An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. military's Space Force branch celebrated its one-year anniversary Friday by announcing that its members would now be known as "guardians". But the name was not universally greeted with respect and appreciation. Gizmodo announced the news with a headline which read "Space Force Personnel Will Be Called 'Guardians' Because Sure, Whatever," in an article which jokingly asks how this will affect the other ranks of this branch of the military. "Does someone get promoted from Guardian to Sentinel to Space Paladin to Tython, The Secessionist King Of Mars or something?" (Their article also suggests other names the U.S. military could have considered — like "moon buddies" or "rocketeers" — even at one point proposing "starship troopers".)

Forbes wrote that "The mockery arrived instantly and in great rivers..." But there was an interesting observation from a British newspaper (which is in fact, named The Guardian). "As the Associated Press put it, delicately: 'President-elect Joe Biden has yet to reveal his plans for the space force in the next administration.'" In fact, New York magazine called the new name for members of Space Force the "strongest case yet for its demise," in an article headlined "Abolish the Space Force." ("Maybe 'stormtrooper' was too obvious...")

In an apparent bid to be taken more seriously, on Friday the Space Force also shared an official anniversary greeting they'd received from Lee Majors, the actor who'd played a cybernetically-enhanced Air Force colonel in the 1970s action series The Six Million Dollar Man (who, in later seasons, befriended Bigfoot and the alien community who'd brought him to earth).

But Mashable added sympathetically that "It's been a long year, though. If people want to draw some nerdy joy from a U.S. military branch inadvertently referencing comic books and video games, let them have their fun."

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares this report from Ars Technica: Amazon's competitor to SpaceX Starlink is moving through the prototype-development phase, with the company announcing yesterday that it has "completed initial development on the antenna for our low-cost customer terminal." Amazon said its "Ka-band phased-array antenna is based on a new architecture capable of delivering high-speed, low-latency broadband in a form factor that is smaller and lighter than legacy antenna designs" and the "prototype is already delivering speeds up to 400Mbps." Performance will get better in future versions, Amazon said.

Amazon in July received Federal Communications Commission approval to launch 3,236 low-Earth orbit satellites. The company says it plans to invest over $10 billion in its satellite-broadband division, which it calls Project Kuiper... Amazon didn't provide any updates on when Kuiper will be ready for customers. FCC rules give Amazon six years to launch and operate 50 percent of its licensed satellites, with a deadline date of July 30, 2026. Amazon would have to launch the rest of the licensed satellites by July 30, 2029. Amazon previously said it plans to offer broadband to customers "once the first 578 satellites are launched."
"Custom-built antenna architecture will allow Amazon to deliver a small, affordable customer terminal to connect unserved and underserved communities around the world," explains Amazon's announcement.

"A new satellite from Capella Space was described as "pretty creepy" by Bustle's technology site Input: Like other hunks of metal currently orbiting Earth, the Capella-2 satellite's onboard radar system makes it capable of producing ludicrously high-resolution visuals from its data. More unconventional is the service Capella has launched to match: the government or private customers can, at any time, request a view of anything on the planet that's visible from the sky...

The Capella-2's system of cameras and sensors is nothing short of magnificent. The satellite uses something called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), a technology used by NASA since the 1970s, to detect the Earth's surface through even the densest of clouds. SAR sends a 9.65 GHz radio signal toward the Earth and interprets the signal as it returns, using that data to form a visual... The Capella-2 is now the highest-resolution commercial SAR satellite in the world, capable of 50 cm x 50 cm resolution imaging. Other satellites are only capable of resolution up to about five meters....

Once Capella's full squadron of satellites is airborne, the company will have the ability to quickly snap views of just about any place in the world. That power could quickly be abused if left unchecked.
The article notes Capella already has a contract with the U.S. Air Force, adding "It's not much of a stretch to imagine high-resolution SAR technology turning into a tool for national surveillance...

"Right now there's just one Capella-2 satellite roaming around in the atmosphere, so that functionality is somewhat limited. Capella plans to launch six additional satellites with similar capabilities in the next year."

In response on Friday Capella Space penned a blog post reminding readers that their satellite "does not see through buildings," and that at 50-centimeter resolution "What it cannot do...is see people, license plates or reveal any personally identifiable information. Unlike other technologies that have recently been under scrutiny for privacy infringement such as cell phone geolocation data or automatic license plate readers, SAR imaging specializes in a macro view of the world to see the general patterns of life.

"Our company was founded on the belief that technology in space can significantly benefit life on Earth, and invading privacy does not help that mission. Part of that also means thoroughly vetting our customers and partners to ensure they will use our information for ethical purposes."

fahrbot-bot quotes an article from Science Alert: Nothing keeps time like the beating heart of an atom. But even the crisp tick-tock of a vibrating nucleus is limited by uncertainties imposed by the laws of quantum mechanics.

Several years ago, researchers from MIT and the University of Belgrade in Serbia proposed that quantum entanglement could push clocks beyond this blurry boundary. Now, we have a proof of concept in the form of an experiment. Physicists connected together a cloud of ytterbium-171 atoms with streams of photons reflected from a surrounding hall of mirrors and measured the timing of their tiny wiggles.

Their results show that entangling atoms in this way could speed up the time-measuring process of atomic nuclei clocks, making them more precise than ever. In principle, a clock based on this new approach would lose just 100 milliseconds since the dawn of time itself.

Reuters reports: A new strain of coronavirus identified in the United Kingdom is up to 70% more infectious but it is not thought to be more deadly and vaccines should still be effective, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and scientists said on Saturday.... "This is early data and it's subject to review. But it's the best that we have at the moment and we have to act on information as we have it, because this is now spreading very fast.
Prime minister Johnson also announced new and tougher lockdown restrictions for millions of people in the U.K., according to Reuters, which elsewhere reports the following known facts about the new variant: - The new variant is thought to have first occurred in mid-September in London or Kent, in the southeast of England.

- UK analysis suggests it may be up to 70% more transmissible than the old variant, which could increase the reproduction "R" rate by 0.4...

- The new variant contains 23 different changes, many of them associated with alterations in a protein made by the virus. Patrick Vallance, the UKâ(TM)s chief scientific adviser, said this was an unusually large number of changes...

- In London, 62% of cases were due to the new variant in the week of Dec. 9. That compared to 28% three weeks earlier. In London, the overall infection rate doubled in the last week.

Slashdot reader destinyland writes: The U.S. Space Force celebrated its one-year anniversary Friday with a new announcement: that members of this branch of the military will be referred to as "guardians." They're describing it as "A name chosen by space professionals, for space professionals." The site Space.com notes that the phrase is a nod to the original long-standing "Space Command" branch of the Air Force (founded in 1982), whose motto had been "Guardians of the High Frontier."

In other news, the Space Force now has one member who is actually in outer space — astronaut Michael Hopkins. Launched by SpaceX to the International Space Station in the Crew-1 capsule, Hopkins agreed to join the Space Force in a ceremony in space which a Space Force official said would "spotlight the decades-long partnership" between NASA and America's Defense Department (which oversees its armed forces).

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine pointed out that 60% of the astronaut corps comes from the military, according to Space.com, which adds that "At least one other member of NASA's active astronaut corps, Air Force Col. Nick Hague, has also requested to transfer to the Space Force."

Long-time Slashdot reader cusco writes: In the first return of a lunar sample since the Soviets in 1976, the Chang'e 5 spacecraft landed Thursday in Inner Mongolia with 2 kilograms of material drilled from as much as two meters below the surface... On December 3, the ascent stage took off from the moon with the sample, docking with the orbiter three days later. After jettisoning the ascent stage the orbiter returned to Earth and was recovered December 17.

Here's a (fairly bad) video of the drilling and sample acquisition, and a video of the recovery, with an IR camera shot showing the hot lander and what appears to be a fox running past.
China's 23-day mission makes it only the third country to return samples from the moon, reports the South China Morning Post, while the drill sites are "believed to be much younger than that of the locations sampled by the Americans and the Russians..." Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday said space exploration knew no limits and called for new interplanetary exploration to turn China into a major power in space and realise national rejuvenation, as well as the peaceful use of space... The lander vehicle of the Chang'e 5 also for the first time unfolded a Chinese five-star national flag on the moon and will hold it there permanently, as it was abandoned after being used as a launch pad for the ascending vehicle...

With the successful completion of the mission, the Chang'e lunar programme aims to land Chinese astronauts on the nearest celestial body by 2030, and set up a permanent research space on the south pole of the moon in the future. China's space ambition goes beyond the moon. It sent a probe to Mars in July, and is preparing to launch a Chinese space station next year.

On Monday, December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will merge in the night sky in an astronomical event known as a "Great Conjunction," appearing closer to one another than they have since Galileo's time in the 17th century. NASA reports: The planets regularly appear to pass each other in the solar system, with the positions of Jupiter and Saturn being aligned in the sky about once every 20 years. What makes this year's spectacle so rare, then? It's been nearly 400 years since the planets passed this close to each other in the sky, and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night, as it will for 2020, allowing nearly everyone around the world to witness this "great conjunction."

The closest alignment will appear just a tenth of a degree apart and last for a few days. On the 21st, they will appear so close that a pinkie finger at arm's length will easily cover both planets in the sky. The planets will be easy to see with the unaided eye by looking toward the southwest just after sunset. From our vantage point on Earth the huge gas giants will appear very close together, but they will remain hundreds of millions of miles apart in space. And while the conjunction is happening on the same day as the winter solstice, the timing is merely a coincidence, based on the orbits of the planets and the tilt of the Earth.

For those who would like to see this phenomenon for themselves, here's what to do:

- Find a spot with an unobstructed view of the sky, such as a field or park. Jupiter and Saturn are bright, so they can be seen even from most cities.
- An hour after sunset, look to the southwestern sky. Jupiter will look like a bright star and be easily visible. Saturn will be slightly fainter and will appear slightly above and to the left of Jupiter until December 21, when Jupiter will overtake it and they will reverse positions in the sky.
- The planets can be seen with the unaided eye, but if you have binoculars or a small telescope, you may be able to see Jupiter's four large moons orbiting the giant planet.

An anonymous reader shares an investigative report by LA Times: The plane had begun its descent into Boston. Inside the cockpit, the captain was slumped in his seat. Sitting beside him, copilot Eric Tellmann was starting to pass out. Tellmann managed to strap on his oxygen mask, then grabbed the captain's arm and forced him to follow suit. Reviving slowly, the captain looked at Tellmann through his mask, and his eyes grew wide with fear. A strange smell had permeated the plane that day. Passengers and flight attendants were coughing and wiping teary eyes. The pilots briefly lifted their masks and could still smell the odor as the runway drew nearer. Tellmann and the captain parked the Airbus A319 at the gate. But they had no memory of landing or taxiing Spirit Airlines Flight 708. Tellmann went to the hospital for treatment and spent the next week at home in bed, vomiting and shaking and feeling "like a freight train had run over us," he said in a letter to his union about the July 2015 event. A mysterious smell. Strange symptoms. A trip to the emergency room. The signs were all there: Something had gone seriously wrong with the plane's air supply.

The air you breathe on airplanes comes directly from the jet engines. Known as bleed air, it is safe, unless there is a mechanical issue -- a faulty seal, for instance. When that happens, heated jet engine oil can leak into the air supply, potentially releasing toxic gases into the plane. For decades, the airline industry and its regulators have known about these incidents -- called fume events -- and have maintained that they are rare and that the toxic chemical levels are too low to pose serious health risks. But a Times investigation found that vapors from oil and other fluids seep into planes with alarming frequency across all airlines, at times creating chaos and confusion: Flight attendants vomit and pass out. Passengers struggle to breathe. Children get rushed to hospitals. Pilots reach for oxygen masks or gasp for air from opened cockpit windows. Such events are documented in airport paramedic records, NASA safety reports, federal aviation records and other filings reviewed by The Times. Tellmann, the Spirit Airlines pilot, was one of hundreds of airline crew members and passengers who reported being sickened or impaired on flights in recent years. A Times analysis of NASA safety reports from January 2018 to December 2019 identified 362 fume events that airline crew members reported to the agency, with nearly 400 pilots, flight attendants and passengers receiving medical attention. During at least 73 of those flights, pilots used emergency oxygen. Four dozen pilots were described as impaired to the point of being unable to perform their duties. Because they're made voluntarily, the NASA safety reports are the "tip of the iceberg," according to a recent study by a researcher from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

OneWeb is back. The company on Friday made its fourth launch of a batch of satellites to build up its constellation in low-Earth orbit that eventually will provide broadband internet access around the globe. From a report: The latest group of 36 satellites headed to orbit atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from Vostochny Cosmodrome, ending a long delay since the last OneWeb launch, on Feb. 6. The nine months since then have seen the company file for bankruptcy at the start of the coronavirus pandemic only to re-emerge under new ownership led by the British government and India's Bharti Global. OneWeb is now flying over 100 satellites of a planned 648-bird constellation.

SpamSlapper shares a report from The Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A company commercializing a CSIRO-developed, seaweed feed product, which slashes the amount of greenhouse gases cattle burp and fart into the atmosphere, has won a $1 million international prize for its work reshaping the food system. CSIRO-affiliated company Future Feed said it would use its Food Planet Prize winnings to create an international commercial fund to help First Nations communities generate income from cultivating and selling the seaweed.

Methane emissions from livestock make up around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and one cow produces on average as much gas emission as one car. "As a greenhouse gas, methane is about 28 times more potent in terms of global warming potential than carbon dioxide and lasts much longer in the atmosphere," the CSIRO said on its website. Future Feed director and CSIRO scientist Michael Battaglia said that when added to cattle feed, the product, which contains Australian "super seaweed" Asparagopsis, virtually eliminated methane from the animals' bodily emissions. "We know that just a handful [of the product] per animal per day, or 0.2 percent of their diet can virtually eliminate 99.9 percent of methane," Dr Battaglia said.

Earlier this week, a team of researchers announced that they successfully teleported qubits of photons across approximately 27 miles of fiber-optic cable. Engadget reports: While other scientists have worked on similar projects, this group is the first to beam quantum information across such a great distance. What's more, they did so across two separate networks and with a fidelity greater than 90 percent. One of the researchers on the team told Motherboard they built the networks using "off-the-shelf" components, and that their tech is compatible with existing telecommunications equipment.

In PRX Quantum, where the team published its findings, they say their work provides "a realistic foundation for a high-fidelity quantum Internet with practical devices." They added, "this is a key achievement on the way to building a technology that will redefine how we conduct global communication." Experts believe a quantum internet could revolutionize a variety of computing fields, including cryptography and search. [...] With two 13-mile networks under their belts, the Caltech and Fermilab teams plan to build a city-scale network called the Illinois Express Quantum Network in Chicago next.

Following a 2018 study demonstrating how disrupted sleep can accelerate the buildup of toxic plaques associated with the disease, scientists from Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in St. Louis have now identified a protein implicated in the progression of the disease that appears highly regulated by the circadian rhythm, helping them join the dots and providing a potential new therapeutic target. New Atlas reports: In their previous research, the WUSM team set out to explore how disruptions to our natural sleep cycles, or circadian rhythm, may accelerate the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain, which are strongly linked to Alzheimer's disease. Through studies on humans and in mice, the team was able to show a strong correlation between the two, and now through follow up work, the team has identified a brain protein that appears to play a role in this relationship. The brain protein in question is called YKL-40 and for years has served as a biomarker for Alzheimer's, as high levels of it have been found in the cerebrospinal fluid of those suffering from the disease and these levels rise as the disease progresses. The researchers were screening for genes that are regulated by the circadian rhythm, and were intrigued to see the gene for this brain protein pop up.

From there, the team investigated this connection between YKL-40 and Alzheimer's, which is characterized by chronic inflammation, by exploring how much of the protein is made under inflammatory conditions both with and without a key circadian gene. Indeed, this demonstrated that the circadian rhythm controls how much YKL-40 is produced. Next up, the team worked with mice prone to developing amyloid plaques, and genetically modified one group of them to be lacking the gene for YKL-40. As the mice reached old age, the team analyzed their brains and found that those without the YKL-40 protein exhibited around half the amyloid plaques of the control group.

Digging deeper into the reasons why, the team found that the mice lacking the YKL-40 gene featured more microglia, which are immune cells that surround amyloid plaques and prevent them from spreading. Essentially, this meant that those mice had more hungry immune cells prepared to gobble up the amyloid. [...] The team also examined this idea in human subjects, drawing on genetic data on 778 subjects from aging and dementia studies and finding only a quarter of them featured a genetic variant that lowers levels of YKL-40, and that cognitive function declined 16 percent more slowly in that group. The research was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Vaccine advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration voted easily and quickly to recommend that the agency give emergency use authorization to Moderna's coronavirus vaccine. CNN reports: The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted 20-0 with one abstention to recommend EUA for the Moderna vaccine, which is very similar in design, composition, safety and efficacy to Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccine. That was the only question facing the committee -- whether to recommend EUA. "There's no doubt in my mind that the data -- it looks like the benefits outweigh the risks, from what I've seen," committee member Dr. Steven Pergam, of the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said before the vote.

That did not, however, stop the collection of academics, physicians, public health specialists and others from getting into a lengthy discussion about whether Moderna should offer the vaccine to people who got saline shots -- something that might have the effect of reducing long-term data on how well and safely the vaccine protects people from infection. "Academics have a way of getting involved in details, and what we have done for the last eight or nine hours was to go over the details," Dr. Arnold Monto, an infectious disease specialist and professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, who chairs the panel, said after the vote. He noted the vote this time was more one-sided than last week's vote to recommend Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccine, which came down 17 for, 4 against, with one abstention. Similar to Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccine, the Moderna vaccine uses messenger RNA or mRNA that prompts the body to produce compounds that look like the outside of the coronavirus, causing an immune response that protects against infection. The report notes that "Each vaccine is about 95% effective in preventing symptomatic illness, with few side effects."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: If you're unfortunate enough to breathe wildfire smoke, you're getting a lungful of charred plant material, noxious gases, and -- if the fire tore through human structures -- incinerated synthetic materials. All across the board, it's bad stuff, proven to be a severe detriment to human health, particularly for those with respiratory conditions like asthma. And not to pile on the worries, but that haze also turns out to be loaded with microbes like bacteria and fungi. The problem is, scientists have only just begun to study this smoky microbial community. That led a pair of researchers to publish a new perspective piece in the journal Science today calling for a multidisciplinary push to better characterize these microbes and determine how they might be making wildfire smoke even worse for human lungs. "It's not just comprised of particulate matter and gases, but it also has a significant living component in it," says University of Idaho fire scientist Leda Kobziar, coauthor of the piece. Wildfire smoke may actually spread beneficial organisms for an ecosystem, Kobziar adds, but "what might the consequences be for the spread of pathogens that we know are airborne?"

But hold on a tick: Shouldn't the microbes get cooked to death in the flames? Well, that's not giving these microbes any credit. You see, a wildfire burns with different intensities at different spots as it moves across a landscape. "At the smallest scales, complete combustion is coupled with incomplete combustion," says Kobziar. "Even at one centimeter, you could get very high temperatures for long durations, and at the next centimeter, it can be completely skipped, and no heat at all. So that degree of variability provides a lot of pockets in which these microbes could survive fire." Instead of perishing, they hitch rides on bits of charred carbon and in water vapor, as the wildfire's heat propels all of the muck skyward. If they end up in tiny droplets of water, this could well protect them from desiccation as they travel downwind. "We know that microbes attached to dust particles are certainly transported across continents," Kobziar says. "So we have no reason to believe that that's not also occurring in smoke as smoke travels. But how long do they survive, and which ones survive? That is an open question, and that's exactly the kind of research that we're hoping this paper will inspire."

Microsoft says in a blog post that PepsiCo is using their Project Bonsai "machine teaching" service to "help ensure its Cheetos cheese-puff snacks all have the same texture, crunch and shape," reports The Wall Street Journal. From the blog post: PepsiCo built a computer vision system that continually monitors Cheeto attributes. Data about qualities such as density and length are fed to the Project Bonsai solution, which makes adjustments to bring the product within spec. This approach reduces the time it takes to correct inconsistencies and allows operators to focus on parts of the line that require human expertise. PepsiCo is preparing to use the solution in a production plant and exploring how to use the solution with other products, including the tortilla chip manufacturing process. An out-of-spec product can't be sold, which leads to wasted resources, time, and money. Greater consistency helps PepsiCo maintain high quality products while maximizing throughput.

To make an ideal Cheeto, the solution needed examples of what wasn't ideal -- and needed to know what to do in those cases. The extruder line is self-contained and well-suited for developing and testing an autonomous system solution. Operators had been running it manually, which gave developers the opportunity to build the solution from scratch, instead of on top of other software. The AI solution has a recommendation mode and a closed loop control mode. In both modes, a computer vision system continuously measures the quality of the Cheetos. In recommendation mode, the AI will alert an operator if the product drifts out of spec, displaying on an instrument panel the attributes that are not ideal as well as a recommendation to correct it. The operator can push a button to make any or all recommended adjustments.

In control mode, the only difference is that the AI solution skips the recommendation step and adjusts the extruder line specifications independently. The company expects that running this intelligent control system will return product to acceptable attributes faster. In the current extruder line, operators measure product attributes manually at defined intervals. If the Cheetos are out of spec, the operator makes adjustments based on guidelines or experience to return the product to acceptable quality. The problem: Infrequent sampling meant that the line could be producing out-of-spec Cheetos for a longer period of time without anyone realizing. The Project Bonsai solution will monitor the product almost continuously, using sensors to oversee characteristics such as length and bulk density. That way, it knows as soon as the product strays outside a defined range.

schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: Since that time, according to The Planetary Society's Casey Dreier, NASA has spent $23.7 billion developing the Orion spacecraft. This does not include primary costs for the vehicle's Service Module, which provides power and propulsion, as it is being provided by the European Space Agency. For this money, NASA has gotten a bare-bones version of Orion that flew during the Exploration Flight Test-1 mission in 2014. The agency has also gotten the construction of an Orion capsule -- which also does not have a full life support system -- that will be used during the uncrewed Artemis I mission due to be flown in 12 to 24 months. So over its lifetime, and for $23.7 billion, the Orion program has produced:

- Development of Orion spacecraft
- Exploration Flight Test-1 basic vehicle
- The Orion capsule to be used for another test flight
- Work on capsules for subsequent missions

Obviously, that is not nothing. But it is far from a lot, even for a big government program. To see how efficiently this money could theoretically have been spent, let's use an extreme example. SpaceX is generally considered one of the most efficient space companies. Founded in 2002, the company has received funding from NASA, the Department of Defense, and private investors. Over its history, we can reliably estimate that SpaceX has expended a total of $16 billion to $20 billion on all of its spaceflight endeavors. Consider what that money has bought:

- Development of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy rockets
- Development of Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon, and Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft
- Development of Merlin, Kestrel, and Raptor rocket engines
- Build-out of launch sites at Vandenberg (twice), Kwajalein Atoll, Cape Canaveral, and Kennedy Space Center
- 105 successful launches to orbit
- 20 missions to supply International Space Station, two crewed flights
- Development of vertical take off, vertical landing, rapid reuse for first stages
- Starship and Super Heavy rocket development program
- Starlink Internet program (with 955 satellites on orbit, SpaceX is largest satellite operator in the world)

To sum up, SpaceX delivered all of that for billions of dollars less than what NASA has spent on the Orion program since its inception.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A nine-year-old girl who died following an asthma attack has become the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death. Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham, south-east London, died in 2013. Southwark Coroner's Court found that air pollution "made a material contribution" to Ella's death. Prof Gavin Shaddick, a government adviser on air pollution, called it "a landmark decision."

At the conclusion of the two-week inquest, coroner Philip Barlow said Ella had been exposed to "excessive" levels of pollution. The inquest heard that in the three years before her death, she had multiple seizures and was admitted to hospital 27 times. Delivering a narrative verdict, Mr Barlow said levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) near Ella's home exceeded World Health Organization and European Union guidelines. He added: "There was a recognized failure to reduce the levels of nitrogen dioxide, which possibly contributed to her death. There was also a lack of information given to Ella's mother that possibly contributed to her death." Giving his conclusion over almost an hour, the coroner said: "I will conclude that Ella died of asthma, contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution."

Hmmmmmm writes: Nestled among the mountains in southwest China, the world's largest radio telescope signals Beijing's ambitions as a global centre for scientific research. The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) -- the only significant instrument of its kind after the collapse of another telescope in Puerto Rico this month -- is about to open its doors for foreign astronomers to use, hoping to attract the world's top scientific talent. The world's second-largest radio telescope, at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, was destroyed when its suspended 900-tonne receiver platform came loose and plunged 140 metres (450 feet) onto the radio dish below. Wang Qiming, chief inspector of FAST's operations and development centre, told AFP during a rare visit by the foreign press last week that he had visited Arecibo. "We drew a lot of inspiration from its structure, which we gradually improved to build our telescope."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: When wildfires swept through the hills near Santa Cruz, California, in 2020, they released toxic chemicals into the water supplies of at least two communities. One sample found benzene, a carcinogen, at 40 times the state's drinking water standard. Our testing has now confirmed a source of these chemicals, and it's clear that wildfires aren't the only blazes that put drinking water systems at risk. In a new study, we heated plastic water pipes commonly used in buildings and water systems to test how they would respond to nearby fires. The results, released Dec. 14, show how easily wildfires could trigger widespread drinking water contamination. They also show the risks when only part of a building catches fire and the rest remains in use. In some of our tests, heat exposure caused more than 100 chemicals to leach from the damaged plastics.

To determine if plastic pipes could be responsible for drinking water contamination after wildfires, we exposed commonly available plastic pipes to heat. The temperatures were similar to the heat from a wildfire that radiates toward buildings but isn't enough to cause the pipes to catch fire. We tested several popular plastic drinking water pipes, including high-density polyethylene (HDPE), crosslinked polyethylene (PEX), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and chlorinated polyvinylchloride (CPVC). Benzene and other chemicals were generated inside the plastic pipes just by heating. After the plastics cooled, these chemicals then leached into the water. It happened at temperatures as low as 392 degrees Fahrenheit. Fires can exceed 1,400 degrees. While researchers previously discovered that plastics could release benzene and other chemicals into the air during heating, this new study shows heat-damaged plastics can directly leach dozens of toxic chemicals into water. What can be done about the contamination? The report says a community can stop water contamination if they can quickly isolate the damaged pipes. Rinsing heat-damaged pipes can also work, but some plastic pipes require more than 100 days of nonstop water rinsing to be safe to use. If that's the case, the pipes may need to be replaced instead.

"Water companies can install network isolation valves and backflow prevention devices, to prevent contaminated water moving from a damaged building into the utility pipe network," the report adds. "Insurance companies can use pricing to encourage property owners and cities to install fire-resistant metal pipes instead of plastic. Rules for keeping vegetation away from meter boxes and buildings can also lessen the chance heat reaches plastic water system components."