But it is clear today that a significant portion of the company’s revenue, if not a majority, comes from its Starlink satellite internet business. So is it still primarily a rocket company?

“I think today they’re a satellite communications company,” Henry said of SpaceX. “I think it’s interesting that Stéphane Israël from Arianespace—in the early days, like 2015, 2016 when Starlink was just announced—would try to court customers and say, ‘Do you want to fund your competitor?’ And no one really took him seriously. Now people are taking him very seriously. [SpaceX is] the largest satellite operator in the world. They have literally more than doubled the number of consumer subscribers for satellite internet in the world.. This is a humongous, nearly unrivaled impact that they’ve had on the industry.”

Please find our entire discussion in the video above, complete with a transcript.

Listing image by SpaceX

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NASA delays Starliner return a few more days to study data

Science, Space, starliner / /

Coming to a White Sands near you —

“I would not characterize it as frustration. I would characterize it as learning.”

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Boeing's Starliner spacecraft approaches the International Space Station on Thursday.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft approaches the International Space Station on Thursday.

NASA TV

NASA and Boeing will take an additional four days to review all available data about the performance of the Starliner spacecraft before clearing the vehicle to return to Earth, officials said Tuesday.

Based on the new schedule, which remains pending ahead of final review meetings later this week, Starliner would undock at 10: 10 pm ET on Tuesday, June 25, from the International Space Station (02: 10 UTC on June 26). This would set up a landing at 4: 51 ET on June 26 (08: 51 UTC) at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico.

During a news conference on Tuesday, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, Steve Stich, said the four-day delay in the spacecraft’s return would “give our team a little bit more time to look at the data, do some analysis, and make sure we’re really ready to come home.”

Working two major issues

NASA is still trying to clear two major hardware issues that occurred during the spacecraft’s flight to the International Space Station nearly two weeks ago: five separate leaks in the helium system that pressurizes Starliner’s propulsion system and the failure of five of the vehicle’s 28 reaction-control system thrusters as Starliner approached the station.

Since then, engineers from NASA and Boeing have been studying these two problems. They took an important step toward better understanding both on Saturday, June 15, when Starliner was powered up for a thruster test.

During this test, engineers found that helium leak rates inside Starliner’s Service Module were lower than the last time the vehicle was powered on. Although the precise cause of the leak is not fully understood—it is possibly due to a seal in the flange between the thruster and manifold—the lower leak rate gave engineers confidence they could manage the loss of helium. Even before this decrease in the leak, Starliner had large reserves of helium, officials said.

The test of the reaction control system thrusters also went well, Stich said. Four of the five thrusters operated normally, and they are expected to be available for the undocking of Starliner later this month. These thrusters, which are fairly low-powered, are primarily used for small maneuvers. They will also be needed for the de-orbit burn that will set Starliner on its return path to Earth. Starliner can perform this burn without a full complement of thrusters, but Stich did not say how many could be safely lost.

First operational mission when?

NASA is being cautious about Starliner because this is the first crewed flight of the vehicle, which NASA funded to provide transportation services to the International Space Station. The goal is to provide regular flights of four astronauts to the space station for six-month rotations. This initial test flight, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, is intended to provide data to certify the vehicle for operational missions.

The first opportunity for Boeing to fly one of these operational missions is early 2025, likely in February or March. NASA will soon need to decide whether to give this slot to Starliner or SpaceX’s Dragon vehicle for the Crew-10 mission—NASA’s 10th operational flight on Dragon.

Given the technical problems that cropped up on the current test flight, it seems likely that NASA will push Starliner’s operational mission to the next available slot, likely in August or September of 2025. However, Stich said Tuesday no decision has been made and that NASA needs to study the results of this test flight.

“We haven’t looked too much ahead to Starliner-1,” he said. “We’ve got to go address the helium leaks. We’re not gonna go fly another mission like this with the helium leaks, and we’ve got to go understand what the rendezvous profile is doing that’s causing the thrusters to have low thrust, and then be deselected by the flight control team.”

Although Starliner’s first crewed flight has challenged NASA and Boeing, Stich said the process has not been frustrating. “I would not characterize it as frustration,” he said Tuesday. “I would characterize it as learning.”

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Supermassive black hole roars to life as astronomers watch in real time

active galactic nuclei, astronomy, astrophysics, black holes, Physics, Science, Very Large Telescope / /

Sleeping Beauty —

A similar awakening may one day occur with the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

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Artist’s animation of the black hole at the center of SDSS1335+0728 awakening in real time—a first for astronomers.

In December 2019, astronomers were surprised to observe a long-quiet galaxy, 300 million light-years away, suddenly come alive, emitting ultraviolet, optical, and infrared light into space. Far from quieting down again, by February of this year, the galaxy had begun emitting X-ray light; it is becoming more active. Astronomers think it is most likely an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which gets its energy from supermassive black holes at the galaxy’s center and/or from the black hole’s spin. That’s the conclusion of a new paper accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, although the authors acknowledge the possibility that it might also be some kind of rare tidal disruption event (TDE).

The brightening of SDSS1335_0728 in the constellation Virgo, after decades of quietude, was first detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility telescope. Its supermassive black hole is estimated to be about 1 million solar masses. To get a better understanding of what might be going on, the authors combed through archival data and combined that with data from new observations from various instruments, including the X-shooter, part of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

There are many reasons why a normally quiet galaxy might suddenly brighten, including supernovae or a TDE, in which part of the shredded star’s original mass is ejected violently outward. This, in turn, can form an accretion disk around the black hole that emits powerful X-rays and visible light. But these events don’t last nearly five years—usually not more than a few hundred days.

So the authors concluded that the galaxy has awakened and now has an AGN. First discovered by Carl Seyfert in 1943, the glow is the result of the cold dust and gas surrounding the black hole, which can form orbiting accretion disks. Gravitational forces compress the matter in the disk and heat it to millions of degrees Kelvin, producing radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Alternatively, the activity might be due to an especially long and faint TDE—the longest and faintest yet detected, if so. Or it could be an entirely new phenomenon altogether. So SDSS1335+0728 is a galaxy to watch. Astronomers are already preparing for follow-up observations with the VLT’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) and Extremely Large Telescope, among others, and perhaps even the Vera Rubin Observatory slated to come online next summer. Its Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be capable of imaging the entire southern sky continuously, potentially capturing even more galaxy awakenings.

“Regardless of the nature of the variations, [this galaxy] provides valuable information on how black holes grow and evolve,” said co-author Paula Sánchez Sáez, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Germany. “We expect that instruments like [these] will be key in understanding [why the galaxy is brightening].”

There is also a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy (Sgr A*), but there is not yet enough material that has accreted for astronomers to pick up any emitted radiation, even in the infrared. So, its galactic nucleus is deemed inactive. It may have been active in the past, and it’s possible that it will reawaken again in a few million (or even billion) years when the Milky Way merges with the Andromeda Galaxy and their respective supermassive black holes combine. Only much time will tell.

Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2024. DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202347957  (About DOIs).

Listing image by ESO/M. Kornmesser

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Drugmaker to testify on why weight-loss drugs cost 15x more in the US

bernie sanders, drug pricing, health, Novo Nordisk, obesity, Ozempic, Pharmaceutical industry, Science, wegovy, weight loss / /

On second thought —

Bernie Sanders cancels subpoena vote.

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Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, chief executive officer Novo Nordisk A/S, during an interview at the company's headquarters in Bagsvaerd, Denmark, on Monday, June 12, 2023.

Enlarge / Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, chief executive officer Novo Nordisk A/S, during an interview at the company’s headquarters in Bagsvaerd, Denmark, on Monday, June 12, 2023.

After some persuasion from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the CEO of Novo Nordisk will testify before lawmakers later this year on the “outrageously high cost” of the company’s diabetes and weight-loss drugs—Ozempic and Wegovy—in the US.

CEO Lars Jørgensen will appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), which is chaired by Sanders, in early September. The agreement came after a conversation with Sanders in which the CEO reportedly “reconsidered his position” and agreed to testify voluntarily. As such, Sanders has canceled a vote scheduled for June 18 on whether to subpoena Novo Nordisk to discuss its US prices, which are considerably higher than those of other countries.

The independent lawmaker has been working for months to pressure Novo Nordisk into lowering its prices and appearing before the committee. In April, Sanders sent Jørgensen a letter announcing an investigation into the prices and included a lengthy set of information requests. In May, the committee’s investigation released a report suggesting that Novo Nordisk’s current pricing threatens to “bankrupt our entire health care system.”

Sanders has repeatedly hammered not only the high prices of Novo Nordisk’s two blockbuster drugs but also the huge disparity between US prices and those in other countries.

Up to 15x more in the US

“Novo Nordisk currently charges Americans with type 2 diabetes $969 a month for Ozempic, while this same exact drug can be purchased for just $155 in Canada and just $59 in Germany,” Sanders wrote in April. “Novo Nordisk also charges Americans with obesity $1,349 a month for Wegovy, while this same exact product can be purchased for just $140 in Germany and $92 in the United Kingdom.”

Yale researchers, meanwhile, published a study in JAMA in March estimating that both drugs could be manufactured for less than $5.

In May, Novo Nordisk responded with a letter to Sanders, arguing that blame for high prices in the US lies with the country’s complex health system and with middle managers who take cuts, according to Bloomberg. Novo Nordisk said in the letter that it is prepared to address “systemic issues so that everyone who can benefit from its medicines is able to get them,” the outlet reported. The company also said it has spent over $10 billion on research and development to bring Wegovy and Ozempic to the market.

Still, that number is small in comparison to the projected revenue from the drugs. Bloomberg noted that analysts estimate that Novo Nordisk will make $27 billion from the two drugs this year alone. The May analysis by the HELP committee found that if just half of the adults in the US with obesity start taking a new weight-loss drug, such as Wegovy, the collective cost would be around $411 billion per year. Another report by the Congressional Budget Office found that the drugs’ costs are so high that they will not be offset by any financial gains from improved health outcomes.

“The Committee looks forward to Mr. Jørgensen explaining why Americans are paying up to 10 or 15 times more for these medications than people in other countries,” Sanders said last week.

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searching-for-a-female-partner-for-the-world’s-“loneliest” plant

Searching for a female partner for the world’s “loneliest” plant

extinction, Science, syndication / /

getting no help from dating apps —

AI assists in the pursuit for one threatened plant species.

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Map from drone mission search for the Encephalartos Woodii in the Ngoye Forest in South Africa.

Enlarge / Map from drone mission search for the Encephalartos Woodii in the Ngoye Forest in South Africa.

“Surely this is the most solitary organism in the world,” wrote paleontologist Richard Fortey in his book about the evolution of life.

He was talking about Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a plant from South Africa. E. woodii is a member of the cycad family, heavy plants with thick trunks and large stiff leaves that form a majestic crown. These resilient survivors have outlasted dinosaurs and multiple mass extinctions. Once widespread, they are today one of the most threatened species on the planet.

The only known wild E. Woodii was discovered in 1895 by the botanist John Medley Wood while he was on a botanical expedition in the Ngoye Forest in South Africa. He searched the vicinity for others, but none could be found. Over the next couple of decades, botanists removed stems and offshoots and cultivated them in gardens.

Fearing that the final stem would be destroyed, the Forestry Department removed it from the wild in 1916 for safekeeping in a protective enclosure in Pretoria, South Africa, making it extinct in the wild. The plant has since been propagated worldwide. However, the E. woodii faces an existential crisis. All the plants are clones from the Ngoye specimen. They are all males, and without a female, natural reproduction is impossible. E. woodii’s story is one of both survival and solitude.

My team’s research was inspired by the dilemma of the lonely plant and the possibility that a female may still be out there. Our research involves using remote sensing technologies and artificial intelligence to assist in our search for a female in the Ngoye Forest.

The evolutionary journey of cycads

Cycads are the oldest surviving plant groups alive today and are often referred to as “living fossils” or “dinosaur plants” due to their evolutionary history dating back to the Carboniferous period, approximately 300 million years ago. During the Mesozoic era (250-66 million years ago), also known as the Age of Cycads, these plants were ubiquitous, thriving in the warm, humid climates that characterised the period.

Although they resemble ferns or palms, cycads are not related to either. Cycads are gymnosperms, a group that includes conifers and ginkgos. Unlike flowering plants (angiosperms), cycads reproduce using cones. It is impossible to tell male and female apart until they mature and produce their magnificent cones.

Female cones are typically wide and round, and male cones appear elongated and narrower. The male cones produce pollen, which is carried by insects (weevils) to the female cones. This ancient method of reproduction has remained largely unchanged for millions of years.

Despite their longevity, today cycads are ranked as the most endangered living organisms on Earth with the majority of the species considered threatened with extinction. This is because of their slow growth and reproductive cycles, typically taking ten to 20 years to mature, and habitat loss due to deforestation, grazing, and over-collection. Cycads have become symbols of botanical rarity.

Their striking appearance and ancient lineage make them popular in exotic ornamental horticulture and that has led to illegal trade. Rare cycads can command exorbitant prices from $620 (495 pounds) per cm with some specimens selling for millions of pounds each. The poaching of cycads is a threat to their survival.

Among the most valuable species is the E. woodii. It is protected in botanical gardens with security measures such as alarmed cages designed to deter poachers.

AI in the sky

In our search to find a female E.woodii we have used innovative technologies to explore areas of the forest from a vertical vantage point. In 2022 and 2024, our drone surveys covered an area of 195 acres or 148 football fields, creating detailed maps from thousands of photos taken by the drones. It’s still a small portion of the Ngoye Forest, which covers 10,000 acres.

An example of the still images used to train the AI software.

Enlarge / An example of the still images used to train the AI software.

Our AI system enhanced the efficiency and accuracy of these searches. As E. woodii is considered extinct in the wild, synthetic images were used in the AI model’s training to improve its ability, via an image recognition algorithm, to recognise cycads by shape in different ecological contexts.

Plant species globally are disappearing at an alarming rate. Since all existing E. woodii specimens are clones, their potential for genetic diversity in the face of environmental change and disease is limited.

Notable examples include the Great Famine in 1840s Ireland, where the uniformity of cloned potatoes worsened the crisis, and the vulnerability of clonal Cavendish bananas to Panama disease, which threatens their production as it did with the Gros Michel banana in the 1950s.

Finding a female would mean E. woodii is no longer at the brink of extinction and could revive the species. A female would allow for sexual reproduction, bring in genetic diversity, and signify a breakthrough in conservation efforts.

E. woodii is a sobering reminder of the fragility of life on Earth. But our quest to discover a female E. woodii shows there is hope even for the most endangered species if we act fast enough.The Conversation

Laura Cinti, Research Fellow in bio art & plant behavior, University of Southampton. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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