An intelligence panel investigating the cause of a spate of mysterious incidents that have struck dozens of US officials across the globe has said that some of the episodes could "plausibly" have been caused by "pulsed electromagnetic energy" emitted by an external source, according to an executive summary of the panel's findings released Wednesday. CNN reports: But the panel stopped short of making a definitive determination, saying only that both electromagnetic energy and, in limited circumstances, ultrasound could explain the key symptoms -- highlighting the degree to which the murky illness known colloquially as "Havana Syndrome" has remained one of the intelligence community's most stubborn mysteries. "We've learned a lot," an intelligence official familiar with the panel's work told reporters, speaking on anonymity under terms set by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "While we don't have the specific mechanism for each case, what we do know is if you report quickly and promptly get medical care, most people are getting well."

The scientific panel emphasized that the cases it studied were "genuine and compelling," noting that some incidents have affected multiple people in the same space and clinical samples from a few victims have shown signs of "cellular injury to the nervous system." An executive summary of the panel's work provided new details about how the government is categorizing cases as possible Havana Syndrome, a clinically vague illness that has long frustrated firm diagnosis because victims have suffered from such a diverse array of symptoms. Although officials declined to say how many cases the panel examined as part of its inquiry, they said they studied cases that met four "core characteristics": the acute onset of sounds or pressure, sometimes in only one ear or on one side of the head; simultaneous symptoms of vertigo, loss of balance and ear pain; "a strong sense of locality or directionality"; and the absence of any known environmental or medical conditions that could have caused the other symptoms.

Both pulsed electromagnetic energy, "particularly in the radiofrequency range," and ultrasonic arrays could feasibly cause the four core symptoms, the panel found. Both could originate from "a concealable source." But ultrasound can't travel through walls, the panel found, "restricting its applicability to scenarios in which the source is near the target." Sources of radiofrequency energy, on the other hand, are known to exist, "could generate the required stimulus, are concealable, and have moderate power requirements," the panel said. "Using nonstandard antennas and techniques, the signals could be propagated with low loss through air for tens to hundreds of meters, and with some loss, through most building materials." But intelligence officials familiar with the panel's work emphasized that important information gaps remained, forestalling them from reaching firmer conclusions. The experts panel also ruled out so-called psycho-social factors. They also ruled out "ionizing radiation, chemical and biological agents, infrasound, audible sound, ultrasound propagated over large distances, and bulk heating from electromagnetic energy."

"The panel made seven recommendations, including developing better biomarkers that are 'more specific and more sensitive for diagnosis and triage' of cases," reports CNN. "It also recommended utilizing 'detectors' and obtaining 'devices to aid research.' Finally, officials urged swift action by medical officials whenever a case is reported, emphasizing that individuals who have been treated immediately after an event have improved."

Astronomers have discovered a captive asteroid shadowing Earth in its orbit. From a report: The asteroid, known as 2020 XL5, is only the second of its type ever seen, shepherded by Earth's gravity into an orbit that is locked in synchrony with our planet's. It has not shared our orbit for long -- a few centuries, probably. And it will not be there in the far future. Simulations indicate that 2020 XL5 will slip out of Earth's grasp within 4,000 years and head into the wider solar system. But its presence offers a tantalizing glimpse of what else might be out there in the local gravitational whirlpools. Some bits might date back to the beginning of the solar system -- shades of the building blocks that coalesced into our planet. "These objects are not as exotic as we think," said Toni Santana-Ros, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona in Spain and an author of a paper describing the discovery, which was published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Almost no corals on the planet will escape severe bleaching once global heating reaches 1.5C, according to a new study of the world's reefs. From a report: Reefs in areas currently regarded as cooler refuges will be overwhelmed at 1.5C of heating, and just 0.2% of reefs will escape at least one bleaching outbreak every decade, according to the research. The team of scientists from the University of Leeds, Texas Tech University and James Cook University used the latest climate model projections to confirm that 1.5C of global heating "will be catastrophic for coral reefs." Corals bleach when ocean temperatures are too high for too long. Algae that provide corals with much of their food and colour separate from the coral during heat stress.

Severe bleaching can kill corals, but they can recover from milder outbreaks if there are several years with no further heatwaves. The world's oceans are heating due mostly to the burning of fossil fuels. The study comes as the world's biggest coral reef system, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia's Queensland coast, is on the verge of another mass coral bleaching event. In the study, the team analysed climate projections across all of the world's shallow-water coral reefs, which constitute the vast majority of reefs and provide habitat, tourism revenue and coastal protection. About 84% of the world's corals exist in areas that are expected to bleach less than once a decade and are regarded as "thermal refugia," the study said. But the analysis suggests at 1.5C of global heating, only 0.2% of the area covered by reefs is in water cool enough to avoid bleaching at least once every five years -- a frequency considered too short to allow corals to recover.

Using a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that they say is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. MIT News: The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets. Such a material could be used as a lightweight, durable coating for car parts or cell phones, or as a building material for bridges or other structures, says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study. "We don't usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things," he says. "It has very unusual properties and we're very excited about that."

The researchers have filed for two patents on the process they used to generate the material, which they describe in a paper appearing today in Nature. MIT postdoc Yuwen Zeng is the lead author of the study. {olymers, which include all plastics, consist of chains of building blocks called monomers. These chains grow by adding new molecules onto their ends. Once formed, polymers can be shaped into three-dimensional objects, such as water bottles, using injection molding. Polymer scientists have long hypothesized that if polymers could be induced to grow into a two-dimensional sheet, they should form extremely strong, lightweight materials. However, many decades of work in this field led to the conclusion that it was impossible to create such sheets. One reason for this was that if just one monomer rotates up or down, out of the plane of the growing sheet, the material will begin expanding in three dimensions and the sheet-like structure will be lost. However, in the new study, Strano and his colleagues came up with a new polymerization process that allows them to generate a two-dimensional sheet called a polyaramide. For the monomer building blocks, they use a compound called melamine, which contains a ring of carbon and nitrogen atoms. Under the right conditions, these monomers can grow in two dimensions, forming disks. These disks stack on top of each other, held together by hydrogen bonds between the layers, which make the structure very stable and strong.

A lighthearted study of spring flowers' blooming times confirms that groundhog soothsaying is essentially a cute, furry coin flip. From a report: The idea behind Groundhog Day is as simple as it is eccentric. Every February 2 -- the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox -- a bleary-eyed groundhog is hoisted from its burrow into the daylight in towns across the United States and Canada. If its human handler proclaims that the rodent sees its shadow (as Punxsutawney Phil did this year), then six more weeks of winter await; if it doesn't, spring will come early -- or so the tradition goes. Each year, the date's approach is met with gleeful anticipation and sometimes a rewatching of the movie that made the day globally famous. Each year, the groundhogs' "proclamations" are reported with mock seriousness. The occasional tongue-in-cheek assertion to the contrary -- for example, General Beauregard Lee from Jackson, Georgia, self-reports an accuracy rate of 99 percent -- few would make the case for groundhog divination as a substitute for long-range meteorology.

To verify whether groundhogs might be weather soothsayers, a team of researchers from Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada, decided to take a cold, hard look at the evidence. It was, admits lead author Alex Ross, a project that was born in the campus bar ("There were many conversations over many beers," he confesses to National Geographic), and given extra impetus by the boredom of a pandemic. But the result, which appeared in the journal Weather, Climate, and Society, is unquestionably the most comprehensive statistical analysis yet published of the accuracy of groundhog predictive abilities.

[...] Not all groundhogs had equal forecasting powers. Punxsutawney Phil's predictions were correct 52 times out of 100, while three mascots -- Essex Ed from Essex, Connecticut; Chuckles from Manchester, Connecticut; and Stonewall Jackson from Wantage, New Jersey -- scored correctly more than 70 percent of the time. Conversely, Buckeye Chuck from Marion, Ohio; Dunkirk Dave (Dunkirk, New York); and Holland Huckleberry (Holland, Ohio) each had a less than 30 percent success rate. Punxsutawney Phil and Ontario's Wiarton Willie were the only groundhogs with more than 50 years of predictions on record. Of the newcomers, the worst performer was probably Winnipeg Willow, who made only four predictions, was wrong on three of them, and predicted a late spring in a year when it arrived 38 days earlier than average. "Even if certain groundhogs can occasionally predict the onset of spring better than others," the authors write, "there appears to be no clear prophet among the group evaluated here."

An almost 500-mile long bolt of lightning that lit up the sky across three US states has set a new world record for longest flash, scientists have confirmed. The BBC reports: The lightning bolt, extended a total of 477.2 miles (768 km) and spread across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The previous record was 440.6 miles (709 km) and recorded in Brazil in 2018. Lightning rarely extends over 10 miles and usually lasts under a second. Another lightning flash recorded in 2020 -- in Uruguay and Argentina -- has also set a new record for duration at 17.1 seconds. The previous record was 16.7 seconds.

According to the WMO, both records took place in areas prone to intense storms that produce 'megaflashes,' namely the Great Plains region of the United States and the La Plata basin of South America's southern cone. Previously accepted WMO 'lightning extremes' include a 1975 incident in which 21 people were killed by a single flash of a lightning as they huddled inside a tent in Zimbabwe. In another incident, 469 people were killed when lightning struck the Egyptian town of Dronka in 1994, causing burning oil to flood the town.

We're in the midst of an energy transition. Renewable power and electric vehicles are getting cheaper, the grid is getting greener, and oil and gas companies are getting nervous. That's why the fossil fuel giants are looking towards petrochemicals, and plastics in particular, as their next major growth market. From a report: "Plastics is the Plan B for the fossil fuel industry," said Judith Enck, Founder and President of the nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Plastics. Plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, are set to drive nearly half of oil demand growth by midcentury, according to the International Energy Agency. That outpaces even hard-to-decarbonize sectors like aviation and shipping.

"Every company who is currently engaged in producing plastic, if you look at their capital budgets for the next two to three years, they're all talking about expansion plans," said Ramesh Ramachandran, CEO of No Plastic Waste, an initiative from the Mindaroo Foundation that's working to create a market-based approach to a circular plastics economy. Yet much of the developed world is already awash in plastics. So fossil fuel and petrochemical companies are relying on emerging economies in Asia and Africa to drive growth. Alan Gelder of Wood Mackenzie forecasts that every year through 2050, there will be 10 million metric tons of growth in the market for petrochemicals, which are used to make plastics and other products. He says much of that will be shipped overseas.

A South African woman suffering from inadequately treated HIV, and who harbored Covid-19 for nine months saw the respiratory virus develop at least 21 mutations while in her body, according to a study. From a report: Once the 22-year-old adhered to the anti-retroviral medication used to treat HIV and her immune system strengthened she was able to overcome the Covid-19 infection within six to nine weeks, the study, led by scientists from Stellenbosch and the University of KwaZulu-Natal showed. The research has not been peer reviewed. The study adds to evidence that Covid-19 may mutate rapidly when harbored by immunosuppressed individuals, such as those not taking medication to treat HIV, and this may lead to the development of new variants. The beta variant, which the patient in the study was infected with, was discovered in South Africa, as was omicron. "This case, like others before, describes a potential pathway for the emergence of novel variants," the scientists said, stressing that it was still a hypothesis. "Our experience reinforces previous reports that effective anti retroviral treatment is the key to controlling such events."

There are an estimated 73,300 species of tree on Earth, 9,000 of which have yet to be discovered, according to a global count of tree species by thousands of researchers who used second world war codebreaking techniques created at Bletchley Park to evaluate the number of unknown species. From a report: Researchers working on the ground in 90 countries collected information on 38 million trees, sometimes walking for days and camping in remote places to reach them. The study found there are about 14% more tree species than previously reported and that a third of undiscovered tree species are rare, meaning they could be vulnerable to extinction by human-driven changes in land use and the climate crisis.

"It is a massive effort for the whole world to document our forests," said Jingjing Liang, a lead author of the paper and professor of quantitative forest ecology at Purdue University in Indiana, US. "Counting the number of tree species worldwide is like a puzzle with pieces spreading all over the world. We solved it together as a team, each sharing our own piece." Despite being among the largest and most widespread organisms, there are still thousands of trees to be discovered, with 40% of unknown species believed to be in South America, according to the paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Some of these undocumented species would probably have been known to indigenous communities but some, in the most inaccessible regions, may have never been found before.

An electric wound dressing can help heal injuries faster than existing methods, according to tests in rats. From a report: Previous research has found that applying electric fields across a cut can speed up wound healing, but this usually requires large and specialised equipment. Because of this, Guang Yao at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu and his colleagues wanted to develop an alternative that could be applied in a similar way to traditional wound dressings. "Non-invasive, efficient, cost-effective and convenient approaches are always desired for treating skin wounds," he says. The dressing is made up of four layers. The bottom layer is made from an electrically charged plastic that produces an electric field through static contact with the skin. Next is a layer of flexible silicone rubber gel that moulds to the skin's curvature, and then a layer of shape memory alloy that pushes the two sides of the wound together. A second layer of flexible gel completes the dressing, which is just 0.2 millimetres thick in total. The team tested the wound-healing properties of the dressing on around 50 rats. They anaesthetised the rats before giving each either a 1-centimetre-long linear wound or a 0.8-centimetre-diameter circular wound and then either applying the new dressing, applying a standard dressing or leaving them to heal by themselves.

Science magazine checks in on the new "Galileo Project" from controversial Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb. It's searching for evidence of extraterrestrial technology, whether it's spotted deep in space by mountaintop observatories or by their network of rooftop cameras "designed to capture any UFOs prowling through Earth's atmosphere."

"After enlisting more than three dozen astronomers and engineers in the project — as well as some notorious nonscientists — Loeb hopes to solve the enduring UFO mystery once and for all. 'Scientists have to come to the rescue and clear up the fog,' Loeb says." Some researchers applaud Loeb's endeavor. "He has mounted a scientific attack on a problem that is frustratingly fuzzy," says Gregory Laughlin, an astrophysicist at Yale University. "A project like this would have been unthinkable 10 years ago." But others say Loeb is tarnishing astronomy and undermining the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) just as that effort has started to acquire a veneer of respectability. In particular, they are bothered by the outspoken UFO zealots with no science background whom Loeb has welcomed into the project. "He's intermingled legitimate scientists with these fringe people," says Caleb Scharf, an astrobiologist at Columbia University. "I think you lose far more by doing that...."

One part of the project would design software to screen the data coming from telescopes like the Rubin observatory for interstellar objects. But the core of the project would be a worldwide network of sky monitors, hundreds in all. Each dome-shaped unit, roughly the size of an umbrella, will contain infrared and optical cameras arranged like a fly's eye to capture the full expanse of sky overhead. Audio sensors and radio antennas will listen at other frequencies. Running 24 hours a day, the monitors are meant to record everything that moves through the sky, day and night: from birds and balloons to insects, airliners, and drones. Artificial intelligence algorithms, trained to discard known objects like birds in favor of fast-moving spherical and lens-shaped objects, will sift through the data, says Richard Cloete, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, who is overseeing the system's software. "We're basically filtering out all the things that we expect to find in the sky," he says. "And all these things that are labeled other [by the AI] will be of interest."

Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute who sits on the Galileo Project's advisory board, points out that networks of sky cameras are not new. Since 2010, one SETI Institute network has detected 2 million meteors, and in the past few years, the LaserSETI project has begun to watch the sky for pulses of light from alien technologies. What's novel about the Galileo Project, Shostak says, is its focus on hunting for aliens in Earth's atmosphere. Both the Galileo Project and the SETI Institute "are looking for indications of extraterrestrial intelligence," he adds. "But that's like saying that studying unknown fauna in the rainforest is similar to those who are hoping to find mermaids or unicorns."

Loeb says a prototype sky monitor is being built now and will be affixed to the roof of the Harvard College Observatory in the spring. If the instruments work, he plans to make duplicates; if he can raise another $100 million from private donors, he will place them around the world. He says he won't utter the UFO word unless they see an object "that looks strange and moves in ways that human technology cannot enable."
A former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, who participates as an unpaid "research affiliate "for the project, points out that "One of the problems is that many of the areas we're seeing the greatest level of [UFO] activity are restricted military airspace. The Defense Department is not going to be real excited about bringing in a lot of instruments to record everything that's going on."

Ed Turner, a Princeton University astrophysicist who is part of the project's core research team, tells the magazine that he's more excited by the interstellar component of the project — and doubts that the ground-based cameras will actually pick up any evidence of extraterrestrial visits. "If the aliens don't want us to know about them, they'll likely know about the Galileo Project," he says drily. "They can just avoid our high-resolution cameras."

Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the article

Last week a Chinese satellite "was observed grabbing another satellite and pulling it out of its normal geosynchronous orbit," reports the Drive, "and into a 'super-graveyard drift orbit.'"

"The maneuver raises questions about the potential applications of these types of satellites designed to maneuver close to other satellites for inspection or manipulation and adds to growing concerns about China's space program overall." On January 22, China's Shijian-21 satellite, or SJ-21, disappeared from its regular position in orbit during daylight hours when observations were difficult to make with optical telescopes. SJ-21 was then observed executing a "large maneuver" to bring it closely alongside another satellite, a dead BeiDou Navigation System satellite. SJ-21 then pulled the dead satellite out of its normal geosynchronous orbit and placed it a few hundred miles away in what is known as a graveyard orbit. These distant orbits are designated for defunct satellites at the end of their lives and are intended to reduce the risk of collision with operational assets....

According to Chinese state news outlets, SJ-21 was designed to "test and verify space debris mitigation technologies."

SJ-21's recent maneuver raises questions and concerns about these types of satellites and their potential for military use. Todd Harrison, director of CSIS's Aerospace Project, told Breaking Defense that SJ-21's actions present "more questions than answers," adding that while we can observe the satellite's actions, "the intent behind it and what China plans to do with this technology is a more subjective assessment."

This isn't the first time SJ-21 has made headlines with its questionable behavior. In November 2021, just a month after its launch, an unknown object was seen orbiting alongside SJ-21. At the time, Space Force designated the unidentified object as a spent apogee kick motor, but it was also reported that it might have been an experimental payload designed to test SJ-21's ability to perform remote operations and manipulate other satellites....

Analyzing the potential applications of these dual-use satellites is difficult.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story!

America's Department of Defense "wants to clean up space...at least the increasingly polluted region in low Earth orbit, where thousands of bits of debris, spent rocket stages and dead satellites whiz uncontrollably," writes the Washington Post.

They're reporting that America's Space Force has now launched a program to give companies seed money to develop space-cleaning technology to eventually demo in space (starting with awards of $250,000 that rise as high as $1.5 million). The name of the program: Orbital Prime. The issue also has gotten the attention of the White House. Its Office of Science and Technology Policy recently held a meeting asking for input from space industry leaders about what to do about the problem. Speaker after speaker said that governments around the world need to fund these efforts to help create a market for companies to operate. They also said that it had become an imperative for the governments largely responsible for the problem in the first place. "If the U.S. Navy had had a derelict ship sitting in sovereign waters, creating a safety hazard, the U.S. Navy would go out and grab that ship," said Doug Loverro, a former top Pentagon and NASA space official. "And I'm not sure why we don't see the same responsibility for government for their derelict ships and their derelict bodies that are in space today."

Or as James Lowenthal, a professor of astronomy at Smith College in Michigan, put it: "Just as we rely on the government to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, we have to rely on the government to protect the resource and the global commons of low Earth orbit."

Europe and Britain have also begun to work toward cleaning up debris — a move that's long overdue, space industry experts say. ClearSpace, a Swiss company, has a contract with the European Space Agency to remove a large piece of debris — a symbol that the issue is finally being addressed. It proposes using a spacecraft with large arms that would grapple the debris like a Venus' flytrap. "This is why we're here. Because we think change is possible," said Luc Piguet, ClearSpace's co-founder and CEO. "And we think we can build a space industry that operates with a different model, where maintenance is just a normal part of it."
"This debris and associated congestion threaten the longer sustainability of the space domain," said Space Force's vice chief of space operations, in a video advertising the seed-money program, adding that America's Department of Defense tracks 40,000 objects in orbit the size of a fist or larger, with at least 10 times as many smaller objects the Pentagon can't reliably track.

Slashdot reader sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: Imagine using any object around you—a frying pan, a glass paperweight—as the central processor in a neural network, a type of artificial intelligence that loosely mimics the brain to perform complex tasks. That's the promise of new research that, in theory, could be used to recognize images or speech faster and more efficiently than computer programs that rely on silicon microchips.

To demonstrate the concept, the researchers built neural networks in three types of physical systems, which each contained up to five processing layers. In each layer of a mechanical system, they used a speaker to vibrate a small metal plate and recorded its output using a microphone. In an optical system, they passed light through crystals. And in an analog-electronic system, they ran current through tiny circuits.

In each case, the researchers encoded input data, such as unlabeled images, in sound, light, or voltage. For each processing layer, they also encoded numerical parameters telling the physical system how to manipulate the data. To train the system, they adjusted the parameters to reduce errors between the system's predicted image labels and the actual labels.

In one task, they trained the systems, which they call physical neural networks (PNNs), to recognize handwritten digits. In another, the PNNs recognized seven vowel sounds. Accuracy on these tasks ranged from 87% to 97%, they report in this week's issue of Nature. In the future, researchers might tune a system not by digitally tweaking its input parameters, but by adjusting the physical objects—warping the metal plate, say.

The team is most excited about PNNs' potential as smart sensors that can perform computation on the fly. A microscope's optics might help detect cancerous cells before the light even hits a digital sensor, or a smartphone's microphone membrane might listen for wake words. These "are applications in which you really don't think about them as performing a machine-learning computation," they say, but instead as being "functional machines."

Astronomers said this week that a piece of a Falcon 9 rocket that was launched in February 2015 is currently on a trajectory to collide with the moon in just a few weeks. CBS News reports: The rocket left from Florida's Cape Canaveral and launched NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project that allows researchers to maintain real-time data for more accurate space weather alerts and forecasts. According to NOAA, having that data is "critical," as space weather events "have the potential to disrupt nearly every major public infrastructure system on Earth." During that deployment, Falcon 9's second stage, which provides it with a second boost to reach its desired orbit, ran out of fuel to return to Earth, according to meteorologist and Ars Technica space editor Eric Berger. The second stage has been orbiting Earth ever since, and now, according to data gathered by astronomers, it's on track to hit the moon.

Bill Gray, who writes the Project Pluto software that is used by both amateur and professional astronomers, gathered data from those space observers over the past few weeks to predict just when the impact will occur. Based on the information he gathered, there will be a "certain impact" with the far side of the moon on March 4, he said. The rocket stage is currently floating away from Earth and outside of the moon's orbit on a "chaotic" orbit, Gray said, but in the coming days, it's expected to turn around and head back towards Earth. It made a "close lunar flyby" on January 5, but March 4 is when its path and the moon's will cross. Thankfully, there's no cause for concern, says Gray, noting that it's the "first unintentional case" of space junk hitting the moon that he's aware of. It may actually help researchers learn more about the moon's makeup if lunar orbiters are able to observe the crash site.

"If we can tell the [lunar orbiter] folks exactly where the crater is, they'll eventually pass over that spot and be able to see a very fresh impact crater and probably learn something about the geology (well, selenology) of that part of the moon," Gray said.

"Former heads of nuclear regulatory bodies across Europe and the US put out a statement this week voicing their opposition to nuclear energy as a climate solution," reports The Verge's Justine Calma. The publication spoke with Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to learn more about why some nuclear experts oppose the energy source as a climate fix. Slashdot reader Ol Olsoc shares an excerpt of the interview: Former NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko in an interview with the Verge notes: "I think there's been a lot of misinformation about the role that nuclear power can play in any climate strategy. A lot of attention has been put on nuclear as somehow the technology that's going to solve a lot of problems when it comes to dealing with climate change. I just think that's not true. And it's taking the debate and discussion away from the areas that can have a role and that do need focus and attention." He added: "I think it's money that's not well spent. Nuclear has shown time and time again that it cannot deliver on promises about deployment and costs. And that's really the most important factor when it comes to climate." Jaczko goes on to note how many of the nuclear plants when he was chairman were supposed to come online but have experienced delays and exceptional cost overruns. Two of the four new design reactors that were licensed when he was chairman, which were supposed to be starting production in 2016 and 2017, were canceled, "and that involved federal indictments for fraud among the heads of the company running that reactor development." The other two, he says, "continue to be pushed back and now are scheduled to start in 2022 or 2023" with a price tag that's over $30 billion.

New submitter blackprint writes: The City of Austin released a memo saying that Samsung released as much as 763,000 gallons of sulfuric acid waste into a Northeast Austin creek over a period as long as 106 days. They confirmed the leak has stopped, but no fish or macro invertebrates survived in the impacted area. They don't know if there are any long-term impacts, but pH levels in the area have returned close to normal. According to the memo, "Public access to this area is limited, and there are no nearby parks."

They have not stated the cause of the spill. "Spill investigators and scientists took a look at the area Jan. 18-19 and saw iron staining in the tributary channel consistent with a low pH environment," reports local news station KXAN, citing the memo. "WPD says it was in this tributary stretch from the Samsung plant to the main branch of Harris Branch Creek that WPD staff found no surviving aquatic life, including fish."

Observations by a long-running Mars mission suggest that liquid water may have flowed on the Red Planet as little as 2 billion years ago, much later than scientists once thought. Space.com reports: Scientists charted the presence of chloride salt deposits left behind by flowing water using years of data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2006. By studying dozens of images of salt deposits taken by the spacecraft's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), the scientists interpreted a younger age for the salt deposits using a method "crater counting." The younger a region is, the fewer craters it should have, with adjustments for aspects such as a planet's atmosphere, allowing scientists to estimate its age. The new results push forward the existence of water on Mars from 3 billion years ago to as little as 2 billion years ago, based on the observations, which could have implications for life on Mars and more broadly, the planet's geological history. [...]

The scientists also created elevation maps using MRO's wide-angle context camera, and the zoomed-in views provided by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) that can spot craters as small as the Curiosity or Perseverance Mars rovers. The salt minerals were first spotted by a different spacecraft 14 years ago, called Mars Odyssey, but MRO's advantage is it has higher resolution instruments than its older (and still operational) companion in orbit. The study based on the research was published in AGU American Geophysical Union Advances.

Commercial space company SpaceX plans to launch a whopping 52 flights in 2022, a NASA safety panel revealed today during a meeting. If successful, it would be the most launches the company has ever conducted in a single year, with its previous record last year at 31 launches. The Verge reports: The impressive figure was given during a virtual meeting of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, which gives guidance to the space agency on how to maintain safety within its biggest programs. "NASA and SpaceX will have to be watchful during 2022 that they're not victims of their success," Sandy Magnus, a former NASA astronaut and member of the panel, said during the meeting. "There's an ambitious 52-launch manifest for SpaceX over the course of the year. And that's an incredible pace."

Spaceflight schedules are always subject to change, so there's no guarantee that SpaceX will meet the 52-launch figure. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company was striving to hit 48 launches in 2021 but only made it to 31. So far this year, SpaceX has already launched three missions, and it has another one scheduled for this afternoon. While meeting the number would certainly be admirable, NASA's ASAP panel also warned about the downsides of having such a packed manifest. "Both NASA and SpaceX will have to ensure the appropriate attention and priority are focused on NASA missions," Magnus said, "and that the right resources are brought to bear to maintain that pace at a safe measure."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Elderly people living near or downwind from unconventional oil and gas wells such as fracking sites are more likely to die prematurely, according to a major new US study. Extracting oil and gas through newer or unconventional methods like fracking has expanded rapidly across America over the past two decades with at least 17.6 million people now living within one kilometer of an active well. Compared with traditional drilling, unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD) is linked to higher levels of exposure to toxic air pollution and poor water quality, as well as noise and light pollution which can be harmful to human health. The impact of fossil fuel extraction -- including by unconventional methods -- has disproportionately affected low income communities and people of color.

Researchers from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health studied the health records of 15 million people on Medicare, the health insurance program that includes at least 95% of Americans aged 65 and older, living in all significant drilling regions from 2001 to 2015. They also gathered data on about 2.5 million oil and gas wells covering leading exploration states, from Montana to Texas and Pennsylvania. The closer people live to an oil and gas operation, the higher the risk of dying prematurely, even after accounting for socioeconomic, environmental and demographic factors such as gender and race, according to the study published in Nature Energy.

Residents most adversely affected are those living nearby and downwind, suggesting toxic airborne contaminants emitted from UOGD sites probably contributed to higher mortality rates. Exposure to toxins associated with unconventional drilling such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides and radioactive materials are linked to a wide range of life-threatening medical conditions. Overall, elderly residents living near these wells have about 2.5% higher mortality rates than those living far away compared with 3.5% for those who are also downwind. This would mean thousands of premature deaths linked to the oil and gas boom, though the peer-reviewed study does not include estimates of lives lost.