NASA is preparing to oversee the largest push of business activity aboard the ISS. "Later this month, up to 10 bottles of a new Estee Lauder (EL) skincare serum will launch to the space station," reports CNN. "NASA astronauts are expected to film the items in the microgravity environment of the ISS and the company will be able to use that footage in ad campaigns or other promotional material." The details of those plans were first reported by New Scientist magazine. From the report: The Estee Lauder partnership will continue NASA's years-long push to encourage private-sector spending on space projects as the space agency looks to stretch its budget beyond the ISS and focus on taking astronauts back into deep space. Those efforts include allowing the space station to be used for marketing and entertainment purposes. The Estee Lauder products, a new formula of the company's "Advanced Night Repair" skin serum, are expected to launch aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft, tucked alongside 8,000 pounds of other cargo, experiments and supplies. NASA astronauts will be tasked with capturing "imagery and video" of the product. The astronauts themselves, however, won't be appearing in any cosmetics ads: The space agency's ethics policies strictly bar astronauts from appearing in marketing campaigns.

schwit1 shares a report from CNN: Several thousand people in northwest China have tested positive for a bacterial disease, authorities said on Tuesday, in an outbreak caused by a leak at a biopharmaceutical company last year. The Health Commission of Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu province, confirmed that 3,245 people had contracted the disease brucellosis, which is often caused by contact with livestock carrying the bacteria brucella. Another 1,401 people have tested as preliminarily positive, though there have been no fatalities reported, the city's Health Commission said. In total, authorities have tested 21,847 people out of the city's 2.9 million population.

Brucellosis had been much more common in China in the 1980s, though it has since declined with the emergence of vaccines and better disease prevention and control. Still, there have been a smattering of brucellosis outbreaks around the world in the past few decades; an outbreak in Bosnia infected about 1,000 people in 2008, prompting the culling of sheep and other infected livestock. In the US, brucellosis has cost the federal government and livestock industry billions of dollars. About 60% of female bison at Yellowstone National Park carry the bacteria, according to national park authorities.

A unique and exciting detail of Hubble's new snapshot appears at mid-northern latitudes as a bright, white, stretched-out storm moving at 560 kilometres per hour. This single plume erupted on 18 August 2020 and another has since appeared. From a report: While it's common for storms to pop up in this region, often several at once, this particular disturbance appears to have more structure behind it than observed in previous storms. Trailing behind the plume are small, counterclockwise dark clumps also not witnessed in the past. Researchers speculate this may be the beginning of a longer-lasting northern hemisphere spot, perhaps to rival the legendary Great Red Spot that dominates the southern hemisphere. Hubble shows that the Great Red Spot, rolling counterclockwise in the planet's southern hemisphere, is ploughing into the clouds ahead of it, forming a cascade of white and beige ribbons. The Great Red Spot is currently an exceptionally rich red colour, with its core and outermost band appearing deeper red. Researchers say the Great Red Spot now measures about 15 800 kilometres across, big enough to swallow the Earth. The super-storm is still shrinking, as noted in telescopic observations dating back to 1930, but its rate of shrinkage appears to have slowed. The reason for its dwindling size is a complete mystery.

New submitter ragnar_ianal writes: Looking at the V-shaped formations of migrating ducks, scientists have long surmised that there are aeronautical efficiencies at play. Airbus is examining this in a practical manner to see if fuel efficiency can be enhanced. "Building on test flights in 2016 with an Airbus A380 megajet and A350-900 wide-body jetliner, [the Airbus fello'fly] hopes to demonstrate and quantify the aerodynamic efficiencies while developing in-flight operational procedures," reports CNN. "Initial flight testing with two A350s began in March 2020. The program will be expanded next year to include the involvement of Frenchbee and SAS airlines, along with air traffic control and air navigation service providers from France, the UK, and Europe." "It's very, very different from what the military would call formation flight. It's really nothing to do with close formation," explained Dr. Sandra Bour Schaeffer, CEO of Airbus UpNext, in an interview with CNN Travel.

In mice and one person, scientists were able to reproduce out-of-body experiences often associated with ketamine by inducing certain brain cells to fire together in a slow-rhythmic fashion. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. NPR reports: "There was a rhythm that appeared and it was an oscillation that appeared only when the patient was dissociating," says Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Stanford University. Dissociation is a brain state in which a person feels separated from their own thoughts, feelings and body. It is common in people with some mental illnesses, or who have experienced a traumatic event. It can also be induced by certain drugs, including ketamine and PCP (angel dust). Deisseroth's lab made the discovery while studying the brains of mice that had been given ketamine or other drugs that cause dissociation. The team was using technology that allowed them to monitor the activity of cells throughout the brain

"It was like pointing a telescope at a new part of the sky," Deisseroth says. "And something really unexpected jumped out at us." What jumped out was a very distinct rhythm produced by cells in an area involved in learning and navigation. Those cells were firing three times each second. To learn more, the team used a tool called optogenetics, which Deisseroth helped invent. It uses light to control the firing of specific cells in the brain. As a result, the team was able to artificially generate this rhythm in the brains of mice. We could see, right before our eyes, dissociation happening," Deisseroth says.

goombah99 shares a report from The Washington Post: Four years ago, the magazine flagged Donald Trump's disdain for science as "frightening" but did not go so far as to endorse his rival, Hillary Clinton. This year, its editors came to a different conclusion. "A 175-year tradition is not something you break lightly," editor in chief, Laura Helmuth told The Washington Post on Tuesday. "We'd love to stay out of politics, but this president has been so anti-science that we can't ignore it." In a nod to Trump's embrace of anti-science conspiracy theories, Scientific American editors compared the people each candidate turns to for expertise and insight. Biden's panel of public health advisers "does not include physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies, one of whom Trump has called 'very respected' and 'spectacular,'" the editors write. The editor in chief of Science Magazine, the "apex predator of academic publishing," according to Wired, also denounced Trump but stopped short of endorsing presidential candidate Joe Biden. goombah99 writes: "This may be the most shameful moment in the history of U.S. science policy," writes H. Holden Thorp, a chemist and longtime university administrator. The editorial's key point is that it was negligence but more like malice. "As he was playing down the virus to the public, Trump was not confused or inadequately briefed: He flat-out lied, repeatedly, about science to the American people. These lies demoralized the scientific community and cost countless lives in the United States." This follows on an august issue's lament over the dangerous policies of the unqualified presidential coronavirus advisor Scott Atlas: "Although Atlas may be capable of neurological imaging, he's not an expert in infectious diseases or public health -- and it shows. He's spreading scientific misinformation in a clear attempt to placate the president and push his narrative that COVID-19 is not an emergency." Thorp concludes his article in this prestige journal with a searing indictment "Trump was not clueless, and he was not ignoring the briefings. Listen to his own words. Trump lied, plain and simple."

The European Space Agency (ESA) is awarding a $153 million contract to an industry consortium led by German space company OHB. "The contract covers the 'detailed design, manufacturing and testing' of a mission codenamed 'Hera,' after the Greek goddess of marriage and the hearth, which will support NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test mission and help provide a path towards future planetary defense operations in space," reports TechCrunch. From the report: ESA's Hera mission will launch a desk-sized satellite, which itself will contain small CubeSats, to perform a post-impact assessment of the effect NASA's DART spacecraft has on as asteroid that it's designed to essentially smash into at high velocity. Hera is intended to navigate around the asteroid autonomously while collecting data to help scientists back here on Earth understand whether their ambitious plan has been successful, in terms of using a human-made spacecraft to intentionally impact with an asteroid and change its trajectory through space.

The CubeSats will inspect the asteroid close-up once deployed from Hera -- including a potential interior probe with a radar array, the first of its kind for an asteroid body. All told, Hera and its CubeSate companions will be spending six months studying the asteroids following their encounter with DART. NASA's mission is set to launch sometime in July, 2021, and will arrive at the pair of asteroids -- called the 'Didymos' pair -- in September the following year. The ESA's Hera mission is set to launch in October 2024, and then rendezvous with the asteroids in 2026, so there will be a considerable gap between the impact and Hera's close-up study -- time during which its effects should hopefully be apparent.

Scientists have produced gene-edited animals they say could serve as "super dads" or "surrogate sires." The BBC reports: The pigs, goats, cattle and mice make sperm carrying the genetic material of donor animals. The researchers used a hi-tech gene editing tool to knock out a male fertility gene in animal embryos. The animals were born sterile, but began producing sperm after an injection of sperm-producing cells from donor animals. The technique would enable surrogate males to sire offspring carrying the genetic material of valuable elite animals such as prize bulls, said a US-UK team. This would be a step towards genetically enhancing livestock to improve food production, they added. Further reading: EurekAlert

Thud457 shares a report from USA Today: The race for a coronavirus vaccine to help end the pandemic has consumed the scientific community and created an escalating demand for an essential resource: monkeys. Before drug companies call on human volunteers, monkeys are used in preclinical trials to test a vaccine's safety and effectiveness. But with more than 100 vaccines in development around the world, there aren't enough monkeys to go around. "There is a shortage," said Dr. Skip Bohm, associate director and chief veterinary medical officer of the Tulane National Primate Research Center.

Like other aspects of society, the pandemic has underscored an already existing problem. Nonhuman primate research centers have been strained in recent years because of restrictions on imported monkeys from countries like China and India, and a lack of funding to support domestic breeding. "We've always been in a state where we were always very close to the level of production to meeting the demand for research, and that has been the status for several years," Bohm said. "When the COVID pandemic came about, that just pressed us even further." According to a 2018 analysis by the National Institutes of Health, the national primate centers' projected demand for monkeys would increase by 20% to 50%. Most centers were not equipped to accommodate that kind of increase -- then the pandemic hit.

Tulane's primate research center has about 5,000 monkeys but only about 500 are used for research in a normal year because of age, health and colony dynamics. This year, Bohm estimates the same number of primates might be needed across the centers just for COVID-19 research alone. To satisfy the demand, NIH and research centers have had to collaborate more closely than ever. NIH created a committee to prioritize COVID-19 research while centers developed master protocols to optimize research, including sharing control groups.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: At 94 years old and with over 60 years of wildlife documentary-making under his belt, Sir David Attenborough is well-placed to share his thoughts about the future of our planet. And on Sunday, in the new BBC documentary Extinction: The Facts, the legendary presenter had a warning for all humans about the creatures we share the Earth with. "Over the course of my life, I've encountered some of the world's most remarkable species of animals," Attenborough says at the start of the hour-long film. "Only now do I realize just how lucky I've been. Many of these wonders seem set to disappear forever. We're facing a crisis, and one that has consequences for us all. It threatens our ability to feed ourselves, to control our climate -- it even puts us at greater risk of pandemic diseases such as COVID-19."

With the help of a number of academics and experts, Attenborough goes on to explain that extinction is now happening much faster than it used to -- with 570 plant species and 700 animal species disappearing since the year 1500. "Studies suggest that extinction is now happening a hundred times faster than the natural evolutionary rate," Attenborough says. "And it's accelerating." A follow-up to Attenborough's 2019 explainer documentary, Climate Change: The Facts, Extinction: The Facts delves into some of the main causes of extinction and disastrous biodiversity loss today, including habitat destruction (either caused by land use or human-induced climate change or both), unsustainable agricultural and fishing practices, and poaching. The documentary examines a number of species across the world that are at risk, from the two remaining northern white rhinos in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy to the 25 percent of assessed plant species currently at risk of disappearing forever. Although the documentary is a heavy and often bleak watch, it does end with a message of hope. "One thing we do know, is that if nature is given the chance, it can bounce back," concludes Attenborough.

Two years ago, Microsoft sank a data centre off the coast of Orkney in a wild experiment. That data centre has now been retrieved from the ocean floor, and Microsoft researchers are assessing how it has performed, and what they can learn from it about energy efficiency. From a report: Their first conclusion is that the cylinder packed with servers had a lower failure rate than a conventional data centre. When the container was hauled off the seabed around half a mile offshore after being placed there in May 2018, just eight out of the 855 servers on board had failed. That compares very well with a conventional data centre. "Our failure rate in the water is one-eighth of what we see on land," says Ben Cutler, who has led what Microsoft calls Project Natick. The team is speculating that the greater reliability may be connected to the fact that there were no humans on board, and that nitrogen rather than oxygen was pumped into the capsule.

There is something funky going on in the clouds of Venus. Telescopes have detected unusually high concentrations of the molecule phosphine -- a stinky, flammable chemical typically associated with feces, farts and rotting microbial activity -- in an atmospheric layer far above the planet's scorching surface. From a report: The finding is curious because here on Earth, phosphine is essentially always associated with living creatures, either as a by-product of metabolic processes or of human technology such as industrial fumigants and methamphetamine labs. Although toxic to many organisms, the molecule has been singled out as a potentially unambiguous signature of life because it is so difficult to make through ordinary geological or atmospheric action. Swathed in sulfuric acid clouds and possessing oppressive surface pressures and temperatures hot enough to melt lead, Venus is a hellish world. But the particular cloud layer where the phosphine is present happens to be relatively balmy, with ample sunlight and Earth-like atmospheric pressure and temperature. The results will have to be carefully vetted by the scientific community. Yet they seem likely to spark renewed interest in exploring our sister planet next door.

"It's a really puzzling discovery because phosphine doesn't fit in our conception of what kinds of chemicals should be in Venus's atmosphere," says Michael Wong, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington. Planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-Madison agrees. "The bottom line is we don't know what's going on," he says. (Neither Wong nor Sanjay were involved in the work.) After the sun and moon, Venus is the brightest object visible to the naked eye in Earth's sky. For thousands of years, people told stories about the glittering jewel that appeared around sunrise and sunset. Venus's brilliance is what made it attractive to Jane Greaves, a radio astronomer at Cardiff University in England. She typically focuses her attention on distant newborn planetary systems but wanted to test her molecular identification abilities on worlds within our cosmic backyard. In 2017 Greaves observed Venus with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, searching for bar code-like patterns of lines in the planet's spectrum that would indicate the presence of different chemicals. While doing so, she noticed a line associated with phosphine. The data suggested the molecule was present at around 20 parts per billion in the planet's atmosphere, a concentration between 1,000 and a million times greater than that in Earth's atmosphere. "I was stunned," Greaves says. Further reading: The original paper in the journal Nature Astronomy; and the case for life on Venus.

CNET describes Venus as "a toxic, overheated, crushing hellscape where nothing can survive." But they reported Friday that one astronomy team's hypothesis published last month "could prompt a reevaluation of how and where we look for life in the universe." Carl Sagan speculated about life in the clouds of Venus back in 1967, and just a few years ago, researchers suggested that strange, anomalous patterns seen when looking at the planet in ultraviolet could be explained by something like an algae or a bacteria in the atmosphere. More recently, research published last month in the journal Astrobiology, from leading astronomer Sara Seager at MIT, offers up a vision of what the life cycle above Venus might be like. Seager has been a 21st century leader in the search for exoplanets, biosignatures, and worlds similar to our own. She's currently the deputy science director for NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission (aka TESS).

Seager and her colleagues suggest that the most likely way for microbes to survive above Venus is inside liquid droplets. But such droplets don't stay still, as anyone who's ever seen rain knows. Eventually they grow large enough that gravity takes over. In the case of Venus, this would mean droplets harboring tiny life forms and falling toward the hotter, lower layers of the planet's atmosphere, where they'd inevitably dry up. "We propose for the first time that the only way life can survive indefinitely is with a life cycle that involves microbial life drying out as liquid droplets evaporate during settling, with the small desiccated 'spores' halting at, and partially populating, the Venus atmosphere stagnant lower haze layer," the paper's summary reads. These dried-out spores would go into a sort of hibernation phase similar to what tardigrades can do, and eventually be lifted higher into the atmosphere and rehydrated, continuing the life cycle.

This is all speculation. Fortunately for Venusian life hunters, a number of astronomers and their instruments are trained on the complex planet. NASA is even considering a mission, dubbed Veritas, that could depart as soon as 2026 to orbit and study Venus and its clouds.

Meanwhile, more data from Venus, and perhaps new discoveries, may soon be incoming. The forecast for the planet remains, as it has for some time, cloudy with a chance of microbes.

Astronomers are searching for solutions to the man-made "constellations" of satellites from SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon's Project Kuiper that they say are interfering with their work. Scientific American reports: Finally, in August — after more than a year of complaints from the scientific community and damage-control efforts from SpaceX — the National Science Foundation and the American Astronomical Society released a report on the situation. It drew from discussions among more than 250 experts at the virtual Satellite Constellations 1 (SATCON1) workshop earlier this summer to provide recommendations for both astronomers and satellite constellation operators in order to minimize further disruptions...

SpaceX's initial efforts at mitigating the spacecraft's impact involved launching a prototype Starlink satellite known as DarkSat earlier this year that features a black antireflective coating. Recent ground-based observations of DarkSat in orbit found it half as bright as a standard Starlink satellite — a great improvement, according to experts, but still far from what astronomers say is needed... While the dimming techniques tested by DarkSat are far from a sufficient solution, SpaceX has continued to develop other ways to further reduce spacecraft brightness. The company's second attempt at a darkened satellite, VisorSat, uses a black sunshade to reduce light reflection. The first spacecraft with this design was launched on June 3. Astronomers are hoping to observe VisorSat and compare it with DarkSat once observatories reopen, following the COVID-19 shutdown. Even before any detailed observations of VisorSat have been made, SpaceX seems to have doubled down on the new model. All the satellites in the two Starlink batches launched in mid-June and early August were VisorSats, with each carrying its own sunshade.

Astronomers are not yet sure whether darkening methods such as DarkSat and VisorSat are the solution. Of the SATCON1 report's 10 recommendations, only one asks satellite operators to use darkening techniques. The others suggest deploying satellites in orbits below 600 kilometers to minimize their nighttime glare, controlling their orientations in space to reflect less sunlight, developing ways to remove their trails from astronomical observations and making their orbital information available so astronomers can point telescopes away from them. By some mix of approaches from this menu of options, it is hoped, the problem can be managed. Even so, the advent of satellite megaconstellations may have made further degradation of astronomers' view of the night sky inevitable.
It's a problem that's only going to accelerate, argues one astronomer at the University of Washington — adding that it's also a question of precedent. "It's a question of what kind of sky you want your grandkids to have."

"Oxford University announced Saturday it was resuming a trial for a coronavirus vaccine it is developing with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, a move that comes days after the study was suspended following a reported side-effect in a U.K. patient," reports the Associated Press: In a statement, the university confirmed the restart across all of its U.K. clinical trial sites after regulators gave the go-ahead following the pause on Sunday. "The independent review process has concluded and following the recommendations of both the independent safety review committee and the U.K. regulator, the MHRA, the trials will recommence in the U.K.," it said.

The vaccine being developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca is widely perceived to be one of the strongest contenders among the dozens of coronavirus vaccines in various stages of testing around the world...

The university said in large trials such as this "it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety." It said globally some 18,000 people have received its vaccine so far. Volunteers from some of the worst affected countries — Britain, Brazil, South Africa and the U.S. — are taking part in the trial... Brazil's health regulator Anvisa on Saturday said it had approved the resumption of tests of the "Oxford vaccine" in the South American country after receiving official information from AstraZeneca... The university insisted that it is "committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our studies and will continue to monitor safety closely."

Pauses in drug trials are commonplace... The Oxford-AstraZeneca study had been previously stopped in July for several days after a participant developed neurological symptoms that turned out to be an undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis that researchers said was unrelated to the vaccine.

Space.com reports: Laika, a stray dog scooped off the streets of Moscow, launched on the Soviet Union's Sputnik 2 mission in November 1957, just a month after Sputnik 1's liftoff opened the space age. The 11-lb. (5 kilograms) mixed-breed quickly died of overheating and circled Earth as a corpse until April 1958, when Sputnik 2 fell back into the atmosphere and burned up.

Laika was sacrificed to aid humanity's march into the cosmos, her pioneering mission and those of her successors designed to help show that our species could survive jaunts into the final frontier. A new documentary called "Space Dogs" asks us to examine that sacrifice and what it says about us. [Trailer here] "This film is about the relationship of another species to us humans. A species that has been used in space history in two ways: both as an experimental object and as a symbol of courage and heroism," directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter said in a statement.

"The dogs had to fulfill mankind's dream by conquering the cosmos for them," the duo added...

Kremser and Peter dug up stunning, never-before-seen footage of Laika and other Soviet space dogs. Some of these archival snippets show the pups being prepped for their landmark launches, their poor little bodies bristling with implanted tubes and wires. Other footage depicts post-landing processing of the shorn and wobbly strays fortunate enough to survive their orbital ordeals. Getting ahold of this priceless historic material was no easy task...

"Space Dogs" is not chiefly about Laika and her fellow space explorers; the historical footage comprises less than one-third of the roughly 90-minute film. The bulk of the documentary is devoted to strays on the streets of modern Moscow, especially one young dog with floppy ears who roams the city with charismatic enthusiasm.
This week saw the "virtual cinema launch" of the documentary, with a real-world release into theatres next weekend.

"Astrophysicists have recently begun hatching plans to find out just how weird Planet Nine might be," reports the New York Times. Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares their report: Although it is probably wishful thinking, some astronomers contend that a black hole may be lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system. All summer, they have been arguing over how to find it, if indeed it is there, and what to do about it, proposing plans that are only halfway out of this world...

Earlier this year, Edward Witten, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, chimed in... Dr. Witten suggested borrowing a trick from Breakthrough Starshot, the proposal by Russian philanthropist Yuri Milner and Dr. Hawking to send thousands of laser-propelled microscopic probes to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. Dr. Witten suggested sending hundreds of similarly small probes outward in all directions to explore the solar system. By keeping track of incoming signals from the probes, scientists on Earth would be able to tell if and when each one sped up or slowed down as it encountered the gravitational field of Planet Nine or anything else out there.

Key to this plan would be the ability of the probes to keep pinging Earth precisely every hundred-thousandth of a second. In May, astronomers Scott Lawrence and Zeeve Rogoszinski of the University of Maryland suggested instead monitoring the trajectories of the probes with high-resolution radio telescopes, which would obviate the need for high-precision clocks on the probes.
Another idea came from Avi Loeb, chair of the astronomy department at Harvard and leader of a scientific advisory board for Breakthrough Starshot: in July Dr. Loeb was back, with a student, Amir Siraj, and a new idea for finding the Planet Nine black hole. If a black hole were out there, they argued, it would occasionally rip apart small comets, causing bright flares that could soon be spotted by the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, previously known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, now under construction in Chile. The observatory's mission, starting in 2021, is to make a movie of the universe, producing a panorama of the entire southern night sky every few days and revealing anything that has changed or moved. Such flares should occur a few times a year, they noted. "Our calculations show that the flares will be bright enough for the Vera Rubin Observatory to rule out or confirm Planet Nine as a black hole within one year of monitoring the sky with its L.S.S.T. survey," Dr. Loeb wrote in an email.

Moreover, because the Rubin telescope examines such a large swath of sky, it could detect or rule out black holes of similar size all the way out to the Oort cloud, a vague and diffuse assemblage of protocomets and primordial, frozen riffraff a trillion miles from the sun, they said.

The prospect of finding a black hole in our own solar system "is as startling as finding evidence that someone might be living in the shed in your backyard," Dr. Loeb said in the email. "If so, who is it, and how did it get there?"

"Scientists have known for nearly 200 years that certain materials can convert heat to electricity..." reports Science, describing research into an intriguing new approach: Refrigerators, boilers, and even lightbulbs continually dump heat into their surroundings. This "waste heat" could — in theory — be turned into electricity, as it is sometimes done with power plants, automobile engines, and other high-heat sources. The problem: These "low-grade" sources give off too little heat for current technology to do the conversion well.

Now, researchers have created a device that uses liquids to efficiently convert low-grade heat to electricity. The advance might one day power energy-scavenging devices that can light up sensors and lights and even charge batteries... Thermocells are good at converting small temperature differences into electricity, but they typically produce only tiny currents... This thermocell generated five times more power for the same electrode area than previous versions, materials physicist Jun Zhou and his colleagues at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology report this week in Science.

It also more than doubled the efficiency needed to make a viable commercial device. A paperback book-size module of 20 thermocells could run LED lights, power a fan, and charge a mobile phone, the team found.

Long-time Slashdot reader bsharma shares an announcement from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope site: Researchers found that small-scale concentrations of dark matter in clusters produce gravitational lensing effects that are 10 times stronger than expected. This evidence is based on unprecedently detailed observations of several massive galaxy clusters by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile...

Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, one of the senior theorists on the team, added, "There's a feature of the real universe that we are simply not capturing in our current theoretical models. This could signal a gap in our current understanding of the nature of dark matter and its properties, as these exquisite data have permitted us to probe the detailed distribution of dark matter on the smallest scales."

The team's paper will appear in the September 11 issue of the journal Science... This unexpected discovery means there is a discrepancy between these observations and theoretical models of how dark matter should be distributed in galaxy clusters.

It could signal a gap in astronomers' current understanding of the nature of dark matter.

gollum123 shares a report from CNBC: Dining out raises the risk of contracting Covid-19 more than other activities, such as shopping or going to a salon, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings come as many states consider the safest ways to reopen businesses, especially restaurants. Those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, "were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than were those with negative SARS-CoV-2 test results," the study authors wrote. And those who were diagnosed without any known exposure to the virus were more likely to report having visited a bar or coffee shop in the previous two weeks. The increased risk makes sense; it's easy to wear a mask in stores or in places of worship, but it's nearly impossible to do so while eating and drinking. In addition to being maskless, individuals are often close together when eating at a restaurant, sitting across the table from one another.