A team of researchers from Plex Corporation, Bruker Scientific LLC and Harvard University has found evidence of a protein inside of a meteorite. They have written a paper describing their findings and have uploaded it to the arXiv preprint server. Phys.Org reports: In this new effort, the researchers have discovered a protein called hemolithin inside of a meteorite that was found in Algeria back in 1990. The hemolithin protein found by the researchers was a small one, and was made up mostly of glycine, and amino acids. It also had oxygen, lithium and iron atoms at its ends -- an arrangement never seen before. The team's paper has not yet been peer reviewed, but once the findings are confirmed, their discovery will add another piece to the puzzle that surrounds the development of life on Earth. Proteins are considered to be essential building blocks for the development of living things, and finding one on a meteorite bolsters theories that suggest either life, or something very close to it, came to Earth from elsewhere in space.

Proteins are considered by chemists to be quite complex, which means a lot of things would have to happen by chance for protein formation. For hemolithin to have formed naturally in the configuration found would require glycine to form first, perhaps on the surface of grains of space dust. After that, heat by way of molecular clouds might have induced units of glycine to begin linking into polymer chains, which at some point, could evolve into fully formed proteins. The researchers note that the atom groupings on the tips of the protein form an iron oxide that has been seen in prior research to absorb photons -- a means of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, thereby producing an energy source that would also be necessary for the development of life.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Billions of years ago, soon after the Big Bang, cosmic inflation stretched the tiny seed of our universe and transformed energy into matter. Physicists think inflation initially created the same amount of matter and antimatter, which annihilate each other on contact. But then something happened that tipped the scales in favor of matter, allowing everything we can see and touch to come into existence -- and a new study suggests that the explanation is hidden in very slight ripples in space-time. "If you just start off with an equal component of matter and antimatter, you would just end up with having nothing," because antimatter and matter have equal but opposite charge, said lead study author Jeff Dror, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and physics researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Everything would just annihilate." Obviously, everything did not annihilate, but researchers are unsure why. The answer might involve very strange elementary particles known as neutrinos, which don't have electrical charge and can thus act as either matter or antimatter.

One idea is that about a million years after the Big Bang, the universe cooled and underwent a phase transition, an event similar to how boiling water turns liquid into gas. This phase change prompted decaying neutrinos to create more matter than antimatter by some "small, small amount," Dror said. But "there are no very simple ways -- or almost any ways -- to probe [this theory] and understand if it actually occurred in the early universe." But Dror and his team, through theoretical models and calculations, figured out a way we might be able to see this phase transition. They proposed that the change would have created extremely long and extremely thin threads of energy called "cosmic strings" that still pervade the universe. Dror and his team realized that these cosmic strings would most likely create very slight ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. Detect these gravitational waves, and we can discover whether this theory is true. The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

In an investigation of neural connectivity in 30 infants ranging from six to 57 days old (with an average age of 27 days), neuroscientists found that circuit wiring precedes, and thus may guide, regional specialization, shedding light on how knowledge systems emerge in the brain. An anonymous reader shares a report from Scientific American: In the study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, the researchers looked at two of the best-studied brain networks dedicated to a particular visual function -- one that underlies face recognition and another that processes scenes. The occipital face area and fusiform face area selectively respond to faces and are highly connected in adults, suggesting they constitute a face-recognition network. The same description applies to the parahippocampal place area and retrosplenial complex but for scenes. All four of these areas are in the inferior temporal cortex, which is behind the ear in humans. The team used a technique called resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI), which measures the level of synchronization of activity in different brain regions to assess how connected they are. The infants were scanned while sleeping and tightly swaddled. "Getting fMRI data from newborns is a new frontier in neuroimaging," says neuroscientist and lead study author Frederik Kamps, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You need participants' head to be still, and a sleeping baby is one that's willing to lie still."

The researchers found that the face regions were highly connected to one another but not to the scene regions, and vice versa, at this young age. It would be months before they became selective for faces or scenes, suggesting connectivity precedes the development of function. The team also assessed connections between these regions and the part of the brain where visual input first arrives from the retina: the primary visual cortex, or V1. This region is structured so that such inputs from the center of the retina arrive at a different area than those from the periphery of the field of vision, forming a map of the visual world. The face network was strongly connected to V1's central area, while the scene network was more tightly linked to its peripheral area. This arrangement likely relates to the fact that we usually fixate on faces, whereas scenes extend across our entire visual field. These networks, present in an infant's earliest days, are therefore connected so as to receive the most appropriate input for the function they will eventually perform. Psychologist Daniel Dilks of Emory University has an eye on possible clinical applications. "He is particularly interested in two neurodevelopmental disorders that are thought to involve differences in brain wiring: People with autism have social impairments that may relate to face processing. And a condition called Williams syndrome causes problems with navigation," reports Scientific American.

"Siblings of children with autism could be studied to ask whether connectivity in face regions might predict the onset of the condition, which is usually not diagnosed until at least two years of age. Dilks also hopes to study babies with Williams syndrome to ask whether connectivity between scene-processing regions is a problem. "

The World Health Organization is warning that the novel coronavirus could be far more dangerous than the flu, with a mortality rate of 3.4%. The new estimates come as the U.S. death toll from the virus reaches 9. From a report: The global mortality rate -- which includes more than 3,000 deaths -- is many times higher than the "mortality rate" of the flu, which is less than 1%. WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that is at least partly because COVID-19 is a new disease, and no one has built up an immunity to it. Still, Tedros reiterated the WHO's belief that containment was still within reach. "We don't even talk about containment for seasonal flu," Tedros said. "It's just not possible, but it's possible for COVID-19." Officials say they have learned the coronavirus is less transmissible than the flu, which is often spread by people who are infected yet don't have symptoms. That doesn't seem to be the case for COVID-19, he said. "There are not yet any vaccines or therapeutics, which is why we must do everything we can to contain it."

Tedros said he's concerned by shortages of masks, gowns and other equipment needed by healthcare workers to stop the spread of disease "caused by rising demands and hoarding and misuse." "We can't stop COVID-19 without protecting our health workers," said Tedros, noting that prices of surgical masks have increased sixfold.

Google has announced that it will not host an in-person I/O 2020 over coronavirus concerns. The company is looking into an alternative format. 9to5Google reports: Google I/O 2020 was announced in January, with the ticket application and drawing process taking place late last month. Hosted at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, it's right across the street from the Googleplex headquarters. "Due to concerns around the coronavirus (COVID-19), and in accordance with health guidance from the CDC, WHO, and other health authorities, we have decided to cancel the physical Google I/O event at Shoreline Amphitheatre," reads a statement on the Google I/O website.

Those that purchased tickets will be fully refunded by March 13, while registered guests this year will automatically be able to purchase I/O 2021 passes. Looking forward, the company is going to "explore other ways to evolve Google I/O to best connect with our developer community." At this time, Google does not look to be committing to the original May 12-14 timeframe. Meanwhile, Google will be providing $1 million to local Mountain View organizations to help with the lack of I/O and its over 7,000 attendees. This is specifically aimed at helping raise awareness about the coronavirus, as well as aiding small businesses, increasing STEM education, and supporting organizations working with unhoused neighbors.

A tally of the number of people tested for the novel coronavirus disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website on Monday. From a report: The change was first reported by journalist Judd Legum on Twitter. The disappearance of the numbers comes less than a week after the first cases of the virus with unknown origins were reported in the US. In the past few days, six deaths due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, have been confirmed in Washington state.

The coronavirus has found a crack in the nation's public health armor, and it is not one that scientists foresaw: diagnostic testing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention botched its first attempt to mass produce a diagnostic test kit, a discovery made only after officials had shipped hundreds of kits to state laboratories. From a report: A promised replacement took several weeks, and still did not permit state and local laboratories to make final diagnoses. And the C.D.C. essentially ensured that Americans would be tested in very few numbers by imposing stringent and narrow criteria, critics say. On Monday, following mounting criticism of the federal response, Trump administration officials promised a rapid expansion of the country's testing capacities. With the help of private companies and academic centers, as many as a million diagnostic tests could be administered by the end of this week, said Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. But many scientists wonder if the moves come too late. As of Monday evening, 103 Americans were infected with the coronavirus in the United States. Six deaths have been reported. Dozens of patients, in several states, may have caught the virus in their communities, suggesting that the pathogen already may be circulating locally.

The case numbers are rising not just because the virus is spreading, but because federal officials have taken steps toward expanded testing. The persistent drumbeat of positive test results has raised critical questions about the government's initial management of the outbreak. Why weren't more Americans tested sooner? How many may be carrying the virus now? Most disturbing of all: Did a failure to provide adequate testing give the coronavirus time to gain a toehold in the United States? "Clearly, there have been problems with rolling out the test," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of the C.D.C. "There are a lot of frustrated doctors and patients and health departments." Still, Dr. Frieden said he thought the situation was improving. Other experts, although supportive of the agency, were mystified that federal officials could have committed so many missteps. "The incompetence has really exceeded what anyone would expect with the C.D.C.," said Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard University. "This is not a difficult problem to solve in the world of viruses."

hackingbear writes: According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, Chinese hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients a few weeks ago now have empty beds. Trials of experimental drugs are having difficulty enrolling enough eligible patients. And the number of new cases reported each day has plummeted from thousands per day to 125 cases on March 2. The report is unequivocal. "China's bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic," it says. "This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real."

The WHO team traveled to several cities including Wuhan, the hardest hit city. They visited hospitals, laboratories, companies, wet markets selling live animals, train stations, and local government offices. "Everywhere you went, anyone you spoke to, there was a sense of responsibility and collective action, and there's war footing to get things done," says WHO's Bruce Aylward. The question now is whether the world can take lessons from China's apparent success -- and whether other countries can imitate the massive lockdowns and electronic surveillance measures imposed by an "authoritarian" government (an assertion which real Chinese may not necessarily agree with from their daily experiences).

Nvidia has announced it has shifted its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) to be online-only due to concerns from the coronavirus outbreak. People who had registered for the event, which was originally set to be held in San Jose, California, from March 22nd to March 26th, will get a full refund. The Verge reports: "This decision to move the event online instead of at the San Jose Convention Center reflects our top priority: the health and safety of our employees, our partners and our customers," the company said in a statement. Nvidia says company founder and CEO Jensen Huang will still deliver a keynote, and that it's working with speakers to begin publishing talks online. The online version of the event will still take place from March 22nd to March 26th. Other tech events cancelled due to the coronavirus include Mobile World Congress, Facebook's F8 developer conference, and the Game Developers Conference.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have found evidence that Earth was covered by a global ocean that turned the planet into a "water world" more than 3 billion years ago. Telltale chemical signatures were spotted in an ancient chunk of ocean crust which point to a planet once devoid of continents, the largest landmasses on Earth. If the findings are confirmed by future work, they will help researchers to refine their theories on where and how the first single-celled life emerged on Earth, and what other worlds may be habitable.

"An early Earth without emergent continents may have resembled a 'water world', providing an important environmental constraint on the origin and evolution of life on Earth, as well as its possible existence elsewhere," the scientists write in Nature Geoscience. Their work centered on a geological site called the Panorama district in north-western Australia's outback, where a 3.2 billion-year-old slab of ocean floor has been turned on its side. Locked inside the ancient crust are chemical clues about the seawater that covered Earth at the time. The scientists focused on different types of oxygen that seawater had carried into the crust. In particular, they analyzed the relative amounts of two isotopes, oxygen-16 and the ever-so-slightly-heavier oxygen-18, in more than 100 samples of the stone. They found that seawater contained more oxygen-18 when the crust was formed 3.2 billion years ago. The most likely explanation, they believe, is that Earth had no continents at the time, because when these form, the clays they contain absorb the ocean's heavy oxygen isotopes. The Earth wasn't entirely landless, however. "The scientists suspect that small 'microcontinents' may have poked out of the ocean here and there," the report adds. "But they do not think the planet hosted vast soil-rich continents like those that dominate Earth today."

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Studies of the origin of life are replete with paradoxes. Take this doozy: Every known organism on Earth uses a suite of proteins -- and the DNA that helps build it -- to construct the building blocks of our cells. But those very building blocks are also needed to make DNA and proteins. The solution to this chicken-and-egg conundrum may lie at the site of hydrothermal vents, fissures in the sea floor that spew hot water and a wealth of other chemicals, researchers report today. Scientists say they have found that a trio of metal compounds abundant around the vents can cause hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide (CO2) to react to form a collection of energy-rich organic compounds critical to cell growth. And the high temperatures and pressures around the vents themselves may have jump-started life on Earth, the team argues.

The new work is "thrilling," says Thomas Carell, an origin of life chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich who was not affiliated with the new project. The organic molecules the study generated include formate, acetate, and pyruvate, which Carell calls "the most fundamental molecules of energy metabolism," the process of converting nutrients into cell growth. The new results support a long-held idea about the origin of life known as "metabolism first hypothesis." It posits that geochemical processes on early Earth created a stew of simple energy-rich compounds that drove the synthesis of complex molecules, which eventually provided the materials for Darwinian evolution and life. The findings appear in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

A woman that tested positive for coronavirus was "mistakenly released" from isolation Saturday, causing the mayor of San Antonio to declare a public health emergency in the city. Dallas News reports: The patient was one of 91 evacuees who were brought to San Antonio from Wuhan, China. She was released Saturday and was in the community for a little more than 12 hours before she was quarantined again. During that time, the woman checked into a Holiday Inn hotel near the San Antonio airport and took a hotel shuttle to the North Star Mall, said Dr. Anita Kurian of the city's Metropolitan Health District. She was at the mall from about 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Kurian said the health department completed its risk assessment of any people the woman could have exposed to the virus and determined that everyone was at low risk, except for health-care personnel who were in direct contact with the woman when she was released.

The CDC said the patient had been treated at a local medical facility for several weeks after she returned from Wuhan on a flight chartered by the State Department. "At the time of discharge from the facility, the patient was asymptomatic and met all of CDC's criteria for release -- resolution of any symptoms and two consecutive sets of negative test results, collected more than 24 hours apart," the agency said. After the patient was released, a lab test was determined to be "weakly positive." The patient was brought back into isolation "out of an abundance of caution," the CDC said. "We simply cannot have a screw-up like this from our federal partners," San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said at a news conference Monday.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott also criticized the CDC, saying: "What the CDC did is completely unacceptable. It appears to be a case of negligence with regard to allowing this person who had coronavirus to leave Texas Center for Infectious Disease and go back into the general population. I think they understand the magnitude of the error."

A woman who recently traveled to Iran is New York's first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday night. The Wall Street Journal reports: The woman, who wasn't named, is in her late 30s and contracted the virus while traveling abroad in Iran. She has respiratory symptoms and is isolated in her home, according to the governor's office. She isn't in serious condition and has been in a controlled situation since arriving in New York, according to the governor's office. "There is no cause for surprise -- this was expected," the governor said in a statement. "I said from the beginning it was a matter of when, not if, there would be a positive case of novel coronavirus in New York." A state official said the woman is in Manhattan. The report says there's been a total of eight other cases in New York City, but all of those people had tested negative.

"As of Sunday, 32 people in New York, including the one positive case, have been tested for coronavirus infection," reports The Wall Street Journal, citing New York state health officials. "All the other tests were negative." If the virus spreads, New York City health officials said there are roughly 1,200 hospital beds throughout the city that could be used.

A new system uses software to dictate quarantines -- and appears to send personal data to police, in a troubling precedent for automated social control. From a report: As China encourages people to return to work despite the coronavirus outbreak, it has begun a bold mass experiment in using data to regulate citizens' lives -- by requiring them to use software on their smartphones that dictates whether they should be quarantined or allowed into subways, malls and other public spaces. But a New York Times analysis of the software's code found that the system does more than decide in real time whether someone poses a contagion risk. It also appears to share information with the police, setting a template for new forms of automated social control that could persist long after the epidemic subsides.

The Alipay Health Code, as China's official news media has called the system, was first introduced in the eastern city of Hangzhou -- a project by the local government with the help of Ant Financial, a sister company of the e-commerce giant Alibaba. People in China sign up through Ant's popular wallet app, Alipay, and are assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- that indicates their health status. The system is already in use in 200 cities and is being rolled out nationwide, Ant says. Neither the company nor Chinese officials have explained in detail how the system classifies people. That has caused fear and bewilderment among those who are ordered to isolate themselves and have no idea why.

The news site Axios (founded by former Politico staffers) reports on an issue discovered at an Atlanta lab for America's Centers for Disease Control that was manufacturing "relatively small amounts" of coronavirus testing kits for laboratories around the country. Sources familiar with the situation in Atlanta tell them that manufacturing has now been moved to another lab.

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn confirmed to the site that there had been problems with "certain test components." The Commissioner also said the problems had been resolved and "were due to a manufacturing issue," and said the FDA has confidence in the current manufacturing of the tests they're distributing, which "have passed extensive quality control procedures and will provide the high-level of diagnostic accuracy we need..."

Axios adds that "It was not immediately clear if or how possible contamination in the Atlanta lab played a role in delays or problems" that America's been experiencing with its coronavirus testing: The U.S. government had admitted to problems with its diagnostic tests -- which have put the U.S. well behind China and South Korea in doing large-scale testing of the American public for the coronavirus... As of Friday, South Korea had tested 65,000 people for the coronavirus; the U.S. had tested only 459, per Science Magazine. China can reportedly conduct up to 1.6 million tests a week. Although the World Health Organization has sent testing kits to 57 other countries, the U.S. decided to make its own.

There have also been problems with the tests themselves. On Feb. 12, the FDA announced that health labs across the country were having problems validating the CDC's diagnostic test, Science reports in an in-depth account of what went wrong with the tests.

The FDA announced yesterday that public health labs can create their own diagnostic test. Scott Becker, the CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told Science that he expects that public health labs will be able to do 10,000 tests a day by the end of the week.

An anonymous reader quotes Teslarati: SpaceX has been awarded a $117 million launch contract for NASA's Psyche mission that will study a unique metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. The NASA mission to loft a 5,750-lb. (2,608-kg) spacecraft atop of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket will study a mineral-rich asteroid named 16 Psyche. The mission is expected to take place sometime in 2022 and launch from NASA's historic Launch Pad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Psyche is an intriguing, metallic world orbiting in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Most asteroids are made of rock and ice, but not Psyche — it's composed of iron and nickel. That's what makes it an interesting target. Scientists want to study it because they believe Psyche could provide insight into how planets form. Terrestrial bodies, like the Earth, have metallic cores deep in their interior, below the outer layers like the mantle and crust. Psyche could be one of these metallic cores: the remnant of a violent collision with another planetary body billions of years ago. We're unable to study the Earth's core directly, so Psyche could provide a lot of insight into our own planet as well as how other rocky planets form...

This mission is one of true exploration because scientists aren't exactly sure of what we will find. Ground-based measurements indicate that Psyche could be as large as Mars, and is probably shaped like a potato. But is this hunk of metal the dead, exposed heart of an ancient protoplanet or could it be a weird iron-rich alien world....?

This is SpaceX's 8th contract from NASA's Launch Services Program (LSP) and the first for Falcon Heavy.
NASA has shared a terrific animation showing what the asteroid will look like.

"Amazon has pulled more than 1 million items from its digital shelves due to claims that the products could either cure or help prevent the spread of coronavirus," reports SiliconValley.com: The move comes during the same week that Facebook said it would ban advertisements on its platform for products purporting to cure or curtail the spread of the virus that has so far infected more than 80,000 people, and results in almost 3,000 deaths, mostly in China. Amazon said has been taking the products in question down throughout the month... "Amazon has always required sellers provide accurate information on product detail pages and we remove those that violate our policies," said an Amazon spokesperson, in a statement given to this news organization.

schwit1 quotes Space.com: In a historic first for satellite operations, a commercial spacecraft "helper" has docked with a working communications satellite to provide life-extension services.

The companies involved in the meetup — Northrop Grumman and Intelsat — hailed the operation, which took place Tuesday (Feb. 25), as the beginning of a new era that will see robotic spacecraft giving new life to older satellites that are low on fuel or require repairs.

SpaceX envisions Starship as a 387-foot-tall (118 meters) spacecraft/booster that can carry up to 100 people to Mars. Pig Hogger (Slashdot reader #10,379) tipped us off to this progress report from Space.com: SpaceX's new Starship prototype appeared to burst during a pressure test late Friday (Feb. 28), rupturing under the glare of flood lights and mist at the company's south Texas facility. The Starship SN1 prototype, which SpaceX moved to a launchpad near its Boca Chica, Texas, assembly site earlier this week, blew apart during a liquid nitrogen pressure test according to a video captured by SPadre.com. A separate video posted by NASASpaceflight.com member BocaChicaGal clearly shows the Starship SN1's midsection buckle during the test, then shoot upward before crashing back to the ground...

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has hinted that many of these prototypes will be needed to perfect the Starship vehicle... Musk unveiled the first full-size Starship prototype, called the Starship Mk1, in September 2019. That vehicle blew its top during cryogenic testing.

"From the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs comes three case studies on people who benefited from LSD overdoses including one woman who took a dose of 55 milligrams of pure powdered LSD," writes clovis (Slashdot reader #4,684).

CNN reports: The 49-year-old woman, known as CB, had contracted Lyme disease in her early 20s, which damaged her feet and ankles and left her in "significant pain." In September 2015, she took 55 milligrams of what she believed was cocaine but was actually "pure LSD in powder form." The authors defined a normal recreational dose as 100 micrograms -- equal to 0.1 milligrams. The woman blacked out and vomited frequently for the next 12 hours but reported feeling "pleasantly high" for the 12 hours after that -- still vomiting, but less often. According to her roommate, she sat mostly still in a chair, either with her eyes open or rolled back, occasionally speaking random words. Ten hours later, she was able to hold a conversation and "seemed coherent."

Her foot pain was gone the next day and she stopped using morphine for five days. While the pain returned, she was able to control it with a lower dose of morphine and a microdose of LSD every three days. After more than two years, in January 2018, she stopped using both morphine and LSD and reported no withdrawal symptoms, although the case report said she did experience an increase in anxiety, depression and social withdrawal.