According to a new study, the Apple Watch can be used to monitor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. STAT reports: Researchers at Apple, working with specialists who treat Parkinson's, designed a system that uses the Apple Watch to detect the motor symptoms that are a hallmark of the neurological disease. By monitoring resting tremors and other involuntary movements, the researchers were able to identify the characteristic "on" and "off" patterns of medication's effects. Their findings were published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

The new system, called the Motor Fluctuations Monitor for Parkinson's disease (MM4PD), uses the Apple Watch's accelerometer and gyroscope data to detect the presence of resting tremor or dyskinesia. Resting tremors, which can affect the hands, legs, and other parts of the body, are a common symptom of Parkinson's. Dyskinesia, another type of involuntary movement, is a frequent side effect of medication used to treat the disease. The algorithms underlying the model were developed using data from a pilot study with 118 people in which researchers matched subject's smartwatch data to a scoring system called MDS-UPDRS Part III, the gold standard by which motor symptoms of Parkinson's are measured.

The authors say that the measurements helped spot symptoms missed in regular care and identified changes after subjects underwent surgery for deep brain stimulation. The paper also suggests the tool helped pinpoint people who slipped on medication adherence, as well as cases in which a person might benefit from a modified medication regimen.

Israel's vaccination drive has reduced confirmed Covid-19 cases among older Israelis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. From a report: Netanyahu cited a 45% drop in confirmed cases and a 26% decline in hospitalizations of seriously ill patients among people age 60 and older in the past 16 days. Israel's vaccination drive, which began in late December, started with this age group, and more than 80% have had at least one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Further reading: Israel Is Now The First Country Where Vaccinations Are Starting To Curb The Pandemic.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Live Science: Scientists have successfully studied einsteinium -- one of the most elusive and heaviest elements on the periodic table -- for the first time in decades. The achievement brings chemists closer to discovering the so-called 'island of stability,' where some of the heftiest and shortest-lived elements are thought to reside. The U.S. Department of Energy first discovered einsteinium in 1952 in the fall-out of the first hydrogen bomb test. The element does not occur naturally on Earth and can only be produced in microscopic quantities using specialized nuclear reactors. It is also hard to separate from other elements, is highly radioactive and rapidly decays, making it extremely difficult to study.

Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) at the University of California, recently created a 233-nanogram sample of pure einsteinium and carried out the first experiments on the element since the 1970s. In doing so they were able to uncover some of the element's fundamental chemical properties for the first time. [...] The main finding from the study was the measurement of the einsteinium bond length -- the average distance between two bonded atoms -- a fundamental chemical property that helps scientists predict how it will interact with other elements. They found that einsteinium's bond length goes against the general trend of the actinides. This is something that had been theoretically predicted in the past, but has never been experimentally proved before. Compared with the rest of the actinide series, einsteinium also luminesces very differently when exposed to light [...]. Further experiments are needed to determine why. The study was published in the journal Nature.

sciencehabit writes: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has, for more than 20 years, pioneered collecting spectra from millions of astronomical objects, from nearby stars to supermassive black holes. But this year, the survey is making a change: Instead of employing a small team of technicians for the daily chore of plugging optical fibers into preprepared plates so that -- when placed in the telescope -- they collect light from exactly the right position in the sky, the SDSS is going robotic. For the project's upcoming fifth set of surveys, plug plates are being replaced by 500 tiny robot arms, each holding fiber tips, that patrol a small area of the telescope's focal plane. They can be reconfigured for a new sky map in 2 minutes. Although such robot spectrographs have been built before, the SDSS is part of a rush to retrofit robots to older telescopes so astronomers can grab spectra from the wealth of interesting objects that will soon be streaming from new imaging surveys.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Technology that harnesses wave energy through a "blowhole" is being tested at a remote Tasmanian island in a project backed by federal grants and investors. When the mostly above-water unit is connected in about a month, King Island in Bass Strait will be powered by three renewables -- wave, wind and solar. And there are hopes the project can be expanded across Australia's vast southern coastline.

Wave Swell Energy co-founder Tom Denniss says the pilot will provide crucial data about the system's potential. "It's very much like an artificial blowhole," he said. "There's a big underwater chamber that's open out the front, so the water is forced into the chamber. "It pushes that air back and forth. The movement of air that spins the turbine and produces electricity." Research by the peak scientific body estimates wave energy could contribute up to 11% of the nation's energy by 2050, the equivalent of a city the size of Melbourne. The boat-like structure can generate up to 200kW of power but there are plans for larger 1,000kW models.

About one in four of India's 1.35 billion people may have been infected with the coronavirus, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of a government serological survey, suggesting the country's real caseload was many times higher than reported. From the report: India has confirmed 10.8 million COVID-19 infections, the most anywhere outside the United States. But the survey, whose findings are much more conservative than a private one from last week, indicates India's actual cases may have crossed 300 million. The state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which conducted the survey, said it would only share the findings at a news conference on Thursday. The source declined to be named ahead of the official announcement. It was not immediately clear how many people participated in the latest survey.

Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover floated back outside the International Space Station Monday and completed solar array battery replacement work that began four years ago. They also installed three new video cameras and made preparations for upcoming work to install new roll-out solar blankets to upgrade the lab's power system. From a report: The work took less time than expected and the astronauts were able to carry out a variety of lower-priority "get-ahead" tasks before returning to Quest airlock and calling it a day, closing out a five-hour 20-minute spacewalk. Taking one last look around before entering the airlock, Hopkins said simply, "Beautiful view." The excursion began at 7:56 a.m. EST when the two men switched their spacesuits to battery power, officially kicking off the 234th spacewalk, or EVA, devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began 23 years ago in 1998.

"OK, it's a beautiful day. Let's go for a walk outside," astronaut Bob Hines radioed from mission control in Houston. The first priority was electrically connecting a replacement battery in the station's solar power system. The batteries are critical to station operation. They are recharged by the arrays when the lab is in sunlight and then provide that stored power during periods of orbital darkness. Starting in 2017, spacewalking astronauts began work to replace all 48 of the station's original nickel-hydrogen batteries with 24 smaller, more powerful lithium ion units. During battery replacement work in March 2019, one of the new lithium ion power packs used by the station's left-side inboard set of arrays failed and was replaced with one of the older nickel hydrogen batteries that had been removed. All of the other older batteries were replaced as planned during multiple spacewalks. Over the weekend, flight controllers operating the station's robot arm by remote control disconnected the one remaining nickel hydrogen battery and robotically installed a fresh lithium ion unit. Hopkins and Glover electrically connected the battery, finally completing the power system upgrade four years after the work began.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.Org: The Milky Way is surrounded by dozens of dwarf galaxies that are thought to be relics of the very first galaxies in the universe. Among the most primitive of these galactic fossils is Tucana II -- an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy that is about 163,000 light years, from Earth. MIT astrophysicists have detected stars at the edge of Tucana II, in a configuration that is surprisingly far from its center but nevertheless caught up in the tiny galaxy's gravitational pull. This is the first evidence that Tucana II hosts an extended dark matter halo -- a region of gravitationally bound matter that the researchers calculated to be three to five times more massive than scientists had estimated. This discovery of far-flung stars in an ancient dwarf galaxy implies that the very first galaxies in the universe were also likely extended and more massive than previously thought.

The team used an imaging filter on the telescope to spot primitive, metal-poor stars beyond the galaxy's core. Analysis shows a kinematic connection, that these far-out stars move in lockstep with the inner stars, like bathwater going down the drain. The results suggest that Tucana II must have an extended dark matter halo that is three to five times more massive than previously thought, in order for it to keep a gravitational hold on these far-off stars. "Without dark matter, galaxies would just fly apart," Chiti. says. "[Dark matter] is a crucial ingredient in making a galaxy and holding it together." The team's results are the first evidence that an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy can harbor an extended dark matter halo. "This probably also means that the earliest galaxies formed in much larger dark matter halos than previously thought," The findings appear in the journal Nature Astronomy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Centers for Disease Control may recommend wearing two masks -- one over the other -- to keep at bay the more contagious variants of the coronavirus, according to Anthony Fauci. The CDC and Fauci discussed the matter Monday but the agency doesn't yet have the data to make any formal recommendation, he said Tuesday during a Washington Post event. Still, "it makes common sense" to increase protection, Fauci said. The infectious disease expert has previously endorsed double-masking given the new strains of the virus.

omfglearntoplay shares a report from ScienceAlert: There's already a long list of reasons to like trees, we know. Warding off depression could be the latest entry on that list, based on a study of 9,751 residents in Leipzig, Germany. For a more consistent measure, researchers used antidepressant prescriptions rather than self-reporting to gauge the mental health of communities, and then cross-referenced these statistics with the numbers of street trees in each area. They reported that more local foliage within 100 meters (328 feet) of the home was associated with a reduced likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants -- findings that could be very useful indeed for city planners, health professionals, and governments.

The reduction in antidepressant use linked to street trees was particularly prominent in socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. While it's important not to take such findings too far, the results do hint that urban trees could act as a simple and affordable way of boosting mental health and assist in closing health inequality gaps across society. The research has been published in Scientific Reports.

On Tuesday, a test flight of SpaceX's Starship, a huge next-generation spacecraft that Elon Musk, the founder and chief executive of the private rocket company, dreams of one day sending to Mars, came to an explosive end. From a report: That brief flight, to an altitude of about 6 miles and then back to a landing pad, appeared to again demonstrate how the mammoth rocket would tip over on its side as it descended in a controlled belly flop back toward a landing. But when the prototype fired its engines to right itself back to a vertical orientation, it appeared that one engine did not properly ignite, and Starship hit the ground at an angle, disintegrating in a fireball, leaving a cloud of smoke rising over the test site, which is in Boca Chica, Tex., near Brownsville. The end was similar to the last test flight in December which also ended in an explosion at landing, although the particular cause of the rocket failing to slow down enough may have been different.

This time, however, SpaceX at least had the permission of government regulators. Last week, SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates rocket launches, seemed to be in a strange regulatory standoff. SpaceX had filled the propellant tanks of this prototype of Starship -- its ninth one -- and looked ready to launch. But then the rocket stayed on the ground when no approval from the F.A.A. arrived. Mr. Musk expressed frustration on Twitter, describing the part of the F.A.A. that oversees SpaceX as "fundamentally broken." Mr. Musk wrote, "Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars." Late on Monday, the F.A.A. gave permission for Tuesday's launch, but then added that the December launch had occurred without the agency's approval. SpaceX had requested a waiver to conduct that flight even though it posed a greater danger to the public than allowed by regulations. The F.A.A. denied the request. SpaceX defied the ruling and launched anyway.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It may sound like something out of a futuristic science fiction film, but scientists have managed to engineer spinach plants which are capable of sending emails. Through nanotechnology, engineers at MIT in the US have transformed spinach into sensors capable of detecting explosive materials. These plants are then able to wirelessly relay this information back to the scientists. When the spinach roots detect the presence of nitroaromatics in groundwater, a compound often found in explosives like landmines, the carbon nanotubes within the plant leaves emit a signal. This signal is then read by an infrared camera, sending an email alert to the scientists. This experiment is part of a wider field of research which involves engineering electronic components and systems into plants. The technology is known as "plant nanobionics," and is effectively the process of giving plants new abilities. "Plants are very good analytical chemists," explains Professor Michael Strano who led the research. "They have an extensive root network in the soil, are constantly sampling groundwater, and have a way to self-power the transport of that water up into the leaves. This is a novel demonstration of how we have overcome the plant/human communication barrier," he adds.

Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur behind a payment processing startup, is funding a multimillion trip to space aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which could be the first-ever orbital flight crewed entirely by non-astronauts. CNN reports: Isaacman, 37, said he will command the mission, which is slated for late-2021 and will see the spacecraft make a "multi-day" trip into Earth's orbit, according to a press release. Isaacman has purchased three additional seats aboard the mission. The seats will be donated to a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital "ambassador," and a member of the public who enters for a chance to join the trip.

The St. Jude ambassador has already been selected, Isaacman said. He did not disclose any details of their identity beyond saying it would be a woman and a front-line healthcare worker who's "committed to helping kids beat cancer." The fourth seat is reserved for a winner of a contest, limited to customers of Isaacman's eCommerce platform, Shift4Shop. Eligible competitors will have to launch an online store on the platform and tweet a video about their "entrepreneurial story," which will then be reviewed by "a panel of celebrity judges, " according to the company. The names of the judges were not yet disclosed. It's not clear when the winners will be chosen, though Isaacman told reporters on a conference call Monday that the crew members could all begin training within 30 days.

Isaacman added that this mission, dubbed Inspiration4, with the "4" referencing the number of crew members, "is the realization of a lifelong dream and a step towards a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars." Isaacman said he wanted the mission to also mark a "historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to tackle childhood cancer," and he pledged to also donate $100 million to the hospital as part of a push to raise $200 million more dollars for the organization's research. It's not clear exaclty how long the trip will be or where in orbit it will fly. [SpaceX CEO Elon Musk] told Isaacman on Monday, "wherever you want to go, we'll take you there."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Exxon Mobil, which has long been criticized by environmentalists and some investors and elected leaders for not doing enough to curb climate change, said on Monday it would invest $3 billion over the next five years in energy projects that lower emissions. The company said the first area it would work on is capturing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial plants and storing the gas so it does not enter the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming. Many climate experts have said that such carbon capture and sequestration will be critical in the fight against climate change. Exxon said it was creating a new business called ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions and is working on 20 carbon capture projects around the world, including in Texas, the Netherlands, Singapore and Qatar.

The Verge reports that SpaceX's first high-altitude test flight of its Starship rocket, "which launched successfully but exploded in a botched landing attempt in December, violated the terms of its Federal Aviation Administration test license, according to two people familiar with the incident." Both the landing explosion and license violation prompted a formal investigation by the FAA, driving regulators to put extra scrutiny on Elon Musk's hasty Mars rocket test campaign. The so-called mishap investigation was opened that week, focusing not only on the explosive landing but on SpaceX's refusal to stick to the terms of what the FAA authorized, the two people said. It was unclear what part of the test flight violated the FAA license, and an FAA spokesman declined to specify in a statement to The Verge.

"The FAA will continue to work with SpaceX to evaluate additional information provided by the company as part of its application to modify its launch license," FAA spokesman Steve Kulm said Friday. "While we recognize the importance of moving quickly to foster growth and innovation in commercial space, the FAA will not compromise its responsibility to protect public safety. We will approve the modification only after we are satisfied that SpaceX has taken the necessary steps to comply with regulatory requirements."

The heightened scrutiny from regulators after the launchpad spectacle has played a role in holding up SpaceX's latest "SN9" Starship test attempt, which the company said would happen on Thursday. The shiny steel alloy, 16-story-tall rocket was loaded with fuel and ready to fly. But at the time, FAA officials were still going through their license review process for the test because of several changes SpaceX made in its license application, a source said. Musk, frustrated with the process, took to Twitter.
"Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure," Musk tweeted on Thursday. "Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars."

The Verge also notes that Musk was asked by the Wall Street Journal what role government should play in regulating innovation just a few hours before Starship's test in December. Musk's reply? "A lot of the time, the best thing the government can do is just get out of the way."

Despite bad weather and early technical difficulties, employee-owned bluShift Aerospace "made history Sunday afternoon when it launched its prototype rocket, Stardust 1.0," reports Maine's Portland Press Herald: The company became the first in Maine to launch a commercial rocket and the first in the world to launch a rocket using bio-derived fuel... It carried three payloads, two commercial and one, free of charge, from Falmouth High School... The rocket and payloads returned to the ground under a parachute shortly after launch and were retrieved by a team of snowmobilers. The rocket is intended to be reusable and environmentally friendly.

While the components of the biofuel remain a company secret, bluShift CEO Sascha Deri said it is solid, non-toxic and carbon neutral. "I can tell you this much, I discovered it with a friend of mine on my brothers farm here in Maine," he said. The company describes its business model as the Uber of space, where they will target a specific customer who wishes to send their payload into a particular orbit.

"We are targeting people that want to go to a specific orbit, they want to have control of their launches, they want to be the primary payload even though their payload is very small," Deri said.
The rocket is roughly 20 feet tall and 14 inches in diameter, the newspaper reports — noting that an earlier launch planned for January 15th had to be called off due to bad weather. "It turns out launching rockets is complicated, apparently it's rocket science," CEO Deri told them.

"We did learn a lot from that failed launch. We learned, first and foremost, that you can't rely upon weather websites, you really need to use a professional meteorologist."

The Associated Press also reports the rocket carried "a Dutch dessert called stroopwafel, in an homage to its Amsterdam-based parent company. Organizers of the launch said the items were included to demonstrate the inclusion of a small payload."

A new research study at the University of Missouri is using CRISPR gene-editing technology to produce mosquitoes that are unable to replicate Zika virus and therefore cannot infect a human through biting. Slashdot reader wooloohoo shared an announcement from Cornell's Alliance for Science: Alexander Franz, an associate professor in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, collaborated with researchers at Colorado State University... Their work was recently published in the journal Viruses. Franz added that the genetic modification is inheritable, so future generations of the altered mosquitoes would be resistant to Zika virus as well... "[W]e are simply trying to expand the toolbox and provide a solution by genetically modifying the mosquitoes to become Zika-resistant while keeping them alive at the same time."

Franz' research is designed to help prevent another outbreak of Zika virus disease from occurring while also addressing concerns that have some have raised about reducing populations of mosquitoes, which are a food source for some animals...

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from Sky.com: Dr. Fatima Ebrahimi "has invented a new fusion rocket thruster concept which could power humans to Mars and beyond," writes Sky.com

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared their report: The physicist who works for the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory designed the rocket which will use magnetic fields to shoot plasma particles — electrically charged gas — into the vacuum of space. According to Newton's second and third laws of motion, the conservation of momentum would mean the rocket was propelled forwards — and at speeds 10 times faster than comparable devices.

While current space-proven plasma propulsion engines use electric fields to propel the particles, the new rocket design would accelerate them using magnetic reconnection... Dr. Ebrahimi's new concept performs much better than existing plasma thrusters in computer simulations — generating exhaust with velocities of hundreds of kilometres per second, 10 times faster than those of other thrusters.

That faster velocity at the beginning of a spacecraft's journey could bring the outer planets within reach of astronauts, the physicist said.... "The next step is building a prototype!"

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: President Joe Biden today created a task force that will conduct a 120-day review of scientific integrity policies across the U.S. government, including documenting instances in which "improper political interference" interfered with research or led to the suppression or distortion of data. The review is part of a lengthy memorandum from Biden on his plans for "restoring trust" in government by emphasizing scientific integrity and the use of evidence in policymaking. The memo also calls on federal research agencies to name Chief Scientific Officers, and for all agencies to spend 90 days reviewing the role of dozens of panels that provide scientific advice to government. Agencies will also determine if they want to recreate technical advisory panels dismantled under former President Donald Trump.

"Scientific and technological information, data, and evidence are central to the development and iterative improvement of sound policies," states the memo. "Improper political interference in the work of Federal scientists or other scientists who support the work of the Federal Government and in the communication of scientific facts undermines the welfare of the Nation." Today's memo largely restates policies outlined in laws passed by Congress and in memos released by former President Barack Obama in 2009 and by his science adviser, John Holdren, in 2010. In general, those policies attempt to create uniform practices across the federal government for handling and sharing data, using technical evidence, and insulating researchers from political concerns.

"Researchers from the fields of print media technology, chemistry, physics, acoustics, electrical engineering, and economics from six nations developed a continuous, highly productive, and reliable roll production of loudspeaker webs," reports project manager Georg C. Schmidt. [For those unfamiliar with roll-to-roll processing, it is the process of creating electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastic or metal foil, which, among other things, reduces manufacturing cost.]

This is an improvement upon the 2015 T-Book -- a large-format illustrated book equipped with printed electronics that outputs sound through a speaker invisibly located inside the sheet of paper. "The T-Book was and is a milestone in the development of printed electronics, but development is continuing all the time," says Prof. Dr. Arved C. Hubler, under whose leadership this technology trend has been driven forward for more than 20 years. Phys.Org reports: Not only did they use the roll-to-roll (R2R) printing process for this, but they also developed inline technologies for other process steps, such as the lamination of functional layers. "This allows electronics to be embedded in the paper -- invisibly and protected," says Hubler. In addition, he says, inline polarization of piezoelectric polymer layers has been achieved for the first time and complete inline process monitoring of the printed functional layers is possible. The final project results were published in the renowned journal Advanced Materials.

The potential of loudspeaker paper was extended to other areas of application in the T-Paper project. For example, meter-long loudspeaker installations can now be manufactured in web form or as a circle (T-RING). "In our T-RING prototype, an almost four-meter-long track with 56 individual loudspeakers was connected to form seven segments and shaped into a circle, making a 360-degree surround sound installation possible," says Schmidt. The speaker track, including printed circuitry, weighs just 150 grams and consists of 90 percent conventional paper that can be printed in color on both sides. "This means that low-cost infotainment solutions are now possible in museums, at trade shows and in the advertising industry, for example. In public buildings, for example, very homogeneous sound reinforcement of long stretches such as corridors is possible. But the process technology itself could also become interesting for other areas, such as the production of inline measurement systems for Industry 4.0," says the project manager, looking to the future.