A newly FDA-approved form of adaptive deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease adjusts electrical stimulation in real time based on an individual's brain signals, improving symptom control and reducing medication dependence. Scientific American: For decades, Keith Krehbiel took high doses of medications with a debilitating side effect -- severe nausea -- following his diagnosis with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 42 in 1997. When each dose wore off, he experienced dyskinesia -- involuntary, repetitive muscle movements. In his case, this consisted of head bobbing and weaving. Krehbiel is among one million Americans who live with this progressive neurological disorder, which causes slowed movements, tremors and balance problems. But soon after surgery to implant electrodes into specific areas of his brain in 2020, his life dramatically improved. "My tremor went away almost entirely," says Krehbiel, now age 70 and a professor emeritus of political science at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose Parkinson's symptoms began at age 40 and were initially misdiagnosed as repetitive stress injury from computer use. "I reduced my Parkinson's meds by more than two thirds," he adds. "And I no longer have a sensation of a foggy brain, nor nausea or dyskinesia."

Krehbiel was the first participant to enroll in a clinical trial testing a new form of deep-brain stimulation (DBS), a technology that gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Parkinson's tremor and essential tremor in 1997 (it was later approved for other symptoms and conditions). The new adaptive system adjusts stimulation levels automatically based on the person's individual brain signals. In late February it received FDA approval for Parkinson's disease "based on results of the international multicenter trial, which involved participants at 10 sites across a total of four countries -- the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada and France. This technology is suitable for anyone with Parkinson's, not just individuals in clinical trials, says Helen Bronte-Stewart, the recent trial's global lead investigator and a neurologist specializing in movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. "Like a cardiac pacemaker that responds to the rhythms of the heart, adaptive deep-brain stimulation uses a person's individual brain signals to control the electric pulses it delivers," Bronte-Stewart says. "This makes it more personalized, precise and efficient than older DBS methods."

"Traditional DBS delivers constant stimulation, which doesn't always match the fluctuating symptoms of Parkinson's disease," adds neurologist Todd Herrington, another of the trial's investigators and director of the deep-brain stimulation program at Massachusetts General Hospital. With adaptive DBS, "the goal is to adjust stimulation in real time to provide more effective symptom control, fewer side effects and improved patient quality of life." Current FDA approval of this adaptive system is for the treatment of Parkinson's only, not essential tremor, dystonia (a neurological disorder that causes excessive, repetitive and involuntary muscle contractions) or epilepsy, which still rely on traditional, continuous DBS, Herrington says.

Across high-income countries, humans' ability to reason and solve problems appears to have peaked in the early 2010s and declined since. Despite no changes in fundamental brain biology, test scores for both teenagers and adults show deteriorating performance in reading, mathematics and science. In an eye-opening statistic, 25% of adults in high-income countries now struggle to "use mathematical reasoning when reviewing statements" -- rising to 35% in the US.

This cognitive decline coincides with a fundamental shift in our relationship with information. Americans reading books has fallen below 50%, while difficulty thinking and concentrating among 18-year-olds has climbed sharply since the mid-2010s. The timing points to our changing digital habits: a transition from finite web pages to infinite feeds, from active browsing to passive consumption, and from focused attention to constant context-switching.

Research shows that intentional use of digital technologies can be beneficial, but the passive consumption dominating recent years impairs verbal processing, attention, working memory and self-regulation.

Some of the cited research in the story:
New PIAAC results show declining literacy and increasing inequality in many European countries â" Better adult learning is necessary;
Have attention spans been declining?;
Short- and long-term effects of passive and active screen time on young children's phonological memory;
Efficient, helpful, or distracting? A literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance.

Google collaborated with Imperial College London and its "Fleming Initiative" partnership with Imperial NHS, giving their scientists "access to a powerful new AI designed" built with Gemini 2.0 "to make research faster and more efficient," according to an announcement from the school. And the results were surprising...

"José Penadés and his colleagues at Imperial College London spent 10 years figuring out how some superbugs gain resistance to antibiotics," writes LiveScience. "But when the team gave Google's 'co-scientist'' — an AI tool designed to collaborate with researchers — this question in a short prompt, the AI's response produced the same answer as their then-unpublished findings in just two days." Astonished, Penadés emailed Google to check if they had access to his research. The company responded that it didn't. The researchers published their findings [about working with Google's AI] Feb. 19 on the preprint server bioRxiv...

"What our findings show is that AI has the potential to synthesise all the available evidence and direct us to the most important questions and experimental designs," co-author Tiago Dias da Costa, a lecturer in bacterial pathogenesis at Imperial College London, said in a statement. "If the system works as well as we hope it could, this could be game-changing; ruling out 'dead ends' and effectively enabling us to progress at an extraordinary pace...."

After two days, the AI returned suggestions, one being what they knew to be the correct answer. "This effectively meant that the algorithm was able to look at the available evidence, analyse the possibilities, ask questions, design experiments and propose the very same hypothesis that we arrived at through years of painstaking scientific research, but in a fraction of the time," Penadés, a professor of microbiology at Imperial College London, said in the statement. The researchers noted that using the AI from the start wouldn't have removed the need to conduct experiments but that it would have helped them come up with the hypothesis much sooner, thus saving them years of work.

Despite these promising findings and others, the use of AI in science remains controversial. A growing body of AI-assisted research, for example, has been shown to be irreproducible or even outright fraudulent.
Google has also published the first test results of its AI 'co-scientist' system, according to Imperial's announcement, which adds that academics from a handful of top-universities "asked a question to help them make progress in their field of biomedical research... Google's AI co-scientist system does not aim to completely automate the scientific process with AI. Instead, it is purpose-built for collaboration to help experts who can converse with the tool in simple natural language, and provide feedback in a variety of ways, including directly supplying their own hypotheses to be tested experimentally by the scientists."

Google describes their system as "intended to uncover new, original knowledge and to formulate demonstrably novel research hypotheses and proposals, building upon prior evidence and tailored to specific research objectives...

"We look forward to responsible exploration of the potential of the AI co-scientist as an assistive tool for scientists," Google adds, saying the project "illustrates how collaborative and human-centred AI systems might be able to augment human ingenuity and accelerate scientific discovery.

"For the first time in history, a privately operated lunar lander has captured images of a total eclipse from the Moon's surface," reports Daily Galaxy.

While the Athena lunar lander tipped over and ended its mission, elsewhere on the moon Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander "continues to beam home incredible imagery," writes Space.com, and since its landing on March 2 "has been sending us stunning photos and videos..." A new video of Blue Ghost's moon-side view captures the eerie red light on the moon (caused by sunlight refracting through the atmosphere over the edges of the earth). "Blue Ghost turns red!" Firefly writes on their mission updates page.

A SpaceX photographer also captured the eclipse as it happened over a Falcon 9 rocket waiting to launch to the International Space Station, in a remarkable time-lapse photograph.

And Space.com collects more interesting lunar-eclipse photos taken from around the world, including Appin, Scotland; Canberra, Australia; and Palm Springs, California...

"SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said his Starship rocket will head to Mars by the end of next year," writes the BBC, "as the company investigates several recent explosions in flight tests." Human landings could begin as early as 2029 if initial missions go well, though "2031 was more likely", he added in a post on his social media platform X...

The billionaire said in 2020 that he remained confident that his company would land humans on Mars six years later. In 2024, he said he would launch the first Starships to Mars in 2026, with plans to send crewed flights in four years.

Musk has said that the coming Mars mission would carry the Tesla humanoid robot "Optimus", which was shown to the public last year.

"Is everything we see around us is sealed within a black hole?" asks Space.com.

Because here's the thing. The $10 billion James Webb Space telescope (in operation since 2022) "has found that the vast majority of deep space and, thus the early galaxies it has so far observed, are rotating in the same direction. While around two-thirds of galaxies spin clockwise, the other third rotates counter-clockwise." In a random universe, scientists would expect to find 50% of galaxies rotating one way, while the other 50% rotate the other way. This new research suggests there is a preferred direction for galactic rotation... "It is still not clear what causes this to happen, but there are two primary possible explanations," team leader Lior Shamir, associate professor of computer science at the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering, said in a statement. "One explanation is that the universe was born rotating.

"That explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology, which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole.

"But if the universe was indeed born rotating, it means that the existing theories about the cosmos are incomplete." Black hole cosmology, also known as "Schwarzschild cosmology," suggests that our observable universe might be the interior of a black hole itself within a larger parent universe. The idea was first introduced by theoretical physicist Raj Kumar Pathria and by mathematician I. J. Good. It presents the idea that the "Schwarzchild radius," better known as the "event horizon," (the boundary from within which nothing can escape a black hole, not even light) is also the horizon of the visible universe.
The article cites a theory by Polish theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven that ultimately black holes don't compress indefinitely into a singularity. "The matter instead reaches a state of finite, extremely large density, stops collapsing, undergoes a bounce like a compressed spring, and starts rapidly expanding," Poplawski explained to Space.com... The scientist continued by adding that rapid recoil after such a big bounce could be what has led to our expanding universe, an event we now refer to as the Big Bang... "I think that the simplest explanation of the rotating universe is the universe was born in a rotating black hole."
Team leader Shamir offers another theory: that we just need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe. (Which could also explain the difference in the expansion rates in the universe "and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself.")

Slashdot has run nearly a dozen stories about Michael Mann, one of America's most prominent climate scientists and a co-creator of the famous "hockey stick" graph of spiking temperatures. In 2012 Mann sued two bloggers for defamation — and last year Mann finally won more than $1 million, reports the Washington Post. "A jury found that two conservative commentators had defamed him by alleging that he was like a child molester in the way he had 'molested and tortured' climate data."

But "Now, a year after that ruling, the case has taken a turn that leaves Mann in the position of the one who owes money." On Wednesday, a judge sanctioned Mann's legal team for "bad-faith trial misconduct" for overstating how much the scientist lost in potential grant funding as a result of reputational harm. The lawyers had shown jurors a chart that listed one grant amount Mann didn't get at $9.7 million, though in other testimony Mann said it was worth $112,000. And when comparing Mann's grant income before and after the negative commentary, the lawyers cited a disparity of $2.8 million, but an amended calculation pegged it at $2.37 million.


The climate scientist's legal team said it was preparing to fight the setbacks in court. Peter J. Fontaine, one of Mann's attorneys, wrote in an email that Mann "believes that the court committed errors of fact and law and will pursue these matters further." Fontaine emphasized that the original decision — that Mann was defamed by the commentary — still stands. "We have reviewed the recent rulings by the D.C. Superior Court and are pleased to note that the court has upheld the jury's verdict," he said.
Thanks to Slashdot reader UsuallyReasonable for sharing the news.

Astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope have discovered 128 new moons around Saturn, bringing its total to 274 -- more than all the other planets combined. CBC News reports: Jupiter and Saturn have been locked in a battle for the most moons for years -- with Saturn stealing the crown from Jupiter only two years ago when the same group of researchers found 64 additional moons orbiting it. But scientists say this discovery likely settles the score once and for all. [...] He and the other scientists working on the project made the discovery using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, a 3.6-meter optical telescope on the summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Scientists have been capturing pictures of the moons using the telescope since 2019. The researchers aligned and layered 44 of those images on top of one another in order to enhance the appearance of the moons and determine what they were. These moons are nothing like Earth's very own, however. Sara Mazrouei, a planetary scientist and educational developer at Humber Polytechnic, says that while we tend to think of a spherical shape when we hear the word moon, anything that orbits a planet, or another body in space that is not a sun, is considered a moon. Mazrouei says many of the moons surrounding other planets in our solar system -- including the ones observed here -- are in fact only a few kilometers across in size and oddly shaped, like an asteroid.

From a Space.com article: Athena, the second lunar lander from Houston company Intuitive Machines, tipped over during its touchdown on March 6, ending up on its side within a small crater near the moon's south pole. This orientation prevented the lander's solar panels from capturing enough sunlight, and Intuitive Machines declared Athena dead on March 7. (The company's first moon lander, named Odysseus, also tipped over during its historic February 2024 touchdown but was able to operate for longer on the lunar surface.)

Athena beamed home a few shots of its surroundings before giving up the ghost. And we now have views of the lander and its crater grave from on high, courtesy of NASA's sharp-eyed Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). On March 7, LRO captured a gorgeous oblique photo of Athena and its landing site -- the Mons Mouton region, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole. Then, three days later, the probe snapped another pic, which provided a closer look at Athena on the shadowed floor of a 65-foot-wide (20 meters) crater.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a four-member crew to the International Space Station on Friday night, paving the way for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return to Earth after being there for nine months due to issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule. Arrival is set for late Saturday night. The Associated Press reports: NASA wants overlap between the two crews so Wilmore and Williams can fill in the newcomers on happenings aboard the orbiting lab. That would put them on course for an undocking next week and a splashdown off the Florida coast, weather permitting. The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew up on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September alongside two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.

Reaching orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, the newest crew includes NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free. "Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher," McClain said minutes into the flight. You can watch a recording of the launch here.

Wilmore and Williams aren't stranded on the International Space Station, and they weren't abandoned, the astronauts reminded CNN in a rare space-to-earth interview last month. "That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck -- and I get it. We both get it," [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. "But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded." Wilmore added a request: "If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.' That's what we prefer..."

A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets reveals that atmospheric gravity waves play a crucial role in driving latitudinal air currents on Mars, particularly at high altitudes. Phys.Org reports: The study applied methods developed to explore Earth's atmosphere to quantitatively estimate the influence of gravity waves on Mars' planetary circulation. [...] "On Earth, large-scale atmospheric waves caused by the planet's rotation, known as Rossby waves, are the primary influence on the way air circulates in the stratosphere, or the lower part of the middle atmosphere. But our study shows that on Mars, gravity waves (GWs) have a dominant effect at the mid and high latitudes of the middle atmosphere," said Professor Kaoru Sato from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science. "Rossby waves are large-scale atmospheric waves, or resolved waves, whereas GWs are unresolved waves, meaning they are too fine to be directly measured or modeled and must be estimated by more indirect means."

Not to be confused with gravitational waves from massive stellar bodies, GWs are an atmospheric phenomenon when a packet of air rises and falls due to variations in buoyancy. That oscillating motion is what gives rise to GWs. Due to the small-scale nature of them and the limitations of observational data, researchers have previously found it challenging to quantify their significance in the Martian atmosphere. So Sato and her team turned to the Ensemble Mars Atmosphere Reanalysis System (EMARS) dataset, produced by a range of space-based observations over many years, to analyze seasonal variations up there.

"We found something interesting, that GWs facilitate the rapid vertical transfer of angular momentum, significantly influencing the meridional, or north-south, in the middle atmosphere circulations on Mars," said graduate student Anzu Asumi. "It's interesting because it more closely resembles the behavior seen in Earth's mesosphere rather than in our stratosphere. This suggests existing Martian atmospheric circulation models may need to be refined to better incorporate these wave effects, potentially improving future climate and weather simulations."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Last week, Aix Marseille University, France's largest university, invited American scientists who believe their work is at risk of being censored by Donald Trump administration's anti-science policies to continue their research in France. Today, the university announced that it is already seeing great interest from scientists at NASA, Yale, Stanford, and other American schools and government agencies, and that it wants to expand the program to other schools and European countries to absorb all the researchers who want to leave the United States. "We are witnessing a new brain drain," Eric Berton, Aix Marseille University's president, said in a press release. "We will do everything in our power to help as many scientists as possible continue their research. However, we cannot meet all demands on our own. The Ministry of Education and Research is fully supporting and assisting us in this effort, which is intended to expand at both national and European levels."

The press release from the university claims that researchers from Stanford, Yale, NASA, the National Institute of Health, George Washington University, "and about 15 other prestigious institutions," are now considering "scientific exile." More than 40 American scientists have expressed interest in the program, it said. Their key research areas are "health (LGBT+ medicine, epidemiology, infectious diseases, inequalities, immunology, etc.), environment and climate change (natural disaster management, greenhouse gases, social impact, artificial intelligence), humanities and social sciences (communication, psychology, history, cultural heritage), astrophysics."

"The current Executive Orders have led to a termination of one of my research grants. While it was not a lot of money, it was a high profile, large national study," one researcher who has reached out to Aix Marseille University in order to take advantage of the program told me. 404 Media granted the researcher anonymity because speaking about the program might jeopardize their current position at a leading American university. "While I have not had to lay off staff as a result of that particular cancellation, I will have to lay off staff if additional projects are terminated. Everything I focus on is now a banned word." The program, called "Safe Place for Science," initially will fund 15 researchers with 15 million Euros. Aix Marseille University says that it is already working closely with the regional government and France's Chamber of Commerce and Industry "to facilitate the arrival of these scientists and their families in the region, offering support with employment, housing, school access, transportation, and visas." "We are doing what is necessary to provide them with the best living environment. We are ready to welcome them and will make them true children of the country!" Renaud Muselier, President of the Regional Council of Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, said in a statement.

An Australian man in his forties has become the first person in the world to leave hospital with an artificial heart made of titanium. From a report: The device is used as a stopgap for people with heart failure who are waiting for a donor heart, and previous recipients of this type of artificial heart had remained in US hospitals while it was in place.

The man lived with the device for more than three months until he underwent surgery to receive a donated human heart. The man is recovering well, according to a statement from St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Australia, where the operations were conducted. The Australian is the sixth person globally to receive the device, known as BiVACOR, but the first to live with it for more than a month.

Using the Summit supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, researchers have modeled a key component of nucleotide excision repair (NER) called the pre-incision complex (PInC), which plays a crucial role in DNA damage repair. Their study, published in Nature Communications, provides new insights into how the PInC machinery orchestrates precise DNA excision, potentially leading to advancements in treating genetic disorders, preventing premature aging, and understanding conditions like xeroderma pigmentosum and Cockayne syndrome. Phys.Org reports: "Computationally, once you assemble the PInC, molecular dynamics simulations of the complex become relatively straightforward, especially on large supercomputers like Summit," [said lead investigator Ivaylo Ivanov, a chemistry professor at Georgia State University]. Nanoscale Molecular Dynamics, or NAMD, is a molecular dynamics code specifically designed for supercomputers and is used to simulate the movements and interactions of large biomolecular systems that contain millions of atoms. Using NAMD, the research team ran extensive simulations. The number-crunching power of the 200-petaflop Summit supercomputer -- capable of performing 200,000 trillion calculations per second -- was essential in unraveling the functional dynamics of the PInC complex on a timescale of microseconds. "The simulations showed us a lot about the complex nature of the PInC machinery. It showed us how these different components move together as modules and the subdivision of this complex into dynamic communities, which form the moving parts of this machine," Ivanov said.

The findings are significant in that mutations in XPF and XPG can lead to severe human genetic disorders. They include xeroderma pigmentosum, which is a condition that makes people more susceptible to skin cancer, and Cockayne syndrome, which can affect human growth and development, lead to impaired hearing and vision, and speed up the aging process. "Simulations allow us to zero in on these important regions because mutations that interfere with the function of the NER complex often occur at community interfaces, which are the most dynamic regions of the machine," Ivanov said. "Now we have a much better understanding of how and from where these disorders manifest."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers at Harvard University led the study, and it included nearly 58,000 adults in Japan who were followed for up to a year using a database of medical records from routine checkups. Researchers found that when people switched from being nondrinkers to drinkers during the study, they saw a drop in their "bad" cholesterol -- aka low-density lipoprotein cholesterol or LDL. Meanwhile, their "good" cholesterol -- aka high-density lipoprotein cholesterol or HDL -- went up when they began imbibing. HDL levels went up so much, that it actually beat out improvements typically seen with medications, the researchers noted.

On the other hand, drinkers who stopped drinking during the study saw the opposite effect: Upon giving up booze, their bad cholesterol went up and their good cholesterol went down. The cholesterol changes scaled with the changes in drinking. That is, for people who started drinking, the more they started drinking, the lower their LDL fell and higher their HDL rose. In the newly abstaining group, those who drank the most before quitting saw the biggest changes in their lipid levels.

Specifically, people who went from drinking zero drinks to 1.5 drinks per day or less saw their bad LDL cholesterol fall 0.85 mg/dL and their good HDL cholesterol go up 0.58 mg/dL compared to nondrinkers who never started drinking. For those that went from zero to 1.5 to three drinks per day, their bad LDL dropped 4.4 mg/dL and their good HDL rose 2.49 mg/dL. For people who started drinking three or more drinks per day, their LDL fell 7.44 mg/dL and HDL rose 6.12 mg/dL. For people who quit after drinking 1.5 drinks per day or less, their LDL rose 1.10 mg/dL and their HDL fell by 1.25 mg/dL. Quitting after drinking 1.5 to three drinks per day, led to a rise in LDL of 3.71 mg/dL and a drop in HDL of 3.35. Giving up three or more drinks per day led to an LDL increase of 6.53 mg/dL and a drop in HDL of 5.65. The study has been published in JAMA Network Open.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: According to information at this tweet from anonymous sources, parts of Starship will likely require a major redesign due to the spacecraft's break-up shortly after stage separation on its last two test flights. These are the key take-aways, most of which focus on the redesign of the first version of Starship (V1) to create the V2 that flew unsuccessfully on those flights:

- Hot separation also aggravates the situation in the compartment.
- Not related to the flames from the Super Heavy during the booster turn.
- This is a fundamental miscalculation in the design of the Starship V2 and the engine section.
- The fuel lines, wiring for the engines and the power unit will be urgently redone.
- The fate of S35 and S36 is still unclear. Either revision or scrap.
- For the next ships, some processes may be paused in production until a decision on the design is made.
- The team was rushed with fixes for S34, hence the nervous start. There was no need to rush.
- The fixes will take much longer than 4-6 weeks.
- Comprehensive ground testing with long-term fire tests is needed. [emphasis mine]

It must be emphasized that this information comes from leaks from anonymous sources, and could be significantly incorrect. It does however fit the circumstances, and suggests that the next test flight will not occur in April but will be delayed for an unknown period beyond.

A new chapter has begun for two of the world's most popular preprint platforms, bioRxiv and medRxiv, with the launch of a non-profit organization that will manage them, their co-founders announced today. From a report: The servers allow researchers to share manuscripts for free before peer review and have become an integral part of publishing biology and medical research. Until now, they had been managed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York. The new organization, named openRxiv, will have a board of directors and a scientific and medical advisory board. It is supported by a fresh US$16-million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the projects' main financial backer.

"It's just exciting to see this key piece of infrastructure really get the attention that it deserves as a dedicated initiative," says Katie Corker, executive director of ASAPbio, a scientist-driven non-profit organization, which is based in San Francisco, California. Preprints are "the backbone of the scientific publishing ecosystem, maybe especially at the current moment, when there's a lot of worries about who has control of information."

The launch of openRxiv "reflects a maturation of the projects," which started as an experiment at CSHL, says Richard Sever, a co-founder of both servers and chief science and strategy officer at openRxiv. It has "become so important that they should have their own organization running them, which is focused on the long-term sustainability of the servers, as opposed to being a side project within a big research institution," says Sever.

Abstract of a paper published on Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management:The adoption of digital menus accessed through quick response (QR) codes has witnessed a notable upsurge. Despite potential benefits for restaurant operators, the nuanced effects of QR code menus on customer behavior and experience remain relatively unknown. This research investigates the influence of menu presentation (QR code vs. traditional) on customer loyalty. In two studies, we find that QR code menus diminish customer loyalty (compared to traditional menus) due to perceived inconvenience. This effect is further moderated by customers' need for interaction. Our work is timely in highlighting the negative impact of perceptions of inconvenience on technology adoption.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has taken control of rocket startup Relativity Space, replacing co-founder Tim Ellis as CEO and significantly funding the company's development of its medium-lift rocket, Terran R. The New York Times first reported (paywalled) the news. Ars Technica reports: Schmidt's involvement with Relativity has been quietly discussed among space industry insiders for a few months. Multiple sources told Ars that he has largely been bankrolling the company since the end of October, when the company's previous fundraising dried up. It is not immediately clear why Schmidt is taking a hands-on approach at Relativity. However, it is one of the few US-based companies with a credible path toward developing a medium-lift rocket that could potentially challenge the dominance of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. If the Terran R booster becomes commercially successful, it could play a big role in launching megaconstellations.

Schmidt's ascension also means that Tim Ellis, the company's co-founder, chief executive, and almost sole public persona for nearly a decade, is now out of a leadership position. "Today marks a powerful new chapter as Eric Schmidt becomes Relativity's CEO, while also providing substantial financial backing," Ellis wrote on the social media site X. "I know there's no one more tenacious or passionate to propel this dream forward. We have been working together to ensure a smooth transition, and I'll proudly continue to support the team as Co-founder and Board member." Relativity also on Monday released a video outlining the development of the Terran R rocket and the work required to reach the launch pad.

According to the video, the first "flight" version of the Terran R rocket will be built this year, with tentative plans to launch from a pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2026. "The company aims to soft land the first stage of the first launch in the Atlantic Ocean," adds Ars. "However, the 'Block 1' version of the rocket will not fly again."

"Full reuse of the first stage will be delayed to future upgrades. Eventually, the Relativity officials said, they intend to reach a flight rate of 50 to 100 rockets a year with the Terran R when the vehicle is fully developed."

NASA is eliminating approximately 20 positions, including its chief scientist and roles related to technology, policy, and diversity. The move, as part of a Trump administration effort to reduce staffing, "could be a harbinger of deeper cuts to NASA's science missions and a greater emphasis on human spaceflight, especially to Mars," reports the New York Times. From the report: The cuts affect about 20 employees at NASA, including Katherine Calvin, the chief scientist and a climate science expert. The last day of work for Dr. Calvin and the other staff members will be April 10. [...] The eliminated positions include the chief technologist and chief economist for the agency, which were part of the technology, policy and strategy office. Chief technologist positions at NASA centers like the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida are not affected, the notice said. The agency is also cutting several positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion in its Office of Equal Opportunity. The notice said that NASA estimated severance costs would be about $1.2 million.

"To optimize our work force, and in compliance with an executive order, NASA is beginning its phased approach to a reduction in force, known as a RIF," Cheryl Wheeler, a NASA spokeswoman, said in an email. "A small number of individuals received notification Monday they are a part of NASA's RIF." Eligible employees could opt for early retirement, Ms. Wheeler said. The Democratic House staff members said they worried deeper cuts at NASA would follow.