An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Huntington's disease is caused by a dominant mutation, meaning that anyone who inherits it will develop the disease. Symptoms typically start when people are in their 30s, and those include dementia and the loss of motor control. Despite having identified the gene decades ago, we've struggled to find a way to use that knowledge to make patients' lives better. The protein that is produced by the damaged gene is so similar to the normal version that targeting it has proven nearly impossible. But now, scientists in China have devised a way to specifically get rid of the damaged protein. They've identified molecules that can link the damaged form of the protein to a system that cells use to target proteins for digestion and recycling. Tests in mice and flies seem to indicate that this is enough to reverse many of the problems caused by the Huntington's mutation. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

dryriver shares a report from CNN: Several rival companies may be hard at work trying to get Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept off the ground, but hurtling across country -- maybe even across continents -- at 600 miles per hour in a low-pressure steel tube still feels far from reality. But 13-year-old New York student Caroline Crouchley may have invented a more economically viable and eco-friendly Hyperloop solution. Crouchley's idea, which just won second place in the annual 3M Young Scientist Challenge, is to build pneumatic tubes next to existing train tracks. Magnetic shuttles would travel through these vacuum tubes, connected via magnetic arm to trains traveling on the existing tracks. This system would utilize current train tracks, thereby cutting infrastructure costs and, Crouchley says, eradicating the potential safety risk posed by propelling passengers in a vacuum. There'd be no need for trains to use diesel or electric motors, making the trains lighter and more fuel-efficient. This is important to Crouchley, who aims to devise active solutions to the climate crisis. "I pinpointed transportation as something I wanted to work on because if we can make trains more efficient, then we can eliminate the amount of cars, trucks and buses on the road," Crouchley tells CNN Travel.

Even as Facebook has cracked down on anti-vaxxers and peddlers of snake oil cure-alls, a particularly grotesque form of fake cancer treatment has flourished in private groups on Facebook. From a report: Black salve, a caustic black paste that eats through flesh, is enthusiastically recommended in dedicated groups as a cure for skin and breast cancer -- and for other types of cancer when ingested in pill form. There's even a group dedicated to applying the paste to pets. A Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that these groups don't violate its community guidelines. This summer, it launched an initiative to address "exaggerated or sensational health claims" and will downrank that content in the News Feed, similar to how it handles clickbait. But it's not clear how it defines what a "sensational" health claim is. Citing user privacy, Facebook would not say whether or not it had downranked the black salve groups in the News Feed. Other platforms have taken a different approach. When BuzzFeed News asked YouTube about several videos where people discussed using black salve, YouTube said the videos were in violation and removed them. Amazon, which does not sell the salve itself, removed a book about black salve when BuzzFeed News asked about it.

A group of astronomers have found direct evidence for the first time of the role of galactic winds -- ejections of gas from galaxies -- in creating the circumgalactic medium (CGM). "It exists in the regions around galaxies, and it plays an active role in their cosmic evolution," reports Phys.Org. "The unique composition of Makani -- meaning wind in Hawaiian -- uniquely lent itself to the breakthrough findings." From the report: "Makani is not a typical galaxy," noted [UC San Diego's Alison Coil], a physics professor at UC San Diego. "It's what's known as a late-stage major merger -- two recently combined similarly massive galaxies, which came together because of the gravitational pull each felt from the other as they drew nearer. Galaxy mergers often lead to starburst events, when a substantial amount of gas present in the merging galaxies is compressed, resulting in a burst of new star births. Those new stars, in the case of Makani, likely caused the huge outflows -- either in stellar winds or at the end of their lives when they exploded as supernovae." Coil explained that most of the gas in the universe inexplicably appears in the regions surrounding galaxies -- not in the galaxies. Typically, when astronomers observe a galaxy, they are not witnessing it undergoing dramatic events -- big mergers, the rearrangement of stars, the creation of multiple stars or driving huge, fast winds.

Coil and [Rhodes College's David Rupke], the paper's first author, used data collected from the W. M. Keck Observatory's new Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) instrument, combined with images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), to draw their conclusions. The KCWI data provided what the researchers call the "stunning detection" of the ionized oxygen gas to extremely large scales, well beyond the stars in the galaxy. It allowed them to distinguish a fast gaseous outflow launched from the galaxy a few million year ago, from a gas outflow launched hundreds of millions of years earlier that has since slowed significantly. From the Hubble, the researchers procured images of Makani's stars, showing it to be a massive, compact galaxy that resulted from a merger of two once separate galaxies. From ALMA, they could see that the outflow contains molecules as well as atoms. The data sets indicated that with a mixed population of old, middle-age and young stars, the galaxy might also contain a dust-obscured accreting supermassive black hole. This suggests to the scientists that Makani's properties and timescales are consistent with theoretical models of galactic winds. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The brain waves generated during deep sleep appear to trigger a cleaning system in the brain that protects it against Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. Electrical signals known as slow waves appear just before a pulse of fluid washes through the brain, presumably removing toxins associated with Alzheimer's, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science. The finding could help explain a puzzling link between sleep and Alzheimer's, says Laura Lewis, an author of the study and an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at Boston University. The finding also suggests that people might be able to reduce their risk of Alzheimer's by ensuring that they get high-quality sleep, says William Jagust, a professor of public health and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study.

Cambridge University researchers say some inhalers are bad for the environment because they release greenhouse gases linked to global warming. They recommend patients with asthma talk to their doctors to see if there's a "greener" medication they could switch to to help cut their carbon footprint and save the environment. The BBC reports: There are more than five million people with asthma in the UK. The research looked at the environmental impact of different inhaler medications prescribed to patients on the NHS in England. In 2017, about 50 million inhalers were prescribed. Seven out of every 10 of them were metered-dose inhalers - the type that contain greenhouse gases. The gas -- hydrofluoroalkane -- is used as a propellant to squirt the medicine out of the inhaler.

Metered-dose inhalers account for nearly 4% of NHS greenhouse gas emissions, according to experts. The researchers estimate replacing even one in every 10 of these inhalers with a more environmentally friendly type (dry powder inhalers) would reduce carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 58 kilotons. That's similar to the carbon footprint of 180,000 return car journeys from London to Edinburgh, they say. And at the individual level, each metered-dose inhaler replaced by a dry powder inhaler could save the equivalent of between 150kg and 400kg (63 stone) of carbon dioxide a year - similar to the carbon footprint reduction of cutting meat from your diet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: An amateur radio rig exposed to the internet and discovered by a security researcher was collecting real-time medical data and health information broadcast by hospitals and ambulances across U.K. towns and cities. The rig, operated out of a house in North London, was picking up radio waves from over the air and translating them into readable text. The hobbyist's computer display was filling up with messages about real-time medical emergencies from across the region. For some reason, the hobbyist had set up an internet-connected webcam pointed at the display. But because there was no password on the webcam, anyone who knew where to look could also see what was on the rig's computer display.

Daley Borda, a security researcher and bug bounty hunter, stumbled upon the exposed webcam. The live stream was grainy, and the quality of the images so poor that it was just possible to make out the text on the display. "You can see details of calls coming in -- their name, address, and injury," he told TechCrunch. TechCrunch verified his findings. Messages spilling across the screen appeared to direct nearby ambulances where to go following calls to the 999 emergency services. One message said a 98-year-old man had fallen at his home address. A few moments later, another message said a 49-year-old male was complaining of chest pains at a nearby residence. One after the other, messages were flooding in, describing accidents, incidents and medical emergencies, often including their home addresses. "The hobbyist was picking up and decoding pager communications from a nearby regional National Health Service trust," adds TechCrunch. These devices remain a fixture in UK hospitals and "allow anyone to send messages to one or many pagers at once by calling a dedicated phone number, often manned by an operator, which are then broadcast as radio waves over the pager network."

While the NHS still uses about 130,000 pagers, according to the UK government, it's not clear how many trusts are exposing medical information -- if at all.

A newly announced project called TruSat uses crowdsourced data to track satellites in an effort to hold companies and nations operating in space accountable. From a report: Space junk is a growing concern for those in the space industry, as companies plan to send thousands of satellites to orbit in the coming years. Having reliable means of tracking those satellites and any space junk created from them will be key to creating a sustainable space economy. Today, governments and other organizations are trying to create standards to help limit the amount of space junk produced in orbit. Instead of relying on information from governments or companies and tracking data from the U.S. Air Force, TruSat will use data collected by people on the ground observing satellites from their own backyards. There is already a vibrant community of people around the world who track satellites with binoculars or cameras from the ground and share that information with one another. Users of TruSat are able to enter tracking information for satellites they observe into the program, where it will be included in a crowdsourced record showing the tracks of satellites in the night sky.

A former Juul executive is alleging in a lawsuit that the fast-growing startup shipped out 1 million contaminated e-cigarette pods earlier this year -- but did not tell customers or issue a recall. From a report: The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Siddharth Breja, a former senior vice president of global finance who worked at the San Francisco-based company from May 2018 to March 2019. In the lawsuit -- filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California on the same day that Juul confirmed its plans to lay off about 500 people -- Breja claims he was retaliated against for raising concerns about the contaminated shipment. In another instance, Breja says he was worried when the company, in February 2019, wanted to resell pods that were at that point almost one year old. He protested their resale and urged the company to at least include an expiration or "best by" date, or a date of manufacture, on the packaging. The lawsuit claims that then-CEO Kevin Burns shot down that idea, saying, "Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods."

By the end of this century, rising oceans will almost certainly flood the lands where tens of millions of people live as accelerating climate change warms the waters and melts ice sheets. From a report: But precise estimates of the vulnerable populations depend on precise measurements of the planet's topography, to understand just how close to sea level communities have settled. A new study that seeks to correct for known errors in earlier elevation models finds that researchers might have been undercounting the number of people exposed to rising tides by hundreds of millions. That's three to four times more people than previously projected, depending on the specific scenarios. If these higher estimates prove correct, it will dramatically increase the damages and casualties from sea-level rise, swell the costs of adaption efforts like constructing higher seawalls, and escalate mass migration away from the coasts. Many of the estimates to date have relied on essentially a three-dimensional map of the planet produced from a radar system that flew on board NASA's space shuttle Endeavour in 2000.

Harvard University researchers have found a way to simulate real meat by growing cow and rabbit muscle cells on a scaffold made out of gelatin. Engadget reports: In the body, cells don't just sit there in a pile. They get physical support from water, collagen proteins and nutrients, which help the cells grown and align. "To grow muscle tissues that resembled meat, we needed to find a 'scaffold' material that was edible and allowed muscle cells to attach and grow in 3D," said first study author and Harvard SEAS research associate Luke MacQueen. To create such a scaffold, the team elected to use gelatin, which is made from the collagen extracted from the skin, bones and connective tissue of domesticated animals. It's not only edible, but closely mimics the way collagen adds a succulent texture to meat when it's cooked.

The researchers dissolved gelatin powder into water and spun it into cotton candy-like fibers, then bonded those into a lattice material using enzymes. When rabbit and cow cells were placed on it, they latched on and formed about a square inch of muscle. Cooking and handling tests showed that the texture and springiness of the lab meat was somewhere between a hamburger and a beef tenderloin. The results are promising, but as with lab-grown burgers, you're not likely to see alt-steaks on your plate anytime soon. Scientists and bio-engineers still need to figure out how to grow them at scale in bioreactor facilities to keep up with the expected demand.

dryriver shares a report from the BBC: Scientists have pinpointed the homeland of all humans alive today to a region south of the Zambesi River. The area is now dominated by salt pans, but was once home to an enormous lake, which may have been our ancestral heartland 200,000 years ago. Our ancestors settled for 70,000 years, until the local climate changed, researchers have proposed. They began to move on as fertile green corridors opened up, paving the way for future migrations out of Africa. "It has been clear for some time that anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago," said Prof Vanessa Hayes, a geneticist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia. "What has been long debated is the exact location of this emergence and subsequent dispersal of our earliest ancestors." Prof Hayes' conclusions have drawn scepticism from other researchers in the field, however. The area in question is south of the Zambesi basin, in northern Botswana. The researchers think our ancestors settled near Africa's huge lake system, known as Lake Makgadikgadi, which is now an area of sprawling salt flats. "It's an extremely large area, it would have been very wet, it would have been very lush," said Prof Hayes. "And it would have actually provided a suitable habitat for modern humans and wildlife to have lived." After staying there for 70,000 years, people began to move on. Shifts in rainfall across the region led to three waves of migration 130,000 and 110,000 years ago, driven by corridors of green fertile land opening up.

However, the study, published in the journal Nature, was greeted with caution by one expert, who says you can't reconstruct the story of human origins from mitochondrial DNA alone. Other analyses have produced different answers with fossil discoveries hinting at an eastern African origin. Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London, who is not connected with the study, said the evolution of Homo sapiens was a complex process. "You can't use modern mitochondrial distributions on their own to reconstruct a single location for modern human origins," he told BBC News. "I think it's over-reaching the data because you're only looking at one tiny part of the genome so it cannot give you the whole story of our origins." Thus, there could have been many homelands, rather than one, which have yet to be pinned down.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Just before the Big Bang launched the universe onto its ever-expanding course, physicists believe, there was another, more explosive phase of the early universe at play: cosmic inflation, which lasted less than a trillionth of a second. During this period, matter -- a cold, homogeneous goop -- inflated exponentially quickly before processes of the Big Bang took over to more slowly expand and diversify the infant universe. Recent observations have independently supported theories for both the Big Bang and cosmic inflation. But the two processes are so radically different from each other that scientists have struggled to conceive of how one followed the other.

Now physicists at MIT, Kenyon College, and elsewhere have simulated in detail an intermediary phase of the early universe that may have bridged cosmic inflation with the Big Bang. This phase, known as "reheating," occurred at the end of cosmic inflation and involved processes that wrestled inflation's cold, uniform matter into the ultrahot, complex soup that was in place at the start of the Big Bang. David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics at MIT, and his colleagues simulated in detail how multiple forms of matter would have interacted during this chaotic period at the end of inflation. Their simulations show that the extreme energy that drove inflation could have been redistributed just as quickly, within an even smaller fraction of a second, and in a way that produced conditions that would have been required for the start of the Big Bang. The team found this extreme transformation would have been even faster and more efficient if quantum effects modified the way that matter responded to gravity at very high energies, deviating from the way Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts matter and gravity should interact. The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Algorithms meant to help patients in need of extra medical care are more likely to recommend relatively healthy white patients over sicker black patients, according to new research set to be published in the journal Science. From a report: While the researchers studied one specific algorithm in use at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, they say their audit found that all algorithms of this kind being sold to hospitals function the same way. It's a problem that affects up to 200 million patients being sorted through this system, their paper claims. Sendhil Mullainathan, co-author of the paper and professor at the University of Chicago, says the research is intended to empower "customers" -- hospitals in this case -- to vet the mechanisms behind the software they're buying. "We're going through this phase where customers buying crucial products aren't being informed in what they are," Mullainathan says. "It's like when I buy a car -- I don't literally know what's happening under the hood."

"An unpiloted Air Force X-37B spaceplane, one of two winged orbiters used to carry out classified research, made a surprise landing at the Kennedy Space Center early Sunday to close out a record 780-day mission," reports CBS News: It was the fifth flight in the secretive Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) program, pushing total time aloft to 2,865 days. "This program continues to push the envelope as the (Air Force's) only reusable space vehicle," Randy Walden, director of the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office, said in a statement. "With a successful landing today, the X-37B completed its longest flight to date and successfully completed all mission objectives."

The unpiloted orbiters, built by Boeing, are based on the same lifting body design used for the space shuttle and they fly a similar re-entry trajectory to a runway touchdown. The X-37B features a small 4-foot by 7-foot payload bay and uses a deployable solar array for power. The spacecraft are believed to fly as orbital test beds for advanced technology sensors and other systems but the program is classified, and the Air Force provides few details. Walden said the latest mission "successfully hosted Air Force Research Laboratory experiments, among others, as well as providing a ride for small satellites...."

The X-37B is one of only two operational spacecraft capable of multiple flights to and from orbit. SpaceX's unpiloted Dragon cargo ship also can be refurbished for additional flights... "This spacecraft is a key component of the space community," Lt. Col. Jonathan Keen, X-37B program manager, said in the Air Force statement. "This milestone demonstrates our commitment to conducting experiments for America's future space exploration. Congratulations to the X-37B team for a job well done."

"A Michigan family was shocked to find a space satellite in their yard Saturday morning," reports a local TV station: Nancy Mumby-Welke shared the video on Facebook, walking up to a satellite lying on its side. "You never know what's going to happen," Welke says in the video. "This baby fell out of the sky and landed in our yard," she went on to say.

According to the Gratiot County Herald, Welke heard the crash around 8:45 a.m. just before they were going to let their horses out. "Thank God none of the horses were out and it didn't land on the house," Welke explained in the video. Welke says when she walked up to it, the satellite was still humming and whirring...

The Herald says Samsung representatives will pick up the equipment from the Welkes' property.
In an announcement last week Samsung said their satellite "pushes the boundaries of innovation." That announcement also promised a "bold, out-of-this-world mission... demonstrating the pioneering spirit of its brand and setting a new standard for the potential of mobile technology."

The announcement said the satellite "will showcase the strength of Samsung's innovations and how it continues to design products that make what was previously impossible, possible." And it quotes their chief marketing officer for Europe as promising "we will show that amazing things continue to happen using Samsung technology."

In a statement to the Detroit Free Press, Samsung blamed the "early soft landing" during the satellite's planned descent on the weather. "We regret any inconvenience this may have caused."

Smithsonian magazine reports on a new study that concluded it may be possible to grow agricultural crops right in the soil of Mars -- and on the moon. For their paper in the journal Open Agriculture, researchers from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands planted ten different earthly crops in three types of soil. One was typical, garden-variety potting soil, another was simulated lunar dust, and a third was simulated Martian soil... Each Friday of the experiment, they added a nutrient-rich solution created to mimic the addition of human manure and urine that astro-colonists would likely add to their lunar farms. The crops planted in the soils included garden cress, rocket (aka arugula), tomato, radish, rye, quinoa, spinach, chives, peas and leeks.

Of those, the only vegetable that failed to grow well in the exo-soils was spinach. The radishes, cress and rye all grew to a point where seeds could be harvested. The team was also able to harvest tomatoes and peas from the lunar and Martian soils. The chives and leeks grew steadily, but slower than normal. While the quinoa produced flowers, it did not produce seeds. Still, the team reports that they suspect this is the first time any plants have been grown large enough to produce fruit in the soil simulants.

In a follow-up, the team were able to germinate the radish, cress and rye seeds produced on the Mars and lunar soils, suggesting that the production of self-sustaining crops might be possible in space.

America's National Transportation Safety Board has now officially determined the probable causes of a Florida pedestrian bridge's collapse in March of 2018: load and capacity calculation errors made by FIGG Bridge Engineers.

Slashdot reader McGruber shares their report: Contributing to the collapse was Louis Berger's inadequate peer review, which failed to detect FIGG's calculation errors in its design of the main span truss member 11/12 nodal region and connection to the bridge deck. The FIGG engineer of record's failure to identify the significance of structural cracking observed in this node before the collapse, and failure to obtain an independent peer review of the remedial plan to address the cracking, further contributed to the collapse...

Six of the eight lanes of the roadway traveling under the bridge were open at the time of the collapse. The failure of FIGG, MCM, Bolton Perez and Associates Consulting Engineers, FIU and the Florida Department of Transportation to cease bridge work and close SW 8th Street to protect public safety contributed to the severity of the collapse outcome, said the NTSB during the meeting.

"Errors in bridge design, inadequate peer review and poor engineering judgment led to the collapse of this bridge," said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt. "The failure of all concerned parties, to recognize and take action on the threat to public safety presented by the significant observed bridge structure distress prior to the collapse, led to the tragic loss of life in this preventable accident."
The report also concludes that Louis Berger "was not qualified by the Florida Department of Transportation to conduct an independent peer review" -- and that Florida's Department of Transportation "should have verified Louis Berger's qualifications as an independent peer review firm as part of FDOT's oversight of local agency program projects."

Russian scientists tracking migrating eagles ran out of money after some of the birds flew to Iran and Pakistan and their SMS transmitters drew huge data roaming charges. The BBC reports: After learning of the team's dilemma, Russian mobile phone operator Megafon offered to cancel the debt and put the project on a special, cheaper tariff. The team had started crowdfunding on social media to pay off the bills. The birds left from southern Russia and Kazakhstan. The journey of one steppe eagle, called Min, was particularly expensive, as it flew to Iran from Kazakhstan. Min accumulated SMS messages to send during the summer in Kazakhstan, but it was out of range of the mobile network. Unexpectedly the eagle flew straight to Iran, where it sent the huge backlog of messages.

The price per SMS in Kazakhstan was about 15 roubles (18p; 30 US cents), but each SMS from Iran cost 49 roubles. Min used up the entire tracking budget meant for all the eagles. Megafon's offer to bail out the team, reported by RIA Novosti news, means they can continue monitoring the eagles' routes, collecting vital data to help their survival.

ScienceAlert reports on a new study published in the journal eLife that explains for the first time how ants are immune to traffic jams, even under crowded conditions. From the report: By cooperating in a self-organized system, researchers have found that Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) can adapt to different road conditions and prevent clogging from ever occurring. All it takes is a little selflessness and restraint - something we humans should maybe consider. Filming 170 repeat experiments, researchers observed how this particular species of ant moved along a bridge between their nest and a food source. The experiments included different widths of bridge (5 mm, 10 mm, and 20 mm), holding anywhere between 400 and 25,600 ants. Throughout the process, data was collected on traffic flow, the speed of the ants, and the number of collisions that occurred. What the authors found was surprising: these ants appeared to be immune to traffic jams.

"The exact nature of the mechanisms used by Argentine ants to keep the traffic flowing in this study remains elusive," they write, "yet when density on the trail increases, ants seemed to be able to assess crowding locally, and adjusted their speed accordingly to avoid any interruption of traffic flow." In fact, compared to humans, these ants could load up the bridge with twice the capacity without slowing down. When humans are walking or driving, the flow of traffic usually begins to slow when occupancy reaches 40 percent. Argentine ants, on the other hand, show no signs of slowing, even when the bridge occupancy reached 80 percent. And they do this through self-imposed speed regulation. When it's moderately busy, for instance, the authors found the ants actually speed up, accelerating until a maximum flow or capacity is reached. Whereas, when a trail is overcrowded, the ants restrained themselves and avoided joining until things thinned out. Plus, at high density times like this, the ants were found to change their behavior and slow down to avoid more time-wasting collisions.