The Rubik's Cube turns 50 this year, but it's far from retiring. At a recent San Francisco conference, math buffs and puzzle fans celebrated the enduring appeal of Erno Rubik's invention, reports The New York Times. With a mind-boggling 43 quintillion possible configurations, the Cube has inspired countless variants and found uses in education and art.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has announced plans to develop standards for brain-computer interface technology, signaling the country's intent to advance in this emerging field. The ministry said it would assemble a committee of experts from various sectors to draft guidelines for brain information encoding and decoding, data communication, and visualization.

Brain-computer interface technology, which enables direct communication between the brain and external devices, has gained prominence with ventures like Elon Musk's Neuralink in the United States. China's move suggests a shift from primarily academic research to more focused development, potentially rivaling Western competitors. Previous Chinese brain-computer interface efforts have been largely confined to university research. In March, state media reported a paralyzed patient regaining some mobility after receiving a brain implant developed by Tsinghua University.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: New analyses from the Annenberg Public Policy Center find that public perceptions of scientists' credibility -- measured as their competence, trustworthiness, and the extent to which they are perceived to share an individual's values -- remain high, but their perceived competence and trustworthiness eroded somewhat between 2023 and 2024. The research also found that public perceptions of scientists working in artificial intelligence (AI) differ from those of scientists as a whole. [...] The five factors in Factors Assessing Science's Self-Presentation (FASS) are whether science and scientists are perceived to be credible and prudent, and whether they are perceived to overcome bias, correct error (self-correcting), and whether their work benefits people like the respondent and the country as a whole (beneficial). [...] In the FASS model, perceptions of scientists' credibility are assessed through perceptions of whether scientists are competent, trustworthy, and "share my values." The first two of those values slipped in the most recent survey. In 2024, 70% of those surveyed strongly or somewhat agree that scientists are competent (down from 77% in 2023) and 59% strongly or somewhat agree that scientists are trustworthy (down from 67% in 2023). The survey also found that in 2024, fewer people felt that scientists' findings benefit "the country as a whole" and "benefit people like me." In 2024, 66% strongly or somewhat agreed that findings benefit the country as a whole (down from 75% in 2023). Belief that scientists' findings "benefit people like me," also declined, to 60% from 68%. Taken together, those two questions make up the beneficial factor of FASS. The findings follow sustained attacks on climate and COVID-19-related science, and more recently, public concerns about the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence. Here's what the study found when comparing perceptions of scientists in general with climate and AI scientists: - Credibility: When asked about three factors underlying scientists' credibility, AI scientists have lower credibility in all three values.
- Competent: 0% strongly/somewhat agree that scientists are competent, but only 62% for climate scientists and 49% for AI scientists.
- Trustworthy: 59% agree scientists are trustworthy, 54% agree for climate scientists, 28% for AI scientists.
- Share my values: A higher number (38%) agree that climate scientists share my values than for scientists in general (36%) and AI scientists (15%). More people disagree with this for AI scientists (35%) than for the others.
- Prudence: Asked whether they agree or disagree that science by various groups of scientists "creates unintended consequences and replaces older problems with new ones," over half of those surveyed (59%) agree that AI scientists create unintended consequences and just 9% disagree.
- Overcoming bias: Just 42% of those surveyed agree that scientists "are able to overcome human and political biases," but only 21% feel that way about AI scientists. In fact, 41% disagree that AI scientists are able to overcome human political biases. In another area, just 23% agree that AI scientists provide unbiased conclusions in their area of inquiry and 38% disagree.
- Self-correction: Self-correction, or "organized skepticism expressed in expectations sustaining a culture of critique," as the FASS paper puts it, is considered by some as a "hallmark of science." AI scientists are seen as less likely than scientists or climate scientists to take action to prevent fraud; take responsibility for mistakes; or to have mistakes that are caught by peer review.
- Benefits: Asked about the benefits from scientists' findings, 60% agree that scientists' "findings benefit people like me," though just 44% agree for climate scientists and 35% for AI scientists. Asked about whether findings benefit the country as a whole, 66% agree for scientists, 50% for climate scientists and 41% for AI scientists.
- Your best interest: The survey also asked respondents how much trust they have in scientists to act in the best interest of people like you. (This specific trust measure is not a part of the FASS battery.) Respondents have less trust in AI scientists than in others: 41% have a great deal/a lot of trust in medical scientists; 39% in climate scientists; 36% in scientists; and 12% in AI scientists.

"A federal grand jury has indicted an embattled Alzheimer's researcher for allegedly falsifying data to fraudulently obtain $16 million in federal research funding from the National Institutes of Health for the development of a controversial Alzheimer's drug and diagnostic test," writes Beth Mole via Ars Technica. "Wang is charged with one count of major fraud against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of false statements. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the major fraud charge, 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, and five years in prison for the count of false statements [...]." From the report: Hoau-Yan Wang, 67, a medical professor at the City University of New York, was a paid collaborator with the Austin, Texas-based pharmaceutical company Cassava Sciences. Wang's research and publications provided scientific underpinnings for Cassava's Alzheimer's treatment, Simufilam, which is now in Phase III trials. Simufilam is a small-molecule drug that Cassava claims can restore the structure and function of a scaffolding protein in the brain of people with Alzheimer's, leading to slowed cognitive decline. But outside researchers have long expressed doubts and concerns about the research.

In 2023, Science magazine obtained a 50-page report from an internal investigation at CUNY that looked into 31 misconduct allegations made against Wang in 2021. According to the report, the investigating committee "found evidence highly suggestive of deliberate scientific misconduct by Wang for 14 of the 31 allegations," the report states. The allegations largely centered around doctored and fabricated images from Western blotting, an analytical technique used to separate and detect proteins. However, the committee couldn't conclusively prove the images were falsified "due to the failure of Dr. Wang to provide underlying, original data or research records and the low quality of the published images that had to be examined in their place." In all, the investigation "revealed long-standing and egregious misconduct in data management and record keeping by Dr. Wang," and concluded that "the integrity of Dr. Wang's work remains highly questionable." The committee also concluded that Cassava's lead scientist on its Alzheimer's disease program, Lindsay Burns, who was a frequent co-author with Wang, also likely bears some responsibility for the misconduct.

In March 2022, five of Wang's articles published in the journal PLOS One were retracted over integrity concerns with images in the papers. Other papers by Wang have also been retracted or had statements of concern attached to them. Further, in September 2022, the Food and Drug Administration conducted an inspection of the analytical work and techniques used by Wang to analyze blood and cerebrospinal fluid from patients in a simufilam trial. The investigation found a slew of egregious problems, which were laid out in a "damning" report (PDF) obtained by Science. In the indictment last week (PDF), federal authorities were explicit about the allegations, claiming that Wang falsified the results of his scientific research to NIH "by, among other things, manipulating data and images of Western blots to artificially add bands [which represent proteins], subtract bands, and change their relative thickness and/or darkness, and then drawing conclusions" based on those false results.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When someone loses part of a leg, a prosthetic can make it easier to get around. But most prosthetics are static, cumbersome, and hard to move. A new neural interface connects a bionic limb to nerve endings in the thigh, allowing the limb to be controlled by the brain. The new device, which is described today in Nature Medicine, could help people with lower-leg amputations feel as if their prosthesis is part of them. "When you ask a patient 'What is your body?' They don't include the prosthesis," says MIT biophysicist Hugh Herr, one of the lead authors on the study. The work is personal for him: he lost both his lower legs in a climbing accident when he was 17. He says linking the brain to the prosthesis can make it feel more like part of someone's anatomy, which can have a positive emotional impact.

Getting the neural interface hooked up to a prosthetic takes two steps. First, patients undergo surgery. Following a lower leg amputation, portions of shin and calf muscle still remain. The operation connects shin muscle, which contracts to make the ankle flex upward, to calf muscle, which counteracts this movement. The prosthetic can also be fitted at this point. Reattaching the remnants of these muscles can enable the prosthetic to move more dynamically. It can also reduce phantom limb pain, and patients are less likely to trip and fall. "The surgery stands on its own," says Amy Pietrafitta, a para-athlete who received it in 2018. "I feel like I have my leg back." But natural movements are still limited when the prosthetic isn't connected to the nervous system.

In step two, surface electrodes measure nerve activity from the brain to the calf and shin muscles, indicating an intention to move the lower leg. A small computer in the bionic leg decodes those nerve signals and moves the leg accordingly, allowing the patient to move the limb more naturally. "If you have intact biological limbs, you can walk up and down steps, for example, and not even think about it. It's involuntary," says Herr. "That's the case with our patients, but their limb is made of titanium and silicone." The authors compared the mobility of seven patients using a neural interface with that of patients who had not received the surgery. Patients using the neural interface could walk 41% faster and climb sloped surfaces and steps. They could also dodge obstacles more nimbly and had better balance. And they described feeling that the prosthetic was truly a part of their body rather than just a tool that they used to get around.

game of Asteroids An anonymous reader shared this report from The Hill: An asteroid the size of a football stadium threaded the needle between Earth and the moon Saturday morning — the second of two astronomical near misses in three days. Near miss, in this case, is a relative term: Saturday's asteroid, 2024 MK, came within 180,000 miles of Earth. On Thursday, meanwhile, asteroid 2011 UL21 flew within 4 million miles.

But the Saturday passage of 2024 MK — which scientists discovered only two weeks ago — coincides with a sobering reminder of threats from space. Sunday is Asteroid Day, the anniversary of the 1908 explosion of a rock from space above a Russian town — the sort of danger that, astronomers warn, is always lurking as the Earth hurtles through space... In 2013, for instance, an asteroid about 62 feet across that broke apart nearly 20 miles above Siberia released 30 times as much energy as the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima. While most of the impact energy was absorbed by the atmosphere, the detonation triggered a shock wave that blew out windows and injured more than a thousand people.
The article points out that if Saturday's asteroid had hit earth, the impact would have "the equivalent impact energy in the hundreds of megaton approaching a gigaton," Peter Brown of Canada's Western University told the Canadian Broadcasting Service. (For comparison, most hydrogen bombs are in the 50-megaton range.) Brown said "It's the sort of thing that if it hit the east coast of the U.S., you would have catastrophic effects over most of the eastern seaboard. But it's not big enough to affect the whole world."

Meanwhile, the article adds that last Thursday's asteroid — "while it was comfortably far out in space" — was the size of Mt. Everest. "At 1.5 miles in diameter, that asteroid was about a quarter the size of the asteroid that struck the earth 65 million years ago, wiping out all dinosaurs that walked, as well as the majority of life on earth." But the risk of a collision like that "is very, very low." NASA has estimated that a civilization-ending event (like the collision of an asteroid the size of Thursday's with the Earth) should only happen every few million years. And such an impact from an asteroid half a mile in diameter or bigger will be almost impossible for a very long time, according to findings published last year in The Astronomical Journal.
NASA's catalog of large and dangerous objects like 2011 UL21 is now 95 percent complete, MIT Technology Review reported.

A new study "has found direct evidence linking a key chemical ingredient of plastic bottles to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes," reports the Independent: The study, published in the journal Diabetes, found that the chemical BPA used to make food and drink packages, including plastic water bottles, can reduce sensitivity to the hormone insulin which regulates the body's sugar metabolism. The findings, to be presented at the 2024 Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association, call for the US Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the safe limits for exposure to BPA in bottles and food containers. Previous studies have already shown that the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) used to make plastic and epoxy resins could disrupt hormones in humans. While research has linked BPA to diabetes, no previous study has directly assessed if administration of this chemical to humans increases this risk in adults.
The researchers administered the dosage considered safe by America's FDA to about 20 individuals — and discovered they became less responsive to insulin after 4 days. The article includes this warning from the researchers:

"These results suggest that maybe the U.S. EPA safe dose should be reconsidered and that healthcare providers could suggest these changes to patients."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.

Commercial space efforts continue around the world, as the Chinese company Space Pioneer fired up a partially-fueled rocket engine Sunday for a short-duration test of its reusable rocket on the ground. But Space News reports that the test "ended in catastrophic failure and a dramatic explosion."

"Amateur footage captured by Gongyi citizens and posted on Chinese social media shows the nine-engine test stage igntiing and then, exceptionally, taking off." Hold-down clamps and other structures are typically used to securely keep stages in place. The stage is seen climbing into the sky before halting, apparently with its engines shutting off, and returning to Earth. The stage impacted the ground around 50 seconds after it took off, apparently with much of its kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant remaining, causing a large explosion.

The Tianlong-3 first stage would likely fire for a number of minutes on an orbital flight. Space Pioneer was conducting its test as a buildup to an orbital launch of the Tianlong-3, which is benchmarked against the SpaceX Falcon 9, in the coming months. The company announced earlier this month that it has secured $207 million in new funding.

Shanghai-based digital newspaper The Paper reported Henan officials as saying there were no casualties reported. Space Pioneer issued its own statement later, stating there was a structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench. The rocket's onboard computer automatically shut down the engines and the rocket fell 1.5 kilometers southwest. It reiterated earlier reports that no casualties were found. The company said the test produced 820 tons of thrust.
The article speculates on whether the event will delay the development of the rocket — or the planned launches for a Chinese megaconstellation of satellites. "Space Pioneer says it will conduct an analysis and restart testing with new hardware as soon as possible."

Slashdot reader Required Snark shared this article from Ars Technica: Almost exactly two years ago, as it prepared for the next generation of human spaceflight, NASA chose a pair of private companies to design and develop new spacesuits. These were to be new spacesuits that would allow astronauts to both perform spacewalks outside the International Space Station as well as walk on the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Now, that plan appears to be in trouble, with one of the spacesuit providers — Collins Aerospace — expected to back out, Ars has learned. It's a blow for NASA, because the space agency really needs modern spacesuits.

NASA's Apollo-era suits have long been retired. The current suits used for spacewalks in low-Earth orbit are four decades old. "These new capabilities will allow us to continue on the International Space Station and allows us to do the Artemis program and continue on to Mars," said the director of Johnson Space Center, Vanessa Wyche, during a celebratory news conference in Houston two years ago. The two winning teams were led by Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space, respectively. They were eligible for task orders worth up to $3.5 billion — in essence NASA would rent the use of these suits for a couple of decades. Since then, NASA has designated Axiom to work primarily on a suit for the Moon and the Artemis Program, and Collins with developing a suit for operations in-orbit, such as space station servicing...

The agency has been experiencing periodic problems with the maintenance of the suits built decades ago, known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, which made its debut in the 1980s. NASA has acknowledged the suit has exceeded its planned design lifetime. Just this Monday, the agency had to halt a spacewalk after the airlock had been de-pressurized and the hatch opened due to a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of Tracy Dyson's spacesuit. As a result of this problem, NASA will likely only be able to conduct a single spacewalk this summer, after initially planning three, to complete work outside the International Space Station.
Collins designed the original Apollo suits, according to the article. But a person familiar with the situation told Ars Technica that "Collins has admitted they have drastically underperformed and have overspent" on their work, "culminating in a request to be taken off the contract or renegotiate the scope and their budget."

Ironically, the company's top's post on their account on Twitter/X is still a repost of NASA's February announcement that they're "getting a nextx-generation spacesuit" developed by Collins Aerospace, and saying that the company "recently completed a key NASA design milestone aboard a commercial microgravity aircraft."

NASA's post said they needed the suit "In order to advance NASA's spacewalking capabilities in low Earth orbit and to support continued maintenance and operations at the Space Station."

The Wall Street Journal reports that a European initiative studying the feasibility data centers in space "has found that the project could be economically viable" — while reducing the data center's carbon footprint.

And they add that according to coordinator Thales Alenia Space, the project "could also generate a return on investment of several billion euros between now and 2050." The study — dubbed Ascend, short for Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty — was funded by the European Union and sought to compare the environmental impacts of space-based and Earth-based data centers, the company said. Moving forward, the company plans to consolidate and optimize its results. Space data centers would be powered by solar energy outside the Earth's atmosphere, aiming to contribute to the European Union's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the project coordinator said... Space data centers wouldn't require water to cool them, the company said.
The 16-month study came to a "very encouraging" conclusion, project manager Damien Dumestier told CNBC. With some caveats... The facilities that the study explored launching into space would orbit at an altitude of around 1,400 kilometers (869.9 miles) — about three times the altitude of the International Space Station. Dumestier explained that ASCEND would aim to deploy 13 space data center building blocks with a total capacity of 10 megawatts in 2036, in order to achieve the starting point for cloud service commercialization... The study found that, in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions, a new type of launcher that is 10 times less emissive would need to be developed. ArianeGroup, one of the 12 companies participating in the study, is working to speed up the development of such reusable and eco-friendly launchers. The target is to have the first eco-launcher ready by 2035 and then to allow for 15 years of deployment in order to have the huge capacity required to make the project feasible, said Dumestier...

Michael Winterson, managing director of the European Data Centre Association, acknowledges that a space data center would benefit from increased efficiency from solar power without the interruption of weather patterns — but the center would require significant amounts of rocket fuel to keep it in orbit. Winterson estimates that even a small 1 megawatt center in low earth orbit would need around 280,000 kilograms of rocket fuel per year at a cost of around $140 million in 2030 — a calculation based on a significant decrease in launch costs, which has yet to take place. "There will be specialist services that will be suited to this idea, but it will in no way be a market replacement," said Winterson. "Applications that might be well served would be very specific, such as military/surveillance, broadcasting, telecommunications and financial trading services. All other services would not competitively run from space," he added in emailed comments.

[Merima Dzanic, head of strategy and operations at the Danish Data Center Industry Association] also signaled some skepticism around security risks, noting, "Space is being increasingly politicised and weaponized amongst the different countries. So obviously, there is a security implications on what type of data you send out there."
Its not the only study looking at the potential of orbital data centers, notes CNBC. "Microsoft, which has previously trialed the use of a subsea data center that was positioned 117 feet deep on the seafloor, is collaborating with companies such as Loft Orbital to explore the challenges in executing AI and computing in space."

The article also points out that the total global electricity consumption from data centers could exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026. "That's roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan, according to the International Energy Agency."

Long-time Slashdot reader jrronimo says JILA physicist Jun Ye's group "has made a breakthrough towards the next stage of precision timekeeping."

From their paper recently published to arXiv: Optical atomic clocks use electronic energy levels to precisely keep track of time. A clock based on nuclear energy levels promises a next-generation platform for precision metrology and fundamental physics studies.... These results mark the start of nuclear-based solid-state optical clocks and demonstrate the first comparison of nuclear and atomic clocks for fundamental physics studies. This work represents a confluence of precision metrology, ultrafast strong field physics, nuclear physics, and fundamental physics.

Lego teamed up with the European Space Agency to make Lego pieces from actual meteorite dust, writes Engadget.

"It's a proof of concept to show how astronauts could use moondust to build lunar structures." Consider the sheer amount of energy and money required to haul up building materials from Earth to the Moon. It would be a game changer to, instead, build everything from pre-existing lunar materials. There's a layer of rock and mineral deposits at the surface of the Moon, which is called lunar regolith...

However, there isn't too much lunar regolith here on Earth for folks to experiment with. ESA scientists made their own regolith by grinding up a really old meteorite. [4.5 billion years, according to Lego's site, discovered in Africa in 2000.] The dust from this meteorite was turned into a mixture that was used to 3D print the Lego pieces. Voila. Moon bricks. They click together just like regular Lego bricks, though they only come in one color (space gray obviously.)
"The result is amazing," says ESA Science Officer Aidan Cowley on the Lego site (though "the bricks may look a little rougher than usual. Importantly the clutch power still works, enabling us to play and test our designs.")

"Nobody has built a structure on the Moon," Cowley said in an ESA statement. "So it was great to have the flexibility to try out all kinds of designs and building techniques with our space bricks." And the bricks will also be "helping to inspire the next generation of space engineers," according to the ESA's announcement — since they'll be on display in select Lego stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia through September 20th.

"Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity," writes Gizmodo, "according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources." The group of stars, known as S-cluster stars, is just three light-years from the center of the Milky Way (for reference, we are about 26,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy, which hosts a supermassive black hole at its core). The stars are surprisingly young for their galactic neighborhood, yet they don't look like stars that simply migrated to this part of the Milky Way after forming in another location...

As reported by Space.com, the research team posits that these weird stars may be accreting dark matter, which they then use as fuel to keep burning. Since models estimate there is plenty of dark matter near the galaxy's core, the stars are "forever young," as study lead author Isabelle John, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology told Space.com. Effectively, the stars have a long, long way to go before they start running low on fuel. The team's paper is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv, meaning it has not yet gone through the process of peer review.
Dark matter is only "seen" through its effects on other objects, the article points out — leading to lots of theories as to where it's actually located. "Earlier this year, a different team of researchers proposed that neutron stars — extremely dense stellar remnants — could actually be a source of dark matter. Last July, yet another team suggested that the Webb Telescope had detected stars that were powered by dark matter."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Bill Gates has defended the rapid rise in energy use caused by AI systems, arguing the technology would ultimately offset its heavy consumption of electricity. Speaking in London, Gates urged environmentalists and governments to "not go overboard" on concerns about the huge amounts of power required to run new generative AI systems, as Big Tech companies such as Microsoft race to invest tens of billions of dollars in vast new data centres.

Data centres will drive a rise in global electricity usage of between 2-6 per cent, the billionaire said. "The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 per cent reduction? And the answer is: certainly," said Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has been a prolific investor in companies developing sustainable energy and carbon- reduction technologies. In May, Microsoft admitted that its greenhouse gas emissions had risen by almost a third since 2020, in large part due to the construction of data centres.

Gates, who left Microsoft's board in 2020 but remains an adviser to chief executive Satya Nadella, said tech companies would pay a "green premium" -- or higher price -- for clean energy as they seek new sources of power, which was helping to drive its development and deployment. "The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity," he said at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on Thursday.

Longtime Slashdot reader thephydes writes: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has announced that the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument on the Perseverance rover has been brought back online "Six months of running diagnostics, testing, imagery and data analysis, troubleshooting, and retesting couldn't come with a better conclusion," said SHERLOC principal investigator Kevin Hand of JPL.

JPL writes in a press release. "Mounted on the rover's robotic arm, SHERLOC uses cameras, spectrometers, and a laser to search for organics and minerals that have been altered by watery environments and may be signs of past microbial life." In addition to its black-and-white context camera, SHERLOC is assisted by WATSON, a color camera for taking close-up images of rock grains and surface textures. The instrument stopped working this past January when it encountered an issue where the "movable lens cover designed to protect the instrument's spectrometer and one of its cameras from dust became frozen in a position that prevented SHERLOC from collecting data," says JPL.

"Analysis by the SHERLOC team pointed to the malfunction of a small motor responsible for moving the protective lens cover as well as adjusting focus for the spectrometer and the Autofocus and Context Imager (ACI) camera. By testing potential solutions on a duplicate SHERLOC instrument at JPL, the team began a long, meticulous evaluation process to see if, and how, the lens cover could be moved into the open position."

A study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) analyzed data from nearly 400,000 healthy adults over 20 years and determined that "multivitamin use to improve longevity is not supported." The findings were published in JAMA Network Open. ABC News reports: The study found no evidence that daily multivitamin consumption reduced the risk of death from conditions such as heart disease or cancer. Rather than living longer, otherwise healthy people who took daily multivitamins were slightly more likely (4%) than non-users to die in the study period, according to researchers. Researchers reported nearly 165,000 deaths occurring during the follow-up period of the study, out of the initial group of 390,000 participants. The study, however, did not analyze data from people with pre-existing vitamin deficiencies. "What this study shows is that, generally, multivitamins aren't going to help you live longer," Dr. Jade A Cobern, MD, MPH, board-certified physician in pediatrics and general preventive medicine, told ABC News. "Even though the cost of many multivitamins isn't high, this is still an expense that many people can be spared from."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are displacing healthy diets "all over the world" despite growing evidence of the risks they pose and should be sold with tobacco-style warnings, according to the nutritional scientist who first coined the term. Prof Carlos Monteiro of the University of Sao Paulo will highlight the increasing danger UPFs present to children and adults at the International Congress on Obesity this week. "UPFs are increasing their share in and domination of global diets, despite the risk they represent to health in terms of increasing the risk of multiple chronic diseases," Monteiro told the Guardian ahead of the conference in Sao Paulo. "UPFs are displacing healthier, less processed foods all over the world, and also causing a deterioration in diet quality due to their several harmful attributes. Together, these foods are driving the pandemic of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes."

Monteiro and his colleagues first used the phrase UPF 15 years ago when designing the food classification system "Nova." This assesses not only nutritional content but also the processes food undergoes before it is consumed. The system places food and drink into four groups: minimally processed food, processed culinary ingredients, processed food and ultra-processed food. Monteiro told the Guardian he was now so concerned about the impact UPF was having on human health that studies and reviews were no longer sufficient to warn the public of the health hazards. "Public health campaigns are needed like those against tobacco to curb the dangers of UPFs," he told the Guardian in an email. "Such campaigns would include the health dangers of consumption of UPFs. Advertisements for UPFs should also be banned or heavily restricted, and front-of-pack warnings should be introduced similar to those used for cigarette packs."

He will tell delegates: "Sales of UPFs in schools and health facilities should be banned, and there should be heavy taxation of UPFs, with the revenue generated used to subsidize fresh foods." Monteiro will tell the conference that food giants marketing UPFs know that, in order to be competitive, their products must be more convenient, more affordable and tastier than freshly prepared meals. "To maximize profits, these UPFs must have lower cost of production and be overconsumed," he said. He will also draw parallels between UPF and tobacco companies. "Both tobacco and UPFs cause numerous serious illnesses and premature mortality; both are produced by transnational corporations that invest the enormous profits they obtain with their attractive/addictive products in aggressive marketing strategies, and in lobbying against regulation; and both are pathogenic (dangerous) by design, so reformulation is not a solution."

An anonymous reader shares a report: A top executive at McDonald's says the chain does not have plans to bring back plant-based options after a test of its McPlant burger in San Francisco and Dallas failed. "It was not successful in either market," Joe Erlinger, McDonald's U.S. president, said during the Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum in Chicago on Wednesday.

American consumers are not coming to McDonald's looking for a McPlant burger or other plant-based proteins, Erlinger added. The chain had previously partnered with Beyond Meat to make McPlant burgers and nuggets. Plant-based items are off the menu for now, but Erlinger didn't rule out the possibility that salads could one day make a return. That'll depend on whether customer demand is there.

"If people really want salads from McDonald's, we will gladly relaunch salads," Erlinger said. "But what our experience has proven is that's not what the consumer is looking for from McDonald's." Instead, consumers are looking for french fries, $5 meal deals, and hot, fresh sandwiches, he added.

Nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to take shelter late Wednesday when a satellite broke up in low Earth orbit. This "debris-generating event" created "over 100 pieces of trackable [space junk]," according to U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs. Space.com reports: The Expedition 71 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) went to their three spacecraft, including Boeing Starliner, shortly after 9 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT), according to a brief NASA update on X, formerly known as Twitter. As the ISS follows a time zone identical to GMT, according to the European Space Agency, the astronauts were likely in their sleep period when the incident occurred. The procedure was a "precautionary measure", NASA officials added, stating that the crew only stayed in their spacecraft for about an hour before they were "cleared to exit their spacecraft, and the station resumed normal operations."

NASA did not specify which satellite was associated with the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection firm LeoLabs identified a "debris-generating event" that same evening. "Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs-P1 [or] SATNO 39186, released a number of fragments," the company wrote on X. U.S. Space Command also reported the Resurs-P1 event, saying on X that over 100 pieces of trackable debris were generated. The military said it "observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments." (A conjunction refers to a close approach of two objects in orbit to one another.)

Scientists have uncovered a new gene-editing tool with potential to rival CRISPR, according to studies published in Nature on Wednesday. The system, based on a bacterial DNA parasite called IS110, uses RNA guides to target specific genomic locations. While showing promise for precise DNA cutting, the method currently lacks the accuracy needed for human applications. At best, it achieved 94% accuracy in lab tests. The team also revealed the molecular structure of IS110's DNA-cutting enzyme, shedding light on its unique four-step editing mechanism.

Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07552-4, 10.1038/s41586-024-07570-2.