NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says he expects China to fly taikonauts around the moon in 2027, "ratcheting up perceptions of a space race between China and the United States," reports SpaceNews. He is using that prospect to argue for a revamped Artemis strategy and an accelerated path toward a U.S. lunar return. From the report: "The next time the world tunes in to watch astronauts fly around the moon, which will likely be sometime in 2027, they will be taikonauts, and America will no longer be the exclusive power to send humans into the lunar environment," he said. While Isaacman has frequently discussed a race with China to be the next to land humans on the moon, this was one of the first times he predicted a 2027 Chinese crewed circumlunar mission. He repeated the comments later in the day at an industry reception.

China has not publicly announced plans for such a mission, which, as Isaacman described it, would likely be similar to NASA's Artemis 2 mission in April. There have been rumors of a mission along those lines, though, and an expectation of a roadmap of missions leading to a Chinese crewed landing by the end of the decade. So far, all the crewed missions to fly around, orbit or land on the moon have been flown by NASA: nine Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972 and Artemis 2. All the astronauts on those missions have been Americans except for Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on Artemis 2.

Isaacman has used the threat that China could land astronauts on the moon before NASA returns there as a rationale for revamping the Artemis lunar exploration program. In February, he announced that Artemis 3, which was to be a lunar landing attempt in 2028, will instead be a test flight in low Earth orbit in 2027, followed by a landing on Artemis 4 in 2028. In March, he changed other elements of Artemis at the agency's Ignition event, including effectively canceling the lunar Gateway to focus resources instead on a lunar base, while calling for a much higher cadence of robotic lander missions.

The 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is facing backlash after several winning entries were accused of being AI-generated, with one Caribbean winner's story flagged as fully AI-written by a detector that WIRED says it independently confirmed. From the report: Each year, the Commonwealth Foundation, a nongovernmental organization in London, awards its short story prize to one writer in each of five regions: Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. One overall winner is then selected from that short list. Regional winners take home [about $3,350], while the top winner, to be announced next month, claims [about $6,700]. On May 12, the respected UK literary magazine Granta published the top five 2026 entries -- all previously unpublished, per the rules of the contest -- on its website. (It has hosted the winning submissions for the prize since 2012.) Within days, however, one entry aroused suspicion. "The Serpent in the Grove," a story by Jamir Nazir of Trinidad and Tobago, which had taken honors for the Caribbean region, struck a few people as bearing the stylistic tells of AI-generated text.

"Well, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize," wrote researcher and entrepreneur Nabeel S. Qureshi, a former visiting scholar of AI at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a post on X on Monday. "'Not X, not Y, but Z' sentences everywhere, the 'hums' trope, and plenty of other obvious markers of AI writing. A major milestone for AI, at any rate..." "They say the grove still hums at noon," Nazir's mysterious and atmospheric tale begins. In his screenshot of the opening paragraphs, Quereshi highlighted the second line as what he considered to be a signature example of AI syntax: "Not the bees' neat industry or the clean rasp of cutlass on vine, but a belly sound -- as if the earth swallows a shout and holds it there."

As the literary community undertook a closer read of Nazir's story, many criticized its language and metaphors as nonsensical, wondering how the Commonwealth judges could have seen any merit to them. Others shared screenshots showing that the AI-detection tool Pangram flagged "The Serpent in the Grove" as 100 percent AI-generated, a result that WIRED independently confirmed. (While no AI-detection software is perfect, third-party analysis has consistently determined Pangram to be the most accurate, with a near-zero rate of false positives.)

[...] Besides Nazir, two more winning authors have drawn allegations of using AI in their work. Pangram finds that "The Bastion's Shadow," by Maltese writer John Edward DeMicoli, winner for the Canada and Europe region, is fully AI-generated; it scans "Mehendi Nights," by Indian writer Sharon Aruparayil, winner for the Asia region, as partly AI-generated. Neither DeMicoli nor Aruparayil immediately returned requests for comment when reached through their respective social media accounts. The other two short-listed stories, by Holly Ann Miller of New Zealand and Lisa-Anne Julien of South Africa, deliver "fully human-written" results from Pangram. Wired also reports that one of the judges for the prize has been "accused of using AI to craft her descriptive blurb that accompanied the listing of 'The Serpent in the Grove' as a regional winner.'" Pangram labels the text as "AI-assisted."

Europe is testing laser-based satellite communications through a new mountaintop ground station in Greece, aiming to deliver faster, more secure links than traditional radio systems as bandwidth demand grows. The Register reports: Lithuanian space and defense biz Astrolight says that it has commissioned a new optical ground station in Greece that will support ESA-backed CubeSat missions testing laser-based communications between satellites and Earth. The Holomondas Optical Ground Station was built through the PeakSat project, led by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with backing from the European Space Agency and Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance. Its job is to receive data from satellites via infrared laser links rather than the radio systems that space operators have relied on for decades.

PeakSat and ERMIS-3, two Greek CubeSats launched in March under ESA's wider Greek IOD/IOV mission program, both carry Astrolight's ATLAS-1 optical communication terminal. Astrolight also built the ground segment, giving the project a fully integrated end-to-end optical communications setup. [...] The company says the station uses an 808-nanometer laser beacon and an optical C-band receiver capable of receiving data at up to 2.5 Gbps. Unlike traditional RF systems, optical links use tightly focused infrared beams that are harder to intercept or jam while also supporting significantly higher throughput.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The World Health Organization declared on Saturday that the spread of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda was a global health emergency. The announcement was made a day after Africa's leading public health authority reported that an outbreak in a province in the northeast of the country was linked to dozens of suspected deaths. By Saturday, cases had also been confirmed in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, the W.H.O. said.

In Congo's Ituri province, where the outbreak was first identified, 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths attributed to the virus had been reported, although only eight cases had been definitively linked to the virus through laboratory testing. There is no approved vaccine and no therapeutics for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the outbreak, according to the W.H.O. The scale of the outbreak could be far larger than has been detected and reported, the W.H.O. said in declaring a "public health emergency of international concern." It added that there were "significant uncertainties" about the precise number of people infected and the "geographic spread."

The W.H.O.'s declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response, and is intended to prompt member countries to prepare for the virus to spread and to share vaccines, treatments and other resources needed to contain the outbreak. [...] The risk of the outbreak spreading is exacerbated by a humanitarian crisis, high population mobility and a large network of informal health care facilities in the area, the agency said. Containing an Ebola outbreak depends on the speed and scale of the public health response. The virus is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, putting family members and caregivers at particular risk. Tracing people who may have come into contact with sufferers, isolating and treating victims promptly and safely, and burying the dead properly are all viewed as critical steps.

"Most of the plastic waste in California is about to lose the recycling symbol," writes the Washington Post's "climate coach." The "chasing arrows" symbol, created in 1970 by a college student inspired by the burgeoning environmental movement, has been stamped indiscriminately on plastic bottles, clamshell takeout containers, chip bags and more for decades. The majority of the items emblazoned with the mark have been virtually impossible to recycle for most people. California lawmakers say they want to end the charade: Under what's known as the Truth in Recycling law, plastics cannot use the symbol if they aren't collected by curbside programs serving 60% of Californians and sorted by facilities serving 60% of the state's recycling programs (with some additional requirements). If the law goes into effect as scheduled on October 4, more than half of the types of plastic packaging and products sold in the state can no longer carry the chasing arrows logo. That will affect plastic films, foam, PVC and mixed plastics...

Food and packaging groups have sued the state of California, calling the law a form of censorship whose vague restrictions violate the First Amendment and due process rights.... Advocates of the law counter that corporations deliberately misled the public by turning the recycling symbol into a marketing device that masks the fact that only a small fraction of plastic packaging is ultimately recycled... The mark was originally intended to informwaste processors what polymers a plastic item was made from. But the public reasonably assumed anything stamped with the symbol was recyclable. Millions of tons of worthless plastic trash have since poured into recycling facilities unable to process it....

States are now taking action. Seven have passed laws shifting the cost of recycling onto packaging makers. Oregon and Washington have lifted requirements that plastic containers carry the chasing arrows symbol.
The article notes that Norway already recovers 97% of beverage bottles, while Slovakia recycles 60% of plastic packaging. "But the U.S. only recovers about a third of its PET and HDPE bottles, and just 13% of plastic packaging, according to U.S. Plastics Pact, an industry-led forum.

"It won't be easy for the U.S. to reach higher levels of recycling: The necessary infrastructure and incentives are chronically underfunded, no federal mandate exists for minimum-recycled-content that would create demand and a mix of mostly unrecyclable hydrocarbons still dominates the waste stream."

"The vulnerability is simple in practice," writes Tom's Hardware: "run a command as a standard user and gain root (administrator) access to the machine." And it was Mythos Preview that helped the security researchers at Palo Alto-based Calif bypass a five-year Apple security effort in just five days. The blog 9to5Mac reports: Last year, Apple introduced Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), a hardware-assisted memory safety system designed to make memory corruption exploits much harder to execute... [The researchers note it's built into Apple all models of the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air, and some MacBooks] They explain they have a 55-page technical report on the hack, but they won't release it until Apple ships a fix for the exploit. But they do note in broad terms that Anthropic's Mythos Preview model helped them identify the bugs and assisted them throughout the entire collaborative exploit development process.

"Mythos Preview is powerful: once it has learned how to attack a class of problems, it generalizes to nearly any problem in that class. Mythos discovered the bugs quickly because they belong to known bug classes. But MIE is a new best-in-class mitigation, so autonomously bypassing it can be tricky. This is where human expertise comes in. Part of our motivation was to test what's possible when the best models are paired with experts. Landing a kernel memory corruption exploit against the best protections in a week is noteworthy, and says something strong about this pairing...."

[I]n a time when even small teams, with the help of AI, can make discoveries such as this one, "we're about to learn how the best mitigation technology on Earth holds up during the first AI bugmageddon."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Wood heating is reintroducing lead into the air of local communities and homes, a systematic investigation by academics has found. Overwhelming evidence of lead's neurotoxicity meant the metal was banned as an additive in petrol more than 25 years ago. The research by academics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst began by analysing samples of particle pollution from five suburban and rural towns in the north-east US. They looked for tiny particles of potassium that are given off when wood is burned and also particles containing lead. Samples from seven winters revealed associations between potassium and lead. When there were more wood burning particles in a daily sample, there was more lead in the air, with clear straight-line relationships in four of the five towns.

The project was extended to 22 other towns across the US. The relationships between lead and potassium varied from place to place, being strongest in the Rocky Mountains. By factoring in the effects of temperature, moderate to strong associations in their analysis strengthened the conclusion that the extra lead came from wood burning. The lead concentrations were less than the US legal limits, but any exposure to the metal is harmful. [...] Although less than legal limits, lead particles are routinely measured in UK cities in winter when people are also burning wood. This is normally attributed to waste wood covered with old lead paint, but the Umass Amherst study suggests the metal is coming from the wood itself. This means that any wood burning could increase exposure in neighborhoods and at home. Tricia Henegan, a PhD student at Umass Amherst and the first author on the research, said: "The most logical answer [to the question of how lead ends up in wood] is that it comes from uptake in the soil, probably riding along with the nutrients and water that trees need. Once in the tree, it deposits in the tree's tissues and remains until that tree is burned." Other research has found that it can then become part of the smoke.

"The use of wood as an energy source is a relic of the past, one that should not be relived if given a choice. Although wood fuel use can feel nostalgic, it does have negative consequences on air quality, and therefore public health."

Anthropic announced today that it is partnering with the Gates Foundation to "commit $200 million in grant funding, Claude usage credits, and technical support for programs in global health, life sciences, education, and economic mobility over the next four years."

"This commitment is central to Anthropic's efforts to extend the benefits of AI in areas where markets alone will not," the company says. Reuters reports: One area of focus is language accessibility. AI systems have performed poorly in writing and translating dozens of African languages, so Anthropic and the foundation want to support better data collection and labeling that would be released publicly to help improve models across the industry, said Janet Zhou, a Gates Foundation director.

Another area under consideration is releasing so-called knowledge graphs that could help AI systems better meet the needs of teachers in sub-Saharan Africa and India, Zhou said. The public-goods focus has come from "the needs of different partners and governments, including some of the fears that they may have around proprietary lock-in and sovereignty," Zhou said.

One initiative will equip research centers to use Claude to predict drug candidates for treating HPV and preeclampsia, diseases that have been less commercially attractive for pharmaceutical companies to research, Zhou and Anthropic's Elizabeth Kelly said. Anthropic [...] is embracing the work to fulfill what Kelly described as its founding mission to benefit humanity. "This announcement is really core to who we are as a company," said Kelly, who leads Anthropic's beneficial deployments team.

NASA's $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift space observatory was launched in 2004. But it's now "at risk of falling back through the atmosphere and burning up without intervention," reports Spaceflight Now.

Fortunately, a mission to prevent that "just passed a notable prelaunch testing milestone." On Friday, NASA announced that the Link spacecraft, manufactured by Katalyst Space Technologies to intervene before Swift's fate is sealed, completed its slate of environmental testing at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland... "Swift will likely re-enter the atmosphere sometime later this year if we don't attempt to lift it to a higher altitude, [said John Van Eepoel, Swift's mission director at NASA Goddard, in a NASA press release]. "Katalyst has gotten to this point in just eight months, and we're glad they were able to use NASA's facilities to test Link and draw on our expertise to help tackle questions that popped up along the way...."

"Given how quickly Swift's orbit is decaying, we are in a race against the clock, but by leveraging commercial technologies that are already in development, we are meeting this challenge head-on," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters, at the time... Attempting an orbit boost is both more affordable than replacing Swift's capabilities with a new mission, and beneficial to the nation — expanding the use of satellite servicing to a new and broader class of spacecraft...."

Swift is in an orbit inclined 20.6 degrees from the equator, which is why Katalyst selected Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL air-launched rocket in November to fly the mission. "The versatility offered by Pegasus' unique air-launch capability provides customers with a space launch solution that can be rapidly deployed anywhere on Earth to reach any orbit," said Kurt Eberly, Director of Space Launch for Northrop Grumman.
The mission is set to launch in June.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Walking into Mexico City's sprawling central Zocalo is a dizzying experience. At one end of the plaza, the capital's cathedral, with its soaring spires, slumps in one direction. An attached church, known as the Metropolitan Sanctuary, tilts in the other. The nearby National Palace also seems off-kilter. The teetering of many of the capital's historic buildings is the most visible sign of a phenomenon that has been ongoing for more than a century: Mexico City is sinking at an alarming rate. Now, the metropolis's descent is being tracked in real time thanks to one of the most powerful radar systems ever launched into space. Known as Nisar, the satellite can detect minute changes in Earth's surface, even through thick vegetation or cloud cover. "Nisar takes radar imaging observations of Earth to the next level," said Marin Govorcin, a scientist at Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory. "Nisar will see any change big or small that happens on Earth from week to week. No other imaging mission can claim this."

Though not the first time that Mexico City's sinking has been observed from space, the Nisar mission has provided a greater sense of how far the sinking spreads and how it changes across different types of land than any other space-based sensor. It has also been able to penetrate areas on the outskirts of the city that were previously challenging to study because of the complex terrain. The implications of the imagery extend far beyond the Mexican capital. "This study of Mexico City speaks to the realm of possibilities that will open up thanks to the Nisar system," said Dario Solano-Rojas, an engineer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam). "And not just for sinking cities but also for studying volcanoes, for studying the deformation associated with earthquakes, for studying landslides." According to Nasa, the technology is also capable of monitoring the climate crisis, glacier sliding, agricultural productivity, soil moisture, forestry, coastal flooding and more. The Nisar system found that some parts of the city are dropping by more than 2cm a month. "First documented in 1925, the city's sinking is a result of centuries of exploitation of the groundwater," the report says. "Because Mexico City and its surrounds were built on an ancient lake bed, the soil beneath the city is extremely soft. When water is pumped out of the aquifer below, this clay-like earth compacts, resulting in a city that is quietly sinking."

The crisis is also self-reinforcing: as the city sinks, aging pipes crack and leak, causing Mexico City to lose an estimated 40% of its water, even as drought and climate change make supplies more fragile.

Longtime Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: The Fehrmarnbelt tunnel is a European construction megaproject building a tunnel between Denmark and Germany, crossing the Fehmarnbelt in the Baltic sea. The first segment of the tunnel has now successfully been placed in its designated spot. This is a yet-unseen, next-level engineering feat achieved by the Danish Sund & Baelt construction company. It took 14 hours and used a massive pontoon ship built specifically for this project.

The tunnel segments are 217 meters long, weigh more than 73,000 metric tons, and have to be placed within a tolerance of 3 mm. The tunnel will eventually consist of 89 of these segments, be 18 km long, and connect the Danish city of Rodby with the German island Fehmarn through five individual tunnel tubes: two for cars, two for trains, and one rescue and maintenance tunnel. Crossing time will be reduced from a 45-minute ferry crossing to seven minutes by train or 10 minutes by car, and cut the travel time between the German city of Hamburg and the Danish capital, Copenhagen, down to 2.5 hours. The project's planned completion is set for the year 2029. German news Tagesschau has some details and a neat animation, while further details are available from the German tech news site Heise.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide hit a new record in April, averaging about 431 parts per million at NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory. That's up from under 320 ppm when the site began measurements in 1958. Scientific American reports: Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are measured as a proportion of the total atmosphere. The numbers are presented as the number of molecules of a particular gas out of a million total molecules, or ppm. Climate scientist Zachary Labe of Climate Central, a nonprofit that researches climate change, says the new record is "depressing" but not unexpected. "It's just another sign that carbon dioxide continues to increase in our atmosphere as our planet continues to warm," he says. "For many climate scientists, this is just 'here it is again, another record in the wrong direction.'"

Labe explains that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere tends to peak in April each year as decaying plants release greenhouse gases after winter. Some of that CO2 gets reabsorbed by plants as they grow during the warmer months. But NOAA's data show a worrying trend, with the average monthly amount of CO2 steadily increasing. [...] Although the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has continued to rise, there was a reduction in U.S. emissions in 2023 and 2024. That trend, however, was reversed in 2025, at least partially because of the increased electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers. Still, Labe says there are reasons for optimism as the use of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind expands.

A new Nature Climate Change study suggests airborne microplastics -- especially darker and colored particles -- are likely contributing to atmospheric warming by absorbing more heat than they reflect. Researchers estimate the effect could be roughly one-sixth that of black carbon, though outside experts say the uncertainties remain large and more study is needed before drawing firm policy conclusions. "We can say with confidence that overall they are warming agents," said Drew Shindell, a Duke University earth science professor and co-author of the study. "To me, that's the big advance." The Washington Post reports: To undertake their study, a group led by researchers at Fudan University in China examined how different colors and sizes of microplastics interact with light across the spectrum, while combining that information with simulations of how particles get dispersed in the air across the planet. "Black, yellow, blue and red [particles] absorb sunlight much more strongly than the white particles," Yu Liu, a Fudan professor and study co-author, said in a call with reporters. In fact, the study details how black and colored particles showed "absorption levels nearly 75 times higher than pristine, non-pigmented plastics." The scientists also found that different sizes of particles absorb light at different intensities -- and that how they absorb light can change as they age.

The authors estimate that microplastics suspended in the atmosphere could be contributing to global warming at about one-sixth the amount of black carbon, also known as soot, a pollutant generated largely from burning fossil fuels. If the latest estimates are right, Shindell said, microplastics might not be an enormous source of atmospheric warming, compared with massive contributors such as cars and trucks, belching industrial plants or even burping cows. "But not a trivial one, either," he said.

By his calculation, the effect of one year's microplastic emissions globally is approximately equivalent to 200 coal-fired power plants running for that year. But that rough estimate does not factor the longer-term repercussions of microplastics decaying and persisting in the environment for decades to come. Whatever the exact impact, the topic deserves further study, the authors say, because current climate modeling does not account for any additional warming that these tiny particles might be causing.

"The Associated Press is reporting on a new study in Nature Astronomy suggesting that a tiny, icy world beyond Pluto harbors a thin, delicate atmosphere that may have been created by volcanic eruptions or a comet strike," writes longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot. From the report: Just 300 miles (500 kilometers) or so across, this mini Pluto is thought to be the solar system's smallest object yet with a clearly detected global atmosphere bound by gravity, said lead researcher Ko Arimatsu of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. This so-called minor planet -- formally known as (612533) 2002 XV93 -- is considered a plutino, circling the sun twice in the time it takes Neptune to complete three solar orbits. At the time of the study, it was more than 3.4 billion miles (5.5 billion kilometers) away, farther than even Pluto, the only other object in the Kuiper Belt with an observed atmosphere. This cosmic iceball's atmosphere is believed to be 5 million to 10 million times thinner than Earth's protective atmosphere, according to the the study [...].

It's 50 to 100 times thinner than even Pluto's tenuous atmosphere. The likeliest atmospheric chemicals are methane, nitrogen or carbon monoxide, any of which could reproduce the observed dimming as the object passed before the star, according to Arimatsu. Further observations, especially by NASA's Webb Space Telescope, could verify the makeup of the atmosphere, according to Arimatsu.

Astronomers have identified 27 potential new circumbinary planets -- worlds that orbit two stars, like Star Wars' Tatooine. "To date, only about 18 circumbinary planets ... had been identified in the universe," reports the Guardian. "More than 6,000 planets have been discovered that orbit single stars, like Earth does around the sun." The Guardian reports: In a timely publication for May 4, also known as Star Wars Day, scientists have identified nearly 30 more candidate planets, whose distances range from 650 to 18,000 light years away from Earth. [...] More than half of the stars in the universe exist in binary or multiple star systems. The researchers instead used a method known as "apsidal precession," searching for a wobble between stars that orbit around and eclipse each other.

"If we monitor the exact timing of these eclipses ... that can tell us that there's something else going on in the system," said Margo Thornton, the study's lead author and a PhD candidate at UNSW. After eliminating other factors such as the rotation and gravitational pull of the two stars, the team identified 36 star systems out of 1,590 whose behavior could only be explained by a third body. For "27 of those objects, it is possible that they are planet mass," Thornton said.

More research into their spectra -- the light they emit -- was needed to formally confirm them as circumbinary planets, she said. "It's just a matter of: what is the mass of it? Is it a planet? Is it a brown dwarf? Is it a star?" The team discovered the potential planets -- which likely range from Neptune-sized to ten times heavier than Jupiter -- using data from Nasa's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, a planet-hunting space telescope that launched in 2018. The research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Associated Press reports: On a March afternoon, artificial intelligence detected something resembling smoke on a camera feed from Arizona's Coconino National Forest. Human analysts verified it wasn't a cloud or dust, then alerted the state's forest service and largest electric utility. One of dozens of AI cameras installed for the utility Arizona Public Service had spotted early signs of what came to be known as the Diamond Fire. Firefighters raced to the scene and contained the blaze before it grew past 7 acres (2.8 hectares).

As record-breaking heat and an abysmal snowpack raise concerns about severe wildfires, states across the fire-prone West are adding AI to their wildfire detection toolbox, banking on the technology to help save lives and property. Arizona Public Service has nearly 40 active AI smoke-detection cameras and plans to have 71 by summer's end, and the state's fire agency has deployed seven of its own. Another utility, Xcel Energy in Colorado, has installed 126 and aims to have cameras in seven of the eight states it serves by year's end... ALERTCalifornia is a network of some 1,240 AI-enabled cameras across the Golden State that work similar to the system in Arizona....

Pano AI, whose technology combines high-definition camera feeds, satellite data and AI monitoring, has seen a growing interest in its cameras since launching in 2020. They've been deployed in Australia, Canada and 17 U.S. states, including Oregon, Washington and Texas... Last year, its technology detected 725 wildfires in the U.S., the company said... Cindy Kobold, an Arizona Public Service meteorologist, said the technology notifies them about 45 minutes faster on average than the first 911 call.

"The war in Iran has sent oil-starved countries scrambling for fuel," CNN reported this week. And many of those countries now want renewable fuels, the article points out, "leaving them turning to the renewables king of the planet: China." Chinese exports of solar technology, batteries and electric vehicles all reached record highs in March, according to energy think tank Ember, a sign that the historic oil supply shock is accelerating the adoption of clean energy around the world... A Thursday report from Ember said China exported 68 gigawatts of solar technology in March, surpassing the previous record set in August by 50%. Fifty countries set new records for Chinese solar imports, with the most significant growth coming from emerging markets in Asia and Africa hit hardest by the energy crisis, according to the think tank. "Fossil shocks are boosting the solar surge," said Euan Graham, senior analyst at Ember, in the report. "Solar has already become the engine of the global economy, and now the current fossil fuel price shocks are taking it up a gear."

Ember said exports of solar, batteries and EVs in total rose 70% in March year over year, according to Chinese customs data... China's battery exports reached $10 billion in March, with particularly high growth rates in the European Union, Australia and India, Ember said. Uncertainty over when the Strait of Hormuz will reopen has spurred deeper regional anxieties about energy securi"ty, helping to hasten the transition to clean energy, analysts said.
The article notes how different countries are reacting to fuel shortages:

• Asian nations that depend on the Middle East for energy imports "are trying to mitigate fuel shortages by encouraging energy conservation and shortening work hours."

• The UK's Energy Secretary said this week that the country needed to reduce its reliance on gas for electricity. "As we face the second fossil fuel shock in less than 5 years, the lesson for our country is clear: The era of fossil fuel security is over, and the era of clean energy security must come of age."

• Pakistan "has been spared some of the impact from the war, since it began drastically importing cheap Chinese solar panels a few years ago. Using solar energy rather than costly oil imports is estimated to save the country billions of dollars each year."

• "According to the China Passenger Car Association, Chinese exports of electric vehicles and hybrids hit a record high in March, increasing 140% compared with the same period a year ago."

Thanks to Slashdot reader AleRunner for sharing the article.

Monday a company called Rainmaker announced their rain-triggering technology had produced 143 million gallons of freshwater for Utah and Oregon residents — making them "the first private company in history to validate the results of cloud seeding operations."

The Deseret News reports: Founded in 2023, Rainmaker uses drones to disperse silver iodide into clouds, then they track precipitation with advanced radar. However, Rainmaker — and every other rain-enhancement company — has been up against the notoriously difficult challenge of validation. Since there is no control set to test, and because the weather is chaotic and variable, the Government Accountability Office declares the benefits of the technology to be "unproven." To overcome this evaluation challenge, Rainmaker flies drones in unique patterns when seeding. Then operators compare distinct radar and satellite features with where their drones operated.

As of April, Rainmaker found 82 unambiguous seeding signatures, which show their seeding operations directly caused precipitation. In Utah and Oregon alone, the company said its cloud-seeding efforts have added enough water to match the annual usage of about 1,750 households. However, "this figure likely represents only a small fraction of Rainmaker's total generation this season," the company said in their press release... Their drone precision, combined with their radar systems, have produced satellite images proving a direct correlation between the seeding and precipitation. Some images show cloud holes or regions of depressed cloud tops after seeding.
Rainmaker's announcement promises they'll "go forward and continue our mission to refill the Great Salt Lake, end drought in the American West and deliver water abundance wherever it is needed most around the world." (Rainmaker currently operates in Utah, Idaho, Oregon, California and Colorado.)

The director of Utah's Natural Resources Department told the Deseret News that with cloud seeding, "cost per unit of water is so low; it really is the smartest thing we can be doing with our money," Ferry said.

NASA engineers have tested a next-generation lithium-plasma electric propulsion system that reached 120 kilowatts, a new U.S. record and about 25 times the power of the electric thrusters on NASA's Psyche spacecraft. "Designing and building these thrusters over the last couple of years has been a long lead-up to this first test," said James Polk, who is a senior research scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's a huge moment for us because we not only showed the thruster works, but we also hit the power levels we were targeting. And we know we have a good testbed to begin addressing the challenges to scaling up." Universe Today reports: While 120 kilowatts is a new record, NASA estimates it a future human mission to Mars will require 2 to 4 megawatts of power consisting of several thrusters and requiring more than 23,000 hours (958 days/2.6 years) of operation. To accomplish this, the thrusters would have to withstand more than 2,800 degrees Celsius (5,000 degrees Fahrenheit), which the thrusters achieved during testing.

The reason for the extended operation is due to the estimated time of an entire human mission to Mars, which is estimated to be approximately 2.6 years. This is because the launch window to Mars only opens once every two years due to the orbital behaviors of both planets. While no mission has ever returned from the Red Planet, this same launch window works from Mars to Earth, too. When launched within this window, robotic spacecraft have traditionally taken approximately 6-7 months to reach Mars.

However, a human mission would require a much larger spacecraft to accommodate the astronauts, food, fuel, water, and other mission-essential items. For the approximate 2.6-year mission, this would entail approximately 6-9 months traveling to Mars, followed by approximately 18 months on the surface of Mars until the next launch window opens, then another approximate 6-9 months back to Earth. However, having much less fuel due to the electric propulsion system could potentially alter this timeframe.

fjo3 shares a report from the Washington Post: Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have produced potent changes in the way plants grow -- from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc. Experts fear the degradation of Earth's food supply will cause an epidemic of hidden hunger, in which even people who consume enough calories won't get the nutrients they need to thrive. "The diets we eat today have less nutritional density than what our grandparents ate, even if we eat exactly the same thing," said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington's Center for Health and the Global Environment.

People in wealthy countries with strong health care systems will have many tools to cope with the change, experts said. But for the world's poorest and most vulnerable, the consequences could be devastating. One study concluded that by the middle of the century the phenomenon could put more than a billion additional women and children at risk of iron-deficiency anemia -- a condition that can cause pregnancy complications, developmental problems and even death. Meanwhile, some 2 billion people across the globe who already suffer from some form of nutrient shortage could see their health problems grow even worse. "The scale of the problem is huge," Ebi said.

Plants depend on carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis -- but that doesn't mean they grow better when there's more carbon in the air, scientists say. A sweeping survey of changes among 32 compounds in 43 crops found that nearly every plant that humans eat is harmed by rising CO2 levels. [...] For the past several years, [Sterre F. ter Haar, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the survey] and her colleagues have worked to compile a database of all existing research on nutrient changes linked to rising CO2. They tracked down hundreds of studies, ranging from tightly controlled lab experiments to sprawling global analyses of real-world crops.

Next the team used their dataset to calculate the nutritional densities of each crop under different carbon dioxide levels -- and to predict how their composition could continue to shift in the future. On average, they found, nutrients have already decreased by an average 3.2 percent across all plants since the late 1980s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 350 parts per million. That figure may seem small, ter Haar said, but with so much of the world already living on the brink of nutrient insufficiency, a drop of just a few percentage points has the potential to push millions of additional people into a health crisis. Researchers are still trying to understand the exact causes of this change. Extra CO2 can make plants grow faster and produce more carbohydrates, but without a matching increase in mineral uptake, nutrients like zinc, iron, and protein become diluted. Higher CO2 also causes plants to open their leaf pores less often, reducing the amount of water -- and dissolved minerals -- they absorb through their roots. At the same time, higher temperatures can further disrupt soil chemistry, affecting how plants take up nutrients and, in some cases, increasing their absorption of harmful substances like arsenic.