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But in space, like on the Moon or Mars, we have…none of that. Zero. No GPS satellites, no globe-spanning networks. Just radio broadcasts from command centers here on Earth to tell our robots and crews what to do.

Scientists at Binghamton University are bringing a sci-fi fantasy to life by developing tiny batteries that vanish after use inspired by Mission: Impossible. Led by Professor Seokheun Choi, the team is tackling one of the trickiest parts of biodegradable electronics: the power source. Instead of using toxic materials, they re exploring probiotics friendly bacteria often found in yogurt to generate electricity. With engineered paper-based batteries that dissolve in acidic environments, this breakthrough could revolutionize safe, disposable tech for medical and environmental use.

Interview with Emily Schoerning; Quickie with Bob: Prepping for Q-Day; News Items: Seed Oils, Lead into Gold, American Lysenkoism, The Screwworm is Coming, Galactic Collision; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Dream Learning; Science or Fiction

Unlike birds, which navigate unknown environments with remarkable speed and agility, drones typically rely on external guidance or pre-mapped routes. However, a groundbreaking development by Professor Fu Zhang and researchers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has enabled drones and micro air vehicles (MAVs) to emulate the flight capabilities of birds more closely than ever before.

Today our regular Mark Sturtevant weighs in with some spider photos. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Here are some spider photos. Most were taken early last season—I’m usually about a year behind—but a couple are more recent, shot specifically to fill in a narrative gap for this post.

It is an odd thing that I tend to neglect photographing some of the most commonplace arthropods, and probably the most overlooked of these had been what we call house spiders. These shy cobweb weavers always hide from the slightest disturbance, but after much, much effort I managed to get a focus stack of this one in a staged setting. This is the Triangulate Cobweb Spider, Steatoda triangulosa, and you have probably seen thousands of them.

Next up is a species of Ground Spider, I think Drassyllus sp. Ground spiders are free-roaming and are among the fastest spiders I know when they decide to make a run for it:

The spider shown in the next photo is a Running Crab Spider (Philodromus sp). The term “crab spider” is widely used for spiders in different families, so this is not particularly related to the crab spiders that you might see lurking on flowers:

Here is a small Wolf Spider (Trochosa idunno). She was quite thirsty, so it was easy to get this focus stack of her while she was having a drink.

With the previous picture and subsequent pictures, you can see a significant change in my gear through the reflections in spider eyes. I had used a very popular brand of dual head flash for years, but one that produced twin reflections. Last season I switched to a more traditional single head flash, and you can see that in the reflections of things like spider eyes. I’ve always rolled my own flash diffusers, and this is one of those big conical ones that people tend to favor for single flashes. The black intrusion on the bottom in the eye reflections is the camera lens. One element in this early edition of the new diffuser is the bright spot that you can see in the reflected diffuser face. This of course comes directly from the flash head, and it is an exceedingly common artifact in these types of diffusers. However, I managed to make that pretty much go away with later refinements on the design, and you will see that here and there in later pictures.

Next up are jumping spiders. I begin with my personal favorite which is the Tan Jumping Spider Platycryptus undatus. These are the largest species in this family in my area, and I am very lucky that I can go out to my shed and almost always find at least one of these spiders on it. They have a flatter shape than other jumping spiders, and this allows them to quickly hide in cracks. The cryptic coloration of this species would make it nearly impossible to spot on tree bark, but these seem to prefer the shed (as far as I know). Jumping spiders are fun to work with since they have so much personality and even curiosity, but they also can hop away and go scurrying across the dining room table in an instant. The first pictures show a male:

 

In spider-world, males are often more colorful than the females, and this is a product of intersexual selection where males actively court sharp-eyed and judgmental females. Normally, male color displays are to attract a female and to persuade her into mating. But in the world of jumping spiders male color may also be used as a defense against a murderous attack from a female. Jumping spiders have good but also very weird vision, in which red objects appear closer than they really are. It has not escaped notice that the males of many jumping spider species have reddish markings on their face, like this one, and there is speculation that this might cause a hungry female to lunge inaccurately.

The next two pictures are of a female Platycryptus. I always think of them as looking a bit like scary little Ewoks from Star Wars. Unlike the male, who was super chill for pictures, she needed a meal to sit still for her manually focus stacked pictures:

I would like to explain focus stacking. Macro photography tends to produce pictures with a very shallow depth of focus. One solution for this is to take a series of shots at slightly different focal points, while striving to keep the same alignment on the subject. The pictures are combined, and software is used to blend the pictures together to produce greater depth of focus in a single picture. The process can also result in certain artifacts, however, and those are later cleaned up to some degree with digital trickery. The whole process is technically very easy, but it can take time.

The final images are manual focus stacks of Bold Jumping Spiders, Phidippus audax. The first one is a juvenile, and the last two are of a very regal adult male, all decked out to advertise the quality of his genes to females. Those largish chelicerae and fangs may look imposing, but males of all spiders are strictly lovers and not fighters: those things are simply part of his “bling” for the ladies. Their only thought is to meet up with a conspecific spider of the opposite sex and to hopefully not be murdered:

Reader Bryan Lepore sent a “spot-the” picture that I consider difficult. As he says below, what you’re looking for is a pentatomid, a member of the Hemiptera family (“true bugs”): Here’s his caption:

I just spotted a cool “stink bug” on my driveway, thought I’d take a photo survey for you – here’s one:

Can you find it? If you do, just say in the comments you have, but please don’t give the location away so that other readers have a chance to look.

The reveal will be at 11:30 am Chicago time.

Shrinking silicon transistors have reached their physical limits, but a team from the University of Tokyo is rewriting the rules. They've created a cutting-edge transistor using gallium-doped indium oxide with a novel "gate-all-around" structure. By precisely engineering the material's atomic structure, the new device achieves remarkable electron mobility and stability. This breakthrough could fuel faster, more reliable electronics powering future technologies from AI to big data systems.

Space is hard. There's no doubt about that. It's completely unlike any environment we have ever faced on the Earth.

The Large Hadron Collider has changed particle physics, and now scientists are dreaming up even bigger supercolliders. But humanity can't match the raw particle-colliding power of a supermassive black hole. In a new paper, researchers describe how supermassive black holes create a dense environment where particles are spinning at relativistic speeds and crashing into each other, releasing other particles that could be detectable on Earth.

When Robert F Kennedy Jr announced that the US would stop recommending covid-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnancies, he bypassed standard protocols and set the stage for future vaccine rollbacks

New mathematical work provides a way to identify when information has been changed by manipulating space-time – and it may form a foundation for future space-time computers

Across many cultures, both men and women rate female faces as more attractive, and women exhibit this preference even more strongly than men

Some time ago I was on the Piers Morgan “Uncensored” show for half an hour, talking about why biological sex is binary (see my post about this here). I now realize how fortunate I was, because I knew in advance that Morgan agreed with me and I didn’t face what Natasha Hausdorff faces below (and many other guests have also faced): unmitigated, rude, and arrogant bullying, as well as constant interruptions. (My solo appearance was followed by a panel of three discussants, and at least one of those people faced Morgan’s opprobrium.)

In the show below (the bullying starts at the beginning and ends at about an hour in, followed by an interview with Ahmed Alnaouq, who, it’s claimed (see below) is from a family of Hamas terrorists. But let’s concentrate on the main guest/target Natasha Hausdorff, someone I deeply admire. She’s a British barrister specializing in international law and also the legal head of the UK lawyers For Israel.  She keeps her cool even under the hottest fire, and you can’t get much hotter than this kind of rude interrogation by Morgan.  There is no debate, no speech, that Hausdorff will refuse to participate in, even if she knows she’ll be subject to booing and hatred, for she feels that she must get the message out about the world’s misconceptions about Israel (e.g., the “apartheid state” and “genocide” canards).  I’ve rarely seen someone so brave on the platform.

Here she tries to give her opinions to both Piers Morgan and libertarian/comedian Dave Smith, but hardly gets a chance to speak. I don’t recommend that you watch the entire first hour, but do dip into it. I recommend, for example, watching the segments beginning at 17:45, 24:35, 27:30, 38:00, and 41:30 (Hausdorff gets two short, uninterrupted spaces to respond, eloquently, at 46:48 and 53:45).  Note that she never interrupts either Smith or Morgan, but listens politely. She is not afforded the same consideration.

Note as well that neither Smith nor Morgan levels any criticisms at Hamas, save for one brief offhand remark by Morgan. Especially notable is the complete dearth of admission by the two men that civilian deaths certainly from Hamas using Gazans as human shields, nor do they offer any approbation for IDF’s care not to kill civilians.

Now if you are anti-Israel you will be taking Pierce’s self-admitted “objective” evaluation of the situation, but I will mention two issues, one of which is dealt with below.

First, Hausdorff is asked several times to admit that Israel has nuclear weapons. Many of us believe they do, but in fact Israel has never admitted it has nuclear weapons (a good strategy if you don’t!), and for a lawyer to say otherwise is simply not on.

Second, Morgan repeatedly brings up the issue of why Israel doesn’t allow foreign reporters into Gaza. In fact it has: Douglas Murray has been several times. Of course, as Morgan says, he was “embedded with the IDF” but if I’m not wrong other journalists from organizations like Reuters have been allowed into Gaza, or at least into Lebanon. But see the article by Sheri Oz below.

And if you’re anti-Israel, you may find support in the words of Morgan and Smith. From me: Kudos to Hausdorff for withstanding Morgan’s verbal cannonade.

 

Here’s a post from Global Disconnect that dissects the segment above, include Morgan’s bullying, his ignorance of the data relevant to the Hamas/Gaza war, and, at the end, the background of guest Ahmed Alnaouq. Click the headline to read.

A few excerpts:

Piers Morgan couldn’t help himself. In his latest so-called debate between comedian Dave Smith and international lawyer Natasha Hausdorff. The so-called “debate: was a staggering display of contempt for both basic debate etiquette and respect for the woman and legal expert he invited to his show. At one point, Piers even sneered that “numbers aren’t her strong point,” a cheap, sexist jab suggesting she’s somehow stupid. In reality, the one who showed no grasp of numbers, facts, logic or any journalistic integrity was him.

. . . Since numbers “aren’t Piers’ thing”, I’m going to help him out: he interrupted Natasha Hausdorff 103 times. Her longest uninterrupted statement lasted 38 seconds, and she generally wasn’t allowed to string five words together before being cut off. Dave Smith spoke uninterrupted nearly every time he had the floor. Piers only interjected 3 times: the first so Piers could clarify his own viewpoint, the second was to agree with Dave, and the third was to pivot back to attacking Natasha. Dave’s longest uninterrupted monologue rolled on for over three minutes. How do you like those numbers, Piers?

. . . Piers Morgan has relentlessly pushed the same false narrative that Israel is starving Gazans or attacking civilians on their way to get food. Let’s start with the most basic and shameless lie—a display not only of journalistic failure, but of a complete lack of integrity as a human being. Israel is not targeting civilians around food distribution points, and that’s not an opinion—it’s documented fact. Hamas itself has admitted to executing people in Gaza. There’s drone and CCTV footage as evidence, even the BBC and The Washington Post—initially eager to repeat Hamas propaganda—retracted their reporting. And yet, Piers Morgan still claims “there is no evidence” that Israel wasn’t responsible. That’s not ignorance—it’s deliberate deception.

. . . To answer the question Piers Morgan so desperately—and theatrically—asks in order to revive the oldest blood libel: that “Jews like to kill children”—only now aimed at the Jew among the nations, Israel. Piers Morgan theatrically performs his “outrage” over Israel not counting the number of children it supposedly “kills,” implying either a deliberate targeting or a cold disregard for their lives—yet not even his own army in any war has ever tracked civilian casualties, let alone child casualties separately, but somehow he demands of Israel what he’s never asked of any other military in any conflict, including wars his own country and brother fought.

. . . As of two days ago, Hamas claims 54,400 total deaths in Gaza, while the IDF estimates around 30,000 were Hamas and militant fighters. That leaves roughly 24,400 civilian deaths if both figures are accepted—giving Piers Morgan the simple math he challenged Natasha on: a combatant-to-civilian ratio of about 1.2:1. That’s already unusually precise warfare, but it gets sharper. Hamas itself admits natural deaths are included in its total, and over the 20-month period, about 8,500 people died of age, illness, or accidents. Excluding those, the adjusted ratio is 1.9:1—meaning 1.9 combatants killed for every 1 civilian. For context, UN and Red Cross data say the global wartime average is 9 civilians for every 1 combatant. So what exactly is Piers screaming about? Is Piers Morgan really that bad at basic math, or is his hatred for Israel so deep it overrides any pretense of journalism or objectivity from the start?

There are more data dealing with the libel that Israel is targeting children in Gaza (at one point he asks Hausdorff how many people she has killed!), but you can read the article for yourself. Just one more quote:

Piers Morgan’s “get out jail” free card is ignorance about the facts on the ground, he loves repeating the falsehood that Israel has banned international media—yet I’m not on the ground, I am not even a journalist and I’m still able to provide basic facts. Piers, Google is your friends—try using it. The truth is, Israel follows the same wartime media protocols as every modern military. No warzone offers unrestricted press access; journalists operate under controlled, coordinated entry by the military in charge, whether it’s in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else. If Piers truly wants to report from Gaza, he can apply and follow protocol, just like any other journalist in any other war.

Now, to take up the last issue, here’s a post from the Israel Diaries Substack (click to read):

So the accusation arises over and over – such as in comments to some of my articles on Substack: Why won’t Israel allow foreign reporters into Gaza?

It’s a fair question. It sounds fair.

Let us see what you think, dear readers. Below, I present two alternative theories that may explain why Israel is not letting foreign reporters into Gaza. Each theory has a number of explanatory items. Mark the item you think most likely stands behind the reason why Israel does not let foreign reporters into Gaza.

Before you answer, consider the following:

Where would the journalists even stay?

War correspondents typically lodge in hotels. Are any still operating in Gaza? If yes, fine — reporting might be feasible. If not, the only option would be to embed with one of three entities:

1. The IDF
2. Hamas
3. A still-active NGO, such as UNRWA — which, given what we now know, is effectively a Hamas affiliate.

Now, weigh the following two theories. Each has a list of possible explanations. Below each list is a multiple choice questionnaire on which you can vote for the explanation that seems most plausible to you.

Theory 1 is “The Journalist as Liability,” and theory two is “It’s a cover-up (or something more sinister),” implying that Israel has something to hide.  The article gives arguments on both sides, and readers (not many at this point) have voted, I’ll let you read the short piece for yourself.

Finally, and I haven’t seen this ever before, Hausdorff herself has taken to the news—the pages of the Spectato—to give a post facto analysis of her appearance with Morgan. Click below to read:

A couple of excerpts from the archived version. She begins with her exchange with Morgan about whether a family of children parented by two doctors was really killed in an Israeli strike. The exchange simply shows that, given Hamas’s history of false reports, Hausdorff is reserving judgement (as am I) until the matter is properly investigated.

Being interrupted and harangued, or even having my volume turned down or line cut, is not a new experience for me in “interviews”. It has always been a clear indication that the individuals involved in this unprofessional conduct were out of their depth and at a loss as to how to engage with the evidence I had presented. Nor, indeed, am I the only one experiencing such treatment. Any individual who does not subscribe to the virulently anti-Israel agenda, and who is asked to comment on broadcast media, will have experienced similar playground antics. It is demonstrative of a catastrophic failure by the media to do its job and an abject absence of journalistic integrity.

The pathetic display this week by Piers Morgan demonstrates that he is a significant part of the problem of disinformation about this conflict. Morgan should be well aware that there have been repeated stories emerging from Gaza which have subsequently been debunked only after they spread around the world. The predictable result has been the poisoning of many minds against Israel, on the basis of fabrications and blood libels. My simple entreaty was that the matter should not be prejudged, especially where fake AI generated images had been deployed to support it. Cue frenzied outrage and bile from Morgan.

Defence of fake images in pursuit of a “good story” is, of course, old ground for Morgan. He was dismissed from his role as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004, following the publication of photographs that purportedly showed British soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. The images were later determined to be staged and not taken in Iraq. Morgan stood by their publication and refused to issue an apology on the basis there was no firm evidence that they were fake, though the newspaper did, acknowledging that it had been the victim of a “calculated and malicious hoax” and expressing deep regret for the reputational damage caused to the British Army. Morgan’s defence of his decision to publish those fake pictures stemmed from his opposition to the Iraq war in a disgraceful example of “the ends justify the means”.

Did he learn anything from that shameful incident? The way I was treated on Uncensored suggests not. At least when Morgan was in the employ of a national newspaper, he could be held accountable. But this no longer appears to be the case. He is now free to shout down his guests without consequence.

The problem doesn’t stop with Morgan. The unfair way in which Israel is presented in the Western media, and the refusal to treat Hamas’s claims with scepticism, misleads the public. It increases the threat of violence to Jews around the world, but also, crucially, props up and encourages Hamas, thereby prolonging the war and the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

After all this—the shouting and rudeness and inability to discuss evidence—I ask myself, “If I had it to do over again, would I still have gone on Piers Morgan’s show to discuss the binary nature of sex? And ;my answer is, “Yes, certainly.” For one thing, I knew that he agreed with me, and so expected little haranguing and rudeness. (I’m not sure that, were I Hausdorff, I would have the guts.)  Mainly, though, it was important for me to speak the biological truth as I knew it, and to relate how that prompted the FFRF’s act of censorship.

h/t: Malgorzata

The monster black hole lurking at the center of galaxy M87 is an absolute beast. It is one of the largest in our vicinity and was the ideal first target for the Event Horizon Telescope. Scientists have taken a fresh look at the supermassive black hole using those iconic Event Horizon Telescope images and have now figured out just how fast this monster is spinning and how much material it's devouring.

First, don’t get too excited, this is a laboratory study, which means if all goes well we are about a decade or more from an actual treatment. The study, however, is a nice demonstration of the potential of recent biotechnology, specifically mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticles. We are seeing some real benefits building on decades of basic science research. It is a hopeful sign of the potential of biotechnology to improve our lives. It is also a painful reminder of how much damage is being done by the current administration’s defunding of that very science and the institutions that make it happen.

The study –Efficient mRNA delivery to resting T cells to reverse HIV latency – is looking for a solution to a particular problem in the treatment of HIV. The virus likes to hide inside white blood cells (CD4+ T cells). There the virus will wait in a latent stage and can activate later. It acts as a reservoir of virus that can keep the infection going, even in the face of effective anti-HIV drugs and immune attack. It is part of what makes HIV so difficult to fully eliminate from the body.

We already have drugs that address this issue. They are called, appropriately, latency-reversing agents (LRAs), and include Romidepsin, Panobinostat, and Vorinostat. These drugs inhibit an enzyme which allows the virus to hide inside white blood cells. So this isn’t a new idea, and there are already effective treatments, which do make other anti-HIV drugs more effective and keep viral counts very low. But they are not quite effective enough to allow for total virus elimination. More and more effective LRAs, therefore, could be highly beneficial to HIV treatment.

This new approach addresses the fact that latent HIV is “transcriptionally silent”, meaning that it is not making HIV proteins from its RNA. Therefore it cannot be detected by the immune system, and it is not engaging in activity that allows anti-HIV drugs to target it. What the researchers did was create a messenger RNA (mRNA) designed to force the viruses into becoming transcriptionally active – forcing them out of the latent stage. This allows them to be targeted by the immune system and anti-HIV drugs.

In order to get the mRNA to the target T cells they encased them in lipid nanoparticles. These are basically tiny fat bubbles that can be engineered to have specific proteins on their membrane which will guide the particles to a particular target and deliver the payload. This is one of those technologies that don’t get a lot of headlines themselves, but they are recently often the tech behind the headlines. The recent case of the personalized CRISPR treatment of the infant with a rare genetic mutation of the carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1) enzyme is an example. The treatment has apparently worked very well – and not surprisingly the CRISPR payload was delivered by lipid nanoparticles.

In the ex vivo study, using donated T cells from HIV patients, found:

“Encapsulating an mRNA encoding the HIV Tat protein, an activator of HIV transcription, LNP X enhances HIV transcription in ex vivo CD4+ T cells from people living with HIV. LNP X further enables the delivery of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) activation machinery to modulate both viral and host gene transcription.”

In other words, it works, at least from a basic science perspective. Next up will be animal studies, then safety human trials and finally human efficacy trials. This will take years, and the treatment may not ultimate work. But it’s very promising. And again, perhaps the most exciting thing about this research is that it further demonstrates the potential of CRISPR, mRNA technology, and lipid nanoparticles. We are transitioning into a new phase of advanced medical technology. But there is, of course, years and even decades of work ahead to make increasing use of these technologies. They are still tricky, and expensive, and need to be tailored to each specific disease, and in some cases specific patients.

KJ’s treatment likely cost about a million dollars to develop (which is similar to the cost of a liver transplant that may now not be necessary), and required the collaboration of about half a dozen institutions. This is happening in the US because of our history of heavily funding biomedical research. Such science funding is an investment, which supercharges our economy and is the secret to America’s dominance as a superpower. Sabotaging this engine of innovation and competitiveness is an incredible self-inflicted wound that will harm American competitiveness for a generation or more.

We may never fully recover. It is creating a brain-drain from the US, and allowing other countries, both allies and enemies alike, to bolster their science and research infrastructure. China is likely to benefit the most. And once those institutions of research are created, they won’t go away just because we try to build back what was lost. This is likely to result in an essentially permanent shift of advantage in science and technology from the US to China and elsewhere. It is an historical advantage that we cannot just recreate. And it’s not just a shift – this will slow the pace of advance for the world. Building institutional knowledge and capability takes decades. It is one of the most reckless things I have ever witnessed, and it’s still hard to grapple with how absolutely insane it is.

This self-destructive policy makes every science news item like this one bittersweet. We are sitting on this stunning biotechnology with the promise of transforming medicine, while we are dismantling the infrastructure that made it all possible.

 

 

 

The post New Potential mRNA HIV Treatment first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

An attempt to become the third successful private landing on the moon has ended in failure, as ispace's Resilience probe crashed due to a malfunctioning laser sensor

Japan's private space company ispace experienced another setback on Thursday 5th June when its Resilience lunar lander crashed into the surface of the Moon, marking the company's second consecutive failed landing attempt in just over two years.

Dark stars were first suggested in 2007, but now observations with the James Webb Space Telescope hint that we may have actually found some of these unusual cosmic objects

June’s sci-fi hot tips feature a sleep-killing neural chip from Laura Elliott, plus Will Carver's vision of a world where a virus makes us kinder

It's impossible to keep track of it all.

The post Our Medical Establishment is Flailing first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.