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In 2017, Dr. Vinay Prasad said an anti-vaccine doctor was a "quack". What changed?

The post Dr. Vinay Prasad 2025 = Dr. Kelly Brogan 2015 first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Neuromorphic computing -- a field that applies principles of neuroscience to computing systems to mimic the brain's function and structure -- needs to scale up if it is to effectively compete with current computing methods. Researchers, now present a detailed roadmap of what needs to happen to reach that goal.

Researchers have demonstrated an ideal Weyl semimetal, marking a breakthrough in a decade-old problem of quantum materials.

Researchers have demonstrated an ideal Weyl semimetal, marking a breakthrough in a decade-old problem of quantum materials.

Red dwarfs always make me think of the classic British TV science comedy show in the 90’s that was named after them. The stars themselves better little resemblance to the show though. They are small, not surprisingly red stars that can generate flares and coronal mass ejections that rival many of the much larger stars. A team of astronomers have recently used the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to study Wolf 359 and found it unleashes brutal X-ray flares that would be extremely damaging to life on nearby planets. 

Red dwarf stars are small, cool, and very long-lived stars that shine with only a fraction of the brightness of our Sun. They have a mass less than half of the Sun’s and their surface temperatures range from 2,500 to 4,000 degrees Celsius. Because they burn their fuel so slowly, red dwarfs can last for trillions of years, far outliving more massive stars. They are common across the cosmos making up about 70-80% of all stars in the Galaxy but despite this they are hard to spot with the naked eye. 

An artistic impression of Trappist-1 B shortly before it passes behind the cool, red dwarf star, Trappist-1. Such stars are known for their activity with large starspots and eruptions. Trappist-1 B may experience intense volcanism. Credit Thomas Muller (HDA.MPIA)

Wolf 359 is a one such red dwarf star located about 7.8 light-years away from Earth, making it one of the closest stars to our solar system. It’s still too dim to be seen without a telescope though shining at just one-thousandth the brightness of the Sun. It’s part of the constellation Leo and has a mass only about 12% of our Sun’s, with a surface temperature around 4,000 degrees Celsius. Wolf 359 is a relatively young star, but due to its low mass, it will burn its hydrogen fuel slowly and could remain stable for tens of billions of years.

With the intense radiation emissions from Wolf 359 its very likely that any planets in orbit around it will be unable to maintain a stable life supporting atmosphere. A team of astronomers however have been studying it with NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM Newton. They have found that only a planet that has green house gasses, just like Earth, in its atmosphere could sustain life. Given that red dwarfs are the most prevalent stars in the Universe, astronomers have explored them to find evidence of exoplanets but to date, with little success. The team found evidence for two planets in orbit about Wolf 359 but not all scientists are convinced. 

Artist’s illustration of Chandra

Every star has a habitable zone and its location is determined by the temperature and energy output from the star itself. The outer limits for this zone around Wolf 359 is about 15% of the distance between Earth and Sun. The two yet to be confirmed exoplanets orbit the star outside the habitable zone; one is too close, the other to far. 

As they studied the system over 3.5 days, they observed 18 X-Ray flares from Wolf 359. That was just over 3.5 days though and the team propose that more powerful and more damaging flares will occur from time to time. These intense X-ray flares are the chief reason that any planets in orbit must be within the habitable zone and will need an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide to sustain habitable conditions. It’s unlikely however, that any planet within the habitable zone will be able to keep its atmosphere due to the strength of the wind blowing upon it. 

Source : Exoplanets Need to Be Prepared for Extreme Space Weather, Chandra Find

The post Life Would Struggle to Survive Near Wolf 359 appeared first on Universe Today.

While entangled photons hold incredible promise for quantum computing and communications, they have a major inherent disadvantage. After one use, they simply disappear. In a new study physicists propose a new strategy to maintain communications in a constantly changing, unpredictable quantum network. By rebuilding these disappearing connections, the researchers found the network eventually settles into a stable -- albeit different -- state.

While entangled photons hold incredible promise for quantum computing and communications, they have a major inherent disadvantage. After one use, they simply disappear. In a new study physicists propose a new strategy to maintain communications in a constantly changing, unpredictable quantum network. By rebuilding these disappearing connections, the researchers found the network eventually settles into a stable -- albeit different -- state.

Perovskite solar cells are a flexible and sustainable alternative to conventional silicon-based solar cells. Researchers were able to find -- within only a few weeks -- new organic molecules that increase the efficiency of perovskite solar cells. The team used a clever combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and automated high-throughput synthesis. Their strategy can also be applied to other areas of materials research, such as the search for new battery materials.

Researchers have measured the thinking time of London taxi drivers -- famous for their knowledge of more than 26,000 streets across the city -- as part of a study into the future of AI route-mapping.

Electrical engineers have developed a better way to perform the comparative analysis of entire genomes. This approach can be used to study relationships between different species across geological time scales. This new approach is poised to unlock discoveries regarding how evolution has shaped present-day genomes and also how the tree of life is organized.

A team has identified a strain of bacteria that can break down and transform at least three types of PFAS, and, perhaps even more crucially, some of the toxic byproducts of the bond-breaking process.

Chirality is a fundamental property of matter that determines many biological, chemical and physical phenomena. Chiral solids, for example, offer exciting opportunities for catalysis, sensing and optical devices by enabling unique interactions with chiral molecules and polarized light. These properties are however established when the material is grown, that is, the left- and right-handed enantiomers cannot be converted into one another without melting and recrystallization. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have shown that terahertz light can induce chirality in a non-chiral crystal, allowing either left- or right-handed enantiomers to emerge on demand. The finding, reported in Science, opens up exciting possibilities for exploring novel non-equilibrium phenomena in complex materials.

The Stargate Project aims to build huge data centres for AI development – but the details remain murky, and it is still unclear exactly how this might impact the energy future of the US

If you want to know what the newly forming Solar System looked like, study planetary disks around other stars. Like them, our star was a single star forming its retinue of worlds and other stars did the same. This all happened 4.5 billion years ago, so we have to look at similar systems around nearby stars.

Recently astronomers used radio and optical telescopes to study a collection of so-called “double planetary disks”. These are collections of material around binary stars, sometimes also called “protoplanetary disks.” They zeroed in on a system called DF Tau because it showed some peculiar characteristics. You’d think the planetary disks in those pairs would be roughly the same since they formed from the same raw materials as their parent stars. However, they show some surprising differences from each other.

DF Tau and Its Double Planetary Disks

DF Tau lies just over 400 light-years away from us in the constellation Taurus. It’s in a giant molecular cloud that contains hundreds of newborn stars. DF Tau is two fairly young stars of equal mass. They’re in a 48-year-long orbital dance with each other, and very likely formed together in the same cloud of gas and dust. However, their disks show distinct differences. The brighter, primary star has an active inner disk. The secondary star’s inner region appears to have almost completely disappeared. What does this say about the formation and evolution of these regions and their planets (if they have any)?

According to Dr Taylor Kutra of Lowell Observatory and one of the researchers looking at this system, it’s complex. “The dispersal of circumstellar disks is a complicated process with many unknowns,” said Kutra. “By looking at systems that form together, we can control one major variable: time. DF Tau and other systems in our survey tell us that disk evolution isn’t strictly a function of time, other processes are at play.”

Disk Mechanics

Think of planetary disks like giant wheels spinning in the hearts of molecular clouds. As it moves, material from the disk clumps together. That forms planetesimals, and ultimately planets. The process of planet formation eventually uses up the material in the disk. It doesn’t take long for the material to dissipate like this. There’s nothing left of our own Solar System’s circumstellar birthplace, so we have to look for other examples to understand our own.

Artist’s depiction of a protoplanetary disk in which planets are forming. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Finding such disks around other stars is a snapshot of a planetary crèche early in the formation and evolution process. Finding a pair of them as a binary is an extraordinary chance to understand the complications of planetary formation in such a pair. The fact that one of them has experienced dissipation of its inner region raises a lot of questions. What’s happening to cause that dissipation? Could it be due to planetary formation taking place more rapidly in one disk? Is there formation taking place in the brighter one? What other processes could cause such an imbalance in the two structures?

Kutra and a team of astronomers used the NRAO’s Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile, as well as optical and infrared observations from other facilities such as the Keck Observatory to study the pair. Their data should help shed light on the process of planetary formation in the paired disks, and explain the differences. One possibility to explain the differences in dissipation is to look at the viscosities of the individual disks. Another is to look for the presence of a substellar companion carving out gaps in the one surrounding the secondary star. It’s also possible that the newborn stars could affect their disks in different ways. In some systems, those stars work to evaporate their disks quite quickly.

Future Work Needed

DF Tau wasn’t the only system they studied. There are many other sources in the ALMA survey. They allow astronomers to study how circumstellar disks evolve, particularly in binary systems. The DF Tau system merits more study since astronomers are just beginning to understand its characteristics.

Once astronomers get a handle on these processes, it should help us understand planet formation in circumstellar disks. That’s because their evolution directly affects the timing of planetary formation. Astronomers will continue to probe the density of the disks, and the timing of changes in the inner and outer regions—and if all goes well—search for newly forming worlds there and in other systems they find in the future. Since not all stars form as singletons (like the Sun did), checking out more binaries should give us a better understanding of binary star and planet evolution.

For More Information

Double the Disks, Double the Discovery: New Insights into Planet Formation in DF Tau
Sites of Planet Formation in Binary Systems. II. Double the Disks in DF Tau
Star Formation in the Taurus-Auriga Dark Clouds

The post Several Double Planetary Disks Found appeared first on Universe Today.

A spacecraft takes between about seven and nine months to reach Mars. The time depends on the spacecraft and the distance between the two planets, which changes as they follow their orbits around the Sun. NASA’s Perseverance is the most recent spacecraft to make the journey, and it took about seven months.

If it didn’t take so long, then Mars would be within reach of a human mission sooner rather than later. NASA is exploring the idea of using nuclear electric propulsion to shorten the travel time.

Sending a crewed mission to Mars is much more complicated than sending a robotic explorer like Perseverance. Perseverance will be left there after its mission ends. But humans need to return to Earth. One of the main restrictions is launch windows. These occur every 26 months when the planets are closest to one another, making the trip shorter and more manageable. So, a crewed return mission to Mars could take about four years, depending on factors like the crew’s time on the planet.

A more efficient propulsion system under development could transport a crew to Mars on a round-trip in only about two years, according to its proponents. Engineers at NASA’s Langley Research Center are working on a nuclear electric propulsion system that could bring Mars within reach in these timeframes. These systems use a nuclear reactor to generate electricity, which is used to ionize or positively charge gaseous propellants and create thrust.

But there’s a catch: it has to be assembled in space.

The system is called the Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL. MARVL is connected to NASA’s goal of developing a Mars Transit Vehicle, aka Deep Space Transport, in the next decade or by the late 2030s.

One of the system’s components is its heat dissipation system. The system is an array about the size of a football field once deployed. The idea is to break the system up into separate components that can be robotically assembled in space.

“By doing that, we eliminate trying to fit the whole system into one rocket fairing,” said Amanda Stark, a heat transfer engineer at NASA Langley and the principal investigator for MARVL. “In turn, that allows us to loosen up the design a little bit and really optimize it.”

This simple illustration shows MARVL’s main components, including its football field-sized heat dissipation system. Image Credit: NASA/Tim Marvel

Folding the entire system up into a small enough payload to fit inside a rocket fairing isn’t really an option. Engineers have successfully folded other spacecraft into nosecones and then deployed them after release. The JWST’s mirror is probably the best example of that. But the JWST’s primary mirror is only 6.5 meters (21 ft and 4 inches) across. That’s far smaller than MARVL’s heat dissipation system, and it was still an elaborate challenge.

Making the heat dissipation system modular and assembling it in space with robots opens up new possibilities. The components could be launched into space in any order and in any combination that makes sense.

Space robotics is advancing and will play a larger and larger role as the future unfolds. The entire idea is an engineering challenge, but one that’s not that far out of reach. NASA’s Langley Research Centre has been working on these types of problems for decades.

Langley is a huge complex covering more than 700 acres that employs thousands of engineers, technicians, and scientists. It has made pioneering contributions to flight and spaceflight. The Centre played an important role in the development of the Apollo Lunar Module and contributed to other endeavours like the Hubble Space Telescope and the Viking Mars Lander. Space technology and research is one of their primary focuses.

This is an opportunity to produce a vehicle from the ground up that is designed to be launched in pieces and assembled in space.

“Existing vehicles have not previously considered in-space assembly during the design process, so we have the opportunity here to say, ‘We’re going to build this vehicle in space. How do we do it? And what does the vehicle look like if we do that?’ I think it’s going to expand what we think of when it comes to nuclear propulsion,” said Julia Cline, a mentor for the project in NASA Langley’s Research Directorate. Cline led the center’s participation in the Nuclear Electric Propulsion tech maturation plan development as a precursor to MARVL.

The Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) system wasn’t the only one under consideration. NASA also considered the Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) system. They also considered a “quad-wing” design for the NEP system because it could be folded into the Space Launch System’s payload fairing. However, that system required a larger surface area, and the deployment systems in that design were heavy and complicated. It also required more propellant.

This illustration shows the basic design of the proposed quad-wing NEP system. Image Credit: From “ECI Modular Assembled Radiators for NEP VehicLes (MARVL), an Overview” by Stark et al. 2024.

The Bi-Wing design has several advantages over the Quad-Wing design. It can be launched piece by piece in commercial launch vehicles without the need for the SLS. The rocket payload fairing doesn’t restrict the radiator size, and it avoids solar flux, which would inhibit cooling.

This illustration shows the MARVL NEP Bi-Wing design. It can be launched on commercial launch vehicles, needs less propellant, and has lightweight joints, among other things. Image Credit: NASA/Tim Marvel

NASA gave the MARVL project team two years to develop the idea. By then, the team hopes to have a small-scale ground demonstration ready.

“One of our mentors remarked, ‘This is why I wanted to work at NASA, for projects like this,'” said Stark, “which is awesome because I am so happy to be involved with it, and I feel the same way.”

The post Getting To Mars Quickly With Nuclear Electric Propulsion appeared first on Universe Today.

Our bodies are made up of around 75 billion cells. But what function does each individual cell perform and how greatly do a healthy person's cells differ from those of someone with a disease? To draw conclusions, enormous quantities of data must be analyzed and interpreted. For this purpose, machine learning methods are applied. Researchers have now tested self-supervised learning as a promising approach for testing 20 million cells or more.

Our bodies are made up of around 75 billion cells. But what function does each individual cell perform and how greatly do a healthy person's cells differ from those of someone with a disease? To draw conclusions, enormous quantities of data must be analyzed and interpreted. For this purpose, machine learning methods are applied. Researchers have now tested self-supervised learning as a promising approach for testing 20 million cells or more.

South American megafauna, from giant sloths to camel-like creatures, survived thousands of years longer than we thought, challenging the idea that they were hunted to extinction by humans

If you want to see a compilation of all of Trump’s executive orders, you can find links here that will take you to the contents of the official orders.

I’ve talked about the new rules on sex and gender before, but wanted to discuss them again, briefly. Click the screenshot below to see Trump’s EO on those issues:

It’s a long document (four pages when printed out single-space in 9-point Times type, but the upshot is an official recognition of two sexes (male and female, of course), which are seen as immutable. Coupled with that is a refusal to use, on government documents or in government work, any concept of gender.

One excerpt:

It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.  These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.  Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality, and the following definitions shall govern all Executive interpretation of and application of Federal law and administration policy:

(a)  “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.  “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.”

(b)  “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.

(c)  “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.

(d)  “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

(e)  “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

(f)  “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.  Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.  Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.

(g)  “Gender identity” reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.

While most of this seems okay to me, I’d make two changes. First, sex is not recognizable, at least via the apparatus to produce gametes, at conception, when we have only a single cell. With high probability you could identify its sex via DNA testing, but the reproductive apparatus develops only later. Ergo I would substitute “at birth” for “at conception”.

Second, it makes no provision for true intersex people, who cannot be identified as either male or female (hermaphrodites are one example). Though such people are vanishingly rare, so that sex is about as close to binary as you can get, they are not nonexistent, and constitute somewhere between 1 person in 5600 to 1 in 20,000.  There has to be some provision for identifying the sex of these people, perhaps with an “I” for intersex.

It also deals with women’s spaces:

Sec. 4.  Privacy in Intimate Spaces.  (a)  The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers, including through amendment, as necessary, of Part 115.41 of title 28, Code of Federal Regulations and interpretation guidance regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act.

(b)  The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall prepare and submit for notice and comment rulemaking a policy to rescind the final rule entitled “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs” of September 21, 2016, 81 FR 64763, and shall submit for public comment a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters.

Sec. 5.  Protecting Rights.  The Attorney General shall issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  In accordance with that guidance, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, the General Counsel and Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and each other agency head with enforcement responsibilities under the Civil Rights Act shall prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms identified.

In general I agree, but there may be specific cases, for example a trans woman in jail for embezzlement and not sexual aggression, might be placed in a woman’s prison. Even so, a trans woman is a biological male and on average men are more aggressive than women, but on the other hand a trans women in a male prison may be at risk of becoming sexually assaulted.

Also, re rape counseling and running women’s shelters, I do not think that there should be legal prohibitions against hiring trans women to do the job, I can’t imagine, in a private organization, of favoring their hiring. I said as much in two previous posts (one of which is here) in which I agreed with Ed Buckner. Buckner’s words are indented, mine doubly indented (bolding is his):

Coyne does offer some opinions that are related to ethics, of course.

For example,

Transgender women, for example, should not compete athletically against biological women; should not serve as rape counselors and workers in battered women’s shelters; or, if convicted of a crime, should not be placed in a women’s prison.

My own “ethical” opinion is close to Coyne’s. I would probably—but only after I studied the matter more carefully, including discussions with rape counselors and probably even with women who’ve been victims of rape or of women-batterers, modify some of what Coyne wrote slightly to say:

Neither men or women, cis- or trans-gendered, should serve as rape counselors and as workers in battered women’s shelters, unless the counselors or others working there pass a background check; even then, no one should so serve unless the clients are aware of and accept the status of the counselors/workers.

I can imagine circumstances where there might be an advantage to victims of having a man or a trans woman on hand, but the rights, needs, and wants of the victims, even if sometimes irrational, should be paramount.

In response, I agreed:

I think the second version, expressing Buckner’s views, is better than what I wrote, and it does summarize views I already held (but failed to express). While I still think that at present tranwomen should not compete against biological women in sports, and shouldn’t really be running battered women’s shelters, they should not be completely barred from that job nor from acting as rape counselors—so long as (as Buckner writes), they undergo a background check and the women residents of shelters or women being counseled for rape or sexual assault are made aware that the counselor is a trans woman (a biological man) and are okay with that. This view will, of course still be seen as “transphobic” by some extremists, but there’s a very good case for holding this view in light of the rights of biological women. This involves a conflict between two groups’ “rights”, and in the interests of fairness and the needs of biological women, I come down against sports participation of transwomen and cast a very cold eye on the other two issues.

In other words, I’d make the rule: “Any woman seeking counseling for rape or sexual assault, or seeking entry into a woman’s shelter, should have the right to have a woman counseling and dealing with her psychological or medical needs.”

In that sense I’d modify Trump’s rules.

h/t: Jay

Researchers have derived a formula for viral behavior in the Wild Cards, a science fiction series written by a collection of authors about an alien virus called the Wild Card that mutates human DNA. The formula he derived is a Lagrangian formulation, which considers the different ways a system can evolve. It's also a fundamental physics principle, which also makes the fictional example a powerful teaching tool.