Long-time Slashdot reader swell shared Scientific American's report on the quest for neuromorphic chips: The human brain is an amazing computing machine. Weighing only three pounds or so, it can process information a thousand times faster than the fastest supercomputer, store a thousand times more information than a powerful laptop, and do it all using no more energy than a 20-watt lightbulb. Researchers are trying to replicate this success using soft, flexible organic materials that can operate like biological neurons and someday might even be able to interconnect with them. Eventually, soft "neuromorphic" computer chips could be implanted directly into the brain, allowing people to control an artificial arm or a computer monitor simply by thinking about it.

Like real neurons — but unlike conventional computer chips — these new devices can send and receive both chemical and electrical signals. "Your brain works with chemicals, with neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Our materials are able to interact electrochemically with them," says Alberto Salleo, a materials scientist at Stanford University who wrote about the potential for organic neuromorphic devices in the 2021 Annual Review of Materials Research. Salleo and other researchers have created electronic devices using these soft organic materials that can act like transistors (which amplify and switch electrical signals) and memory cells (which store information) and other basic electronic components.

The work grows out of an increasing interest in neuromorphic computer circuits that mimic how human neural connections, or synapses, work. These circuits, whether made of silicon, metal or organic materials, work less like those in digital computers and more like the networks of neurons in the human brain.... An individual neuron receives signals from many other neurons, and all these signals together add up to affect the electrical state of the receiving neuron. In effect, each neuron serves as both a calculating device — integrating the value of all the signals it has received — and a memory device: storing the value of all of those combined signals as an infinitely variable analog value, rather than the zero-or-one of digital computers.

On Friday, the family of astronomer Frank Drake announced that he passed away peacefully at 92 in his California home, near the site of his final academic position at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ars Technica reports: Drake made a number of contributions to radio astronomy, including serving as director of the Arecibo radio telescope facility. But Drake is probably best known for an equation that bears his name and his subsequent involvement in SETI efforts. His equation was the first significant attempt to estimate the probability of intelligent extraterrestrial life. [...] His most prominent contribution in this area was the formulation of what's now known as the Drake equation. It's purportedly a calculation -- plug in the probabilities of a handful of things like the frequency of exoplanets around stars and the probability of life forming spontaneously, and out would pop the overall number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. [...]

Drake first presented his equation in 1961, and he maintained an interest in the question of extraterrestrial life throughout his career. While at Arecibo, he was involved in a project that beamed a message from that facility to a cluster of stars. He also helped craft two messages sent with our first hardware that was expected to leave the Solar System: a plaque on Pioneer 10 and 11 and gold records placed on the Voyager probes. He was also involved with the SETI institute and served on its board of trustees.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: More than a billion miles away from Earth, on the ice giants of Neptune and Uranus, diamonds are forever. This isn't cosmic poetry, but a reasonable scientific conclusion: We know that under extreme pressures and high temperatures miles beneath a planet's surface, hydrocarbons are pummeled into a crystalline bling coveted by the affianced. But on far-flung Neptune and Uranus, the Universe's diamond-making process is a bit more curious. Since the 1970s, scientists believed that diamonds might actually rain down toward the mostly slushy planets' rocky interiors -- a diamond rain, if you will. In 2017, researchers in Germany and California found a way to replicate those planetary conditions, fabricating teeny tiny diamonds called nanodiamonds in the lab using polystyrene (aka Styrofoam). Five years later and they're back at it again, this time using some good ol' polyethylene terephthalate (PET), according to a study published on Friday in Science Advances. The research has implications not only for our understanding of space, but paves a path toward creating nanodiamonds that are used in a range of contexts out of waste plastic.

So, why in the world are we making diamonds out of the same plastic that things like food containers and water bottles are made of? There's a good reason for this, Dominik Kraus, a scientist at the German research laboratory Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and lead author of the study, said in an email. When Kraus and his colleagues first attempted making nanodiamonds with polystyrene -- which contains the same elements of carbon and hydrogen found on Neptune and Uranus -- they did so by bombarding the material with the Linac Coherent Light Source, a high-powered X-ray laser at the SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory in California. This process rapidly heated the polystyrene to 5,000 Kelvin (around 8,540 degrees Fahrenheit) and compressed it by 150 gigapascals, similar to conditions found about 6,000 miles into the interior of the icy planets. While the researchers were able to make the microscopic bling with two quick hits from the laser, they later realized one vital chemical ingredient was missing: oxygen. So they turned to PET, which has a good balance of not only carbon and hydrogen but also oxygen, making it a closer chemical proxy to the ice giants than polystyrene.

"The chemistry at these conditions is very complex and modeling extremely difficult. 'Anything can happen' is a typical phrase when discussing such scenarios with theorists," said Kraus. "Indeed, there were some predictions showing that the presence of oxygen is helping [carbon separate from hydrogen] and diamond formation, but also ideas that it may be the other way around." To put the theoretical pedal to the metal, Kraus and his colleagues took a piece of PET, put it through the same 2017 experimental motions, but also included something called small angle X-ray diffraction to see how quickly and how large the diamonds grow. "We found that the presence of oxygen enhances diamond formation instead of preventing it, making 'diamond rain' inside those planets a more likely scenario," said Kraus. "We [also] see that diamonds grow larger for higher pressures and with progressing time in the experiments." They were also able to squeeze out a lot of tiny diamonds from just one shot of X-ray, on the order of a few billion crystallites (or a few micrograms if you're talking total weight). But Kraus said this isn't enough, at least right now, for application purposes like diamond quantum sensors, which are used to detect magnetic flow, or chemical catalysts, which need a couple of milligrams at minimum. However, it could eventually be scaled up to serve those purposes, and be the first step to a more ritzy way of plastic recycling. Kraus and his team also believe they found more evidence for superionic water, a bizarre type of water that acts like a weird cross between solid and liquid. "Kraus said that the finding that nanodiamonds indeed form inside ice giants makes it more likely for the conditions for superionic water to arise," reports Motherboard.

Kraus said: "[O]ur experiments show that carbon is separating from hydrogen and oxygen allowing pure water regions to form inside the planets. Thus, by making diamond precipitation a more realistic scenario inside those planets, also the formation of superionic water becomes more likely."

A federal judge on Thursday tentatively declined to overturn the jury conviction of disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy. That leaves the former Silicon Valley star a step closer to serving prison time. Politico reports: U.S. District Judge Edward Davila won't make that decision final until Oct. 17, when he is scheduled to sentence Holmes in the same San Jose, California, courtroom where a jury found her guilty of duping investors in her much-hyped blood-testing startup. Holmes, 38, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, plus restitution, for lying to investors about a Theranos technology she hailed as a revolution in healthcare but which in practice produced dangerously inaccurate results.

Cannabis users are often depicted as lazy "stoners" whose life ambitions span little further than lying on the sofa eating crisps. But research from the University of Cambridge challenges this stereotype, showing that regular users appear no more likely to lack motivation compared with non-users. From a report: The research also found no difference in motivation for rewards, pleasure taken from rewards, or the brain's response when seeking rewards, compared with non-users. "We're so used to seeing 'lazy stoners' on our screens that we don't stop to ask whether they're an accurate representation," said Martine Skumlien, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and the research's first author. "Our work implies that ... people who use cannabis are no more likely to lack motivation or be lazier than people who don't."

Skumlien said smoking cannabis could be associated with other downsides, but that the stoner stereotype is "stigmatising" and could make messages around harm reduction less effective. "We need to be honest and frank about what are and are not the harmful consequences of drug use," she added. Cannabis is the third most commonly used controlled substance worldwide, after alcohol and nicotine, with a 2018 NHS report finding that almost one in five (19%) of 15-year-olds in England had used cannabis in the previous 12 months.

The world's largest offshore wind farm is now fully operational, 55 miles off the coast of Yorkshire. The Hornsea 2 project can generate enough electricity to power about 1.3 million homes - that's enough for a city the size of Manchester. From a report: A decade ago renewables made up just 11% of the UK's energy mix. By 2021 it was 40%, with offshore wind the largest component. Hornsea 2 is part of a huge wind farm development by energy firm Orsted. "The UK is one of the world leaders in offshore wind," Patrick Harnett, programme director for the Hornsea 2 wind farm told BBC News. "This is very exciting after five years of work to have full commercial operations at the world's largest offshore wind farm."

Stefanie Waldek reports via Space.com: Led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is a small instrument on the Perseverance rover that's designed to transform carbon dioxide, which comprises some 96% of the atmosphere on Mars, into breathable oxygen. Oxygen, of course, is crucial for a human mission to Mars. Since February 2021, the device has run seven times, each time producing about 0.2 ounces (6 grams) of oxygen per hour. That's on par with the abilities of small trees here on Earth.

MOXIE has now operated in a variety of conditions on Mars, both day and night, through all four seasons. The researchers expect that a version of the instrument approximately 100 times larger than MOXIE could potentially create breathable oxygen for future astronauts who visit the Red Planet. If explorers can't make their own oxygen on Mars, supplies from Earth would take up valuable mass on a spacecraft. Furthermore, MOXIE's products could also be used as an ingredient for rocket fuel -- pretty crucial to ensuring the mission isn't one-way. A rocket would need 33 to 50 tons (30 to 45 metric tons) of liquid oxygen propellant in order to launch humans off Mars. "This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body, and transforming them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission," MOXIE deputy principal investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor of the practice in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a former NASA astronaut, said in a statement. "It's historic in that sense."

The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

A new study looks at interactions between microscopic neurons in salamanders to understand how the "arrow of time" is biologically generated. Motherboard reports: The second law of thermodynamics says that everything tends to move from order to disorder, a process known as entropy that defines the arrow of time. A stronger arrow of time means it would be harder for a system to go back to a more ordered state. "Everything that we perceive as a difference between the past and the future stems fundamentally from that one principle about the universe," said Christopher Lynn, the lead author of the study. Lynn said that his motivation for the study was "to understand how the arrows of time we see in life" fit into this larger idea of entropy on the scale of the entire universe.

Using previously done research on salamanders, Lynne and colleagues at City University of New York and Princeton examined how the arrow of time is represented in interactions between the amphibians' neurons in response to watching a movie. Their research is soon to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters. On one hand, it's somewhat obvious that an arrow of time would be biologically produced. "To be alive, almost, you have to have an arrow of time because you develop from a baby to an adult, and you're constantly moving and taking in stimuli," Lynne said. Indeed, entropy here is irreversible -- you cannot go back. What the team found was anything but intuitive, however.

Lynne and colleagues looked at a separate 2015 study where researchers had salamanders watch two different movies. One depicted a scene of fish swimming around, similar to what a salamander might experience in everyday life. As in the real world, the video had a clear arrow of time -- that is, if you watched it in reverse, it would look different than if you played it forwards. The other video contained only a gray screen with a black, horizontal bar in the middle of the screen, which moved quickly up and down in a random, jittery way. This video didn't have an obvious arrow of time. A major question for the researchers was if they could pick out signs of "local irreversibility" in interactions between small groups of retinal neurons in response to this stimulus. Would interactions with irreversibility -- they would look different if played in reverse, having an "arrow of time" -- present in simpler or more complex interactions between neurons? "You can go look at a system and you can ask: are the more complicated interactions strongly producing the arrow of time, or is it the simpler dynamics?" said Lynn.

The researchers found that the interactions between simple pairs of neurons primarily determined the arrow of time, no matter which movie the salamanders watched. In fact, the authors found a stronger arrow of time for the neurons when salamanders watched the video with the gray screen and black bar -- in other words, the video without an arrow of time in its content elicited a greater arrow of time in the neurons. "We naively thought that if the stimulus has a stronger arrow of time, that would show up on your retina," said Lynn. "But it was the opposite. So that's why it was surprising to us." While the researchers can't say for sure why this is, Lynn said that it might be because salamanders are more used to seeing something like the fish movie, and processing the more artificial movie took greater energy. In a more disordered system, which would have a greater arrow of time, more energy is consumed. "Being alive will still define an arrow of time," Lynne said, no matter the stimulus.

Scientists should commit acts of civil disobedience to show the public how seriously they regard the threat posed by the climate crisis, a group of leading scientists has argued. From a report: "Civil disobedience by scientists has the potential to cut through the myriad complexities and confusion surrounding the climate crisis," the researchers wrote in an article, published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change on Monday.

"When those with expertise and knowledge are willing to convey their concerns in a more uncompromising manner ... this affords them particular effectiveness as a communicative act. This is the insight of Greta Thunberg when she calls on us to âact as you would in a crisis.'" In recent months, scientists have shown themselves increasingly willing to take part in direct actions to bring attention to the climate crisis. A "scientists rebellion" mobilised more than 1,000 scientists in 25 countries in April, while in the UK a number of scientists were arrested for gluing scientific papers -- and their hands -- on to the glass facade of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the first redesign of coronavirus vaccines since they were rolled out in late 2020, setting up millions of Americans to receive new booster doses targeting Omicron subvariants as soon as next week. From a report: The agency cleared two options aimed at the BA.5 variant of Omicron that is now dominant: one made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for use in people as young as 12, and the other by Moderna, for those 18 and older. The doses can be given at least two months since people last received a booster dose or completed their initial series of vaccinations.

Biden administration officials have argued that even as researchers work to understand how protective the new shots might be, inoculating Americans again in the coming weeks could help curb the persistently high number of infections and deaths. "As we head into fall and begin to spend more time indoors, we strongly encourage anyone who is eligible to consider receiving a booster dose," Dr. Robert M. Califf, the F.D.A. commissioner, said in a statement on Wednesday. He added that the vaccine would "provide better protection against currently circulating variants."

A critical system aboard the probe was sending garbled data about its status. Engineers have fixed the issue but are still seeking the root cause. NASA reports: Engineers have repaired an issue affecting data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft. Earlier this year, the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which keeps Voyager 1's antenna pointed at Earth, began sending garbled information about its health and activities to mission controllers, despite operating normally. The rest of the probe also appeared healthy as it continued to gather and return science data. The team has since located the source of the garbled information: The AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago, and the computer corrupted the information.

Suzanne Dodd, Voyager's project manager, said that when they suspected this was the issue, they opted to try a low-risk solution: commanding the AACS to resume sending the data to the right computer. Engineers don't yet know why the AACS started routing telemetry data to the incorrect computer, but it likely received a faulty command generated by another onboard computer. If that's the case, it would indicate there is an issue somewhere else on the spacecraft. The team will continue to search for that underlying issue, but they don't think it is a threat to the long-term health of Voyager 1.

NASA delayed the debut launch of its new massive rocket due to an issue with one of its engines, dealing a temporary blow to the space agency's plan to return to the lunar surface. From a report: With Vice President Kamala Harris in attendance at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and a global audience watching online, the uncrewed Artemis I mission was called off at 8:34 a.m., one minute after its originally scheduled liftoff time. The launch missed its window after controllers were unable to resolve a temperature problem with one of the rocket's four main engines. The rocket and space capsule are in "a safe and stable configuration," NASA said Monday in a statement, adding that engineers were continuing to gather data.

The earliest available opportunity to try again is on Sept. 2, NASA said in a webcast while announcing the scrubbed launch. No decision has been made on rescheduling. Official confirmation of the delay came after the space agency spent the early morning hours investigating issues including a potential crack in material in the main body of the rocket as well as the temperature issue, officials said earlier Monday. Those came after engineers examined and resolved a suspected leak affecting the hydrogen tanking process.

Long-time Slashdot reader Beeftopia writes: All living cells power themselves by coaxing protons from one side of a membrane to the other. A place where this occurs naturally outside of cells are alkaline hydrothermal vents on the deep seafloor, inside highly porous rock formations that are almost like mineralized sponges. "Carbon and energy metabolism are driven by proton gradients, exactly what the vents provided for free," wrote biochemist Nick Lane. In Lane's view, metabolism came first, and genetic information emerged naturally from it rather than the other way around.
Quanta magazine asks Lane the big question: How did these first proto-cells become independent from the proton gradients they got for free in the hydrothermal vents? LANE: We've shown that theoretically, if you introduce random sequences of RNA and assume that the nucleotides in there can polymerize, you get little chains of nucleotides. Let's say seven or eight random letters long, with no information encoded in there whatsoever.... [H]ydrophobic amino acids are more likely to interact with hydrophobic bases. So you have a random sequence of RNA that generates a nonrandom peptide. And that nonrandom peptide could by chance have some function in a growing proto-cell. It could make the cell grow better or grow worse; it could help the RNA replicate itself; it could bind to cofactors. Then you have selection for that peptide and the RNA sequence that gave rise to it.

Although it's a very rudimentary system, this means we've just entered the world of genes, information and natural selection.
Quanta summarizes Lane's next idea: that these vent environments "favored the beginnings of what we call the Krebs cycle, the metabolic process that derives energy from carbohydrates, fats and proteins." Lane himself has said that metabolism "conjures genes into existence."

But if genes are conjured into existence by metabolism, then what else might be true? Lane ultimately concludes that cancer may be a metabolic disease rather than a "genomic" one: LANE: About 10 years ago, the cancer community was amazed by the discovery that in some cancers, mutations can lead to parts of the Krebs cycle running backward. It came as quite a shock because the Krebs cycle is usually taught as only spinning forward to generate energy. But it turns out that while a cancer cell does need energy, what it really needs even more is carbon-based building blocks for growth. So the whole field of oncology began to see this reversal of the Krebs cycle as a kind of metabolic rewiring that helps cancer cells grow....

[C]ancers aren't caused simply by some genetically deterministic mutation that forces cells to go on growing without stopping. Metabolism is important too, for providing a permissive environment for growth. Growth comes before genes in this sense.
Or, as Slashdot reader Beeftopia puts it, "In Lane's view, metabolism came first, and genetic information emerged naturally from it rather than the other way around. Lane believes that the implications of this reversal touch almost every big mystery in biology, including the nature of cancer and aging."

Long-time Slashdot reader Dr_Ish writes: It is not too common for the world of academic philosophy to be changed by a new discovery, or innovation. Perhaps the last time this happened in a major way can be traced back to Turing's famous (1950) "Computational Machinery and Intelligence" paper "Mind," where Turing proposed that computational systems could exhibit mind-like properties. However, it appears to be in the process of happening again.

In a series of recent papers and a book that was published last week, philosopher Prof. Paco Calvo from the University of Murcia, has made a compelling case that plants exhibit cognitive properties, such as memory, planning, intelligence and perhaps even numerical abilities... His book, Calvo, P. with Lawrence, N. "Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence was published in the UK last week. It will appear in North America in March next year.
From the Guardian's review of the book: Calvo writes that intelligence is "not quite as special as we like to think". He argues that it's time to accept that other organisms, even drastically different ones, may be capable of it....

In the course of his book, Calvo describes many experiments that reveal plants' remarkable range, including the way they communicate with others nearby using "chemical talk", a language encoded in about 1,700 volatile organic compounds.... Other studies show that some plants retain a memory of where the sun will rise, in order to turn their leaves towards the first rays. They store this knowledge — an internal model of what the sun is going to do — for several days, even when kept in total darkness. The conclusion must be that they constantly collect information, processing and retaining it in order to "make predictions, learn, and even plan ahead".

United Launch Alliance has been developing a heavy-lift space vehicle since 2014 (with investment from the U.S. military) called the Vulcan Centaur.

So CNN reports that the ashes of the late Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols "will head to deep space on a Vulcan rocket." Nichols' cremated remains will be aboard the first Celestis Voyager Memorial Spaceflight, which will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Celestis, Inc., is a private company that conducts memorial spaceflights. Among the remains also aboard the flight will be the ashes of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry; his wife, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who played various roles in the show and films; and James Doohan, who played Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the films and TV series....

The spaceflight will travel beyond NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and into interplanetary deep space. In addition to cremated remains, capsules onboard will also carry complete human genome DNA samples from willing participants.

People can participate in the flight — by having DNA or loved ones' remains in a spaceflight container — for a price starting at $12,500, and reservations close August 31. (Celestis offers other voyages that don't travel as far, but can cost less than $5,000.) Ahead of the flight's liftoff, Celestis will host a three-day event with mission briefings, an astronaut-hosted dinner, launch site tours, an on-site memorial service and launch viewing. All events will be shown via webcast, according to Celestis.
An announcement on the flight's site invites fans of Nichelle Nichols to "share your own story about how she inspired you and it will be sent into deep space aboard the first Celestis Voyager Memorial Spaceflight — the Enterprise Flight, launching later in 2022."

Every Friday Politico interviews someone about "The Future in Five Questions". This week they interviewed Neal Stephenson (who they describe as "the sci-fi author who coined the term 'metaverse' and now a Web3 entrepreneur in his own right.")

Stephenson began by sharing his thoughts on a big idea that's underrated. Neal Stephenson: Desalination. It's an incredibly obvious, kind of simple process. Nothing is more basic than having water to drink, so it's kind of hiding in plain sight, but coupled with cheap energy from photovoltaics it's going to make big changes in the world. When you look at how much water, or a lack thereof, has shaped where people live and how people make food, the notion that we might be able to engineer ways to get fresh water in a new way could be revolutionary.

What's a technology you think is overhyped?

Stephenson: I'm going to go with an oldie: rockets. It's just a historical accident that chemical rockets became our only way of putting stuff into space, and if we had started at a different time we would have ended up doing something that works better.

One alternative would be beaming energy from the ground to vehicles, using lasers or microwaves. That seems like a doable project right now. There's nuclear propulsion, which I think is probably never going to happen at scale, because it's politically impossible, but even something as simple as constructing a very tall building or a tall tower and using that as a launch platform, or as a way to accelerate things up upward, could really change the economics of spaceflight.
Stephenson also says the book that most shaped his conception of the future was Robert Heinlein's 1958 novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. And the biggest surprise of 2022 was Ukraine's strong response after Russia's invasion. "Most people who are paying attention have understood that drones and other new technologies are going to change the way wars get fought, but we're seeing it unfold and mutate in real time in Ukraine.

"These guys are taking old Cold War grenades and disassembling them, and putting on homemade fuses and attaching 3D printed fins and dropping them out of consumer-grade drones, to a significant effect on the battlefield...."

In 2004 Neal Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot's readers.

"At the onset of the outbreak, scientists thought they knew when and how the monkeypox virus was spread, what the disease looked like and who was most vulnerable," remembers the New York Times.

"The 47,000 cases identified worldwide have upended many of those expectations." Some had headaches or depression, confusion and seizures. Others had severe eye infections or inflammation of the heart muscle. At least three of the six deaths reported so far were linked to encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. "We really are seeing a very, very wide range of presentation," said Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease physician at a clinic in Atlanta that serves people living with H.I.V. Scientists now know that the monkeypox virus lurks in saliva, semen and other bodily fluids, sometimes for weeks after recovery. The virus has always been known to spread through close contact, but many researchers suspect the infection may also be transmitted through sex itself....

"It's no longer correct to say it can't be transmitted asymptomatically," said Dr. Chloe Orkin, an infectious disease physician at Queen Mary University of London. "I think that it means that our working model of how it's spread is incorrect."

Early in the outbreak, [America's Centers for Disease Control] said that "people who do not have monkeypox symptoms cannot spread the virus to others." The agency changed that phrasing on July 29 to say that "scientists are still researching" the possibility of asymptomatic transmission. In a statement to The New York Times, an agency spokeswoman acknowledged recent evidence that asymptomatic cases were possible but said that it was still uncertain whether people without symptoms could spread the virus and that more research was needed.

A small study on the therapeutic effects of using psychedelics to treat alcohol use disorder found that just two doses of psilocybin magic mushrooms paired with psychotherapy led to an 83 percent decline in heavy drinking among the participants. Those given a placebo reduced their alcohol intake by 51 percent. From a report: By the end of the eight-month trial, nearly half of those who received psilocybin had stopped drinking entirely compared with about a quarter of those given the placebo, according to the researchers. The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, is the latest in a cascade of new research exploring the benefits of mind-altering compounds to treat a range of mental health problems, from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder to the existential dread experienced by the terminally ill.

Although most psychedelics remain illegal under federal law, the Food and Drug Administration is weighing potential therapeutic uses for compounds like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA, the drug better known as Ecstasy. Dr. Michael Bogenschutz, director at NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine and the study's lead investigator, said the findings offered hope for the nearly 15 million Americans who struggle with excessive drinking -- roughly 5 percent of all adults. Excessive alcohol use kills an estimated 140,000 people each year.

China is using two massive drones to seed rainclouds in Sichuan province to try to end a devastating drought that has choked power output and disrupted supply chains of global giants like Apple and Tesla. From a report: The China Meteorological Administration launched drones in northern and southeastern Sichuan on Thursday morning, and the aircraft will eventually cover an area of 6,000 square kilometers in operations lasting through Monday, state-owned CCTV reported. Seeding works by dropping an ice-forming agent like silver iodide into a cloud that already contains ample moisture. Rain droplets gather around the agent, gaining weight until they begin to fall. China has a long history of using the technology to water crop fields, cool blistering cities and make sure skies are clear for events like the Olympics.

Academic journals will have to provide immediate access to papers that are publicly funded, providing a big win for advocates of open research and ending a policy that had allowed publishers to keep publications behind a paywall for a year, according to a White House directive. The New York Times: In laying out the new policy, which is set to be fully in place by the start of 2026, the Office of Science and Technology Policy said that the guidance had the potential to save lives and benefit the public on several key priorities -- from cancer breakthroughs to clean-energy technology. "The American people fund tens of billions of dollars of cutting-edge research annually," Dr. Alondra Nelson, the head of the office, said in a statement. "There should be no delay or barrier between the American public and the returns on their investments in research."

Advocates for open-research access, like Greg Tananbaum, the director of the Open Research Funders Group, called the guidance "transformational" for researchers and the broader public alike. He said it built off a 2013 memorandum that was also important in expanding the public's access to research but fell short in some areas. The 2013 guidance applied to federal agencies with research and development expenditures of $100 million or more, about 20 of the largest agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The guidance announced on Thursday covers nearly all federal bodies, a major expansion that includes about 400 or more entities, several experts said. The directive also requires that publications be made available in machine-readable formats to ensure use and reuse, a component that open-access advocates hailed as a game-changer for accessibility.