It turns out that JavaScript had a hand in delivering the stunning images that the James Webb Space Telescope has been beaming back to Earth. From a report: I mean that the actual telescope, arguably one of humanity's finest scientific achievements, is largely controlled by JavaS … | Continue reading
"In molecular biologist David Sinclair's lab at Harvard Medical School, old mice are growing young again," reports CNN:Using proteins that can turn an adult cell into a stem cell, Sinclair and his team have reset aging cells in mice to earlier versions of themselves. In his team' … | Continue reading
Bill Gates shares a statistic about the COVID-19 pandemic. "If we'd been able to stop it within 100 days, we would've saved over 98% of the lives.""Viruses spread exponentially, and so if you get in there when the infection rate is fairly small, you can actually stop the spread. … | Continue reading
On Saturday CNBC published a remarkable headline. "Stem cells may finally offer a cure for Type 1 diabetes."There are 537 million people around the world living with diabetes. And that number is growing.... But over the past 20 years, significant advancements in stem cell resear … | Continue reading
Sixty years after NASA set the goal, and three years after its Parker Solar Probe launched, the spacecraft has become the first to "touch the sun." CNN World reports: The Parker Solar Probe has successfully flown through the sun's corona, or upper atmosphere, to sample particles … | Continue reading
sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: In late 1791 and early 1792, on the eve of the French Revolutionary Wars, Queen Marie Antoinette engaged in a secret correspondence with her confidant and rumored lover, Swedish Count Axel von Fersen. Nearly 50 letters from that exch … | Continue reading
"The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt," reports the Guardian, "after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to 'ethical concerns'."The preprint study on the … | Continue reading
Ivermectin is making the rounds again online after Joe Rogan casually mentioned he took the drug after testing positive for COVID-19. Some researchers claim it helps treat symptoms of the virus; others, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have yet to make that … | Continue reading
"COVID-19 origin theorists could be right about a Chinese government cover-up," reports The Week, "but they might have their sights set in the wrong direction, an American virologist suggested to Bloomberg."When an international group of experts organized by the World Health Orga … | Continue reading
"A quake-measuring device on Mars is providing the first detailed look at the red planet's interior, revealing a surprisingly thin crust and a hot molten core beneath the frigid surface," reports the Associated Press:In a series of articles published this week, scientists reporte … | Continue reading
Linus Torvalds was "clearly unamused" by a "humanoid conspiracy theory, and also on its discussion in a Linux kernel topic thread," reports Neowin. They add that Torvalds "weighed in quite heavily with some very strong language, mixed with some biology lessons..." Here's an exce … | Continue reading
Four astronauts in a SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully splashed down into the Gulf of Mexico this morning at 2:57 a.m. ET — returning from the International Space Station in the first U.S. crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot in 1968. Phys.org reports:It … | Continue reading
If your heart stops en route to Mars, rest assured that researchers have considered how to carry out CPR in space. (One option is to plant your feet on the ceiling and extend your arms downwards to compress the patient's chest.) From a report: Astronauts, because of their age ran … | Continue reading
"The huge parachute used by NASA's Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message," reports the Associated Press — thanks to the rover's puzzle-loving systems engineer Ian Clark. "During a live stream discussing the landing, one Nasa commentator said: 'Someti … | Continue reading
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.Org: The Milky Way is surrounded by dozens of dwarf galaxies that are thought to be relics of the very first galaxies in the universe. Among the most primitive of these galactic fossils is Tucana II -- an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy that is about … | Continue reading
Just 11 months before his death in 2001, famous author Douglas Adams answered questions from Slashdot readers. And Slashdot reader Informativity still remembers how Adams (also a Doctor Who script editor) had included a supercomputer named Deep Thought in his first book which spe … | Continue reading
"NASA's rocket charged with taking the agency back to the moon fired its four main engines Saturday afternoon, but the test in Mississippi was cut short after a malfunction caused an automatic abort," reports Florida Today... "We did get an MCF on engine four," a control room mem … | Continue reading
Since 1976 "Project Censored," a U.S.-based nonprofit media watchdog organization, has been identifying "the news that didn't make the news," the most significant stories it believes are being systematically overlooked. Slashdot ran stories about its annual list of the year's mo … | Continue reading
"A Mysterious Object Is Hurtling Towards Earth, and Scientists Don't Know What It Is," read Newsweek's headline on Monday, describing an object projected to pass 31,605 miles from earth. (One astronomer told them that was roughly 13% of the average distance between the earth and … | Continue reading
Thelasko shares a report from Forbes: In a major milestone, the New Zealand-based launch company Rocket Lab has successfully recovered an orbital-class rocket after parachuting it back to Earth from near-space -- only the second company in history ever to do so. Yesterday, Thursd … | Continue reading
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Two theoretical physicists specializing in complex systems conclude that global deforestation due to human activities is on track to trigger the "irreversible collapse" of human civilization within the next two to four decades … | Continue reading
Jennifer Riggins is participating in the Oxford Vaccine Trial. She's an American technology journalist and marketer who's self-employed in London — and she's also agreed to answer some questions from Slashdot! Slashdot: Can you give me any details on what it's like when … | Continue reading
"Australia's coronavirus tracing app, dubbed COVIDSafe, has been released as the nation seeks to contain the spread of the deadly pandemic," reports ABC.net.au:People who download the app will be asked to supply a name, which can be a pseudonym, their age range, a mobile number a … | Continue reading
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: NASA will launch a new rover to Mars this July — and 28,000 American schoolchildren wrote essays with suggestions for what NASA should name it. NASA has now selected the top nine finalists, which they'll let the public vote on through Mond … | Continue reading
Slashdot reader JoshuaZ writes: In a major breakthrough in quantum computing it was shown that MIP* equals RE. MIP* is the set of problems that can be efficiently demonstrated to a classical computer interacting with multiple quantum computers with any amount of shared entangl … | Continue reading
The BBC reports:President Donald Trump has officially funded a Pentagon force focused on warfare in space -- the U.S. Space Force. The new military service, the first in more than 70 years, falls under the U.S. Air Force. The funding allocation was confirmed on Friday when the … | Continue reading
Researchers have discovered that plants make airborne sounds when stressed, which they say "could open up a new field of precision agriculture where farmers listen for water-starved crops," reports New Scientist. From the report: Itzhak Khait and his colleagues at Tel Aviv Unive … | Continue reading
"A Michigan family was shocked to find a space satellite in their yard Saturday morning," reports a local TV station:Nancy Mumby-Welke shared the video on Facebook, walking up to a satellite lying on its side. "You never know what's going to happen," Welke says in the video. "Th … | Continue reading
pgmrdlm shares a report from StudyFinds: Could the very air we breathe have an impact on our mental health? That's the suggestion coming out of a new international study conducted in the United States and Denmark. After analyzing long-term data sets from both countries, research … | Continue reading
The Los Alamos National Lab wrote in 2012 that "For over 20 years the military, the commercial aerospace industry, and the computer industry have known that high-energy neutrons streaming through our atmosphere can cause computer errors." Now an anonymous reader quotes Computerw … | Continue reading
The "blue light" in LED lighting can damage the eye's retina and disturb natural sleep rhythms, France's government-run health watchdog said this week. From a report: New findings confirm earlier concerns that "exposure to an intense and powerful [LED] light is 'photo-toxic' and … | Continue reading
I worked as a research chemist for a specialty chemical manufacturing firm (Fujifilm Electronic Materials), with customers such as Intel, Samsung, Global Foundaries, and TSMC. There were layers upon layers of fraudulent data reporting, especially ICP-MS trace metal data. I disc … | Continue reading
An anonymous reader quotes Florida Today:A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule suffered an anomaly during a routine test fire at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Saturday afternoon, the 45th Space Wing confirmed today. "On April 20, 2019, an anomaly occurred at Cape Canaveral Air Force S … | Continue reading
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has congratulated the team which sent the first privately-funded mission into lunar orbit -- even though it crashed into the surface of the moon. Its final photo was taken Thursday just 7.5 kilometers above the surface of the moon. But Space.c … | Continue reading
DevNull127 writes: Research scientist James Heathers is a postdoctoral research associate working on bio-signals and meta-science research at Northeastern University, with a PhD from the University of Sydney. He's also pretending to be a mouse on Twitter. And every tweet consis … | Continue reading
Longtime Slashdot reader johnnyb (Jonathan Bartlett) shares the findings of a new study he, along with co-author Asatur Zh. Khurshudyan, published this week in the journal DCDIS-A: Recently a longstanding flaw in elementary calculus was found and corrected. The "second derivativ … | Continue reading
schwit1 quotes ABC News: Vaccines are universally backed by respected scientists and federal agencies, but that isn't enough to convince every parent to vaccinate their children. The decision to fly in the face of near universal scientific opinion doesn't come as a result of a … | Continue reading
Scientists claim they have found new evidence of a link between infection with the protozoan parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, and schizophrenia, in what is described as the largest study of its kind. From a report: T. gondii, a brain-dwelling parasite estimated to be hosted by at lea … | Continue reading
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: How far will Plan S spread? Since the September 2018 launch of the Europe-backed program to mandate immediate open access (OA) to scientific literature, 16 funders in 13 countries have signed on. That's still far shy of P … | Continue reading
Chris Reeve writes: Wired Magazine is reporting that astronomers have since 2014 witnessed up to 100 possible instances of quasars transforming into galaxies over very short timespans, but the article leaves no hint of the trouble this spells for the Big Bang cosmology. The arti … | Continue reading
Researchers at the Naval Medical Center San Diego and Google AI, a division within Google dedicated to artificial intelligence research, are using cancer-detecting algorithms to detect metastatic tumors by autonomously evaluating lymph node biopsies. VentureBeat reports: Their A … | Continue reading
New submitter ilguido writes: At a workshop organized by CERN, Prof Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University said that "physics was invented and built by men, it's not by invitation", BBC reported Monday. Strumia's presentation that supports the idea that "physics is not sexist agai … | Continue reading
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed on Monday the identity of the passenger signed to visit the moon, set to launch on the company's Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) vehicle: Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Mr. Maezawa, who is 42, is the founder of Japan's largest online clothing retailer … | Continue reading
pacopico writes:First World View hung Google SVP Alan Eustace at the end of a balloon and then dropped him 135,908 feet back to Earth. Then, it sent a KFC chicken sandwich to the edge of space. Now, World View has figured out how to get high-altitude balloons to sail winds in th … | Continue reading
A Portland man appears to have a pill-sized camera stuck in his gut. That man is me... Let me explain. For the average Joe, the following statement might sound a bit peculiar: I have swallowed a pill-sized camera a number of times. You see, I have Crohn's Disease (CD) in the smal … | Continue reading
There's a new surprise from the Wall Street Journal's John Carreyrou (author of the Theranos expose Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup). An anonymous reader shares Vanity Fair's summary of their newest podcast interview:According to Carreyrou, Holmes is curr … | Continue reading