For two decades, researchers have used brain-imaging technology to try to identify how the structure and function of a person's brain connects to a range of mental-health ailments, from anxiety and depression to suicidal tendencies. But a new paper, published Wednesday in Nature, calls into question whether much of this research is actually yielding valid findings. The New York Times reports: Many such studies, the paper's authors found, tend to include fewer than two dozen participants, far shy of the number needed to generate reliable results. "You need thousands of individuals," said Scott Marek, a psychiatric researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and an author of the paper. He described the finding as a "gut punch" for the typical studies that use imaging to try to better understand mental health.

Studies that use magnetic-resonance imaging technology commonly temper their conclusions with a cautionary statement noting the small sample size. But enlisting participants can be time-consuming and expensive, ranging from $600 to $2,000 an hour, said Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a neurologist at Washington University School of Medicine and another author on the paper. The median number of subjects in mental-health-related studies that use brain imaging is around 23, he added. But the Nature paper demonstrates that the data drawn from just two dozen subjects is generally insufficient to be reliable and can in fact yield 'massively inflated' findings," Dr. Dosenbach said. The findings from the Nature paper can "absolutely" be applied to other fields beyond mental health, said Marek. "My hunch this is much more about population science than it is about any one of those fields," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard in collaboration with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent not-for-profit news organization based in London: Campylobacter is America's biggest cause of foodborne illness, just ahead of salmonella. Both are potentially fatal. Yet between 2015 and 2020, U.S. companies sold tens of thousands of meat products contaminated with campylobacter and salmonella, according to government sampling records obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. More than half of these were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant strains, a rapidly escalating issue that can be exacerbated by poor hygiene conditions. The poultry companies supply major grocery stores and fast-food chains. Tyson has supplied chicken to McDonald's, Perdue has sold to Whole Foods, and both have supplied Walmart.

Although the USDA deems a certain level of salmonella and campylobacter within poultry acceptable, 12 major U.S. poultry companies -- including poultry giants Perdue, Pilgrim's Pride, Tyson, Foster Farms, and Koch Foods -- have exceeded USDA standards for acceptable levels of salmonella multiple times since 2018, when the government began reporting contamination rates at individual plants, according to the department's records. The USDA still runs tests for campylobacter in processing plants but does not currently track whether plants exceed the contamination thresholds. Batches of poultry products with contamination rates above the limit don't have to be recalled, although plants that repeatedly exceed the thresholds can be temporarily shut down. Separate government records also show that between January 2015 and August 2019, the same 12 major U.S. poultry companies broke food safety rules on at least 145,000 occasions -- or on average more than 80 times a day. Poultry plant workers also claimed they have sometimes been asked to process rotten-smelling meat, have witnessed chicken tossed into grinders with dead insects, and found government safety inspectors apparently asleep on the job.

Campylobacter causes more than 100 deaths every year in America as well as 1.5 million infections. It also accounts for up to 40 percent of the country's cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome [...]. Yet the sale of poultry products found to be contaminated with either that or salmonella bacteria remains perfectly legal. The level of salmonella and campylobacter that the USDA deems acceptable differs depending on the product. A maximum of 15.4 percent of chicken parts leaving a processing plant, for instance, can test positive for salmonella and the plant can still meet acceptable standards. The threshold for campylobacter is 7.7 percent. Many experts argue these levels are too lax. The report also notes the concerning increase in antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. "The number of drug-resistant salmonella infections in the U.S. rose from around 159,000 in 2004 to around 222,000 in 2016," reports Motherboard, citing the CDC. "Campylobacter has become more resistant too: Ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat it, is increasingly ineffective."

"The rise of superbugs is having increasingly serious human consequences. In order to treat these illnesses, doctors are turning more frequently to last-resort drugs, which often have more side effects. And if these fail, there's no choice but to let the disease take its course."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In Wednesday's issue of Nature, a new paper describes a potentially useful way of measuring the interactions between normal matter and exotic particles, like antiprotons and unstable items like kaons or elements containing a strange quark. The work is likely to be useful, as we still don't understand the asymmetry that has allowed matter to be the dominant form in our Universe. But the study is probably most notable for the surprising way that it collected measurements. A small research team managed to put an antiproton in orbit around the nucleus of a helium atom that was part of some liquid helium chilled down to where it acted as a superfluid. The researchers then measured the light emitted by the antiproton's orbital transitions.
[...]
At temperatures above the point at which liquid helium becomes a superfluid, the transition created a broad peak instead of a sharp one. The peak narrowed as the temperature dropped, and it eventually separated into two distinct peaks at the transition temperature. This separation -- called the hyperfine split -- is caused by interactions between the antiproton and the helium nucleus. The fact that it can be detected with this level of precision indicates that an experimental system can be used to tell us about both the antimatter and the fundamental physics behind these interactions. Why did this experiment work when previous attempts to measure the properties of molecules in liquid helium failed? The researchers suggest their success is mostly due to the fact that they were essentially measuring an odd form of helium in a pool of helium. In the other cases, researchers measured a molecule that was dissolved in the helium, producing very different behavior. (One suggestion is that the helium forms a cage around any molecules dissolved in it, and the cage is large enough to allow the molecule to move around freely.)

The researchers are excited about the idea that this process could be used more generally to get these sorts of measurements. Technically, any moderately sized, negatively charged particle could be put in orbit around a helium nucleus, provided it can be slowed down enough -- the researchers specifically mention "negatively charged mesons and hyperons that include strange quarks." The authors suggest that helium with an unusual nuclear composition would also work.

Former astronaut Scott Kelly said he is ending his feud with the head of Russia's space program after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked former astronauts to dial down criticism of their Russian counterparts. From a report: The dustup began when Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin and other Russian government entities published a series of social-media posts, including one video showing Russian cosmonauts abandoning the International Space Station and leaving behind U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei. Mr. Kelly, who spent nearly a year in 2015 and 2016 aboard the ISS, got into a heated exchange on Twitter last week with the Russian space chief over the series of posts. Now Mr. Kelly said he is ending the spat with Mr. Rogozin after NASA sent an email to former astronauts asking them to stop criticizing their Russian partners because it was hurting the mission aboard the ISS, an orbiting lab where American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts work side by side. "I respect their position. They have a tough job. I believe in NASA and what they do. I want to help them. I respect the person that sent it greatly," Mr. Kelly said in an interview. "I would say that if I was in their position, I would have done the same exact thing."

Long-term exposure to air pollution can increase the risk of autoimmune disease, research has found. From a report: Exposure to particulates has already been linked to strokes, brain cancer, miscarriage and mental health problems. A global review, published in 2019, concluded that almost every cell in the body could be affected by dirty air. Now researchers at the University of Verona have found that long-term exposure to high levels of air pollution was associated with an approximately 40% higher risk of rheumatoid arthritis, a 20% higher risk of inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, and a 15% higher risk of connective tissue diseases, such as lupus. The study, published in the journal RMD Open, took comprehensive medical information about 81,363 men and women on an Italian database monitoring risk of fractures between June 2016 and November 2020. About 12% were diagnosed with an autoimmune disease during this period.

Pamela Burdman, the executive director of Just Equations, a policy institute focused on the role of math in education equity, writes in an op-ed for Scientific American: All routes to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees run through calculus classes. Each year, hundreds of thousands of college students take introductory calculus. But only a fraction ultimately complete a STEM degree, and research about why students abandon such degrees suggests that traditional calculus courses are one of the reasons. With scientific understanding and innovation increasingly central to solving 21st-century problems, this loss of talent is something society can ill afford. Math departments alone are unlikely to solve this dilemma. Several of the promising calculus reforms highlighted in our report Charting a New Course: Investigating Barriers on the Calculus Pathway to STEM , published with the California Education Learning Lab, were spearheaded by professors outside of math departments. It's time for STEM faculty to prioritize collaboration across disciplines to transform math classes from weed-out mechanisms to fertile terrain for cultivating a diverse generation of STEM researchers and professionals. This is not uncharted territory.

In 2013, life sciences faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, developed a two-course sequence that covers classic calculus topics such as the derivative and the integral, but emphasizes their application in a biological context. The professors used modeling of complex systems such as biological and physiological processes as a framework for teaching linear algebra and a starting point for teaching the basics of computer programming to support students' use of systems of differential equations. Creating this course, Mathematics for Life Scientists, wasn't easy. The life sciences faculty involved, none of whom had a joint appointment with the math department, said they resorted to designing the course themselves after math faculty rebuffed their overture. The math faculty feared creating a "watered-down" course with no textbook (though after the course was developed, one math instructor taught some sections of the class).

Besides math, the life sciences faculty said they experienced "significant pushback" from the chemistry and physics departments over concerns that the course wouldn't adequately prepare students for required courses in those disciplines. But the UCLA course seems to be successful, and a textbook based on it now exists. According to recently published research led by UCLA education researchers, students in the new classes ended up with "significantly higher grades" in subsequent physics, chemistry and life sciences courses than students in the traditional calculus course, even when controlling for factors such as demographics, prior preparation and math grades. Students' interest in the subject doubled, according to surveys.

Several tombs and a leaden sarcophagus likely dating from the 14th century have been uncovered by archaeologists at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris as work continues on the building's reconstruction after its devastating 2019 fire. From a report: The burial sites "of remarkable scientific quality" were unearthed during preparatory work for rebuilding the ancient church's spire at the central spot where the transept crosses the nave, France's culture ministry announced late Monday. Among the tombs was a "completely preserved, human-shaped sarcophagus made of lead." It is thought the coffin was made for a senior dignitary in the 1300s -- the century after the cathedral's construction. As well as the tombs, elements of painted sculptures were found just beneath the current floor level of the cathedral, identified as parts of the original 13th-century rood screen -- an architectural element separating the altar area from the nave.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Our universe is connected by a cosmic web made of giant threads of dark matter and gas that stretch across millions of light years and intersect at "nodes" populated by dense clusters of galaxies. This vast network shapes the distribution and evolution of galaxies in fundamental ways that scientists are trying to unravel with ever-sharper observations and advanced simulations. Now, a team led by Callum Donnan, a postgraduate student in astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, have identified a key correlation between the chemical makeup of galaxies and their location within the cosmic web. Using both real-life observations and computer simulations, the team found that "galaxies closer to nodes [display] higher chemical enrichment than those farther away," a discovery that reveals some of the mysterious dynamics that link the universe, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy.

To home in on this question, Donnan and his colleagues examined galaxies within about a billion light years of the Milky Way observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in New Mexico, which covers a huge area of the sky. The team studied the elemental makeup of gasses in the interstellar spaces within these real-life galaxies, a property that is known as gas-phase metallicity. The results revealed that galaxies close to the nodes of the cosmic web were richer in "metals," which in astronomy refers to any element heavier than helium. A weaker correlation was also observed with proximity to the web's filaments, which are the threads that stretch across the universe and link nodes together. The team ran sophisticated cosmological simulations using the IllustrisTNG platform, which supported the observational findings. Significantly, the approach revealed that a galaxy's position in the cosmic web modulates its chemical content even when other factors, such as the density of a particular region in the universe, are taken into account.

Naturally, that raises the question of why galaxies located near nodes are enriched with more metals compared to those distributed along filaments or in empty "voids" within the cosmic web. Donnan's team isolated two major drivers of this relationship: The absorption of gas from outside of galaxies and the evolution of stars and dark matter inside of them. Galaxies feed on gasses that are strewn across space in the intergalactic medium, but those that are further from nodes consume much more of this outside material than those close to nodes. Since intergalactic gas is metal-poor, it dilutes the enriched gas of far-flung galaxies, lowering their overall gas-phase metallicities. Galaxies near nodes don't consume as much of this metal-poor material, which helps to keep them chemically enriched with higher concentrations of heavier elements. In addition, galaxies close to nodes seem to have matured earlier than those located at a distance. These galaxies had a head-start in birthing new stars and collecting dark matter, which is a mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe.

Two hours. That's about how much time elapsed between the discovery of asteroid 2022 EB5 and when it reached Earth's atmosphere. The asteroid is only the fifth one to have been detected before impact. CNET reports: Astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky first spotted the asteroid on March 11 with a telescope at the Piszkesteto observatory in Hungary. He reported the sighting to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which tracks near-Earth objects and comets. News of the asteroid spread from there, and calculations showed the space rock had a 100% chance of impact north of Iceland. Fortunately, the asteroid was very small, roughly 1 meter (3.3 feet) in diameter -- that's half the height of basketball superstar Michael Jordan. An asteroid that small will safely burn up in our planet's atmosphere, but the dainty size also makes it hard to spot.

The thought of an asteroid discovery mere hours before reaching us might make you think "yikes," but the European Space Agency described the news as "rather positive." Researchers have done an excellent job tracking bigger asteroids, so it's impressive they're now finding some of the smaller, sneakier ones. "All five asteroids, spotted before impact, were found since 2008, illustrating how much asteroid observation technologies have improved in the last years," ESA said in a statement. While 2022 EB5 was relatively tiny, infrasound detectors picked up on the likely impact, which ESA said suggested an energy release equivalent to a magnitude 4.0 earthquake. As detection systems get more sophisticated, it might be possible to warn communities when a small asteroid is inbound.

An anonymous reader shares a report: While US health experts closely monitor upticks of COVID-19 cases in Europe as well as the global rise of the omicron subvariant BA.2, Pfizer is renewing calls for fourth doses of COVID-19 vaccine. In an interview Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that a fourth dose -- aka a second booster -- is "necessary."

"The protection what we are getting from the third [doses], it is good enough -- actually, quite good for hospitalizations and deaths," Dr. Bourla said. But, "it's not that good against infections" with omicron, and "it doesn't last very long." He reported that Pfizer is "working very diligently" to come up with a new dose that will protect against all variants and provide longer-lasting protection.

The US astronaut Mark Vande Hei has made it through nearly a year in space, but now faces what could be his trickiest assignment: riding a Russian capsule back to Earth in the midst of deepening tension between the two countries. From a report: Nasa insists Vande Hei's homecoming at the end of the month remains unchanged, even as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in canceled launches, broken contracts and an escalating war of words from the leader of the Russian Space Agency. Many worry Dmitry Rogozin is putting decades of peaceful partnership at risk, most notably at the International Space Station (ISS). Vande Hei, who on Tuesday will break the US single spaceflight record of 340 days, is due to leave with two Russians aboard a Soyuz capsule for touchdown in Kazakhstan on 30 March. He will have logged 355 days in space. The world record of 438 days belongs to Russia.

The retired Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly, America's record-holder until Tuesday, is among those sparring with Rogozin, a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin. Kelly has returned a medal to the Russian embassy in Washington but believes the two sides "can hold it together" in space. "We need an example set that two countries that historically have not been on the most friendly of terms, can still work somewhere peacefully. And that somewhere is the International Space Station. That's why we need to fight to keep it," Kelly said. Nasa wants to keep the space station running until 2030, as do the European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies. The Russians have not committed beyond the original end date of 2024 or so.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Time: Pfizer said it would no longer start new clinical trials in Russia and that it would donate all profits from its subsidiary in the country to Ukraine relief causes. At the same time, the drugmaker said in a statement that it will continue to supply medicines to Russia, out of fear that vulnerable patients such as children and elderly people who rely on its therapies could be harmed by any halt. The company "concluded that a voluntary pause in the flow of our medicines to Russia would be in direct violation of our foundational principle of putting patients first," according to the statement. Pfizer said it doesn't own or operate any manufacturing sites in Russia and plans to cease planned investments with local suppliers. Pfizer said it would work with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulators to move current clinical trials to alternative locations outside of Russia. Patients already enrolled in studies will continue to receive medications, the company said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Sleeping in the dark may reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes, a new study suggests. Exposure to overhead lighting during sleep at night, compared to sleeping in a dimly lit room, harms heart function during sleep and affects how well the body responds to insulin the next morning, researchers found. They suggest it is important for people to avoid or minimize the amount of light exposure during sleep, and that if people are able to see things well, it is probably too light. The study found that, when exposed to more light during sleep, the body went into a state of alert, with the heart rate rising and the body not being able to rest properly.

According to the scientists, people should not turn lights on, but if they do need to have some light -- for example, in the interests of safety for older adults -- it should be a dim light that is closer to the floor. The color is also important, with amber or a red/orange light less stimulating for the brain. White or blue light should be kept far away, the experts suggest. Blackout curtains or eye masks are a good option if outdoor light cannot be controlled. The study of 20 people found that insulin resistance occurred the morning after people slept in a light room. This is when cells in muscles, fat and the liver do not respond well to insulin and cannot use glucose from the blood for energy. To make up for it, the pancreas makes more insulin and, over time, blood sugar goes up. Senior study author Dr Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in America, said: "The results from this study demonstrate that just a single night of exposure to moderate room lighting during sleep can impair glucose and cardiovascular regulation, which are risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome." Dr Daniela Grimaldi, a co-first author and research assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern, added: "We showed your heart rate increases when you sleep in a moderately lit room. "Even though you are asleep, your autonomic nervous system is activated. That's bad. Usually, your heart rate together with other cardiovascular parameters are lower at night and higher during the day."

The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

sciencehabit writes: A debate over claims of room temperature superconductivity has now boiled over into the realm of scientific publishing. Administrators of arXiv, the widely used physics preprint server, recently removed or refused to post several papers from the opposing sides, saying their manuscripts include inflammatory content and unprofessional language. ArXiv has also banned one of the authors, Jorge Hirsch, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), from posting papers for 6 months.

The ban is "very unfair," Hirsch says. "I can't work if I can't publish papers." To some other scientists, arXiv's ban and removal of papers amount to stifling scientific debate. "The scientists that care about the issue and have the expertise to evaluate the arguments on both sides should be allowed to do so by accessing the preprints in question," Nigel Goldenfeld, a physicist at UCSD, wrote in an email to a wide range of physicists last week. "The alternative is that for cases such as this, we'll return to the pre-arXiv days when the science of the day is discussed in privately circulated preprints that are not accessible to the wider community." Daniel Arovas, another UCSD physicist, agreed: "Squelching what is essentially a purely scientific exchange -- even one where the respective parties engage in some distasteful accusations -- is highly problematic." But arXiv administrators argue the decision wasn't about science. "There are no papers in this whole chain that were rejected because we did not like the scientific content," says Ralph Wijers, a physicist at the University of Amsterdam who is the preprint server's board chair. "People's emotions became too affected. They got acrimonious."

High tea took on a whole new meaning for Andrew Hughes and his climbing crew. From a report: The group of adventurers held a tea party at 21,312 feet above sea level at Mount Everest's Camp 2 in Nepal last year, setting a new 'Guinness World Record -- which was officially recognized by Guinness this month -- for the highest tea party ever held. Hughes, a self-described high-endurance athlete from Seattle, Washington, said he first had the idea for the tea party early in the pandemic when Covid-19 travel restrictions and shutdowns meant expeditions were not possible. He said the isolation made him realize he missed the community more than the summits. "The greatest things in life are often those shared," Hughes said, adding he hopes the feat -- held on May 5, 2021 -- will "inspire others to seek their own dreams, no matter the heights." According to a news release, Hughes' "highest of high tea parties ... exceeded the previous mark by thousands of feet in altitude and was full of complexities, including carrying supplies through the treacherous Khumbu Icefalls."

Hong Kong is struggling to get a handle on its worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic, warning that it doesn't have the testing capacity to carry out the strict strategy handed down by Beijing. From a report: In Shenzhen and Shanghai, in mainland China, officials imposed restrictions on millions of people within days of local outbreaks in order to test every single resident. But Hong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lam, noted on Monday that her city doesn't have the same ability. "Hong Kong is very different from many mainland cities and therefore we cannot have any comparison," Mrs. Lam told reporters at a news conference. The difference amounts to resources and systems of governance, Mrs. Lam said. Shenzhen and Shanghai can test millions of people a day; Hong Kong's health officials can only test between 200,000 and 300,000 people a day.

Hong Kong, one of the last places in the world that is still trying to get rid of the virus instead of living with it, has reported more than 700,000 cases and 4,066 deaths since late January. It is a strategy that has been dictated by Beijing but one that appears increasingly out of reach for Hong Kong, which continues to hold freedoms that don't exist in the mainland. In the Chinese cities of Wuhan and Xian, officials halted daily life and confined residents to their homes for weeks until there were no more local cases. In Tianjin, they began testing every single resident after just 20 cases of coronavirus were reported. Further separating Hong Kong from the mainland's approach, Mrs. Lam said she would not consider tightening social-distancing measures because she had to take into how residents felt about them.

Pi day is here — 3/14. And to celebrate, NASA released their ninth annual NASA Pi Day Challenge — "some math problems related to current and future NASA missions."

MIT Bloggers released a videogame-themed video to welcome the class of 2026.

If you Google "pi day" (or Pi), you're given an interactive doodle that (when you click the pi symbol in the upper-left) presents a Simon-like game challenging you to type in approximations of pi to an ever-increasingnumber of digits.

Guinness World Records points out that the most accurate value of pi is 62,831,853,071,796 digits, "achieved by University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland) in Chur, Switzerland, on 19 August 2021." (Note: the number of digits looks suspiciously significant....)

And USA Today published an article which shares the history of how Pi Day got started. Former physicist Larry Shaw, who connected March 14 with 3.14, celebrated the first Pi Day at the Exploratorium with fruit pies and tea in 1988. The museum said Shaw led Pi Day parades there every year until his passing in 2017.

In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution marking March 14 as National Pi Day.

The date is significant in the world of science. Albert Einstein was born on this day in 1879. The Exploratorium said it added a celebration of Einstein's life as part of its Pi Day activities after Shaw's daughter, Sara, realized the coincidence. March 14 also marks the death of renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who passed away in 2018.
And "For those who don't enjoy math, you get pie," the article quips, noting that numerous pizza chains and restaurants are offering appropriately-adjusted one-day sale prices on pizza (and fruit) pies.

Instacart has even released a list showing which pie flavors enjoy the highest popularity over the national average in each of America's 50 states. ("New York — Boston Cream Pie. Washington — Marionberry Pie....")

This week Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum posted a PDF transcript (and video excerpts) from an interview with 81-year-old Margaret Hamilton, the programmer/systems designer who in the 1960s became director of the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory which developed the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program. Prior to that Hamilton had worked on software to detect an airplane's radar signature, but thought, "You know, 'I guess I should delay graduate school again because I'd like to work on this program that puts all these men on the Moon....'"

"There was always one thing that stood out in my mind, being in the onboard flight software, was that it was 'man rated,' meaning if it didn't work a person's life was at stake if not over. That was always uppermost in my mind and probably many others as well."

Interestingly, Hamilton had originally received two job offers from the Apollo Space Program, and had told them to flip a coin to settle it. ("The other job had to do with support systems. It was software, but it wasn't the onboard flight software.") But what's fascinating is the interview's glimpses at some of the earliest days of the programming profession: There was all these engineers, okay? Hardware engineers, aeronautical engineers and all this, a lot of them out of MIT... But the whole idea of software and programming...? Dick Battin, Dr. Battin, when they told him that they were going to be responsible for the software...he went home to his wife and said he was going to be in charge of software and he thought it was some soft clothing...
Hamilton also remembers in college taking a summer job as a student actuary at Travelers Insurance in the mid-1950s, and "all of a sudden one day word was going around Travelers that there were these new things out there called computers that were going to take away all of their jobs... Pretty soon they wouldn't have jobs. And so everybody was talking about it. They were scared they wouldn't have a way to make a living.

"But, of course, it ended up being more jobs were created with the computers than there were...."

Hamilton's story about Apollo 8 is amazing...

Right now an asteroid is zooming past earth "at a relatively close distance" reports Newsweek, "and the event can be viewed live." The asteroid, called 2022 ES3, will be traveling at 41,000 miles per hour when it comes between the moon and the Earth at around 2:18 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 13, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

The space rock isn't expected to hit Earth. Instead, it will pass by at a distance of about 206,000 miles, which is about 87 percent of the distance between us and the moon.

The event provides a great viewing opportunity. An Italian astronomy organization called the Virtual Telescope Project, which often tracks asteroids and other space objects through the sky, is due to host a livestream of what it calls 2022 ES3's "very close, but safe, encounter with us" on its WebTV page starting at 18:30 UTC on March 13th.

Astronomers don't consider 2022 ES3 to be potentially hazardous, probably due to its size. The asteroid is predicted to be somewhere between 33 and 72 feet in diameter — about as wide as the length of a bowling lane.... [S]cientists track more than 28,000 near-Earth asteroids as they travel through the solar system. Around 900 of these are more than one kilometer, or 3,280 feet, in size.

"A long duration C2 solar flare launched an asymmetrical full halo coronal mass ejection into space," tweeted the nonprofit science site SpaceWeatherLive (sharing a black-and-white video). "The solar plasma cloud is likely to arrive at Earth late on Sunday, 13 March. Minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions are likely with a chance of moderate G2 conditions."

Long-time Slashdot reader PuddleBoy shared this additional report from their web site: The solar flare lasted for hours and launched an asymmetrical full halo coronal mass ejection into space. Most of the ejecta is heading north-west but a significant part of the plasma cloud is expected to arrive at our planet. The coronal mass ejection was launched at a speed of about 600km/s which is a fairly average speed. This puts the likely arrival time at Earth late on Sunday, 13 March.

Minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions (Kp5) are likely with a chance of moderate G2 conditions which equals a Kp-value of 6. Middle latitude locations might catch a glimpse of the aurora near the northern (or southern) horizon under optimal conditions.