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Researchers have developed a new method for detecting defects in additively manufactured components.

A new study offers a framework for an objective, non-invasive and zero-effort sleep monitoring system utilizing smart thermostats equipped with motion sensors.

Have you ever wished you could understand what your dog is trying to say to you? Researchers are exploring the possibilities of AI, developing tools that can identify whether a dog's bark conveys playfulness or aggression.

Researchers have developed a model that enables computers to interpret and understand human emotions, utilizing principles of mathematical psychology. In the future, the model can help the computer to adapt its own behavior and guide an irritated or anxious user in different ways. The implications of such technology are profound, offering a glimpse into a future where computers are not merely tools, but empathetic partners in user interaction.

Previous research has demonstrated that adding tin to beta-type titanium alloys improves their strength. But scientists have yet to understand the reasons for this. Now, a research team has pinpointed the exact mechanisms behind this phenomenon.

For years, various models have been developed to describe an important class of mixing effects that occur, for example, in the flow in a chemical reactor. Experimental validation, however, has lagged far behind due to the superimposition of gravity effects. Scientists have now closed this gap with experiments conducted under weightlessness.

Researchers have developed a platform for the interactive evaluation of AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT. A team of computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians and cognitive scientists developed an open-source evaluation platform called CheckMate, which allows human users to interact with and evaluate the performance of large language models (LLMs).

Floating solar photovoltaic panels could supply all the electricity needs of some countries, new research has shown. The researchers calculated the daily electrical output for floating photovoltaics (FPV) on nearly 68,000 lakes and reservoirs around the world, using available climate data for each location.

Nanoscale electron transfer (ET) in solids is fundamental to the development of multifunctional materials. However, ET in solids is not yet clearly understood. Now, researchers achieved a direct observation of solid-state ET through X-ray crystal analysis by fabricating a novel double-walled non-covalent crystalline nanotube, which can absorb electron donor molecules and maintain its crystalline structure during ET. This innovative approach can lead to the design of novel functional materials soon.

A newly described technology improves the clarity and speed of using two-photon microscopy to image synapses in the live brain.

Researchers uncover how the halogen bond can be exploited to direct sequential dynamics in the multi-functional crystals, offering crucial insights for developing ultrafast-response times for multilevel optical storage.

A perspective piece describes innovative strategies that significantly reduce both resource consumption and fossil fuel emissions.

A team used experiments and simulations to quantify and predict how knit fabric response can be programmed. By establishing a mathematical theory of knitted materials, the researchers hope that knitting -- and textiles in general -- can be incorporated into more engineering and manufacturing applications.

A team used experiments and simulations to quantify and predict how knit fabric response can be programmed. By establishing a mathematical theory of knitted materials, the researchers hope that knitting -- and textiles in general -- can be incorporated into more engineering and manufacturing applications.

Using artificial intelligence (AI), breast radiologists in Denmark have improved breast cancer screening performance and reduced the rate of false-positive findings.

Polarized light waves spin clockwise or counterclockwise as they travel, with one direction behaving differently than the other as it interacts with molecules. This directionality, called chirality or handedness, could provide a way to identify and sort specific molecules for use in biomedicine applications, but researchers have had limited control over the direction of the waves -- until now.

There are real benefits to a positive mindset, but the idea that we should always look on the bright side has gone too far. Research into toxic positivity can help restore balance

Among all scientific or medical journals, The Lancet is the most woke, and I’ve written about it several times before, once calling it the “medical Scientific American“. For a fuller account of its wokeness, which seems to be entirely the doing of editor Richard Horton, see this piece from the site The Daily Skeptic, which summarizes a lot of craziness in the journal.  The latest mishigass is the long (11-page set of “author guidelines” that you can read by clicking on the link below:

And right near the beginning, on page 2, you read the guidelines for using the terms “sex and gender”.  The bolding of the headers is theirs (I’ve put these in caps), but I’ve taken the liberty of putting in bold several select sections of the text.

REPORTING SEX-BASED AND GENDER-BASED ANALYSES 

Reporting guidance

For research involving or pertaining to humans, animals, model organisms, or eukaryotic cells, investigators should integrate sex-based and gender-based analyses into their research design according to evolving funder/sponsor requirements and best practices within a field. Authors should address their research’s sex and/or gender dimensions in their manuscript. In cases where they cannot, they should discuss this as a limitation to their research’s generalisability. With research involving cells and model organisms, researchers should use the term “sex”. With research involving humans, researchers should consider which terms best describe their data (see Definitions section below). Authors can refer to the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) Guidelines and the SAGER guidelines checklist. They offer systematic approaches to the use and editorial review of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, outcome reporting, and research interpretation. However, there is no single, universally agreed-upon set of guidelines for defining sex and gender or reporting sex-based and gender-based analyses.

DEFINITIONS

In human research, the term “sex” carries multiple definitions. It often refers to an umbrella term for a set of biological attributes associated with physical and physiological features (eg, chromosomal genotype, hormonal levels, internal and external anatomy). It can also signify a sex categorisation, most often designated at birth (“sex assigned at birth”) based on a newborn’s visible external anatomy. The term “gender” generally refers to socially constructed roles, behaviours, and identities of women, men, and gender-diverse people that occur in a historical and cultural context, and might vary across societies and over time. Gender influences how people view themselves and each other, how they behave and interact, and how power is distributed in society. Sex and gender are often incorrectly portrayed as binary (female/male or woman/man), concordant, and static. However, these constructs exist along a spectrum that includes additional sex categorisations and gender identities, such as people who are intersex/have differences of sex development (DSD), or identify as non-binary. In any given person, sex and gender might not align, and both can change. Sex and gender are not entirely discrete concepts and their definitions continue to evolve. Biology and society influence both, and many languages do not distinguish between them. Since the terms “sex” and “gender” can be ambiguous, authors should describe the methods they use to gather and report sex-related and/or gender-related data (eg, self-report or physician-report, specific biological attributes, current sex/gender, sex assigned at birth, etc) and discuss the potential limitations of those methods. This will enhance the research’s precision, rigor, and reproducibility, and avoid ambiguity or conflation of terms and the constructs to which they refer. Authors should use the term “sex assigned at birth” rather than “biological sex”, “birth sex” or “natal sex” as it is more accurate and inclusive. When ascertaining gender and sex, researchers should use a two-step process: (1) ask for gender identity allowing for multiple options and (2) if relevant to the research question, ask for sex assigned at birth. In addition to this defining guidance and the SAGER guidelines, you can find further information about reporting sex and gender in research studies on Elsevier’s diversity, equity, and inclusion in the publishing author guide available here.

Note that everything referred to here deals with HUMANS, as this is a medical journal. Note that the editors specify that “sex” has multiple definitions, but in so doing mix up the way sex is determined in humans (chromosomes carrying sex-determining genes), the way it is observed at birth (usually via genitalia), and the way it is defined (whether an individual has the apparatus for producing big, immobile gametes (“females”) or small, mobile gametes (“males”).

Biologists agree about the gametic definition of sex, which produces the sex binary that I’ve discussed so often, and that definition is not ambiguous. (Note that there are no cases of hermaphrodites in humans that are functional as both males and females, so even if you considere hermaphrodites to be members of a “third sex”, and I don’t, they don’t exist in our species.)

The editors also state twice that sex is “not static” and can change, but biological sex cannot change. What can change is gender—unless you use a hormonally-based definition of sex, which is not tenable and was used only to determine which group someone could compete in athletically. (The Olympics has now abandoned that approach.)

Finally, note that The Lancet recommends the term “sex assigned at birth,” which is simply wrong. Sex is not ASSIGNED at birth, it is observed at birth, but observed using characters like genitalia that are almost always concordant with biological sex but may not be infallible indicators of biological sex.  But regardless, sex is never “assigned” but exists.  The exceptions to the sex binary—individuals who are truly intersex—comprise about 0.018% of people, or about 1 in 5600. As I always say, “that’s as close to binary as you can come.”

Finally, why do the editorial guidelines imply that sex is not “static”?  There is only one reason I can think of, and that’s trying to push on the journal’s readers a gender-activist ideology.  If you truly believe that a transwoman is a woman in terms of biological sex, or a transman is a man in terms of biological sex, then yes, you can say that sex is malleable. But this is not accurate, for using the biological definitions of sex, a transwoman remains a biological man and a transman remains a biological women. (This of course is not to demean them or say that they’re somehow morally unequal to the rest of us; it’s just biology.) In the end, biological sex is not malleable but static.

As the Daily Skeptic notes at the end of its piece:

The Lancet’s guidelines on sex conclude by explicitly telling authors to use the term “sex assigned at birth” because it is “more accurate and inclusive”. I’m imagining a future Lancet article on Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: “She was the first person who’d been assigned ‘female’ at birth to qualify as a doctor in Britain, and she went on to found the first medical school to train people who’d been assigned ‘female’ at birth. All in all, she was a truly remarkable person who’d been assigned ‘female’ at birth.”

If this were some obscure Gender Studies periodical, it wouldn’t really matter. But we’re talking about the world’s second most cited medical journal. It’s read by doctors, surgeons, researchers and all the people to whom we’ve entrusted our health. How can they maintain our trust when they can’t seem to tell the difference between a man and a woman?

Indeed!

h/t: Luana

SpaceX is getting ready to launch its massive Starship rocket tomorrow and we have all the details on the mission

The Hubble Space Telescope has been shut down temporarily after one of its gyroscopes sent faulty telemetry readings back to Earth in late May. The venerable space-based observatory, which has been responsible for some of the most remarkable scientific advances of the last three decades, and stunning astrophotography that became a cultural mainstay, is in its thirty-fourth year of operation.

Hubble’s many and varied accomplishments have been achieved despite a plague of technical challenges over the years. Right out of the gate, it launched with blurry vision, due to an improperly polished lens. The problem was fixed with a space shuttle servicing mission in 1993, three years after launch. Four more servicing missions between 1997 and 2009 repaired and upgraded various parts of the spacecraft.

With the retirement of the space shuttle, the space telescope has now been operating for 15 years without servicing.

Pauses in science operations like the current one are common events for Hubble these days, occurring several times a year in recent times. Hubble’s gyroscopes are the usual culprit.

In fact, a faulty gyroscope previously caused a shutdown barely a month ago, in April 2024, and did the same back in November 2023. In every case, NASA was able to get the space telescope back up and running in short order.

That doesn’t mean there is no cause for concern. Gyroscopes help the telescope orient itself in space, keeping it stable to point at astronomical targets in the distant universe. The last servicing mission in 2009 left the telescope with six operational gyroscopes, but it has been running on three since 2018.

Hubble needs all three to operate at full capacity.

The end of a Hubble gyro reveals the hair-thin wires known as flex leads. They carry data and electricity inside the gyro, and their corrosion has caused gyroscope failures in the past. NASA

But having two wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the mission. It would reduce the area of the sky Hubble can observe, and slow down science operations.

Regardless of the outcome of the current troubles, NASA appears confident that this is not the end of the line, stating in a press release on May 31:

“NASA anticipates Hubble will continue making discoveries throughout this decade and possibly into the next, working with other observatories, such as the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope for the benefit of humanity.”

It doesn’t appear that that will be the last word on the subject, however. A press conference has been called for 4PM EDT on June 4, where NASA’s Director of the Astrophysics Division, Mark Clampin, and Hubble’s project Manager, Patrick Crouse, are expected to give an update on Hubble’s condition.

In the event that Hubble is reduced to two working gyroscopes, NASA recently indicated that it would likely put one of them into safe mode, relying on just one gyroscope and keeping the last in good working order for the future.

With just one gyroscope in operation, magnetometers, sun sensors, and star trackers will need to make up for the work that the other gyroscopes used to do. This takes more time, and would reduce Hubble’s working capacity by 20-25%. Hubble would no longer be able to look at objects closer to Earth than Mars, it would be less capable of catching transient events at a moment’s notice, and it would have to pause observations during parts of its orbit when the Moon and Earth get in the way of its star trackers.

But it would keep the mission alive longer, which is good news for astronomers and astronomy fans everywhere. There is even hope for a future Hubble repair mission, an idea proposed by Jared Isaacman, a private astronaut who will command the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Currently, Dragon is incapable of docking with Hubble, leaving the idea firmly in the speculative stage for the moment.

As for more immediate plans, we’ll have to see what NASA has to say. Stay tuned for the press conference at 4PM June 4.

The post Hubble Pauses its Science Again appeared first on Universe Today.