An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On Wednesday, an international team of scientists published the first image of a black hole ever. It looked like a SpaghettiO, and yet the image was an incredible scientific achievement that gave humanity a glimpse of one of the universe's most destructive forces and confirmed long-held theories -- namely, that black holes exist. Storing the raw data for the image was a feat itself -- tiny portions of data spread across five petabytes stored on multiple hard drives, the equivalent of 5,000 years worth of MP3s. Katie Bouman, a computer scientist and assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, led the development of the algorithm that imaged the black hole. An image of her posing with some of the data drives went viral as observers praised her success.

The massive amounts of data were essential to creating the image of the black hole. Bouman and other scientists coordinated radio telescopes all over the Earth, each pointed at the black hole and gathering data at different times. The data scientists then pieced this information together and used an algorithm to fill in the blanks and generate a likely image of the black hole. The five petabytes of data took up such a massive amount of digital and physical space it couldn't be sent over the internet. Instead, the hard drives were flown to processing centers in Germany and Boston where the data was assembled. On Reddit's /r/datahoarder subreddit, a community dedicated to spreading the passion of hoarding vast amounts of data, the drives were bigger news than the scientific achievement itself.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully launched its first-ever mission for a paying customer. It was also the first time the aerospace company managed to land all three rocket boosters after launch. CNN reports: The rocket took off Thursday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after 6 pm ET. It delivered a pricey communications satellite into orbit for Saudi Arabia-based firm Arabsat. For the first time ever, all three Falcon Heavy rocket boosters returned to Earth after launch: The two side-boosters landed simultaneously on ground pads in Florida, while the center core landed on a remote-controlled platform in the ocean a short time later. Reusable hardware is part of Falcon Heavy's appeal. The boosters are guided back to Earth so they can be refurbished and used again. SpaceX says it can drastically reduce the cost of spaceflight.

The Arabsat mission is evidence that some satellite operators will opt for a larger rocket anyway: Arabsat 6A was small enough to fit onto a Falcon 9 rocket. But using the larger rocket allows the company to put the satellite deeper into space, which means the satellite won't need to waste as much of its own precious fuel maneuvering to its intended position. Arabsat 6A will update satellite coverage for Arabsat, which is based in Riyadh and delivers hundreds of television channels and radio stations to homes across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Lockheed Martin built the satellite, along with a second one, for Arabsat as part of a batch of contracts worth $650 million. When Arabsat announced the contracts in 2015, it said at the time that it planned to launch the Arabsat 6A satellite aboard Falcon Heavy. In related news, SpaceX has won a contract to launch the first-ever experiment in 2022 to deflect an asteroid through a high-speed spacecraft collision. "NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will ride on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at a cost of $69 million," reports Florida Today. "It's expected to launch in June of that year."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: A small spacecraft that has captured the imagination and excitement of people in Israel and around the world appears to have crashed on the moon (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). "We had a failure in the spacecraft," said Opher Doron, the general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries' space division, which collaborated on building the spacecraft. "We unfortunately have not managed to land successfully."

If it had succeeded, the robotic lander, named Beresheet, which means "Genesis" or "in the beginning" in Hebrew, would have been the first on the moon built by a private organization, and it would have added Israel to just three nations -- the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China -- to have accomplished that feat. Beresheet reached the launchpad and was headed to space aboard a SpaceX rocket in February. It orbited the moon, by itself a major accomplishment. That has only been done by five nations -- the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, Japan and India -- and the European Space Agency. But the landing was the riskiest part of the mission. The start of the automated landing sequence went as planned. The spacecraft even took a picture of itself at an altitude of 13 miles with the moon in the background. Then, still high above the surface, the engine cut out. The appointed landing time -- 10:25 p.m. in Israel, or 3:25 p.m. Eastern time -- came and passed, and the SpaceIL team realized the mission was over. "Well we didn't make it, but we definitely tried," said Morris Kahn, an Israeli telecommunications entrepreneur and president of SpaceIL, the nonprofit that undertook the mission. "And I think the achievement of getting to where we got is really tremendous. I think we can be proud."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said, "If at first you don't succeed, you try again."

RockDoctor writes: A common trope in "the world is going to end, maybe tomorrow" alarmism is the prospect of the earth undergoing one of its frequent (but aperiodic) magnetic field reversals. Popular conceptions have migrating birds falling out of the sky, satellites and GPS systems no longer working, and much other such silliness. Of course, geologists point out that it has literally all happened before, that there is no significant association of extinction with reversals, and that what evidence there is points to a reversal taking a number of centuries to millennia to achieve. And then the next story comes out and the same old "sky is falling" garbage comes out again.

Just for a change, an astronomer has thrown in his few cents worth. In a letter to The Astrophysical Journal (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), Manasvi Lingam of Harvard University looks at the implications of a magnetic reversal, or of the "switching on" of the Earth's "dynamo" on the flux of radiation experienced by an organism living near the surface. Lingam deduces that during a reversal (or before the dynamo started) "neither the biological radiation dose rates [...] would vary by more than a factor of 2." Behind the "..." is a prospect which will appeal to those looking for ways to die, as "the atmospheric escape rate" is also somewhat affected by the strength of the magnetic field. As a theoretical astronomer, Lingam agrees with the geological record (yay!) that field reversals are unlikely to have major effects on life, or on the atmosphere, or really, on anything other than astronomers' and geophysicists' gauges and dials. None of this will even slightly slow down the overblown hysteria that accompanies the next twitch of the magnetic field.

"A growing cadre of neuroscientists is using sophisticated technology -- and some very complicated math -- to capture what happens in one brain, two brains, or even 12 or 15 at a time when their owners are engaged in eye contact, storytelling, joint attention focused on a topic or object, or any other activity that requires social give and take," reports Scientific American. "Although the field of interactive social neuroscience is in its infancy, the hope remains that identifying the neural underpinnings of real social exchange will change our basic understanding of communication and ultimately improve education or inform treatment of the many psychiatric disorders that involve social impairments." Here's an excerpt from the report: [T]he first study to successfully monitor two brains at the same time took place nearly 20 years ago. Physicist Read Montague, now at Virginia Tech, and his colleagues put two people in separate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines and observed their brain activity as they engaged in a simple competitive game in which one player (the sender) transmitted a signal about whether he or she had just seen the color red or green and the other player (the receiver) had to decide if the sender was telling the truth or lying. Correct guesses resulted in rewards. Montague called the technique hyperscanning, and his work proved it was possible to observe two brains at once.

Initially, Montague's lead was followed mostly by other neuroeconomists rather than social neuroscientists. But the term hyperscanning is now applied to any brain imaging research that involves more than one person. Today the techniques that fit the bill include electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography and functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Use of these varied techniques, many of them quite new, has broadened the range of possible experiments and made hyperscanning less cumbersome and, as a consequence, much more popular. The report also mentions a study from earlier this year that "used hyperscanning to show that eye contact prepares the social brain to empathize by activating the same areas of each person's brain simultaneously: the cerebellum, which helps predict the sensory consequences of actions, and the limbic mirror system, a set of brain areas that become active both when we move any part of the body (including the eyes) and when we observe someone else's movements."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Scientists have taken cancer apart piece-by-piece to reveal its weaknesses, and come up with new ideas for treatment. A team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute disabled every genetic instruction, one at a time, inside 30 types of cancer. It has thrown up 600 new cancer vulnerabilities and each could be the target of a drug. Cancer Research UK praised the sheer scale of the study.

The researchers disrupted nearly 20,000 genes in more than 300 lab-grown tumors made from 30 different types of cancer. The results, published in the journal Nature, revealed 6,000 crucial genes which at least one type of cancer needs to survive. Some were unsuitable for developing cancer drugs, as they are also essential in healthy cells. Others are already the target of precision drugs like Herceptin in breast cancer -- the team called this a "sanity check" that proves their method works. And yet more are beyond current science to develop suitable drugs, so the researchers narrowed down a shortlist of 600 potential new targets for drugs to attack.

Major Blud writes: A newly discovered extinct species of human has been found in the Philippines. It's been named Homo Luzonensis after the island of Luzon where it was found. Homo Erectus has long thought to have been the first member of our direct line to leave the African homeland -- around 1.9 million years ago. The physical features of Homo Luzonensis are a mixture of those found in very ancient human ancestors and in more recent people. This could mean primitive human relatives left Africa and made it all the way to South-East Asia, something not previously thought possible, since Luzon was only ever accessible by sea. The paper detailing the discovery has been published in the journal Nature.

Scientists in southern China report that they've created several transgenic macaque monkeys with extra copies of a human gene suspected of playing a role in shaping human intelligence. "According to their findings, the modified monkeys did better on a memory test involving colors and block pictures, and their brains also took longer to develop -- as those of human children do," reports MIT Technology Review. "There wasn't a difference in brain size." From the report: The experiments, described on March 27 in a Beijing journal, National Science Review, and first reported by Chinese media, remain far from pinpointing the secrets of the human mind or leading to an uprising of brainy primates. Bing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the effort, specializes in searching for signs of "Darwinian selection" -- that is, genes that have been spreading because they're successful. His quest has spanned such topics as Himalayan yaks' adaptation to high altitude and the evolution of human skin color in response to cold winters. [Instead of the FOXP2 gene famous for its potential link to human speech] Su was fascinated by a different gene: MCPH1, or microcephalin. Not only did the gene's sequence differ between humans and apes, but babies with damage to microcephalin are born with tiny heads, providing a link to brain size. With his students, Su once used calipers and head spanners to the measure the heads of 867 Chinese men and women to see if the results could be explained by differences in the gene.

By 2010, though, Su saw a chance to carry out a potentially more definitive experiment -- adding the human microcephalin gene to a monkey. China by then had begun pairing its sizable breeding facilities for monkeys (the country exports more than 30,000 a year) with the newest genetic tools, an effort that has turned it into a mecca for foreign scientists who need monkeys to experiment on. To create the animals, Su and collaborators at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research exposed monkey embryos to a virus carrying the human version of microcephalin. They generated 11 monkeys, five of which survived to take part in a battery of brain measurements. Those monkeys each have between two and nine copies of the human gene in their bodies. After putting the monkeys inside MRI machines to measure their white matter, they gave them computerized memory tests. "According to their report, the transgenic monkeys didn't have larger brains, but they did better on a short-term memory quiz, a finding the team considers remarkable," reports MIT Technology Review.

Longtime Slashdot reader johnnyb (Jonathan Bartlett) shares the findings of a new study he, along with co-author Asatur Zh. Khurshudyan, published this week in the journal DCDIS-A: Recently a longstanding flaw in elementary calculus was found and corrected. The "second derivative" has a notation that has confused many students. It turns out that part of the confusion is because the notation is wrong. Note -- I am the subject of the article. Mind Matters provides the technical details: "[T]he second derivative of y with respect to x has traditionally had the notation 'd2 y/dx 2.' While this notation is expressed as a fraction, the problem is that it doesn't actually work as a fraction. The problem is well-known but it has been generally assumed that there is no way to express the second derivative in fraction form. It has been thought that differentials (the fundamental 'dy' and 'dx' that calculus works with) were not actual values and therefore they aren't actually in ratio with each other. Because of these underlying assumptions, the fact that you could not treat the second derivative as a fraction was not thought to be an anomaly. However, it turns out that, with minor modifications to the notation, the terms of the second derivative (and higher derivatives) can indeed be manipulated as an algebraic fraction. The revised notation for the second derivative is '(d 2 y/dx 2) - (dy/dx)(d 2 x/dx 2).'"

The report adds that while mathematicians haven't been getting wrong answers, "correcting the notation enables mathematicians to work with fewer special-case formulas and also to develop a more intuitive understanding of the nature of differentials."

Astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe's most enigmatic objects. From a report: The picture shows a halo of dust and gas, tracing the outline of a colossal black hole, at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55 million light years from Earth. The black hole itself -- a cosmic trapdoor from which neither light nor matter can escape -- is unseeable. But the latest observations take astronomers right to its threshold for the first time, illuminating the event horizon beyond which all known physical laws collapse.

The breakthrough image was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain and Chile, in an effort involving more than 200 scientists. Sheperd Doeleman, Event Horizon Telescope Director and Harvard University senior research fellow said: "Black holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe. We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have taken a picture of a black hole." The image gives the first direct glimpse of a black hole's accretion disk, a fuzzy doughnut-shaped ring of gas and dust that steadily "feeds" the monster within. A video stream of the press conference.

New submitter nichogenius writes: The latest observation run of LIGO and VIRGO only started April 1st, but has already observed another black hole merger. The LIGO detectors have been offline since the 25th of August, 2017 for a series of upgrades. The latest observational run is the first run where gravitational wave events are being publicly announced as they happen rather than being announced weeks or months later. Few details of the merger are available at this time, but there is some information available on LIGO's twitter and raw details can be obtained from LIGO's event database page.

Gravitational detection events are being publicly broadcast using NASA's VOEvent system. If you know a bit of python, you can setup your own VOEvent client using the pygcn module with example code available in this tutorial.

A new study has found that electrical brain stimulation can temporarily reverse a decline in memory as a result of aging. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares the findings via a report from The Guardian: The study focused on a part of cognition called working memory, the brain system that holds information for short periods while we are making decisions or performing calculations. Working memory is crucial for a wide variety of tasks, such as recognizing faces, doing arithmetic and navigating a new environment. Working memory is known to steadily decline with age, even in the absence of any form of dementia. One factor in this decline is thought to be a disconnection between two brain networks, known as the prefrontal and temporal regions. In young people, the electrical brain activity in these two regions tends to be rhythmically synchronized, which scientists think allows information to be exchanged between the two brain areas. However, in older people the activity tends to be less tightly synchronized. This may be as result of deterioration of the long-range nerve connections that link up the different parts of the brain.

In the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, 42 people aged 20 -- 29 and 42 people aged 60 -- 76 were assessed in a working memory task. The older group were slower and less accurate on the tests. The scientists then subjected them all to 25 minutes of non-invasive brain stimulation. This aimed to synchronize the two target brain regions by passing gentle pulses of electricity through the scalp and into the brain. After the intervention, working memory in the older adults improved to match the younger group and the effect appeared to last for 50 minutes after the stimulation. Those who had scored worst to start with showed the largest improvements.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today, highlighting the key findings from a new study published in the journal Nature: Thanks to global warming, our planet's glaciers continue to melt away, losing up to 390 billion tons of ice and snow per year, a new study suggests. The largest losses were glaciers in Alaska, followed by the melting ice fields in southern South America and glaciers in the Arctic. Glaciers could almost disappear in some mountain ranges by the end of the century, including those in the U.S. The world's seas have risen about an inch in the past 50 years just due to glacier melt alone, according to the study. Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, the study reported. Melted, that's enough to cover the lower 48 U.S. states in about 4 feet of water.

An extensive survey of bacteria and fungi on surfaces inside the International Space Station has revealed an astonishing number of microorganisms living among the astronauts -- the health impacts of which aren't entirely clear. Gizmodo reports: Since it was first established in 1998, the International Space Station has been visited by hundreds of astronauts (227 to be exact). These trips have invariably introduced an array of microbes to the orbital outpost, as have shipments of cargo. But while astronauts return to Earth, their germs stay behind. New research published today in Microbiome offers the most comprehensive catalogue to date of the bacteria and fungi living on the ISS, detailing the station's distinctive and ever-changing microbiological profile. This research will now be used by NASA and other space agencies to develop safety measures for the ISS and other long-term space missions.

NASA astronauts took swabs using sterile wipes at eight predefined locations on the ISS, on three different occasions during a 14 month period. The locations included both high and low traffic areas, including the viewing window, toilet, exercise platform, stowage rack, dining table, and sleeping quarters. NASA astronaut Terry Virts performed the first two sampling sessions on March 4, 2015 and then three months later on May 15, 2015. NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams took the third sample a year later on May 6, 2016. The samples were returned to Earth for analysis. The ISS may seem like a cold, sterile place in space, but the analysis showed it's a veritable cornucopia for microbes. The most prolific bacteria, according to culture results, were Staphylococcus (26 percent of total samples), Pantoea (23 percent), Bacillus (11 percent), Staphylococcus aureus (10 percent) and Pantoea conspicua and Pantoea gaviniae (both at 9 percent). The fungal population was primarily comprised of Rhodotorula mucilaginosa. The authors warn that some strains of bacteria could form damaging biological sheets known as biofilms: "[B]iofilm formation on the ISS could decrease infrastructure stability by causing mechanical blockages, reducing heat transfer efficiency, and inducing microbial influenced corrosion..."

Since 2008, a $65 million program has been designing a sophisticated new "ignition interlock" system that would only allows cars to start if it detects that the driver is sober, the Washington Post reports: What's different -- perhaps even revolutionary -- is that the built-in ignition interlock would make an instantaneous and precise reading of every driver's blood alcohol content (BAC) level when the driver attempts to start the vehicle. Eventually, the device could become standard equipment, just like air bags. The device would take BAC samples in one of two ways. A breath-based system would gather a whiff of a driver's ambient breath. A touch-based system would analyze the touch of a driver's finger, perhaps from a vehicle's starter button or the steering wheel....

Officials behind the public-private effort to develop the technology -- known as the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) -- say the device will be ready for commercial fleets next year. Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles became the first state agency to use it in its fleet last year, and a private company, James River Transportation, is road-testing them in its fleet of Ford Flex crossovers.... . Advocates say that if their work is successful, such a device -- which requires understanding complexities involving the science of biology, spectroscopy, electrical engineering, consumer behavior and even politics -- could save an estimated 10,000 lives a year.
"We intend to release by the end of 2020 a breath-based device for use in fleet applications and as a dealer-installed accessory," says the president of Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety, which represents 17 automakers.

He tells the Post that the interlock devices now available are zero-tolerance -- "if any amount of alcohol is present, they will lock you out" -- and "are very difficult to use... Even people who use them regularly and are experienced in using them typically fail to provide a sufficient breath sample about 30 percent of the time... The other problem with those mouthpieces [besides some drivers seeing them as uncomfortable or intrusive] is they're plastic and you can only use them about five times... And then, the technology has to be recalibrated roughly every year, dependent upon usage. If you use it more, you have to calibrate it more frequently."

But with the new devices, "you simply sit in driver's seat and breathe normally. That's all that's required. There is no mouthpiece... We want to make a very precise very accurate measurement within a third of a second."

A drug-resistant fungus called Candida auris "is quietly spreading across the globe," reports the New York Times: Over the last five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical center to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa. Recently C. auris reached New York, New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to add it to a list of germs deemed "urgent threats...."

In the United States, two million people contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them, according to the official CDC estimate. That number was based on 2010 figures; more recent estimates from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine put the death toll at 162,000. Worldwide fatalities from resistant infections are estimated at 700,000.... With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs.

Even the CDC, under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases.... [A] hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients -- or prospective ones.
The Times reports that C. auris targets people with weakened immune systems (including babies and the elderly) -- and that 587 cases of C. auris have already been reported in the U.S., according to the CDC: 309 cases in New York, 104 in New Jersey, and 144 in Illinois. The CDC adds that half the patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days.

It also survived in a room treated for an entire week with aerosolized hydrogen peroxide, according to the Times. "Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines."

The New York Post adds that "Given the speed at which the inspection spreads, coupled with its resistance to medication, 'the prospect of an endemic or epidemic multidrug-resistant yeast in U.S. healthcare facilities is troubling,' the CDC said in October."

Long-time Slashdot reader frank249 brings some news from Diana Dragomir, a Hubble Fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research: Diana Dragomir tweeted that the MOST Telescope "can no longer be powered up. It's had a long life, overshooting its planned one-year lifespan by a factor of 15!"

The MOST Space Telescope (which stands for Microvariability and Oscillation of Stars) was launched into space in 2003. It was the first Canadian scientific satellite in orbit in 33 years, and it is the first space telescope to be entirely designed and built in Canada. About the size and shape of a large suitcase, the satellite weighs only 54 kilograms and is equipped with an ultra high precision telescope that measures only 15 centimetres in diameter (thus the nickname "humble space telescope").

Despite its diminutive size, it is [was?] ten times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope in detecting the minuscule variations in a star's luminosity caused by vibrations that shake its surface.
Interestingly, when the Most telescope first launched back in 2003 -- it was the same long-time Slashdot reader frank249 who submitted the story.

In December a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket deployed 64 satellites into space. But four months later, more than a dozen "have yet to be identified in space," reports the Verge. "We know that they're up there, and where they are, but it's unclear which satellites belong to which satellite operator on the ground...."

"Many of the satellite operators do not know which of these 19 probes are theirs exactly, and the Air Force can't figure it out either." For a good portion of these satellites, it's possible that they have experienced some kind of technical problem, preventing the operators from contacting the spacecraft in orbit. But part of the identification issue stems from the SSO-A "SmallSat Express" mission's structure. This was a rocket ride-share, a type of launch that's become popular in the industry. As satellites grow smaller, operators can pack a bunch of these tiny probes together on larger launch vehicles, sending them into space all at once. But with so many satellites going into orbit at the same time, it can be hard for the Air Force's technology to distinguish the satellites from each other. And that, in turn, can make it hard for satellite operators to decipher which satellites are theirs...

Not knowing the exact location of a spacecraft is a major problem for operators. If they can't communicate with their satellite, the company's orbiting hardware becomes, essentially, space junk. It brings up liability and transparency concerns, too. If an unidentified satellite runs into something else in space, it's hard to know who is to blame...

One problem is that most of the spacecraft on board all look the same. Nearly 50 satellites on the SSO-A launch were modified CubeSats -- a type of standardized satellite that's roughly the size of a cereal box. That means they are all about the same size and have the same general boxy shape. Plus, these tiny satellites are often deployed relatively close together on ride-share launches, one right after the other. The result is a big swarm of nearly identical spacecraft that are difficult to tell apart from the ground below.
"It's possible that some of the owners of the unidentified satellite got in touch with their vehicles recently and just have not informed the Air Force where they are," the article acknowledges. But Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard and spaceflight tracker, points out to the Verge that five of the 13 satellites launched on an Electron rocket in December are still unidentified -- as are eight of the 72 satellites deployed on a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2017.

And four months after its launch in December, the web site for Trevor Paglen's "Orbital Reflector" art project (deploying a giant reflective balloon that can be seen from Earth) is still giving visitors this discouraging message.

"Due to the large number of satellites aboard #SSOA, the satellite tracking information is taking longer than we originally anticipated..."

An anonymous reader writes: "A bad diet kills more people globally than tobacco," reports Bloomberg, citing a new study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and published Wednesday in Lancet. The study argues that poor diets led to 11 million deaths in 2017 -- and that more than half of them were caused by just three main dietary factors: low consumption of whole grains, low consumption of fruits, and high intake of sodium.

In fact, bad diets are responsible for more deaths worldwide than any other cause, the researchers concluded. "We found that improvement of diet could potentially prevent one in every five deaths globally."

William Robinson writes: The Hayabusa2 Japanese spacecraft on Friday dropped an explosive on the Ryugu asteroid (named after an undersea palace in a Japanese folktale) to make a crater on its surface. The spacecraft safely evacuated and remained intact after dropping a "small carry-on impactor" made of copper onto the asteroid. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said that they plan to send Hayabusa2 back to the site later, when the dust and debris settle, for observations from above and to collect samples from underground that have not been exposed to the sun or space rays. If successful, it would be the first time a spacecraft has taken such materials. In a 2005 "Deep Impact" mission to a comet, NASA observed fragments after blasting the surface but did not collect them.