Australians have been named the heaviest drinkers in the world after spending more time drunk in 2020 than any other nation. The Guardian reports: An international survey (PDF) has found Australians drank to the point of drunkenness an average of 27 times a year, almost double the global average of 15. Almost a quarter of Australians reported feeling regret for becoming intoxicated. The Global Drug Survey asked more than 32,000 people from 22 countries what their drug and alcohol consumption was last year. On average, Australians drank alcohol in line with the global average of two nights a week, and became heavily drunk about once every two weeks. The French topped that metric, drinking around three times a week. Australian participants also tripled the global average on seeking emergency care for their drinking (3.9% compared with the global average of 1.2%). "Global Drug Survey researcher Dr Monica Barratt said Australia's high rate of drunkenness might be related to most of the country avoiding Covid lockdowns in 2020," the report adds. "Bar Victoria, most states and territories only went through short and sharp lockdowns, with relatively few cases or deaths, allowing hospitality venues to remain open and events to continue."

On the opposite end of the spectrum were New Zealanders, who became intoxicated "fewer times than almost any other country in the survey, getting drunk about 10 times a year," reports the Guardian. "Danes and Finns spent the most time drinking to excess after Australians, tied at 23.8 times a year. Americans came in third place, becoming intoxicated an average of 23 times in 2020, followed by the British (22.5 times)."

To better understand the coronavirus's journey from one person to another, a team of 50 scientists has for the first time created an atomic simulation of the coronavirus nestled in a tiny airborne drop of water. From a report: To create the model, the researchers needed one of the world's biggest supercomputers to assemble 1.3 billion atoms and track all their movements down to less than a millionth of a second. This computational tour de force is offering an unprecedented glimpse at how the virus survives in the open air as it spreads to a new host. "Putting a virus in a drop of water has never been done before," said Rommie Amaro, a biologist at the University of California San Diego who led the effort, which was unveiled at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis last month. "People have literally never seen what this looks like."

How the coronavirus spreads through the air became the subject of fierce debate early in the pandemic. Many scientists championed the traditional view that most of the virus's transmission was made possible by larger drops, often produced in coughs and sneezes. Those droplets can travel only a few feet before falling to the floor. But epidemiological studies showed that people with Covid-19 could infect others at a much greater distance. Even just talking without masks in a poorly ventilated indoor space like a bar, church or classroom was enough to spread the virus. Those findings pointed to much smaller drops, called aerosols, as important vehicles of infection. Scientists define droplets as having a diameter greater than 100 micrometers, or about 4 thousandths of an inch. Aerosols are smaller -- in some cases so small that only a single virus can fit inside them. And thanks to their minuscule size, aerosols can drift in the air for hours.

Scientists have raised concerns about a proposed overhaul of newborn screening that could lead to the UK becoming the first country to offer whole-genome sequencing for every baby. From a report: Speaking before the publication of plans for an NHS pilot study in which up to 200,000 babies' genomes will be sequenced and analysed, scientists suggested the initiative appeared designed to create a valuable health dataset rather than an effective method of improving the diagnosis of rare diseases. Anneke Lucassen, director of the Centre for Personalised Medicine at the University of Oxford, said that if the primary objective were improving newborn screening, there were alternative, more targeted tests that would be cheaper and potentially more reliable.

"If it was really all about [diagnosing more conditions], you could do that through other means," she said. "It's about helping to build the genomics industry in the UK and it's about creating a research resource so we can study people as they grow older." Lucassen said she was not opposed to the pilot, or even necessarily to these objectives, but wanted more transparency, "because otherwise it's sold as something that is not the full picture. The public needs to know that," she added. Sequencing the genomes of all newborns would represent a hugely ambitious upgrade to the routine "heel prick" test that all babies receive at about five days to detect nine serious health conditions including cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and various metabolic diseases.

schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: The comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB) -- the largest our telescopes have ever spotted -- is on a journey from the outer reaches of our Solar System that will see it flying relatively close to Saturn's orbit. Now, a new analysis of the data we've collected on BB has revealed something rather surprising. Digging into readings logged by the Transient Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) between 2018 and 2020, researchers have discovered that BB became active much earlier, and much farther out from the Sun, than was previously thought.

A comet becomes active when light from the Sun heats its icy surface, turning ice to vapor and releasing trapped dust and grit. The resulting haze, called a coma, can be useful for astronomers in working out exactly what a particular comet is made out of. In the case of BB, it's still too far out for water to sublimate. Based on studies of comets at similar distances, it's likely that the emerging fog is driven instead by a slow release of carbon monoxide. Only one active comet has previously been directly observed at a greater distance from the Sun, and it was much smaller than BB. "These observations are pushing the distances for active comets dramatically farther than we have previously known," says astronomer Tony Farnham, from the University of Maryland (UMD). "We make the assumption that comet BB was probably active even farther out, but we just didn't see it before this. What we don't know yet is if there's some cut-off point where we can start to see these things in cold storage before they become active."

The research has been published in the Planetary Science Journal.

Just two days after officially (and quietly) confirming that it intends to replace the International Space Station with a commercial station by 2030, NASA has awarded over $400 million in agreements to three companies to further develop private station plans. TechCrunch reports: The three companies, which received the awards under the agency's Commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) Destinations program, are: Nanoracks for $160 million; Blue Origin for $130 million; and Northrop Grumman for $125.6 million. NASA received eleven proposals in total, director of commercial spaceflight Phil McAlister said Thursday. He added that of the three chosen proposals, there was a diversity of technical concepts and a variety of logistical and launch vehicle options offered. "This diversity not only enhances the likelihood of success of NASA strategy, but it also leads to a high degree of innovation, which is critical in most commercial space endeavors," he said.

The three companies have already released a handful of details about their proposals. Blue Origin is calling its station concept "Orbital Reef," and it is designing it with Boeing, Sierra Space and others. The team said it wants to launch the station in 2027. Meanwhile, Nanoracks is calling its station, which is being developed with its parent company Voyager Space and aerospace prime Lockheed Martin, "Starlab." While Northrop didn't give its station proposal a flashy name, it's working with Dynetics to deliver a modular design based around its Cygnus spacecraft.

These substantial awards mark the first phase of a two-phase process as NASA seeks to ensure that there will be no gap between the retirement of the ISS and the introduction of a new station. NASA has repeatedly stressed, both to Congress and more recently in a report by the Office of Inspector General, that the overall success of the development of a thriving economy in LEO is dependent upon avoiding this gap. "If there is no habitable commercial destination in low Earth orbit after the ISS is decommissioned, NASA will be unable to conduct microgravity health research and technology demonstrations needed for long-duration human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, significantly increasing the risk of -- or delaying -- those missions," the agency said in the report.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: U.S. Space Force's General David Thompson, the service's second in command, said last week that Russia and China are launching "reversible attacks," such as electronic warfare jamming, temporarily blinding optics with lasers, and cyber attacks, on U.S. satellites "every single day." He also disclosed that a small Russian satellite used to conduct an on-orbit anti-satellite weapon test back in 2019 had first gotten so close to an American one that there were concerns an actual attack was imminent.

Thompson, who is Vice Chief of Space Operations, disclosed these details to The Washington Post's Josh Rogin in an interview on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum, which ran from Nov. 19 to 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. The forum opened just four days after a Russian anti-satellite weapon test involving a ground-launched interceptor, which destroyed a defunct Soviet-era electronic intelligence satellite and created a cloud of debris that presents a risk to the International Space Station (ISS). That test drew widespread condemnation, including from the U.S. government, and prompted renewed discussion about potential future conflicts in space.

"The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it's really an evolution of activity that's been happening for a long time," Thompson, told Rogin. "We're really at a point now where there's a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened." "Right now, Space Force is dealing with what Thompson calls 'reversible attacks' on U.S. government satellites (meaning attacks that don't permanently damage the satellites) 'every single day,'" according to Rogin. "Both China and Russia are regularly attacking U.S. satellites with non-kinetic means, including lasers, radio frequency jammers, and cyber attacks, he said." [...] Thompson's assertion that these kinds of attacks are occurring with extreme frequency is new. It underscores the rapid development and fielding by Russia and China, among others, of a wide variety of anti-satellite capabilities, something the U.S. military has called increasing attention to in recent years. "The Chinese are actually well ahead [of Russia]," Thompson told Rogin. "They're fielding operational systems at an incredible rate." "Thompson could not confirm or deny whether any American satellites had actually been damaged in a Russian or Chinese attack," the report adds. "[H]e told Rogin that even if such a thing had occurred, that very fact would be classified."

He did, however, provide new details about the incident in 2019 where a small Russian satellite released a projectile in one on-orbit anti-satellite weapon test. According to The Drive, "Russia's satellite had first got in very close to a U.S. 'national security satellite' and that 'the U.S. government didn't know whether it was attacking or not.'"

"It maneuvered close, it maneuvered dangerously, it maneuvered threateningly so that they were coming close enough that there was a concern of collision," Thompson said. "So clearly, the Russians were sending us a message."

Long-time Slashdot reader Aighearach shares a report from Reuters: President Joe Biden on Thursday laid out his strategy to fight the coronavirus as the highly contagious Omicron spread across the globe with winter coming and hours after the first known U.S. case of community transmission of the variant was reported. [...] In California and Colorado, the patients had recently returned from trips to southern Africa and had not gotten booster doses. The case in Minnesota is the first known community transmission within the United States. The patient in Minnesota had recently travelled to New York City for an anime convention, prompting the city to launch contact tracing to try to contain the spread.

"We are aware of a case of the Omicron variant identified in Minnesota that is associated with travel to a conference in New York City, and we should assume there is community spread of the variant in our city," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. The person told state health investigators he attended the Anime NYC 2021 convention at the Javits Center from Nov. 19 to 21 and developed mild symptoms on Nov. 22. How many Slashdot readers were there? Have you had a recent COVID test?

As of this writing, CNBC reports a total of five cases of the omicron Covid-19 variant have been confirmed in New York. "Cases were discovered in Suffolk County, two in Queens, one in Brooklyn and one in New York City," the report states, citing Gov. Kathy Hochul.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Vegan alternatives to leather could save more than just animals. The scientists behind fashion's new latest must-have -- the "mushroom leather" handbag -- believe that mycelium, a material grown from fungi which can be engineered to look and feel like calfskin or sheepskin, could help save the planet. Speaking to the Guardian before a talk at the Business of Fashion Voices conference in Oxfordshire, Dr Matt Scullin, CEO of biomaterials company MycoWorks, forecast that mushroom leather could be a sustainability gamechanger, "unlocking a future of design which begins with the material, not with the object."

Fine Mycelium, a patented material which can be grown from fungi in trays in a matter of weeks, replicates the appearance and feel of leather while outperforming it in strength and durability. The material recently made its high fashion debut as an exclusive HermÃs handbag. "It can give the same emotional response as an animal leather. It has that hand-feel of rarity," says Scullin. On a planet of finite natural resources, Scullin believes both the technology and the mindset of carbon-neutral, grown-to-order mushroom leather could be "revolutionary" -- and have implications for innovation in manufacture beyond fashion.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Gizmodo: New research this week finds that people hospitalized with severe covid-19 often pay a heavy price afterward. The study concluded that these survivors were more than twice as likely to die in the subsequent 12 months compared to people who had tested negative for the virus. This relatively increased risk of death was even higher for people under the age 65. While there remains much research to be done, studies thus far have made it clear that many covid-19 survivors can experience lingering symptoms even after the infection itself has cleared up. And those who are hospitalized are all the more vulnerable to these aftereffects. Severe covid often seriously damages the lungs and other organs, while life-saving interventions like steroids, ventilators, and life support devices like ECMO can take a toll on the body as well.

Researchers from the University of Florida had already published a study in July showing that hospitalized survivors were significantly more likely to be hospitalized again within six months, compared to those with mild to moderate covid-19. This new study of theirs, based on an examination of anonymous electronic health records, instead looked at the long-term mortality risk of patients up to a year later. Nearly 14,000 patients in the same health care system were studied. These included 178 diagnosed with severe COVID-19 and 246 diagnosed with mild to moderate covid-19, as well as many others who tested negative for the virus but may have been sick for other reasons and received medical care in some way. Compared to covid-negative patients, and even after accounting for other factors like age and sex, those with severe covid were 2.5 times more likely to die in the next 12 months after their illness. Overall, just over 52% of severe covid patients died in a year's time. There was no significant increased risk of mortality for mild to moderate cases, however. "About 20% of the deaths among these patients post-infection were attributed to problems with either the respiratory or cardiovascular system," the report adds. "[A]mong patients in this study, the associated risk of dying was actually relatively greater for survivors of severe covid under age 65 than it was for patients over 65. Compared to similarly aged but non-infected people, they were more than three times more likely to die in the months after their hospitalization."

The findings have been published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.

Long-time Slashdot reader tlhIngan writes: The AstraZeneca vaccine, one of the few approved vaccines to fight COVID-19, was under fire earlier this year for causing blood clots. While the vaccine is still approved for use, and is being used, scientists have been working hard to figure out the cause. The main trigger appears to be caused by the immune system mistakenly identifying a blood protein as part of the virus. The AstraZeneca vaccine has viral RNA embedded on a normal cold virus. Platelet factor 4, a blood protein, is attracted to the virus and sticks to it. Sometimes, the immune system thinks the protein on the virus is the virus and attacks it, causing red blood cells to clump on it, creating a blood clot. This is a positive hope in helping figure out who may be susceptible to blood clots caused by the vaccine and to offer an alternative to those allergic to components of the mRNA vaccines.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: U.S. health officials have confirmed the country's first case of the new, heavily mutated coronavirus variant called omicron in California, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said the individual, who was fully vaccinated, had just returned from traveling in South Africa to the San Francisco area on Nov. 22 and tested positive on Nov. 29.

"The individual is self quarantining and all close contacts have been contacted and all close contacts, thus far, have tested negative," he announced at a White House press briefing providing more details of the case. "We feel good that this patient not only had mild symptoms, but actually the symptoms appear to be improving." The CDC said genomic sequencing was initially conducted at the University of California, San Francisco and confirmed by the CDC as the omicron variant. On Twitter, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said: "CA's large-scale testing and early detection systems have found the Omicron COVID-19 variant in California. We should assume that it's in other states as well. There's no reason to panic--but we should remain vigilant. That means get vaccinated. Get boosted. Wear a mask indoors."

Further reading: WHO Says Omicron Has Been Found in 23 Countries Across the World

A British man has become the first patient in the world to be fitted with a 3D printed eye, according to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. From a report: Steve Verze, who is 47 and an engineer from Hackney, east London, was given the left eye on Thursday and first tried it for size earlier this month. Moorfields Eye Hospital said in a press release Thursday that the prosthetic is the first fully digital prosthetic eye created for a patient. The eye is more realistic than other alternatives, and is designed to have "clearer definition and real depth to the pupil," the hospital said. Other prosthetic eyes consist of an iris hand-painted onto a disc that is then embedded into the eye socket. However, their design prevents light from passing into the "full depth" of the eye, the hospital added in the release. As well as appearing more realistic, the procedure is considered less invasive. Fitting traditional prosthetics requires a mold to be taken of the eye socket, whereas in 3D prosthetic eye development the socket is scanned digitally to create a detailed image. Verze's functional eye was also scanned to ensure both eyes look the same.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that 23 countries across the world have reported cases of the highly mutated omicron Covid-19 variant. From a report: "At least 23 countries from five of six WHO regions have now reported cases of omicron and we expect that number to grow," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters during an update Wednesday in Geneva. "WHO takes this development extremely seriously and so should every country. But it should not surprise us," Tedros continued. "This is what viruses do. And it's what this virus will continue to do, as we long as we allow it to continue spreading."

The new number comes one day after White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said 226 cases of the variant have been detected across 20 countries. Officials have not confirmed a case in the U.S. yet. The variant, which was reported to WHO by South Africa a week ago, has more than 30 mutations to the spike protein alone. Some of the mutations are associated with a decrease in antibody protection and higher transmission, according to the WHO. Tedros said there is still more to learn about the new variant's effect on transmission, the severity of disease and the effectiveness of tests, therapeutics and vaccines. Several WHO advisory groups have met in the last few days to "evaluate the emerging evidence, and prioritize the studies needed to answer these questions," he said.

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris' office released a new framework for US space policy, detailing how the Biden administration plans to approach commercial, civil, and military space activity moving forward. From a report: Called the United States Space Priorities Framework, the document keeps many of the same space priorities from the previous administration but adds a new emphasis on using space to help combat climate change and investing in STEM education. The new framework comes ahead of today's National Space Council meeting, the first one to be held under the Biden administration. Harris, who chairs the National Space Council, will convene the policy advisory group at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, at 1:30PM ET today.

[...] When it comes to space, the Biden administration is carrying forward many of the priorities set by the Trump administration. Notably, NASA's ambitious Artemis program, which was solidified under Trump, is still a major focus under Biden. And plenty of the topics discussed under Pence's Space Council are included in the new framework released by Harris. A few of the key points include maintaining US leadership in space by sending humans back to the Moon and exploring the Solar System with robotic spacecraft, fostering a competitive, regulatory environment for space companies, and defending against security threats in space while strengthening our space assets. In the biggest break from the previous administration, there looks to be a renewed focus on using space in the fight against climate change. In the new framework, the administration pledges to invest in satellites that can observe Earth from space, helping scientists better understand our changing climate. "Open dissemination of Earth observation data will support both domestic and international efforts to address the climate crisis," the document states. To further drive home this new emphasis on climate research from space, President Biden plans to sign a new Executive Order today that will add five new members to the National Space Council, including the Secretaries of Education, Labor, Agriculture, and the Interior, but also notably the National Climate Advisor.

The Biden administration is looking for communities willing to serve as temporary homes for tens of thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste currently stranded at power plants around the country. Bloomberg reports: The Energy Department filed (PDF) a public notice Tuesday that it is restarting the process for finding a voluntary host for spent nuclear fuel until a permanent location is identified. "Hearing from and then working with communities interested in hosting one of these facilities is the best way to finally solve the nation's spent nuclear fuel management issues," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. The agency, in its notice, requested input on how to proceed with a "consent-based" process for a federal nuclear storage facility, including what benefits could entice local and state governments and how to address potential impediments. Federal funding is also possible, the notice said. Approximately 89,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is being stored at dozens of nuclear power plants and other sites around the country.
[...]
One such interim storage site could be in Andrews, Texas. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September approved a license for a proposal by Orano CIS LLC and its joint venture partner, J.F. Lehman & Co.'s Waste Control Specialists LLC, to establish a repository in the heart of Texas' Permian Basin oil fields for as many as 40,000 metric tons of radioactive waste. The joint venture envisioned having nuclear waste shipped by rail from around the country and sealed in concrete casks where it would be stored above ground at a site about 30 miles (48.28 kilometers) from Andrews. But the plan has drawn opposition from Texas authorities and local officials who once embraced it as an economic benefit but have since had a change of heart. A similar nuclear waste storage project, proposed in New Mexico by Holtec International Corp., is awaiting approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency said it expects to make a decision on that proposal in January 2022.

An anonymous reader writes: The mysterious ways cancer spreads through the body, a process known as metastasis, is what can make it such a difficult enemy to keep at bay. Researchers at Princeton University working in this area have been tugging at a particular thread for more than 15 years, focusing on a single gene central to the ability of most major cancers to metastasize. They've now discovered what they describe as a "silver bullet" in the form of a compound that can disable this gene in mice and human tissue, with clinical trials possibly not too far away.

This discovery has its roots in 2004 research in which Princeton scientists identified a gene implicated in metastatic breast cancer, called metadherin, or MTDH. A 2009 paper by cancer biologist Yibin Kang then showed the gene was amplified and produced abnormally high levels of MTDH proteins in around a third of breast cancer tumors, and was central to not just the process of metastasis, but also the resistance of those tumors to chemotherapy. Subsequent research continued to shed light on the importance of the MTDH gene, demonstrating how it is critical for cancer to flourish and metastasize. Mice engineered to lack the gene grew normally, and those that did get breast cancer featured far fewer tumors -- and those tumors that did form didn't metastasize. This was then found to be true of prostate cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, liver cancer and many other cancers.

The crystal structure of MTDH shows the protein has a pair of protrusions likened to fingers, which interlock with two holes in the surface of another protein called SND1. This is "like two fingers sticking into the holes of a bowling ball," according to Kang, and the scientists suspected if this intimate connection could be broken, it could go a long way to dampening the harmful effects of MTDH. "We knew from the crystal structure what the shape of the keyhole was, so we kept looking until we found the key," Kang says. The team spent two years screening for the right molecules to fill these holes without any great success, until they landed on what they say is a "silver bullet." The resulting compound plugs these voids and prevents the proteins from interlocking, with profound anti-cancer effects that resemble those seen in the MTDH-deficient mice from their earlier work. "The scientists say that MTDH assists cancer in two primary ways, by helping tumors endure the stresses of chemotherapy and by silencing the alarm that organs normally sound when a tumor invades them," adds New Atlas. "By interlocking with the SND1 protein, it prevents the immune system from recognizing the danger signals normally generated by cancerous cells, and therefore stops it from attacking them. The team is now working to refine the compound, hoping to improve its effectiveness in disrupting the connection between MTDH and SND1 and lower the required dosage. [T]hey hope to be ready for clinical trials on human patients in two to three years."

The research has been published across two papers in the journal Nature Cancer.

Nasa has postponed a planned spacewalk outside the International Space Station due to flying "debris," two weeks after Russia blew up one of its own satellites in a missile test that created clouds of zooming shrapnel in orbit. From a report: Washington's space agency did not mention the Russian test in its announcement, but a Nasa official had warned a day earlier of a slightly elevated risk to astronauts due to the 14 November incident. The strike generated thousands of pieces of "space junk" that are now hurling around the Earth at about 17,000 mph (27,400km/h) -- much faster than the speed of a bullet. At that velocity, even tiny flecks of paint can damage spacecraft, with spacesuits even more vulnerable.

On Tuesday, about five hours before the astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron were due to venture outside the space station, Nasa said on Twitter that the spacewalk to fix a failed antenna had been cancelled. "Nasa received a debris notification for the space station. Due to the lack of opportunity to properly assess the risk it could pose to the astronauts, teams have decided to delay the 30 November spacewalk until more information is available," it tweeted. Moscow has said its test to destroy its own spacecraft, Tselina-D, which had been in orbit since 1982, was successful and the debris posed no "threat to space activity."

The head of drugmaker Moderna said COVID-19 vaccines are unlikely to be as effective against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus as they have been previously, sparking fresh worry in financial markets about the trajectory of the pandemic. From a report: "There is no world, I think, where (the effectiveness) is the same level... we had with Delta," Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel told the Financial Times in an interview. "I think it's going to be a material drop. I just don't know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I've talked to are like 'this is not going to be good.'"

Vaccine resistance could lead to more sickness and hospitalisations and prolong the pandemic, and his comments triggered selling in growth-exposed assets like oil, stocks and the Australian dollar. Bancel added that the high number of mutations on the protein spike the virus uses to infect human cells meant it was likely the current crop of vaccines would need to be modified. He had earlier said on CNBC that it could take months to begin shipping a vaccine that does work against Omicron.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Rights groups petitioned Israel's top court on Monday to repeal new COVID-19 measures that authorize the country's domestic intelligence service to use counter-terrorism phone tracking technology to contain the spread of the Omicron virus variant. Announcing the emergency measures on Saturday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the phone tracking would be used to locate carriers of the new and potentially more contagious variant in order to curb its transmission to others. Israeli rights groups say the emergency measures violate previous Supreme Court rulings over such surveillance, used on-and-off by the country's Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency since March, 2020.

A senior health ministry official said on Sunday that use of phone tracking would be "surgical" in nature, only to be utilized on confirmed or suspected carriers of the variant. The surveillance technology matches virus carriers' locations against other mobile phones nearby to determine with whom they have come into contact. Israel's Supreme Court this year limited the scope of its use after civil rights groups mounted challenges over privacy concerns. Further reading: Omicron Covid Variant Poses Very High Global Risk, Says WHO

The US scientists who created the first living robots say the life forms, known as xenobots, can now reproduce -- and in a way not seen in plants and animals. CNN reports: Formed from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which it takes its name, xenobots are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide. The tiny blobs were first unveiled in 2020 after experiments showed that they could move, work together in groups and self-heal. Now the scientists that developed them at the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering said they have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction different from any animal or plant known to science.

[T]hey found that the xenobots, which were initially sphere-shaped and made from around 3,000 cells, could replicate. But it happened rarely and only in specific circumstances. The xenobots used "kinetic replication" -- a process that is known to occur at the molecular level but has never been observed before at the scale of whole cells or organisms [...]. With the help of artificial intelligence, the researchers then tested billions of body shapes to make the xenobots more effective at this type of replication. The supercomputer came up with a C-shape that resembled Pac-Man, the 1980s video game. They found it was able to find tiny stem cells in a petri dish, gather hundreds of them inside its mouth, and a few days later the bundle of cells became new xenobots.

The xenobots are very early technology -- think of a 1940s computer -- and don't yet have any practical applications. However, this combination of molecular biology and artificial intelligence could potentially be used in a host of tasks in the body and the environment, according to the researchers. This may include things like collecting microplastics in the oceans, inspecting root systems and regenerative medicine. While the prospect of self-replicating biotechnology could spark concern, the researchers said that the living machines were entirely contained in a lab and easily extinguished, as they are biodegradable and regulated by ethics experts. "Most people think of robots as made of metals and ceramics but it's not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is act on its own on behalf of people," said Josh Bongard, a computer science professor and robotics expert at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In that way it's a robot but it's also clearly an organism made from genetically unmodified frog cell."

"The AI didn't program these machines in the way we usually think about writing code. It shaped and sculpted and came up with this Pac-Man shape," Bongard said. "The shape is, in essence, the program. The shape influences how the xenobots behave to amplify this incredibly surprising process."