"Last week at the 2022 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, planetary scientists and astronomers discussed how new machine-learning techniques are changing the way we learn about our solar system," reports Space.com, "from planning for future mission landings on Jupiter's icy moon Europa to identifying volcanoes on tiny Mercury...." For many tasks in astronomy, it can take humans months, years or even decades of effort to sift through all the necessary data... "You can find up to 10,000, hundreds of thousands of boulders, and it's very time consuming," Nils Prieur, a planetary scientist at Stanford University in California said during his talk at AGU. Prieur's new machine-learning algorithm can detect boulders across the whole moon in only 30 minutes. It's important to know where these large chunks of rock are to make sure new missions can land safely at their destinations. Boulders are also useful for geology, providing clues to how impacts break up the rocks around them to create craters.

Computers can identify a number of other planetary phenomena, too: explosive volcanoes on Mercury, vortexes in Jupiter's thick atmosphere and craters on the moon, to name a few. During the conference, planetary scientist Ethan Duncan, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, demonstrated how machine learning can identify not chunks of rock, but chunks of ice on Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The so-called chaos terrain is a messy-looking swath of Europa's surface, with bright ice chunks strewn about a darker background. With its underground ocean, Europa is a prime target for astronomers interested in alien life, and mapping these ice chunks will be key to planning future missions.

Upcoming missions could also incorporate artificial intelligence as part of the team, using this tech to empower probes to make real-time responses to hazards and even land autonomously. Landing is a notorious challenge for spacecraft, and always one of the most dangerous times of a mission.

Like a visit from an old friend, it's Donald Knuth's annual Christmas tree lecture for 2022. "Because of the pandemic, it's been three years since Knuth has been able to honor this tradition," notes The New Stack: 2022 marks the 60th anniversary of that fateful day in 1962 when a 24-year-old Donald Knuth started writing " The Art of Computer Programming." Now approaching his 85th birthday, Knuth has become almost a legend in the world of computer programming — and he's still writing additional volumes for his massive analysis of algorithms. But every year, right around Christmas time, there's another tradition. Knuth gives a special lecture "pitched at non-specialists" for a small audience at Stanford University (where Knuth is a professor emeritus) and a larger audience online...

Hunched over a notepad (which was projected onto a screen behind him), Knuth began the 26th annual Christmas lecture by pointing out that the evening's topic had been hiding in plain sight for two decades. For the first 20 years, they'd called them the "Christmas tree" lectures, since "trees are one of the most important things to a computer scientist. And every year I learned at least two new cool things about trees..."

About five years ago they'd changed the name to just "Christmas lectures" — but the problem wasn't that trees stopped being interesting. "I still learn cool things about trees every year. But they're getting harder and harder to explain to a general audience!"

So this year's triumphant "homecoming" lecture would indeed include trees — specifically a phenomenon Knuth describes as "twintrees," along with Baxter permutations, and Floorplans. Knuth noted they're all topics touched on in the latest volume of The Art of Computer Programming, before jokingly reminding the audience that his book makes an excellent Christmas present.
By the end of the lecture, Knuth had written algorithms for all three mathematical concepts — then connected all three algorithms with Linux pipes to show what happens when you convert one kind of sequence into the other and then into the other.

"I get back, of course, the one I started with!"

CNN shares the historic close-up snowflake photos of Wilson Bentley, the first person to capture the details of the individual "snow crystal" ice that makes up snowflakes.

It was 1885, just 69 years after the invention of the camera, and after years of trial and error, "He went on to photograph more than 5,000 of these "ice flowers" during his lifetime — never finding any duplicates — and the images still mesmerize to this day." Every snow crystal shares a common six-sided or six-pointed structure — it's how frozen water molecules arrange themselves — but they will always vary from one another because each falls from the sky in its own unique way and experiences slightly different atmospheric conditions on its travel down to earth. Some of their arms may look long and skinny. Others may appear short and flat or somewhere in between. The possibilities are endless and fascinating....

"He had the mind of a scientist and the soul of a poet, and you can see that in his writings," said Sue Richardson, Bentley's great-grandniece who is vice president of the board for the Jericho Historical Society. "He wrote many, many articles over the years for scientific publications and for other magazines like Harper's Bazaar and National Geographic. "He also kept very detailed weather records and very detailed journals of every photograph that he took of a snow crystal — the temperature, the humidity, what part of the storm it came from. He kept very detailed information, and then these weather records that he kept and the theories that he developed about how snow crystals formed in the atmosphere, those were proven true...."

It wasn't easy, however, to get those snow crystals on camera. It took almost three years, Richardson said, for Bentley to figure out how to successfully photograph one — which he did just a month shy of his 20th birthday. The first obstacle was figuring out how to attach the microscope to the camera. And then there was the challenge of getting each crystal photographed before it could melt away. "He worked in an unheated woodshed at the back of the house. He had to," Richardson said. "And the microscope slides, everything, had to be an ambient temperature or they'd melt" the crystal....

A children's book about him won the Caldecott Medal in 1999.
Bentley never had formal education, according to his grandniece (who grew up hearing stories about this famous ancestor). One says that when Wilson Bentley was given an old microscope at age 15, "The first time he looked at a snow crystal under it, he was hooked. Just the beauty, the intricate detail. He was totally hooked."

Reason.com notes NASA's successful completion of its Artemis I mission, calling it "part of NASA's ambitious program to bring American astronauts back to the moon for the first time in half a century. And then on to Mars."

But then they ask if the project is worth the money, with the transportation policy director at the libertarian "Reason Foundation" think tank, Robert W. Poole, arguing instead that NASA "isn't particularly interested in cost savings, and its decision making is overly driven by politics." NASA would have been better off replacing the costly and dated Space Launch System used in the Artemis program. But it didn't. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that it was largely constructed and engineered in Alabama, the home state of Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Richard Shelby, who has a history of strong-arming NASA to preserve jobs for his constituents.
Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shared the article, which ultimately asks whether it'd be faster and cheaper to just rely on private companies: In 2009, the private sector saw one of its biggest champions ascend to become the number two person at NASA. Lori Garver pushed to scrap the Constellation program as a way to entice the private sector to fill in the gaps. She also spearheaded the Commercial Crew Program, which continues to employ commercial contractors to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Today, companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX are launching rockets at a faster pace and for a fraction of what NASA spends. In 2022, the company successfully launched 61 rockets, each with a price tag between $100 million and 150 million.

Private companies already design and lease NASA much of its hardware. Poole says there's no reason NASA can't take it a step further and just use the SpaceX starship to cover the entire journey from Earth to the moon and eventually to Mars. "If the current NASA plan goes ahead to have the SpaceX Starship actually deliver the astronauts from the lunar outpost orbit to the surface of the moon and bring them back, that would be an even more dramatic refutation of the idea that only NASA should be doing space transportation," he says.

Poole says that instead of flying its own missions, NASA should play a more limited and supportive role. "The future NASA role that makes the most sense is research and development to advance science," he says.
But for a contrary opinion, Slashdot reader youn counters that "You can bash NASA all you want but a big reason the private sector is where it is at is because it funded research 12 years ago." They share a CNET article noting the $6 billion NASA budgeted over five years "to kick-start development of a new commercial manned spaceflight capability."

And Slashdot reader sg_oneill argues that "Its gonna be a century before we're really colonizing the moon and/or Mars... because we have a lot of science to do first. How do you do a civilization with zero energy inputs from the rest of humanity? How do we deal with radiation? How do bodies work in low G? (Mars is about 1/3 the gravbity of earth). This needs science, and to get science we need NASA, even if private enterprise is building the rockets."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers aging to be a natural process. This makes it difficult to get FDA approval for drugs that seek to slow or reverse the biological process of aging. Instead, drugs intended to target aging must target a disease that often results from the aging process in order to demonstrate efficacy and gain approval. But there is growing consensus and effort among scientists to convince the FDA that aging itself should be classified as a disease and an appropriate target for drug development.

This could be a major milestone for not just industry, but society. If the FDA is swayed, the resulting regulatory shift could mean approval of drugs or treatments that slow or reverse the aging process generally, before a patient develops disease. Researchers who view aging as a medical condition aren't referring only to the inevitable passage of time. Instead, they view aging as a process of deterioration of our structure and function at the cellular level; the hallmark characteristics of which are genomic instability and damage to our DNA. And the World Health Organization (WHO) supports this view -- WHO describes the process of aging as "... the impact of the accumulation of a wide variety of molecular and cellular damage over time."

Israeli researchers say they have developed gene-edited hens that lay eggs from which only female chicks hatch. From a report: The breakthrough could prevent the slaughter of billions of male chickens each year, which are culled because they don't lay eggs. The female chicks, and the eggs they lay when they mature, have no trace of the original genetic alteration Animal welfare group, Compassion in World Farming, has backed the research. Dr Yuval Cinnamon from the Volcani institute near Tel Aviv, who is the project's chief scientist, told BBC News that the development of what he calls the ''Golda hen'' will have a huge impact on animal welfare in the poultry industry.

"I am very happy that we have developed a system that I think can truly revolutionise the industry, first of all for the benefit of the chickens but also for all of us, because this is an issue that affects every person on the planet," he said. The scientists have gene edited DNA into the Golda hens that can stop the development of any male embryos in eggs that they lay. The DNA is activated when the eggs are exposed to blue light for several hours. Female chick embryos are unaffected by the blue light and develop normally. The chicks have no additional genetic material inside them nor do the eggs they lay, according to Dr Cinnamon. "Farmers will get the same chicks they get today and consumers will get exactly the same eggs they get today," he said. "The only minor difference in the production process is that the eggs will be exposed to blue light."

The Biden administration has strengthened limits on smog-forming pollution from buses, delivery vans, tractor-trailers and other trucks, the first time in more than 20 years that tailpipe standards have been tightened for heavy-duty vehicles. From a report: The new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency is designed to cut nitrogen oxide from the vehicles by 48 percent by 2045. Nitrogen dioxide is a poisonous gas that has been linked to cardiovascular problems and respiratory ailments like asthma. The rule will require manufacturers to cut the pollutant from their vehicles starting with the model year 2027. But the new rule is not as stringent as one proposed by the E.P.A. in March, which would have cut the pollutant as much as 60 percent by 2045. And the agency stopped short of âârequiring that truck manufacturers also cut greenhouse gas emissions associated with burning diesel fuel or convert their fleets to electric models.

Walking like John Cleese's character, Mr. Teabag, in Monty Python's famous "Ministry of Silly Walks" skit requires considerably more energy expenditure than a normal walking gait because the movement is so inefficient, according to a new paper published in the annual Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal. From a report: In fact, just 11 minutes a day of walking like Mr. Teabag was equivalent to 75 minutes of vigorously intense physical activity per week, presenting a novel means of boosting cardiovascular fitness. "Half a century ago, the [Ministry of Silly Walks] skit might have unwittingly touched on a powerful way to enhance cardiovascular fitness in adults," the authors wrote. "Had an initiative to promote inefficient movement been adopted in the early 1970s, we might now be living among a healthier society."

The BMJ's Christmas issue is typically more lighthearted, though the journal maintains that the papers published therein still "adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigor, reporting transparency, and readability as apply in the regular issue." Past years have included papers on such topics as why 27 is not a dangerous age for musicians, the side effects of sword swallowing, and measuring the toxicity of the concoction brewed in Roald Dahl's 1981 book George's Marvelous Medicine. (It's very toxic indeed.) The most widely read was 1999's infamous "Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Most people have two sex chromosomes, either two X's or an X and a Y, which give rise to female or male biological attributes on a spectrum. Studies suggest these chromosomes also have much broader effects, contributing to processes that include immune system function, neuronal development, disease susceptibility and reactions to drugs. But scrutinizing the specific role of X and Y chromosomes is challenging. With current tools, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of genes versus hormones, for example. Now scientists have devised a tool that could overcome this obstacle -- by generating XX and XY cells from a single person for the first time. This unique set of cells could help researchers tackle long-standing questions about how sex chromosomes affect disease and the role they play in early development.

Benjamin Reubinoff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Hadassah Medical Center in Israel, and his team began the project to overcome barriers facing investigations of sex differences in humans. Currently there are two major ones, according to Reubinoff: the difficulty of separating chromosomal and hormonal effects and the inability to pinpoint the effects of X and Y chromosomes while ruling out contributions from the rest of a person's genetic makeup. "The main reason for doing this study was the lack of a good model to study differences between males and females in humans," Reubinoff says. "There have been animal models, but a model in humans was not available." To create such a model, Reubinoff, his former M.D. and Ph.D. student Ithai Waldhorn and their colleagues first obtained white blood cells previously collected from a person with Klinefelter syndrome, a condition in which male individuals are born with an extra X chromosome. The cells came from the repositories of the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, where people donate samples for use in a wide range of biomedical research projects. The donor had a rare "mosaic" form of the condition, in which some of their cells had three sex chromosomes (XXY), some had two X chromosomes, and some had one X and one Y. The researchers reprogrammed all three cell types into induced pluripotent stem cells, which have the capacity to self-renew and to develop into neurons, muscle cells or other cell types.

Ultimately the team generated XX and XY cells that -- apart from their sex chromosomes -- were genetically identical. The researchers then conducted a series of experiments replicating findings from prior studies with other models. For example, they confirmed previously reported differences in genes that were turned on in XX or XY cells. They also coaxed their stem cells to develop into immature versions of neurons and found evidence of previously reported sex differences in early neural development. "It was reassuring to see that the model really shows differences between the sexes that were reported from other systems," Reubinoff says. The findings were published last month in Stem Cell Reports. "This is a very well-designed study that validates the notion that sex differences start early in development -- and that they depend on the sex chromosomes because that's the only thing that can account for those differences," says Nora Engel, a professor of cancer and cell biology at Temple University.

"As a quick follow-up to yesterday's post about InSight's final photo, the InSight Lander's mission is now officially over after 2 failed communications attempts," writes Slashdot reader davidwr. From a NASA press release: NASA's InSight mission has ended after more than four years of collecting unique science on Mars. Mission controllers at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft's solar-powered batteries have run out of energy -- a state engineers refer to as "dead bus."

"I watched the launch and landing of this mission, and while saying goodbye to a spacecraft is always sad, the fascinating science InSight conducted is cause for celebration," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The seismic data alone from this Discovery Program mission offers tremendous insights not just into Mars but other rocky bodies, including Earth." You can read more about the InSight Mars Lander at NASA's website.

Aria Alamalhodaei writes via TechCrunch: We're going to have to wait a little longer for Rocket Lab's American debut. The company, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, was due to launch a trio of satellites for radio-frequency analytics customer HawkEye 360 to orbit from the company's new site at Virginia Space's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. It would've marked the first time a Rocket Lab vehicle has taken off from U.S. soil. But the company said late yesterday that strong upper-levels winds made today -- the final day in the launch window -- a no-go, pushing the launch to January.

It's certainly a bummer. The mission was due to have a handful of firsts: Not only marking the first time Electron takes off from U.S. soil, but also the first time a rocket flies with novel flight safety software that Rocket Lab and NASA say is a gamechanger for American launch plans. That software, an autonomous flight termination system, will reduce range costs and prime Rocket Lab to serve the launch needs of the U.S. defense agencies.

"This flight just doesn't symbolize another launch pad for Rocket Lab," CEO Peter Beck told reporters in a media briefing last Wednesday. "It's a standing up of a new capability for the nation." That capability is called the NASA Autonomous Flight Termination Unit (NAFTU), a key component of the Pegasus software, which was jointly developed by Rocket Lab and the space agency. Autonomous flight termination capabilities will be required on all Department of Defense launches by 2025.

NASA's InSight lander has probably phoned home for the last time from the planet Mars. From a report: The space agency said the spacecraft did not respond to communications from Earth on Sunday, December 18. The lack of communications came as the lander's power-generating capacity has been declining in recent months due to the accumulation of Martian dust on its solar panels. NASA said that it is "assumed" that InSight has reached the end of its operations but that it will continue to try to contact the lander in the coming days. Also on Monday, the InSight Twitter account shared a photo with a message saying this was probably the last photo it was sending from Mars. UPDATE 12/21/22: NASA's InSight Mission Officially Over

A new study published in Nature Astronomy assessed the viability of turbines as an energy source for future Mars missions, and "the results hint that wind power could be an important pillar of energy generation on the red planet, assuming humans are able to successfully land there in the coming decades," reports Motherboard. From the report: Scientists have generally written off wind power as a key energy source for Mars missions, compared to solar and nuclear power, because Martian winds are extremely weak. Now, a team led by Victoria Hartwick, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Ames Research Center, has used global climate models of Mars to show that, contrary to past assumptions, "wind power represents a stable, sustained energy resource across large portions of the Mars surface," according to the study. "Using a state-of-the-art Mars global climate model, we analyze the total planetary Martian wind potential and calculate its spatial and temporal variability," Hartwick and her colleagues said in the study. "We find that wind speeds at some proposed landing sites are sufficiently fast to provide a stand-alone or complementary energy source to solar or nuclear power." "Wind energy represents a valuable but previously dismissed energy resource for future human missions to Mars, which will be useful as a complementary energy source to solar power," the team added.

To assess whether wind power could fill that gap, Hartwick and her colleagues used the NASA Ames Mars global climate model to estimate wind speeds across the planet. Since Mars' atmosphere is very thin, with only 1 percent the density of Earth's atmosphere, Martian winds are pretty wimpy everywhere. Even so, the researchers found that several tantalizing locations could theoretically use wind as the only source of power, and that a combination of solar and wind power would unlock sites across a huge swath of the planet -- including icy locations at the poles.

To that point, the team identified several sites that would be particularly conducive to wind power, including locations within the icy northern regions of Deuteronilus Mensae and Protonilus Mensae. The researchers envision setting up medium-sized turbines, measuring 50 meters (160 feet) tall, to catch the stronger winds in these areas, allowing astronauts to subsist in the strange glacial terrain of an alien world. Turbines could also be effective if placed near topographical gradients, such as crater rims or the slopes of ancient volcanoes, to catch the gusts generated by these landscapes.

Scientists working on Australia's Great Barrier Reef have successfully trialled a new method for freezing and storing coral larvae they say could eventually help rewild reefs threatened by climate change. Reuters: Scientists are scrambling to protect coral reefs as rising ocean temperatures destabilise delicate ecosystems. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered four bleaching events in the last seven years including the first ever bleach during a La Nina phenomenon, which typically brings cooler temperatures. Cryogenically frozen coral can be stored and later reintroduced to the wild but the current process requires sophisticated equipment including lasers. Scientists say a new lightweight "cryomesh" can be manufactured cheaply and better preserves coral.

In a December lab trial, the world's first with Great Barrier Reef coral, scientists used the cryomesh to freeze coral larvae at the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS). The coral had been collected from the reef for the trial, which coincided with the brief annual spawning window. "If we can secure the biodiversity of coral ... then we'll have tools for the future to really help restore the reefs and this technology for coral reefs in the future is a real game-changer," Mary Hagedorn, Senior Research Scientist at Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute told Reuters from the AIMS lab.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Science Alert: Could the sweetened drinks we're consuming be making us feel a little more anxious? A new study looking at the effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame on mice suggests that it's a possibility that's worth investigating further.

Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1981, aspartame is widely used in low-calorie foods and drinks. Today, it's found in nearly 5,000 different products, consumed by adults and children. When a sample of mice were given free access to water dosed with aspartame equivalent to 15 percent of the FDA's recommended maximum daily amount for humans, they generally displayed more anxious behavior in specially designed mood tests.

What's truly surprising is the effects could be seen in the animals' offspring, for up to two generations...

When the mice were given doses of diazepam — a drug once marketed as Valium, which is commonly used to treat anxiety in humans — anxiety-like behaviors stopped across all generations. The medication helps to regulate the same pathways in the brain that are altered by the effects of the aspartame.

An announcement from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: An almost limitless supply of fresh water exists in the form of water vapor above Earth's oceans, yet remains untapped, researchers said. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the first to suggest an investment in new infrastructure capable of harvesting oceanic water vapor as a solution to limited supplies of fresh water in various locations around the world.

The study, led by civil and environmental engineering professor and Prairie Research Institute executive director Praveen Kumar, evaluated 14 water-stressed locations across the globe for the feasibility of a hypothetical structure capable of capturing water vapor from above the ocean and condensing it into fresh water — and do so in a manner that will remain feasible in the face of continued climate change. Kumar, graduate student Afeefa Rahman and atmospheric sciences professor Francina Dominguez published their findings in the journal Nature Scientific Reports....

"Eventually, we will need to find a way to increase the supply of fresh water as conservation and recycled water from existing sources, albeit essential, will not be sufficient to meet human needs. We think our newly proposed method can do that at large scales," Kumar said.

The researchers performed atmospheric and economic analyses of the placement of hypothetical offshore structures 210 meters in width and 100 meters in height. Through their analyses, the researchers concluded that capturing moisture over ocean surfaces is feasible for many water-stressed regions worldwide. The estimated water yield of the proposed structures could provide fresh water for large population centers in the subtropics....

"The climate projections show that the oceanic vapor flux will only increase over time, providing even more fresh water supply," graduate student Afeefa Rahman said. "So, the idea we are proposing will be feasible under climate change. This provides a much needed and effective approach for adaptation to climate change, particularly to vulnerable populations living in arid and semi-arid regions of the world." The researchers said one of the more elegant features of this proposed solution is that it works like the natural water cycle. "The difference is that we can guide where the evaporated water from the ocean goes," Dominguez said....

The researchers said this study opens the door for novel infrastructure investments that can effectively address the increasing global scarcity of fresh water.
Thanks to Slashdot reader L.Kynes for submitting the news.

The New York Times cites predictions from American's Defense Department that China could surpass U.S. space capabilities as soon as 2045. "I think it's entirely possible they could catch up and surpass us, absolutely," said the staff director of the United States Space Force. "The progress they've made has been stunning — stunningly fast."

But in a new article this week, the newspaper notes that China recenty sent space probes to the moon and to Mars — and invited foreign media to the launch of its space station in November — and looks back over decades of development: Thirty years ago, the Chinese government initiated a secret plan for its space program, including a key goal of building a space station by 2020. At the time, the country was 11 years from sending its first astronaut into space, and its space efforts were going through a rough patch: Chinese rockets failed in 1991, 1992, 1995 and twice in 1996. The worst failure, in 1996, was a rocket that tipped to the side, flew in the wrong direction and exploded 22 seconds after launch, showering a Chinese village with falling wreckage and flaming fuel that killed or injured at least 63 people.

While grand spaceflight plans of some nations have ended up many years behind schedule, China completed the assembly in orbit of its Tiangong space station in late October, only 22 months later than planned. And on Nov. 29, the Shenzhou 15 mission blasted off from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center deep in the Gobi Desert and took three astronauts to the space station to begin permanent occupancy of the outpost.
The article notes that the U.S. Congress "ended up banning American space agencies in 2011 from spending any money to cooperate in space with China, except in limited circumstances."

But today Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's crewed space program, asserts that "within a few years, we will be able to achieve the reuse of re-entry capsules for our new generation spaceships." Sending a person to Mars is an even bigger prize for China. It has placed an emphasis on shortening the duration of such a trip, perhaps with nuclear propulsion instead of conventional rocket engines. Officials are also determined that any journey will be a round-trip from which all astronauts return alive and in good health.... With nuclear propulsion, the trip could be trimmed to 500 days, Mr. Zhou said, without predicting whether China would adopt that approach.

A new study published in the journal PLoS ONE has reported on the first human tests of an experimental therapy using sound and light to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD). New Atlas reports: Over the last seven years, Li-Huei Tsai and colleagues at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have been investigating an unusual hypothesis. The researchers found toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease could be eliminated from mouse brains following exposure to flickering lights. Further research found the magic frequency was 40 Hz. When animals were exposed to both sound and light at that frequency, improvements in brain health were detected. Of course, these kinds of animal tests don't mean much if they can't be replicated in humans, so after further investigations revealed how this sensory therapy could be affecting a mouse brain, the researchers started preliminary human experiments. Working with colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital, two clinical trials set out to test the therapy in humans.

The first Phase 1 study recruited 43 participants to test whether this kind of light and sound exposure was safe, and did anything to the human brain. Each subject was monitored using EEG measures while experiencing a short exposure to what has been dubbed by the researchers as GENUS (Gamma ENtrainment Using Sensory stimulation). This preliminary study comprised both healthy and cognitively impaired subjects, as well as participants with epilepsy in order to evaluate the seizure potential of the treatment. After a short exposure to the sensory stimulation, the researchers found a number of brain regions synchronize with the 40-Hz frequency.

The second trial recruited 15 participants with early-stage Alzheimer's disease. Each participant was given a device to take home and use for around an hour a day. The device was essentially a small LED white board with an iPad in the middle and a soundbar underneath. While watching videos on the iPad, the LED light panel on the white board would flicker at a rate of 40 Hz and the soundbar would play a 40-Hz tone. Half the cohort was randomized to a sham control condition, exposed to a constant white light and white noise. Compliance was relatively high between both the GENUS and the sham groups, with participants completing the daily requirement of exposure around 90 percent of the time. After around three months of use the researchers could detect statistically significant differences between the two groups, both on brain imaging and memory tests. The researchers are cautious not to overstate their initial findings, the report says. "It's early days for human studies [...], larger cohorts of patients are needed to better understand the impacts of this sensory stimulation and longer trials will hopefully establish more prominent beneficial effects."

Longtime Slashdot reader necro81 writes: A Soyuz spacecraft (MS-22) docked at the International Space Station appears to have developed a coolant leak, according to NASA and various news sources. YouTuber Scott Manley has further background and explanation.

The cause and severity are presently not known. There is no immediate danger to the crew. The leak was discovered during preparations for a planned spacewalk, which has since been cancelled. This Soyuz is the return spacecraft for three of the ISS' residents, but after this failure a replacement spacecraft may need to sent up.

A NASA-led international satellite mission was set for blastoff from Southern California early on Thursday on a major Earth science project to conduct a comprehensive survey of the world's oceans, lakes and rivers for the first time. Reuters reports: Dubbed SWOT, short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography, the advanced radar satellite is designed to give scientists an unprecedented view of the life-giving fluid covering 70% of the planet, shedding new light on the mechanics and consequences of climate change. A Falcon 9 rocket, owned and operated by billionaire Elon Musk's commercial launch company SpaceX, was set to liftoff before dawn on Thursday from the Vandenberg U.S. Space Force Base, about 170 miles (275 km) northwest of Los Angeles, to carry SWOT into orbit. If all goes as planned, the SUV-sized satellite will produce research data within several months.

Nearly 20 years in development, SWOT incorporates advanced microwave radar technology that scientists say will collect height-surface measurements of oceans, lakes, reservoirs and rivers in high-definition detail over 90% of the globe. The data, compiled from radar sweeps of the planet at least twice every 21 days, will enhance ocean-circulation models, bolster weather and climate forecasts and aid in managing scarce freshwater supplies in drought-stricken regions, according to researchers. One major thrust of the mission is to explore how oceans absorb atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide in a natural process that moderates global temperatures and climate change. [...] SWOT's ability to discern smaller surface features also be used to study the impact of rising ocean levels on coastlines.