An unexpected ‘heat wave’ of 700 degrees Celsius, extending 130,000 kilometres (10 Earth diameters) in Jupiter’s atmosphere, has been discovered. James O’Donoghue, of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has presented the results this week at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022 in Granada.
Jupiter’s atmosphere, famous for its characteristic multicoloured vortices, is also unexpectedly hot: in fact, it is hundreds of degrees hotter than models predict. Due to its orbital distance millions of kilometres from the Sun, the giant planet receives under 4% of the amount of sunlight compared to Earth, and its upper atmosphere should theoretically be a frigid -70 degrees Celsius. Instead, its cloud tops are measured everywhere at over 400 degrees Celsius.
“Last year we produced – and presented at EPSC2021 – the first maps of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere capable of identifying the dominant heat sources,” said Dr O’Donoghue. “Thanks to these maps, we demonstrated that Jupiter’s auroras were a possible mechanism that could explain these temperatures.”
Just like the Earth, Jupiter experiences auroras around its poles as an effect of the solar wind. However, while Earth’s auroras are transient and only occur when solar activity is intense, auroras at Jupiter are permanent and have a variable intensity. The powerful auroras can heat the region around the poles to over 700 degrees Celsius, and global winds can redistribute the heat globally around Jupiter.
A panning-view of Jupiter’s upper atmospheric temperatures, 1000 kilometers above the cloud tops. Jupiter is shown on top of a visible image for context. In this snapshot, the auroral region (near the northern pole, in yellow/white) appears to have shed a massive, planetary-scale wave of heating towards the equator. The feature is over 130,000 kilometers long, or 10-Earth diameters, and is hundreds of degrees warmer than the background. For video see: https://youtu.be/gWT0QwSoVls/CREDIT:Hubble / NASA / ESA / A. Simon (NASA GSFC) / J. Schmidt. Credit: James O’Donoghue
Looking more deeply through their data, Dr O’Donoghue and his team discovered the spectacular ‘heat wave’ just below the northern aurora, and found that it was travelling towards the equator at a speed of thousands of kilometres per hour.
The heat wave was probably triggered by a pulse of enhanced solar wind plasma impacting Jupiter’s magnetic field, which boosted auroral heating and forced hot gases to expand and spill out towards the equator.
“While the auroras continuously deliver heat to the rest of the planet, these heat wave ‘events’ represent an additional, significant energy source,” added Dr O’Donoghue. “These findings add to our knowledge of Jupiter’s upper-atmospheric weather and climate, and are a great help in trying to solve the ‘energy crisis’ problem that plagues research into the giant planets.”
Wearable sensors styled into t-shirts and face masks
Imperial researchers have embedded new low-cost sensors that monitor breathing, heart rate, and ammonia into t-shirts and face masks.
Potential applications range from monitoring exercise, sleep, and stress to diagnosing and monitoring disease through breath and vital signs.
Spun from a new Imperial-developed cotton-based conductive thread called PECOTEX, the sensors cost little to manufacture. Just $0.15 produces a metre of thread to seamlessly integrate more than ten sensors into clothing, and PECOTEX is compatible with industry-standard computerised embroidery machines.
First author of the research Fahad Alshabouna, PhD candidate at Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, said: “The flexible medium of clothing means our sensors have a wide range of applications. They’re also relatively easy to produce which means we could scale up manufacturing and usher in a new generation of wearables in clothing.”
The research team embroidered the sensors into a face mask to monitor breathing, a t-shirt to monitor heart activity, and textiles to monitor gases like ammonia, a component of the breath that can be used to track liver and kidney function. The ammonia sensors were developed to test whether gas sensors could also be manufactured using embroidery.
Fahad added: “We demonstrated applications in monitoring cardiac activity and breathing, and sensing gases. Future potential applications include diagnosing and monitoring disease and treatment, monitoring the body during exercise, sleep, and stress, and use in batteries, heaters, anti-static clothing.”
The research is published today in Materials Today.
Mask
Seamless sensors
Wearable sensors, like those on smartwatches, let us continuously monitor our health and wellbeing non-invasively. Until now, however, there has been a lack of suitable conductive threads, which explains why wearable sensors seamlessly integrated into in clothing aren’t yet widely available.
Enter PECOTEX. Developed and spun into sensors by Imperial researchers, the material is machine washable, and is less breakable and more electrically conductive than commercially available silver-based conductive threads, meaning more layers can be added for to create complex types of sensor.[1]
Lead author Dr Firat Guder, also of the Department of Bioengineering, said: “PECOTEX is high-performing, strong, and adaptable to different needs. It’s readily scalable, meaning we can produce large volumes inexpensively using both domestic and industrial computerised embroidery machines.
“Our research opens up exciting possibilities for wearable sensors in everyday clothing. By monitoring breathing, heart rate, and gases, they can already be seamlessly integrated, and might even be able to help diagnose and monitor treatments of disease in the future.”
Next, the researchers will explore new application areas like energy storage, energy harvesting and biochemical sensing, as well as finding partners for commercialisation.
This study was funded by the Saudi Ministry of Education, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, part of the UKRI), Cytiva, Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the US Army.
A study led by Durham University’s Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab, UK, took 4D ultrasound scans of 100 pregnant women to see how their unborn babies responded after being exposed to flavours from foods eaten by their mothers.
Researchers looked at how the fetuses reacted to either carrot or kale flavours just a short time after the flavours had been ingested by the mothers.
Fetuses exposed to carrot showed more “laughter-face” responses while those exposed to kale showed more “cry-face” responses.
Their findings could further our understanding of the development of human taste and smell receptors.
The researchers also believe that what pregnant women eat might influence babies’ taste preferences after birth and potentially have implications for establishing healthy eating habits.
The study is published in the journal Psychological Science.
pregnant lady/Commons.wikimedia.org
Humans experience flavour through a combination of taste and smell. In fetuses it is thought that this might happen through inhaling and swallowing the amniotic fluid in the womb.
Lead researcher Beyza Ustun, a postgraduate researcher in the Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab, Department of Psychology, Durham University, said: “A number of studies have suggested that babies can taste and smell in the womb, but they are based on post-birth outcomes while our study is the first to see these reactions prior to birth.
“As a result, we think that this repeated exposure to flavours before birth could help to establish food preferences post-birth, which could be important when thinking about messaging around healthy eating and the potential for avoiding ‘food-fussiness’ when weaning.
“It was really amazing to see unborn babies’ reaction to kale or carrot flavours during the scans and share those moments with their parents.”
The research team, which also included scientists from Aston University, Birmingham, UK, and the National Centre for Scientific Research-University of Burgundy, France, scanned the mothers, aged 18 to 40, at both 32 weeks and 36 weeks of pregnancy to see fetal facial reactions to the kale and carrot flavours.
Mothers were given a single capsule containing approximately 400mg of carrot or 400mg kale powder around 20 minutes before each scan. They were asked not to consume any food or flavoured drinks one hour before their scans.
A 4D scan image of a fetus showing a neutral face/CREDIT: FETAP (Fetal Taste Preferences) Study, Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab, Durham University.
The mothers also did not eat or drink anything containing carrot or kale on the day of their scans to control for factors that could affect fetal reactions.
Facial reactions seen in both flavour groups, compared with fetuses in a control group who were not exposed to either flavour, showed that exposure to just a small amount of carrot or kale flavour was enough to stimulate a reaction.
Co-author Professor Nadja Reissland, head of the Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab, Department of Psychology, Durham University, supervised Beyza Ustun’s research. She said: “Previous research conducted in my lab has suggested that 4D ultrasound scans are a way of monitoring fetal reactions to understand how they respond to maternal health behaviours such as smoking, and their mental health including stress, depression, and anxiety.
“This latest study could have important implications for understanding the earliest evidence for fetal abilities to sense and discriminate different flavours and smells from the foods ingested by their mothers.”
Co-author Professor Benoist Schaal, of the National Centre for Scientific Research-University of Burgundy, France, said: “Looking at fetuses’ facial reactions we can assume that a range of chemical stimuli pass through maternal diet into the fetal environment.
“This could have important implications for our understanding of the development of our taste and smell receptors, and related perception and memory.”
The researchers say their findings might also help with information given to mothers about the importance of taste and healthy diets during pregnancy.
They have now begun a follow-up study with the same babies post-birth to see if the influence of flavours they experienced in the womb affects their acceptance of different foods.
Research co-author Professor Jackie Blissett, of Aston University, said: “It could be argued that repeated prenatal flavour exposures may lead to preferences for those flavours experienced postnatally. In other words, exposing the fetus to less ‘liked’ flavours, such as kale, might mean they get used to those flavours in utero.
“The next step is to examine whether fetuses show less ‘negative’ responses to these flavours over time, resulting in greater acceptance of those flavours when babies first taste them outside of the womb.”
Activated carbon is used in kitchen fans to eliminate food odours. A new dissertation from the University of Gothenburg shows that activated carbon could also eliminate the smell of urine from diapers. Experiments with the odour molecule p-cresol show that activated carbon, which largely consists of the carbon variant graphene, can lock in odour instead of it being released to the surroundings.
Modern diapers can absorb and lock in a lot of liquid, meaning they do not have to be changed as often as in the past. But odour is still a problem. In a dissertation by Isabelle Simonsson at the University of Gothenburg, she looked at a specific odour molecule and discovered that in the right setting, it can choose to remain in the liquid and not cause foul odour.
“The odour molecule is called p-cresol and is an organic, volatile hydrocarbon. It’s what causes the strong odour associated with pig farming and horse stables. p-Cresol is also found in human urine and is hydrophobic, which means it avoids water. That’s one of the reasons why it is released from urine into the surrounding air, in other words, that the odour spreads,” says Isabelle Simonsson.
Electrically charged surfaces can adsorb odour
Manufacturers of diapers and other hygiene products have long known that an electrically charged surface can adsorb odour. There is even an old patent covering this, but a great deal has involved conducting tests on different materials and seeing what works. The tests have not resulted in a solution.
The main goal of the dissertation is to investigate what material properties are important for adsorbing odour molecules in urine. One of the materials used was activated carbon, which is found in almost every kitchen fan these days to neutralise odour; it is also an inexpensive and environmentally friendly material.
Tests with carbon materials that had been manipulated in various ways showed that carbon with the least charge was most effective at attracting p-cresol molecules from the liquid, resulting in less odour. Activated carbon, consisting mainly of the carbon variant graphene, was best at capturing the odour molecule.
“Our findings show a direct ‘ion-specific effect’ on the material’s properties and adsorption capability in synthetic urine. Activated carbon has a large surface area, which is good at adsorbing odour molecules,” says Simonsson.
Baby Diapers/wikipedia
Salts in urine enhance the effect
The same effect was not achieved in tests in which p-cresol was dissolved in water, which is due to the salts in urine. The salt ions, including sodium, reduce the water solubility of organic molecules, which then bind to the activated carbon instead.
The dissertation primarily involved fundamental research, but its findings may be useful in many industrial processes, including for the mining industry, water and sewage treatment, the development of new hygiene products, pharmaceuticals and construction materials.
“These results are promising, but there are obstacles to developing an odourless diaper. Like colour. Can you sell a diaper that’s black?”
Mosquitoes that spread Zika, dengue and yellow fever are guided toward their victims by a scent from human skin. The exact composition of that scent has not been identified until now.
A UC Riverside-led team discovered that the combination of carbon dioxide plus two chemicals, 2-ketoglutaric and lactic acids, elicits a scent that causes a mosquito to locate and land on its victim. This chemical cocktail also encourages probing, the use of piercing mouthparts to find blood.
This chemical mixture appears to specifically attract female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, vectors of Zika as well as chikungunya, dengue, and yellow fever viruses. This mosquito originated in Africa, but has spread to tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, including the U.S.
Mosquitoes use a variety of cues to locate their victims, including carbon dioxide, sight, temperature, and humidity. However, Cardé’s recent research shows skin odors are even more important for pinpointing a biting site.
Aedes aegyptii mosquito biting a person./CREDIT CDC
“We demonstrated that mosquitoes land on visually indistinct targets imbued with these two odors, and these targets aren’t associated with heat or moisture,” Cardé said. “That leaves skin odor as the key guiding factor.”
Given the significance of odor in helping mosquitoes successfully feed on humans, Cardé wanted to discover the exact chemicals that make our scent so potent for the insects. Part of the equation, lactic acid, was identified as one chemical element in the odor cocktail as long ago as 1968.
Since then, several studies have identified that carbon dioxide combined with ammonia, and other chemicals produced by humans also attract these mosquitoes. However, Cardé, who has studied mosquitoes for 26 years, felt these other chemicals were not strong attractants.
Methods that chemists typically use to identify these chemicals would not have worked for 2-ketoglutaric acid, Cardé said. Gas chromatography, which separates chemicals by their molecular weight and polarity, would have missed this acid.
“I think that these chemicals may not have been found before because of the complexity of the human odor profile and the minute amounts of these compounds present in sweat,” said chemist Jan Bello, formerly of UCR and now with insect pest control company Provivi.
Searching for mosquito attractors, Cardé turned to Bello, who extracted compounds from the sweat in his own feet. He filled his socks with glass beads and walked around with the beads in his socks for four hours per odor collection.
Credit: MINDY TAKAMIYA/KYOTO UNIVERSITY ICEMS
“Wearing the beads felt almost like a massage, like squeezing stress balls full of sand, but with your feet,” said Bello. ‘The most frustrating part of doing it for a long time is that they would get stuck in between your toes, so it would be uncomfortable after a while.”
The inconvenience was worth the investment. Bello isolated chemicals from the sweat deposited on the sock beads and observed the mosquitoes’ response to those chemicals. In this way, the most active combination emerged.
Future studies are planned to determine whether the same compound is effective for any other mosquitoes, and why there is such variation in how individuals are apt to be bitten. “Some are more attractive than others to these mosquitoes, but no one’s yet established why this is so,” Cardé said.
Though this discovery may not lead to insights for the development of new repellants, the research team is hopeful their discovery can be used to attract, trap, and potentially kill disease-spreading mosquitoes.
NASA Television will provide live coverage of the upcoming Artemis I cryogenic demonstration test on NASA TV beginning at 7:15 a.m. EDT or 4.30 pm IST on Wednesday, Sept. 21.
The demonstration test will allow teams to confirm the repair to a hydrogen leak seen during an early September Artemis I launch attempt, evaluate updated propellant loading procedures, and conduct additional evaluations. The demonstration will conclude when the objectives for the test have been met.
NASA remains on track for an Artemis I cryogenic demonstration test.In the days since the previous launch attempt, teams have analyzed the seals that were replaced on an interface for the liquid hydrogen fuel line between the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the mobile launcher and adjusted procedures for loading cryogenic, or supercold, propellants into the rocket. Engineers identified a small indentation found on the eight-inch-diameter liquid hydrogen seal that may have been a contributing factor to the leak on the previous launch attempt.
NASA’s Cryogenic Demonstration Test .Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
During the test, teams will load propellants into both the core stage and upper stage tanks, and Orion and the SLS boosters will remain unpowered. Meteorologists currently predict favorable weather for the test with a 15% chance of lightning within 5 nautical miles of the area, which meets criteria required for the test, and will continue to monitor expected conditions.
One approach to treating cancer is photodynamic therapy using photo-uncaging systems, in which light is used to activate a cancer-fighting agent in situ at the tumor. However, suitable agents must be stable under visible light, have an anti-tumor effect in low-oxygen environments, and have the ability to be activated by low-energy tissue-penetrative red light – a combination of properties that is difficult to achieve. Now, a team from The Institute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo has developed a new platform that uses, for the first time, organorhodium(III) phthalocyanine complexes to achieve this combination of traits.
Conventional photodynamic techniques depend on the formation of reactive oxygen species to destroy tumor cells, but many tumors contain environments that lack oxygen. Photo-uncaging systems, where the agent is administered in an inactive form and then activated, or “uncaged”, in the location of the tumor, address this issue. They uncage alkyl radicals, which are known to be capable of inducing cell death both with and without the presence of oxygen. Alkyl radicals are converted into terminal aldehydes in the presence of oxygen, and these terminal aldehydes can also induce cell death. The team used molecules called “organorhodium(III) phthalocyanine (Pc) complexes” to develop, for the first time, a novel platform for photo-uncaging therapy.
Researchers from The Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo have developed a streamlined photo-uncaging system for photodynamic cancer therapy, using a pulse of light for tumor-specific activation of a cancer-fighting agent/CREDIT Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
“The organorhodium(III) phthalocyanine (Pc) complexes we developed are highly stable under ambient light during the processes of synthesis, purification, and measurement, but can be activated by a laser that gives out nanosecond pulses of red light,” explains lead author Kei Murata. These nanosecond-pulsing lasers (pulsing for a billionth of a second) are relatively easy for medical staff to handle.
They went on to show that the compounds that were released after the organorhodium(III) phthalocyanine (Pc) complexes were activated showed toxicity to HeLa cells, a cell line developed from cancer, indicating that these compounds would have the ability to fight cancer if released inside a tumor.
“Our new technology could allow the photochemical generation of a wide variety of alkyl radicals and aldehydes, making possible the site-selective release of various bioactive molecules,” says senior author Kazuyuki Ishii. As an improvement on other photo-uncaging systems, it opens an exciting new avenue for the treatment of cancer by phototherapy.
InSight, which has hit headlines this week with the realtime recording of sound from the Mars when meteoroids struck Mars’ surface at four places since its landing on the Red Planet in November 2018, is nearing the end of its mission by mid-2023.
The first NASA mission to explore Mars’ deep interior, InSight rover landed on Mars surface on Nov. 26, 2018, in the Elysium Planitia region and collected enormous data over the past four years.
To its credit, the lander has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes since touching down on Mars, providing information that has allowed scientists to measure the depth and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle, and core.
As power on the spacecraft diminishes, the InSight team hopes to maximize the science and increase the possibility of recording additional marsquakes.
However, the lander achieved a milestone when NASA released the sound of a meteoroid striking Mars that was captured by its Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The sound resembled like a “bloop” due to a peculiar atmospheric effect and the sound can be heard three times.
In addition, the InSight lander has provided visuals of three craters created between 2020 and 2021, ranging between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290 kilometers) at Elysium Planitia.
It has proved a point that Mars has escaped from many such meteoroids as its atmosphere is just 1 per cent as thick as Earth’s, and several meteoroids pass through it without disintegrating, according to NASA. InSight’s team also said other impacts may have been obscured by noise from wind or by seasonal changes in the atmosphere.
The data helps NASA scientists to know the impact rate and estimate the age of different surfaces by counting its impact craters. The more they find, the older is the surface.
Auto shutdown of seismometer deferred
Initially, the lander was to automatically shut down the seismometer, its last operational science instrument by the end of June in order to conserve energy, surviving on what power its dust-laden solar panels can generate until around December.
Now, the team plans to program the lander to keep the seismometer operate three more months though batteries get discharged sooner and cause the spacecraft to run out of power soon. The team hopes that it might enable the seismometer to detect additional marsquakes.
“InSight hasn’t finished teaching us about Mars yet,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division in Washington. “We’re going to get every last bit of science we can before the lander concludes operations.”
This collage shows three other meteoroid impacts that were detected by the seismometer on NASA’s InSight lander and captured by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its HiRISE camera. / NASA/JPL
As of September 10, 2022, InSight was generating an average of 420 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .80 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
All instruments but the seismometer have already been powered down. Like other Mars spacecraft, InSight has a fault protection system that automatically triggers “safe mode” in threatening situations and shuts down all but its most essential functions, allowing engineers to assess the situation. Low power and temperatures beyond pre-determined limits can trigger safe mode.
Seisomometer helps detect more Marsquakes
To enable the seismometer to continue to run for as long as possible, the mission team is turning off InSight’s fault protection system. While this will enable the instrument to operate longer, it leaves the lander unprotected from sudden, unexpected events that ground controllers wouldn’t have time to respond to.
“The goal is to get scientific data all the way to the point where InSight can’t operate at all, rather than conserve energy and operate the lander with no science benefit,” said Chuck Scott, InSight’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The Mars lander’s seismometer has picked up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years, which is the first of its kind to have recorded seismic and acoustic waves from an impact on the Red Planet.
NASA’s InSight lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021, detected by the spacecraft’s seismometer since its landing in 2018.
A new paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience details the impacts, which ranged between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290 kilometers) from InSight’s location, a region of Mars called Elysium Planitia.
The first of the four confirmed meteoroids – the term used for space rocks before they hit the ground – made the most dramatic entrance: It entered Mars’ atmosphere on Sept. 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left a crater behind.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Then, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site and confirmed the location using its black-and-white Context Camera to find three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters.
“After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, a co-author of the paper and a specialist in Mars impacts. Finally, scientists confirmed three other impacts had occurred on May 27, 2020; Feb. 18, 2021; and Aug. 31, 2021.
Researchers have puzzled over why they haven’t detected more meteoroid impacts on Mars. The Red Planet is next to the solar system’s main asteroid belt, which provides an ample supply of space rocks to scar the planet’s surface. Because Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as thick as Earth’s, more meteoroids pass through it without disintegrating.
InSight’s seismometer has also detected over 1,300 marsquakes. Provided by France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, the instrument is so sensitive that it can detect seismic waves from thousands of miles away. But the Sept. 5, 2021, event marks the first time an impact was confirmed as the cause of such waves.
InSight’s team suspects that other impacts may have been obscured by noise from wind or by seasonal changes in the atmosphere. But now that the distinctive seismic signature of an impact on Mars has been discovered, scientists expect to find more hiding within InSight’s nearly four years of data.
Listen to a Meteoroid Hitting the Red Planet
The sound of a meteoroid striking Mars – created from data recorded by NASA’s InSight lander – is like a “bloop” due to a peculiar atmospheric effect. In this audio clip, the sound can be heard three times: when the meteoroid enters the Martian atmosphere, explodes into pieces, and impacts the surface.
The four meteoroid impacts confirmed so far produced small quakes with a magnitude of no more than 2.0. Those smaller quakes provide scientists with only a glimpse into the Martian crust, while seismic signals from larger quakes, like the magnitude 5 event that occurred in May 2022, can also reveal details about the planet’s mantle and core.
But the impacts will be critical to refining Mars’ timeline. “Impacts are the clocks of the solar system,” said the paper’s lead author, Raphael Garcia of Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France. “We need to know the impact rate today to estimate the age of different surfaces.”
Scientists can approximate the age of a planet’s surface by counting its impact craters: The more they see, the older the surface. By calibrating their statistical models based on how often they see impacts occurring now, scientists can then estimate how many more impacts happened earlier in the solar system’s history.
InSight’s data, in combination with orbital images, can be used to rebuild a meteoroid’s trajectory and the size of its shock wave. Every meteoroid creates a shock wave as it hits the atmosphere and an explosion as it hits the ground. These events send sound waves through the atmosphere. The bigger the explosion, the more this sound wave tilts the ground when it reaches InSight. The lander’s seismometer is sensitive enough to measure how much the ground tilts from such an event and in what direction.
“We’re learning more about the impact process itself,” Garcia said. “We can match different sizes of craters to specific seismic and acoustic waves now.”
The lander still has time to study Mars. Dust buildup on the lander’s solar panels is reducing its power and will eventually lead to the spacecraft shutting down. Predicting precisely when is difficult, but based on the latest power readings, engineers now believe the lander could shut down between October of this year and January 2023.
Scientists have created a ‘digital mask’ that will allow facial images to be stored in medical records while preventing potentially sensitive personal biometric information from being extracted and shared.
In research published today in Nature Medicine, a team led by scientists from the University of Cambridge and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, used three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction and deep learning algorithms to erase identifiable features from facial images while retaining disease-relevant features needed for diagnosis.
Facial images can be useful for identifying signs of disease. For example, features such as deep forehead wrinkles and wrinkles around the eyes are significantly associated with coronary heart disease, while abnormal changes in eye movement can indicate poor visual function and visual cognitive developmental problems. However, facial images also inevitably record other biometric information about the patient, including their race, sex, age and mood.
Graphic showing digital masking process/Photo:Professor Haotian Lin’s research group
With the increasing digitalisation of medical records comes the risk of data breaches. While most patient data can be anonymised, facial data is more difficult to anonymise while retaining essential information. Common methods, including blurring and cropping identifiable areas, may lose important disease-relevant information, yet even so cannot fully evade face recognition systems.
Due to privacy concerns, people often hesitate to share their medical data for public medical research or electronic health records, hindering the development of digital medical care.
Professor Haotian Lin from Sun Yat-sen University said: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to turn to consultations over the phone or by video link rather than in person. Remote healthcare for eye diseases requires patients to share a large amount of digital facial information. Patients want to know that their potentially sensitive information is secure and that their privacy is protected.”
Professor Lin and colleagues developed a ‘digital mask’, which inputs an original video of a patient’s face and outputs a video based on the use of a deep learning algorithm and 3D reconstruction, while discarding as much of the patient’s personal biometric information as possible – and from which it was not possible to identify the individual.
Deep learning extracts features from different facial parts, while 3D reconstruction automatically digitises the shapes and movement of 3D faces, eyelids, and eyeballs based on the extracted facial features. Converting the digital mask videos back to the original videos is extremely difficult because most of the necessary information is no longer retained in the mask.
Next, the researchers tested how useful the masks were in clinical practice and found that diagnosis using the digital masks was consistent with that carried out using the original videos. This suggests that the reconstruction was precise enough for use in clinical practice.
Compared to the traditional method used to ‘de-identify’ patients – cropping the image – the risk of being identified was significantly lower in the digitally-masked patients. The researchers tested this by showing 12 ophthalmologists digitally-masked or cropped images and asking them to identify the original from five other images. They correctly identified the original from the digitally-masked image in just over a quarter (27%) of cases; for the cropped figure, they were able to do so in the overwhelming majority of cases (91%). This is likely to be an over-estimation, however: in real situations, one would likely have to identify the original image from a much larger set.
The team surveyed randomly selected patients attending clinics to test their attitudes towards digital masks. Over 80% of patients believed the digital mask would alleviate their privacy concerns and they expressed an increased willingness to share their personal information if such a measure was implemented.
Doctor/IANS
Finally, the team confirmed that the digital masks can also evade artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition algorithms.
Professor Patrick Yu-Wai-Man from the University of Cambridge said: “Digital masking offers a pragmatic approach to safeguarding patient privacy while still allowing the information to be useful to clinicians. At the moment, the only options available are crude, but our digital mask is a much more sophisticated tool for anonymising facial images.
“This could make telemedicine – phone and video consultations – much more feasible, making healthcare delivery more efficient. If telemedicine is to be widely adopted, then we need to overcome the barriers and concerns related to privacy protection. Our digital mask is an important step in this direction.”
Instead of sitting in a tattoo chair for hours enduring painful punctures, imagine getting tattooed by a skin patch containing microscopic needles. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed low-cost, painless, and bloodless tattoos that can be self-administered and have many applications, from medical alerts to tracking neutered animals to cosmetics.
“We’ve miniaturized the needle so that it’s painless, but still effectively deposits tattoo ink in the skin,” said Mark Prausnitz, principal investigator on the paper. “This could be a way not only to make medical tattoos more accessible, but also to create new opportunities for cosmetic tattoos because of the ease of administration.”
Tattoos are used in medicine to cover up scars, guide repeated cancer radiation treatments, or restore nipples after breast surgery. Tattoos also can be used instead of bracelets as medical alerts to communicate serious medical conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy, or allergies.
Various cosmetic products using microneedles are already on the market — mostly for anti-aging — but developing microneedle technology for tattoos is new. Prausnitz, a veteran in this area, has studied microneedle patches for years to painlessly administer drugs and vaccines to the skin without the need for hypodermic needles.
tattoo/en.wikipedia.org
“We saw this as an opportunity to leverage our work on microneedle technology to make tattoos more accessible,” Prausnitz said. “While some people are willing to accept the pain and time required for a tattoo, we thought others might prefer a tattoo that is simply pressed onto the skin and does not hurt.”
Transforming Tattooing
Tattoos typically use large needles to puncture repeatedly into the skin to get a good image, a time-consuming and painful process. The Georgia Tech team has developed microneedles that are smaller than a grain of sand and are made of tattoo ink encased in a dissolvable matrix.
“Because the microneedles are made of tattoo ink, they deposit the ink in the skin very efficiently,” said Li, the lead author of the study.
In this way, the microneedles can be pressed into the skin just once and then dissolve, leaving the ink in the skin after a few minutes without bleeding.
Tattooing Technique
Although most microneedle patches for pharmaceuticals or cosmetics have dozens or hundreds of microneedles arranged in a square or circle, microneedle patch tattoos imprint a design that can include letters, numbers, symbols, and images. By arranging the microneedles in a specific pattern, each microneedle acts like a pixel to create a tattoo image in any shape or pattern.
The researchers start with a mold containing microneedles in a pattern that forms an image. They fill the microneedles in the mold with tattoo ink and add a patch backing for convenient handling. The resulting patch is then applied to the skin for a few minutes, during which time the microneedles dissolve and release the tattoo ink. Tattoo inks of various colors can be incorporated into the microneedles, including black-light ink that can only be seen when illuminated with ultraviolet light.
Prausnitz’s lab has been researching microneedles for vaccine delivery for years and realized they could be equally applicable to tattoos. With support from the Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs, Prausnitz’s team started working on tattoos to identify spayed and neutered pets, but then realized the technology could be effective for people, too.
The tattoos were also designed with privacy in mind. The researchers even created patches sensitive to environmental factors such as light or temperature changes, where the tattoo will only appear with ultraviolet light or higher temperatures. This provides patients with privacy, revealing the tattoo only when desired.
A magnified view of a microneedle patch with green tattoo ink/photo:Georgia Tech
The study showed that the tattoos could last for at least a year and are likely to be permanent, which also makes them viable cosmetic options for people who want an aesthetic tattoo without risk of infection or the pain associated with traditional tattoos. Microneedle tattoos could alternatively be loaded with temporary tattoo ink to address short-term needs in medicine and cosmetics.
Microneedle patch tattoos can also be used to encode information in the skin of animals. Rather than clipping the ear or applying an ear tag to animals to indicate sterilization status, a painless and discreet tattoo can be applied instead.
“The goal isn’t to replace all tattoos, which are often works of beauty created by tattoo artists,” Prausnitz said. “Our goal is to create new opportunities for patients, pets, and people who want a painless tattoo that can be easily administered.”
Ranchi, Sep 14 (IANS) Peeved by the drinking habit of men coming from adjoining Bihar to villages of Jharkhand to consume liquor, women of a village in Jharkhand have embarked upon a unique liquor prohibition campaign where they stop such men from consuming liquor in their villages and have destroyed local breweries.
The liquor ban in Bihar has become a bane for many villages in Jharkhand.
Every day hundreds of group of men from Bihar cross over to the border areas of Jharkhand to consume liquor. Due to this the women living in villages across Jharkhand have decided to take up the onus upon themselves to protect their villages and banish such alcholic men from crossing over from neighbouring Bihar.
Women of Asnakoni village in Satgawan block of Jharkhand, located close to Nawada district of Bihar, have started guarding their village with sticks and wooden blocks to stop alcoholic men coming from outside the village outskirts. This campaign, which has been launched for the last one month has become the talk of the town.
Women raised sticks to stop alcoholics coming from Bihar to Jharkhand’s border villages.
The women living in Asanbani village have also demolished half a dozen liquor breweries selling liquor illegally. Police are also helping the women of this village to keep this initiative alive. A meeting of men and women living in the village was held on the instructions of a self-help organisation in which it was decided that all people would form a group and guard the village border carrying sticks and logs all day and night. As a result, alcoholic men in Bihar dare to enter this village.
Similar to Asanbani village, now a meeting of locals is being held against liquor consumption in Danua and Chordaha villages as well as Chatra district of Chauparan in Jharkhand, adjoining Bihar’s Gaya district. In these areas too, locals have started a movement against liquor prohibition.
Asha Devi, one of the women leading the liquor prohibition campaign in Asanbani village, says that due to such men entering her village it has compelled the locals here to take such a step.
The situation was such that there used to be a gathering of alcoholic men coming from Bihar entering the village each day. Incidents of frequent scuffles and assaults had become common sight in the village which had an adverse impact on children and women.
alcohol
The locals living in Asanbani village warned those selling liquor illegally after which they demolished several liquor breweries selling liquor illegally.
Anita Devi, a Anganwadi centre social activist in Asanbani village, says the identity of her village had been tarnished due to such men entering her village from Bihar.
People have now started knowing this village by its original name Kalali Mod. She says that the locals living in her village also sought help from the police and district administration.
“Police station In-charge Uttam Baidya has also fully supported our campaign against liquor prohibition,” Anita said.
Local youth led by Manoj Dangi of a local self-help organisation have also come forward in this liquor prohibition campaign.
Last week, people travelling in a Bolero car, who had come to consume liquor from Bihar, got washed away in the Dhadhar river in Parsatari under Bhaghar panchayat in Chauparan, adjoining Bihar. Three drunk men in the Bolero car also drowned in the river and were rescued with the help of locals here. Now the people of this village are also running a campaign to stop miscreants coming from Bihar to consume liquor here.
Starting twice daily flushing of the mucus-lined nasal cavity with a mild saline solution soon after testing positive for COVID-19 can significantly reduce hospitalization and death, investigators report.
They say the technique that can be used at home by mixing a half teaspoon each of salt and baking soda in a cup of boiled or distilled water then putting it into a sinus rinse bottle is a safe, effective and inexpensive way to reduce the risk of severe illness and death from coronavirus infection that could have a vital public health impact.
“What we say in the emergency room and surgery is the solution to pollution is dilution,” says Dr. Amy Baxter, emergency medicine physician at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University
“By giving extra hydration to your sinuses, it makes them function better.
If you have a contaminant, the more you flush it out, the better you are able to get rid of dirt, viruses and anything else,” says Baxter.
“We found an 8.5-fold reduction in hospitalizations and no fatalities compared to our controls,” says senior author Dr. Richard Schwartz, chair of the MCG Department of Emergency Medicine. “Both of those are pretty significant endpoints.”
Drs. Richard Schwartz and Amy Baxter/Photo:Medical College of Georgia
The study appears to be the largest, prospective clinical trial of its kind and the older, high-risk population they studied — many of whom had preexisting conditions like obesity and hypertension — may benefit most from the easy, inexpensive practice, the investigators say.
They found that less than 1.3% of the 79 study subjects age 55 and older who enrolled within 24-hours of testing positive for COVID-19 between Sept. 24 and Dec. 21, 2020, experienced hospitalization. No one died.
Among the participants, who were treated at MCG and the AU Health System and followed for 28 days, one participant was admitted to the hospital and another went to the emergency room but was not admitted.
Schwartz says Baxter brought him the idea early in the pandemic and he liked that it was inexpensive, easy to use and could potentially impact millions at a time where, like other health care facilities, the Emergency Department of the AU Health System was starting to see a lot of SARS-CoV-2-positive patients.
They knew that the more virus that was present in your body, the worse the impact, Baxter says. “One of our thoughts was: If we can rinse out some of the virus within 24 hours of them testing positive, then maybe we can lower the severity of that whole trajectory,” she says, including reducing the likelihood the virus could get into the lungs, where it was doing permanent, often lethal damage to many.
Covid/commons.wikimedia.org
Additionally, the now-infamous spiky SARS-CoV-2 is known to attach to the ACE2 receptor, which is pervasive throughout the body and in abundance in locations like the nasal cavity, mouth and lungs. Drugs that interfere with the virus’ ability to attach to ACE2 have been pursued, and Baxter says the nasal irrigation with saline helps decrease the usual robust attachment. Saline appears to inhibit the virus’ ability to essentially make two cuts in itself, called furin cleavage, so it can better fit into an ACE2 receptor once it spots one.
Participants self-administered nasal irrigation using either povidone-iodine, that brown antiseptic that gets painted on your body before surgery, or sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda, which is often used as a cleanser, mixed with water that had the same salt concentration normally found in the body.
But their experience indicates the saline solution alone sufficed. “It’s really just the rinsing and the quantity that matter,” Baxter says.
The investigators also wanted to know any impact on symptom severity, like chills and loss of taste and smell. Twenty-three of the 29 participants who consistently irrigated twice daily had zero or one symptom at the end of two weeks compared to 14 of the 33 who were less diligent.
Those who completed nasal irrigation twice daily reported quicker resolution of symptoms regardless of which of two common antiseptics they were adding to the saline water.
Others have shown the nasal irrigation, also called lavage, can also be effective in reducing duration and severity of infection by a family of viruses that include the coronaviruses, which are also known to cause the common cold, as well as the influenza viruses, the investigators write. “SARS-CoV-2 infection was another perfect situation for it,” Baxter says.
In fact, nasal irrigation is something that has been done for millennia in Southeast Asia, and Baxter had noted lower death rates from COVID-19 in countries like Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. “Those were places that I knew from having been there where they use nasal irrigation as a normal part of hygiene just like brushing their teeth,” she says. A 2019 pre-COVID study provided evidence that regular nasal irrigation in Thailand can improve nasal congestion, decrease postnasal drip, improve sinus pain or headache, improve taste and smell and improve sleep quality.
Saline water
Schwartz said the simplicity and safety of the treatment had him recommending nasal irrigation to positive patients early on and the published results make him even more confident in recommending nasal irrigation to essentially anyone who tests positive.
“Many of the people who have been using this now for months have told me their seasonal allergies have gone away, that it really makes a huge difference in any of the things that go through the nose that are annoying.”
A study released in September 2020 indicated that gargling with a saline-based solution can reduce viral load in COVID-19, and another released in 2021 suggested that saline works multiple ways to reduce cold symptoms related to infection with other coronaviruses and might work as well as a first-line intervention for COVID-19.
Despite the two nostrils, the nasal sinus is just one cavity, so the water is pushed into one side and comes out the other, Baxter notes.
Mandya (Karnataka), Sep 12 (IANS) Scientists on Monday successfully fitted a GPS device to a pelican bird in Kokkare Bellur in Karnataka’s Mandya district.
A team of scientists attached to the Dehradun Wildlife Institute carried out the experiment for the first time in the country, according to the local officials.
The experiment was carried out to study the abodes of pelicans, food habits and international routes that these migratory birds traverse.
Sources said that the GPS device was imported from Greece. The animal lovers and scientists have described the experiment as historical.
Spot-billed pelican birds
The GPS device will help ascertain the route, including countries the pelican’s travel through besides recording their activities. The scientists have also stated that they would be able to find out the origin place of the bird through this experiment.
Pelican birds travel across India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. The GPS device will get charged automatically through sun rays. The device is designed to send all the information regarding various travelling routes for a period of four years.
Attractive pelican birds arrive in Kokkare Bellur in October and disappear after two months. This breed of birds are found in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Myanmar.
After disconnecting the ground and rocket-side plates on the interface, called a quick disconnect, for the liquid hydrogen fuel feed line, teams have replaced the seals on the Space Launch System rocket’s core stage associated with the liquid hydrogen leak detected during the Artemis I launch attempt Sept. 3.
Both the 8-inch line used to fill and drain liquid hydrogen from the core stage and the 4-inch bleed line used to redirect some of the propellant during tanking operations were removed and replaced this week.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is seen at Launch Pad 39B Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as teams work to replace the seal on an interface, called the quick disconnect, between the liquid hydrogen fuel feed line on the mobile launcher and the rocket. Photo Credit: (NASA/Chad Siwik)
Coming up, technicians will reconnect the umbilical plates and perform inspections over the weekend before preparing for a tanking demonstration as soon as Saturday, Sept. 17. This demonstration will allow engineers to check the new seals under cryogenic, or supercold, conditions as expected on launch day and before proceeding to the next launch attempt.
NASA/Photo: Nasa.gov
During the operation, teams will practice loading liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in the rocket’s core stage and interim cryogenic propulsion stage and getting to a stable replenish state for both propellants.
Teams will confirm the leak has been repaired and also perform the kick-start bleed test and a pre-pressurization test, whichwill validate the ground and flight hardware and software systems can perform the necessary functions required to thermally condition the engines for flight. Following the test, teams will evaluate the data along with plans for the next launch opportunity.
Engineers are making progress repairing the area where a liquid hydrogen leak was detected during the Artemis I launch attempt Sept. 3, and NASA is preserving options for the next launch opportunity as early as Friday, Sept. 23.
Technicians constructed a tent-like enclosure around the work area to protect the hardware and teams from weather and other environmental conditions at Launch Pad 39B. They have disconnected the ground- and rocket-side plates on the interface, called a quick disconnect, for the liquid hydrogen fuel feed line, performed initial inspections, and began replacing two seals – one surrounding the 8-inch line used to fill and drain liquid hydrogen from the core stage, and another surrounding the 4-inch bleed line used to redirect some of the propellant during tanking operations. The SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft are in good condition while remaining at the launch pad.
Once the work is complete, engineers will reconnect the plates and perform initial tests to evaluate the new seals. Teams will check the new seals under cryogenic, or supercold, conditions no earlier than Sept. 17 in which the rocket’s core stage and interim cryogenic propulsion stage will be loaded with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to validate the repair under the conditions it would experience on launch day. Engineers are in the process of developing a full plan for the checkouts.
Artemis I logo/NASA
NASA has submitted a request to the Eastern Range for an extension of the current testing requirement for the flight termination system. NASA is respecting the range’s processes for review of the request, and the agency continues to provide detailed information to support a range decision.
In the meantime, NASA is instructing the Artemis team to move forward with all preparations required for testing, followed by launch, including preparations to ensure adequate supplies of propellants and gases used in tanking operations, as well as flight operations planning for the mission. NASA has requested the following launch opportunities:
Sept 23: Two-hour launch window opens at 6:47 a.m. EDT; landing on Oct. 18
Sept. 27: 70-minute launch window opens at 11:37 a.m.; landing on Nov. 5
NASA’s teams internally are preparing to support additional dates in the event flexibility is required. The agency will evaluate and adjust launch opportunities and alternate dates based on progress at the pad and to align with other planned activities, including DART’s planned impact with an asteroid, the west coast launch of a government payload, and the launch of Crew-5 to the International Space Station.
NASA/Photo: Nasa.gov
Listen to a replay of today’s media teleconference on the status of the Artemis I mission. Artemis I is an uncrewed flight test to provide a foundation for human exploration in deep space and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond.
NASA is awarding more than $4 million to institutions across the U.S. to help bring the excitement of authentic NASA experiences to groups of middle and high school students who are traditionally underserved and underrepresented in STEM.
The new Space Grant K-12 Inclusiveness and Diversity in STEM (SG KIDS) opportunity will boost these students’ sense of belonging in STEM subjects, a critical first step toward STEM degrees and careers.
SG KIDS is a pilot program made possible through NASA’s National Space Grant and Fellowship Project, which comprises Space Grant Consortia led by an institution in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. This opportunity represents a new approach by asking the awarded consortia to reach beyond state boundaries to create regional projects tailored to students in those areas. Through partnerships, the awardees will be able to share these exciting STEM opportunities with students residing in other states.
sg_kids_award/Photo: NASA
“Through Space Grant KIDS, we’ve asked the nation’s Space Grant consortia to deploy educational activities across state lines to share the excitement of NASA and STEM with students who otherwise might not have that opportunity,” said Mike Kincaid, NASA’s associate administrator for the Office of STEM Engagement, which administers NASA Space Grant. “We’re looking forward to seeing how these regional partnerships will make a lasting difference for the Artemis Generation.”
SG KIDS addresses the White House Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, as well as NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s focus on providing authentic STEM opportunities to K-12 students.
The projects funded under SG KIDS will provide students with hands-on experiences and lessons that bring NASA’s missions to life, provide training and resources to the educators teaching those students, and boost the STEM ecosystem in these regions.
NASA/Photo: Nasa.gov
“Space Grant KIDS is designed to establish networks that deliver enriching NASA STEM experiences to underserved student populations,” said Dr. Erica Alston, NASA’s deputy Space Grant manager. “We can leverage these networks to reach traditionally overlooked groups in future DEIA efforts.”
Each of the four grantees, Virginia Space Grant Consortium, Georgia Space Grant Consortium, Ohio Space Grant Consortium and Texas Space Grant Consortium, will receive approximately $1,050,000 in cooperative agreements to put their proposals into action during the next three years.
Ovarian cancer is most often found in people of middle-age or older as the Wilmot study showed that the mean age of participants was 56.
Of the 183 participants, 42 were found to have ovarian cancer, which is 23 percent. The technology also discovered that 20 other participants had non-ovarian cancers.
Ovarian cancer symptoms can be vague, such as gas and bloating, but there are some that should not be ignored, Moore said: pelvic pain or pressure, feeling full quickly after eating, vaginal discharge or abnormal bleeding, urgency to urinate frequently, fatigue, upset stomach, pain during sex, constipation, or menstrual changes.
Because ovarian cancer is most often diagnosed in later stages.
A new type of technology can capture stray ovarian cancer cells from a simple blood test and successfully predict cancer in people who have a lesion or cyst in the pelvic region, according to a new study by a Wilmot Cancer Institute physician/scientist.
Nearly 200 local people participated in the study.
One of those local participants, Toni Masci, 51, of Fairport, took part in Moore’s study by providing blood samples for analysis. She had an ovarian cyst that burst — only to find out that a large tumor was also in her abdomen. She was treated with surgery and six rounds of chemotherapy in 2017 for stage 1 ovarian cancer, and just celebrated the milestone of five years in remission.
“I feel lucky to be part of this,” Masci said. “As most people know, ovarian cancer usually doesn’t get detected early. If Dr. Moore hadn’t been doing this research, we might not have had this advance and I might not be here.”
Currently, there is no routine ovarian cancer screening method available for people who do not have symptoms or a known lesion. And yet, the new technology, called a “liquid biopsy,” developed by United Kingdom-based ANGLE PLC, and the URMC team at Wilmot, advances the field in a couple of important ways, according to the study:
It confirmed for physicians quickly and accurately that cancer was present in patients who were scheduled for surgery or other procedures. The detection enabled physicians to classify which patients needed immediate care from a specially trained gynecological oncologist to improve survival.
The study analyzed gene expression from captured cells in blood and evaluated 72 different gene transcripts and seven blood biomarkers related to ovarian cancer (including CA125). From this collection, the study identified nine gene transcripts and four biomarkers that were useful for detecting cancers. They were used to develop an algorithm known as MAGIC (Malignancy Assessment using Gene Identification in Captured Cells). The algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 95 percent and an accuracy of 83 percent for detecting ovarian cancer.
In the clinical trial, MAGIC also was able to detect ovarian cancer in early and late stages. Early-stage detection is critical for survival and difficult to achieve. And, the test picked up other types of cancer that had spread to the pelvic region or originated there.
“This is an important step forward for the detection of ovarian cancer in patients with a pelvic mass,” Moore said. “The fact that we can capture circulating tumor cells and analyze them from a simple blood draw is extremely exciting.”
Being able to find circulating tumor cells is the key, Moore said. These are rare, living cells that break off from the original tumor. They have an estimated ratio in the blood of one in 100 million to one in one billion. The technology captures the rare cells and allows for genetic analysis in a single tool within a couple of hours.
Currently, if a person has a suspicious lesion, surgery is necessary to diagnose ovarian cancer, and annually, more than 200,000 people in the U.S. are in this situation. A non-invasive test that predicts malignancy beforehand would enable people with the highest risk to have surgery done by an oncology specialist with greater experience and surgical volume for these types of cases, Moore said.
Masci, a U.S. Navy veteran and esthetician at a local salon, was 46 years old in January 2017 when her cancer was diagnosed.
“I was in such shock,” she said. “Looking back, I did have some symptoms: bloating, my back hurt, weight loss, and when I would sit down to eat I would feel full right away.”
She enrolled in the study a month later, and Moore performed her ovarian cancer surgery.
“I had wonderful care from everyone at Wilmot,” Masci added, “but I can’t say enough good things about Dr. Moore. He needs to clone himself a million times.”
ANGLE Europe Limited funded the study. Moore has worked extensively with the company to test its detection system. Earlier this summer, the FDA gave approval for the same tool to be used to track breast cancer cells that have spread. Moore’s lab was the sole location nationally to test the reproducibility of the breast cancer tests, and local residents were also involved in that clinical trial.
Nature likes spirals – from the whirlpool of a hurricane, to pinwheel-shaped protoplanetary disks around newborn stars, to the vast realms of spiral galaxies across our universe.
Now astronomers are bemused to find young stars that are spiraling into the center of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The outer arm of the spiral in this huge, oddly shaped stellar nursery called NGC 346 may be feeding star formation in a river-like motion of gas and stars. This is an efficient way to fuel star birth, researchers say.
The Small Magellanic Cloud has a simpler chemical composition than the Milky Way, making it similar to the galaxies found in the younger universe, when heavier elements were more scarce. Because of this, the stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud burn hotter and so run out of their fuel faster than in our Milky Way.
Though a proxy for the early universe, at 200,000 light-years away the Small Magellanic Cloud is also one of our closest galactic neighbors.
The massive star cluster NGC 346, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, has long intrigued astronomers with its unusual shape. This shape is partly due to stars and gas spiraling into the center of this cluster in a river-like motion. ILLUSTRATION: NASA, ESA, Andi James (STScI)
Learning how stars form in the Small Magellanic Cloud offers a new twist on how a firestorm of star birth may have occurred early in the universe’s history, when it was undergoing a “baby boom” about 2 to 3 billion years after the big bang (the universe is now 13.8 billion years old).
The new results find that the process of star formation there is similar to that in our own Milky Way.
Only 150 light-years in diameter, NGC 346 boasts the mass of 50,000 Suns. Its intriguing shape and rapid star formation rate has puzzled astronomers. It took the combined power of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to unravel the behavior of this mysterious-looking stellar nesting ground.
“Stars are the machines that sculpt the universe. We would not have life without stars, and yet we don’t fully understand how they form,” explained study leader Elena Sabbi of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “We have several models that make predictions, and some of these predictions are contradictory. We want to determine what is regulating the process of star formation, because these are the laws that we need to also understand what we see in the early universe.”
Researchers determined the motion of the stars in NGC 346 in two different ways. Using Hubble, Sabbi and her team measured the changes of the stars’ positions over 11 years. The stars in this region are moving at an average velocity of 2,000 miles per hour, which means that in 11 years they move 200 million miles. This is about 2 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust./Photo:NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team
But this cluster is relatively far away, inside a neighboring galaxy. This means the amount of observed motion is very small and therefore difficult to measure. These extraordinarily precise observations were possible only because of Hubble’s exquisite resolution and high sensitivity. Also, Hubble’s three-decade-long history of observations provides a baseline for astronomers to follow minute celestial motions over time.
The second team, led by Peter Zeidler of AURA/STScI for the European Space Agency, used the ground-based VLT’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument to measure radial velocity, which determines whether an object is approaching or receding from an observer.
“What was really amazing is that we used two completely different methods with different facilities and basically came to the same conclusion, independent of each other,” said Zeidler. “With Hubble, you can see the stars, but with MUSE we can also see the gas motion in the third dimension, and it confirms the theory that everything is spiraling inwards.”
But why a spiral?
“A spiral is really the good, natural way to feed star formation from the outside toward the center of the cluster,” explained Zeidler. “It’s the most efficient way that stars and gas fueling more star formation can move towards the center.”
Half of the Hubble data for this study of NGC 346 is archival. The first observations were taken 11 years ago. They were recently repeated to trace the motion of the stars over time. Given the telescope’s longevity, the Hubble data archive now contains more than 32 years of astronomical data powering unprecedented, long-term studies.
“The Hubble archive is really a gold mine,” said Sabbi. “There are so many interesting star-forming regions that Hubble has observed over the years. Given that Hubble is performing so well, we can actually repeat these observations. This can really advance our understanding of star formation.”
Observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope should be able to resolve lower-mass stars in the cluster, giving a more holistic view of the region. Over Webb’s lifespan, astronomers will be able to repeat this experiment and measure the motion of the low-mass stars. They could then compare the high-mass stars and the low-mass stars to finally learn the full extent of the dynamics of this nursery.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp celebrating NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, the largest, most powerful, and most complex science telescope ever put in space. The stamp, which features an illustration of the observatory, will be dedicated in a ceremony Thursday, Sept. 8, at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington.
“When anyone who uses these stamps looks at this telescope, I want them to see what I see: its incredible potential to reveal new and unexpected discoveries that help us understand the origins of the universe, and our place in it,” said NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana. “This telescope is the largest international space science program in U.S. history, and I can’t wait to see the scientific breakthroughs it will enable in astronomy.”
Webb, a mission led by NASA in partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), launched Dec. 25, 2021, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Over the following months, Webb traveled to its destination nearly one million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth, underwent weeks of complex deployments to unfold into its final configuration, and prepared its mirrors and science instruments to capture never-before-seen views of the universe.
The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp highlighting NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on Sept. 8, 2022. U.S. Postal Service Art Director Derry Noyes designed the stamp using existing art by James Vaughan and an image provided by NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute. Credits: U.S. Postal Service
NASA released Webb’s first full-color images and spectra July 12 – providing a first look at the observatory’s powerful capabilities. The U.S. Postal Service stamp honors these achievements as Webb continues its mission to explore the unknown in our universe and study every phase in cosmic history.
“I am excited to add this beautiful stamp to our collection, as we watch from the ground as humanity’s newest and most capable telescope unlocks the greatest secrets of our cosmos that have been waiting to be revealed since the beginning of time,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “The Webb Telescope represents the start to a new era of what we can accomplish for the benefit of all.”
The stamp features an artist’s digital illustration of Webb against a background of stars. The selvage around each set of stamps showcases a sharp image of a star, captured while setting up the telescope in space to confirm precise alignment of Webb’s 18 hexagonal mirror segments.
The U.S. Postal Service’s first day of issue event is free and open to the public on Thursday, Sept. 8, at 11 a.m. EDT at the National Postal Museum. NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana; Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; and Erin Smith, Webb deputy observatory project scientist at NASA Goddard will be among the speakers providing remarks.
NASA/Photo: Nasa.gov
To follow along with NASA’s Webb Telescope as it begins its mission to unfold the infrared universe, visit:
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier infrared space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
