Tech News
Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead
science - Posted On:2025-10-18 19:00:01 Source: slashdot
Long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 shares an announcement from the U.S.-based nonprofit Consumer Reports: Protein powders still carry troubling levels of toxic heavy metals, according to a new Consumer Reports (CR) investigation. Our latest tests of 23 protein powders and ready-to-drink shakes from popular brands found that heavy metal contamination has become even more common among protein products, raising concerns that the risks are growing right alongside the industry itself. For more than two-thirds of the products we analyzed, a single serving contained more lead than CR's food safety experts say is safe to consume in a day — some by more than 10 times... [I]n addition to the average level of lead being higher than what we found 15 years ago, there were also fewer products with undetectable amounts of it. The outliers also packed a heavier punch. Naked Nutrition's Vegan Mass Gainer powder, the product with the highest lead levels, had nearly twice as much lead per serving as the worst product we analyzed in 2010. Nearly all the plant-based products CR tested had elevated lead levels, but some were particularly concerning. Two had so much lead that CR's experts caution against using them at all... Dairy-based protein powders and shakes generally had the lowest amounts of lead, but half of the products we tested still had high enough levels of contamination that CR's experts advise against daily use... Unlike prescription and over-the-counter drugs, the Food and Drug Administration doesn't review, approve, or test supplements like protein powders before they are sold. Federal regulations also don't generally require supplement makers to prove their products are safe, and there are no federal limits for the amount of heavy metals they can contain. The article acknowledges that "Many of these powders are fine to have occasionally, and even those with the highest lead levels are far below the concentration needed to cause immediate harm. That said, because most people don't actually need protein supplements — nutrition experts say the average American already gets plenty — it makes sense to ask whether these products are worth the added exposure." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Should Scientists Be Allowed to Edit Genes of Wild Animals? Top Conservation Groups Just Voted Yes
science - Posted On:2025-10-18 17:00:00 Source: slashdot
It's the world's largest network of environmental groups, according to NBC News, with more than 1,400 members from roughly 160 countries. It meets once every four years. And in a vote Tuesday, the International Union for Conservation of Nature "approved further exploration of the use of genetic engineering tools to aid in the preservation of animal species and other living organisms." Researchers are already pursuing projects that involve changing some species' DNA. Scientists are genetically modifying mosquitoes to reduce transmission of diseases like malaria, for example, and synthesizing horseshoe crab blood, which is used in drug development. Controversial efforts to "de-extinct" archaic creatures — such as the so-called "dire wolf" that a biosciences company announced it had revived this spring — fall under the umbrella, as well. So do possibilities like modifying organisms to help them adapt to a warming world, which are on the table but further off in development.... The decision is applicable to work on a range of organisms, including animals, plants, yeasts and bacteria.... The notion of introducing genetic engineering into wild ecosystems would have been considered a nonstarter in most conservation circles a decade ago, according to Jessica Owley [a professor and environment law program director at the University of Miami]. But the intensifying effects of climate change and other stressors to biodiversity are bolstering arguments in favor of human intervention that could make endangered species resistant to those threats... The IUCN vote, she added, reflects a feeling of desperation among conservationists and governments, as existing regulations and conservation efforts fall short and species continue to disappear worldwide. "A separate measure, a proposed moratorium on releasing genetically modified organisms into the environment, failed by a single vote..." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
'How We Sharpened the James Webb Telescope's Vision From a Million Kilometers Away'
science - Posted On:2025-10-18 12:45:00 Source: slashdot
The James Webb Space Telescope gets its highest resolution with the aperture masking interferometer (or AMI), "a tiny piece of precisely machined metal that slots into one of the telescope's cameras," according to a new article by Benjamin Pope, an associated math professor at Macquarie University. "We can finally present its first successful observations of stars, planets, moons and even black hole jets." [AMI] was put on Webb to diagnose and measure any blur in its images. Even nanometres of distortion in Webb's 18 hexagonal primary mirrors and many internal surfaces will blur the images enough to hinder the study of planets or black holes, where sensitivity and resolution are key. AMI filters the light with a carefully structured pattern of holes in a simple metal plate, to make it much easier to tell if there are any optical misalignments. We wanted to use this mode to observe the birth places of planets, as well as material being sucked into black holes. But before any of this, AMI showed Webb wasn't working entirely as hoped. At very fine resolution — at the level of individual pixels — all the images were slightly blurry due to an electronic effect: brighter pixels leaking into their darker neighbours. This is not a mistake or flaw, but a fundamental feature of infrared cameras that turned out to be unexpectedly serious for Webb. This was a dealbreaker for seeing distant planets many thousands of times fainter than their stars a few pixels away: my colleagues quickly showed that its limits were more than ten times worse than hoped. So, we set out to correct it... We built a computer model to simulate AMI's optical physics, with flexibility about the shapes of the mirrors and apertures and about the colours of the stars. We connected this to a machine learning model to represent the electronics with an "effective detector model" — where we only care about how well it can reproduce the data, not about why. After training and validation on some test stars, this setup allowed us to calculate and undo the blur in other data, restoring AMI to full function. It doesn't change what Webb does in space, but rather corrects the data during processing. It worked beautifully — the star HD 206893 hosts a faint planet and the reddest-known brown dwarf (an object between a star and a planet). They were known but out of reach with Webb before applying this correction. Now, both little dots popped out clearly in our new maps of the system... With the new correction, we brought Jupiter's moon Io into focus, clearly tracking its volcanoes as it rotates over an hour-long timelapse. "This correction has opened the door to using AMI to prospect for unknown planets at previously impossible resolutions and sensitivities..." the article points out. "Our results on painstakingly testing and enhancing AMI are now released on the open-access archive arXiv in a pair of papers." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NASA’s next Moonship reaches last stop before launch pad
Science - Posted On:2025-10-17 14:45:00 Source: arstechnica
The Orion spacecraft, which will fly four people around the Moon, arrived inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida late Thursday night, ready to be stacked on top of its rocket for launch early next year.
The late-night transfer covered about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from one facility to another at the Florida spaceport. NASA and its contractors are continuing preparations for the Artemis II mission after the White House approved the program as an exception to work through the ongoing government shutdown, which began on October 1.
The sustained work could set up Artemis II for a launch opportunity as soon as February 5 of next year. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will be the first humans to fly on the Orion spacecraft, a vehicle that has been in development for nearly two decades. The Artemis II crew will make history on their 10-day flight by becoming the first people to travel to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972.
Lead poisoning has been a feature of our evolution
Science - Posted On:2025-10-17 12:45:00 Source: arstechnica
Our hominid ancestors faced a Pleistocene world full of dangers—and apparently one of those dangers was lead poisoning.
Lead exposure sounds like a modern problem, at least if you define “modern” the way a paleoanthropologist might: a time that started a few thousand years ago with ancient Roman silver smelting and lead pipes. According to a recent study, however, lead is a much more ancient nemesis, one that predates not just the Romans but the existence of our genus Homo. Paleoanthropologist Renaud Joannes-Boyau of Australia’s Southern Cross University and his colleagues found evidence of exposure to dangerous amounts of lead in the teeth of fossil apes and hominins dating back almost 2 million years. And somewhat controversially, they suggest that the toxic element’s pervasiveness may have helped shape our evolutionary history.
Joannes-Boyau and his colleagues took tiny samples of preserved enamel and dentin from the teeth of 51 fossils. In most of those teeth, the paleoanthropologists found evidence that these apes and hominins had been exposed to lead—sometimes in dangerous quantities—fairly often during their early years.
Physicists Inadvertently Generated the Shortest X-Ray Pulses Ever Observed
science - Posted On:2025-10-17 06:15:00 Source: slashdot
Physicists using SLAC's X-ray free-electron laser discovered two new laser phenomena that allowed them to generate the shortest, highest-energy X-ray pulses ever recorded (60-100 attoseconds). These breakthroughs could let scientists observe electron motion and chemical bond formation in real time. Physicists Uwe Bergmann and Thomas Linker write in an article for The Conversation: In this new study we used X-rays, which have 100 million times shorter wavelengths than microwaves and 100 million times more energy. This meant the resulting new X-ray laser pulses were split into different X-ray wavelengths corresponding to Rabi frequencies in the extreme ultraviolet region. Ultraviolet light has a frequency 100 million times higher than radio waves. This Rabi cycling effect allowed us to generate the shortest high-energy X-ray pulses to date, clocking in at 60-100 attoseconds. While the pulses that X-ray free-electron lasers currently generate allow researchers to observe atomic bonds forming, rearranging and breaking, they are not fast enough to look inside the electron cloud that generates such bonds. Using these new attosecond X-ray laser pulses could allow scientists to study the fastest processes in materials at the atomic-length scale and to discern different elements. In the future, we also hope to use much shorter X-ray free-electron laser pulses to better generate these attosecond X-ray pulses. We are even hoping to generate pulses below 60 attoseconds by using heavier materials with shorter lifespans, such as tungsten or hafnium. These new X-ray pulses are fast enough to eventually enable scientists to answer questions such as how exactly an electron cloud moves around and what a chemical bond actually is. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Scientists Create New Form of Ice, Known As Ice XXI
science - Posted On:2025-10-17 03:15:00 Source: slashdot
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Popular Mechanics: [I]n a new study published in the journal Nature Materials, scientists from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) have now found yet another phase, appropriately named Ice XXI. At the heart of the experiment, scientists used diamond anvil cells (DACs) -- a common device used in materials science for squeezing samples under immense pressure -- to subject water to 2 gigapascals (20,000 times higher than normal atmosphere) of pressure in just 10 milliseconds. The scientists call this kind of water "supercompressed," and it's metastable, meaning it persists for a time even when another form of ice would be more stable. And because of the immense pressure, ice forms at room temperature but the molecules are much more densely packed. "Rapid compression of water allows it to remain liquid up to higher pressures, where it should have already crystallized to ice VI," Geun Woo Lee, a co-author of the study from RISS, said in a press statement. "The structure in which liquid H2O crystallizes depends on the degree of supercompression of the liquid." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SpaceX has plans to launch Falcon Heavy from California—if anyone wants it to
Science - Posted On:2025-10-16 12:30:01 Source: arstechnica
The Department of the Air Force has approved SpaceX's plans to launch up to 100 missions per year from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
This would continue the tectonic turnaround at the spaceport on California's Central Coast. Five years ago, Vandenberg hosted just a single orbital launch. This year's number stands at 51 orbital flights, or 53 launches if you count a pair of Minuteman missile tests, the most in a single calendar year at Vandenberg since the early 1970s.
Vandenberg is used for missions launching into polar orbits, paths oriented north-south that, over time, cover most of the Earth's surface area. These orbits are popular for Earth observation satellites.
Antarctica is starting to look a lot like Greenland—and that isn’t good
Science - Posted On:2025-10-16 11:45:00 Source: arstechnica
As recently as the 1990s, when the Greenland Ice Sheet and the rest of the Arctic region were measurably thawing under the climatic blowtorch of human-caused global warming, most of Antarctica’s vast ice cap still seemed securely frozen.
But not anymore. Physics is physics. As the planet heats up, more ice will melt at both poles, and recent research shows that Antarctica’s ice caps, glaciers, and floating ice shelves, as well as its sea ice, are just as vulnerable to warming as the Arctic.
Both satellite data and field observations in Antarctica reveal alarming signs of a Greenland-like meltdown, with increased surface melting of the ice fields, faster-moving glaciers, and dwindling sea ice. Some scientists are sounding the alarm, warning that the rapid “Greenlandification” of Antarctica will have serious consequences, including an accelerated rise in sea levels and significant shifts in rainfall and drought patterns.
New Alzheimer's Treatment Clears Plaques From Brains of Mice Within Hours
science - Posted On:2025-10-16 03:15:00 Source: slashdot
Scientists from Spain and China have successfully repaired the blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer's-model mice, enabling the brain to naturally clear amyloid-beta plaques and reverse cognitive decline. "After just three drug injections, mice with certain genes that mimic Alzheimer's showed a reversal of several key pathological features," adds ScienceAlert. From the report: Within hours of the first injection, the animal brains showed a nearly 45 percent reduction in clumps of amyloid-beta plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. The mice had previously shown signs of cognitive decline, but after all three doses, the animals performed on par with their healthy peers in spatial learning and memory tasks. The benefits lasted at least six months. These preclinical results don't guarantee success in humans, but they're an encouraging start, which the authors say "heralds a new era" in drug research. "The therapeutic implications are profound," claim the international team of researchers, co-led by scientists at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the West China Hospital Sichuan University (WCHSU). The findings have been published in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Focused Sound Energy Holds Promise For Treating Cancer, Alzheimer's and Other Diseases
science - Posted On:2025-10-15 23:45:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Conversation: Sound waves at frequencies above the threshold for human hearing are routinely used in medical care. Also known as ultrasound, these sound waves can help clinicians diagnose and monitor disease, and can also provide first glimpses of your newest family members. And now, patients with conditions ranging from cancer to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's may soon benefit from recent advances in this technology. I am a biomedical engineer who studies how focused ultrasound -- the concentration of sound energy into a specific volume -- can be fine-tuned to treat various conditions. Over the past few years, this technology has seen significant growth and use in the clinic. And researchers continue to discover new ways to use focused ultrasound to treat disease. [...] Research on focused ultrasound has primarily focused on the most devastating and prevalent diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease. However, I believe that further developments in, and increased use of, focused ultrasound in the clinic will eventually benefit patients with rare diseases. One rare disease of particular interest for my lab is cerebral cavernous malformation, or CCM. CCMs are lesions in the brain that occur when the cells that make up blood vessels undergo uncontrolled growth. While uncommon, when these lesions grow and hemorrhage, they can cause debilitating neurological symptoms. The most common treatment for CCM is surgical removal of the brain lesions; however, some CCMs are located in brain areas that are difficult to access, creating a risk of side effects. Radiation is another treatment option, but it, too, can lead to serious adverse effects. We found that using focused ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier can improve drug delivery to CCMs. Additionally, we also observed that focused ultrasound treatment itself could stop CCMs from growing in mice, even without administering a drug. While we don't yet understand how focused ultrasound is stabilizing CCMs, abundant research on the safety of using this technique in patients treated for other conditions has allowed neurosurgeons to begin designing clinical trials testing the use of this technique on people with CCM. With further research and advancements, I am hopeful that focused ultrasound can become a viable treatment option for many devastating rare diseases. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Rice weevil on a grain of rice wins 2025 Nikon Small World contest
Science - Posted On:2025-10-15 17:15:01 Source: arstechnica
A stunning image of a rice weevil on a single grain of rice has won the 2025 Nikon Small World photomicrography contest, yielding valuable insight into the structure and behavior of—and providing a fresh perspective on—this well-known agricultural pest. The image was taken by Zhang You of Yunnan, China. Another of You's photographs placed 15th in this year's contest.
“It pays to dive deep into entomology: understanding insects’ behaviors and mastering lighting," You said in a statement. "A standout work blends artistry with scientific rigor, capturing the very essence, energy, and spirit of these creatures.”
There was an element of luck in creating his winning image, too. "I had observed rice weevils in grains before, but never one with its wings spread," You said. "This one was naturally preserved on a windowsill, perhaps in a final attempt to escape. Its tiny size makes manually preparing spread-wing specimens extremely difficult, so encountering it was both serendipitous and inspiring.”
The Numbers Six and Seven Are Making Life Hell for Math Teachers
science - Posted On:2025-10-15 14:15:00 Source: slashdot
Math teachers across American schools are contending with a classroom disruption that has proven impossible to contain. The numbers six and seven now trigger instant pandemonium among students. They scream the phrase and perform a palms-up seesaw hand gesture whenever the numbers appear in equations or instructions. Teachers have begun avoiding breaking students into groups of six or seven or asking them to turn to page 67. The meme has no meaning, reports WSJ. That absence of meaning is the point. The phenomenon traces back to late last year when Philadelphia rapper Skrilla released "Doot Doot (6 7)," a song referencing 67th street where his friends grew up. The phrase spiraled into youth culture in March through a viral video of a boy with forward-swept hair lurching toward a camera to deliver an animated "six seven." Skrilla is now touring venues where audiences wait for the six-seven line. Some teachers have attempted to neutralize the meme by saying it themselves. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Believing misinformation is a “win” for some people, even when proven false
Science - Posted On:2025-10-15 11:15:01 Source: arstechnica
Why do some people endorse claims that can easily be disproved? It’s one thing to believe false information, but another to actively stick with something that’s obviously wrong.
Our new research, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, suggests that some people consider it a “win” to lean in to known falsehoods.
We are social psychologists who study political psychology and how people reason about reality. During the pandemic, we surveyed 5,535 people across eight countries to investigate why people believed COVID-19 misinformation, like false claims that 5G networks cause the virus.
Common Yeast Can Survive Martian Conditions
science - Posted On:2025-10-15 03:15:00 Source: slashdot
A new study shows that common baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) can survive Mars-like conditions, including meteorite shock waves and toxic perchlorate salts found in Martian soil. Phys.org reports: Published in PNAS Nexus, Purusharth I. Rajyaguru and colleagues subjected Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is a widely used model yeast, to shock waves and perchlorates. The authors chose the yeast in part because it has already been studied in space. When stressed, yeast, humans, and many other organisms form ribonucleoprotein (RNP) condensates, structures made of RNA and proteins that protect RNA and affect the fates of mRNAs. When the stressor passes, the RNP condensates, which include subtypes known as stress granules and P-bodies, disassemble. The authors simulated Martian shock waves at the High-Intensity Shock Tube for Astrochemistry (HISTA) housed in the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India. Yeast exposed to 5.6 Mach intensity shock waves survived with slowed growth, as did yeast subjected to 100 mM sodium salt of perchlorate (NaClO4) -- a concentration similar to that in Martian soils. Yeast cells also survived exposure to the combined stress of shock waves and perchlorate stress. In both cases, the yeast assembled RNP condensates. Shock waves induced the assembly of stress granules and P-bodies; perchlorate caused yeast to make P-bodies but not stress granules. Mutants incapable of assembling RNP condensates were poor at surviving the Martian stress condition. Transcriptome analysis identified specific RNA transcripts perturbed by Mars-like conditions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Satellites Are Leaking the World's Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data
science - Posted On:2025-10-14 13:00:01 Source: slashdot
Researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland have found that roughly half of geostationary satellite signals transmit sensitive data without encryption. The team spent three years using an $800 satellite receiver on a university rooftop in San Diego to intercept communications from satellites visible from their location. They collected phone calls and text messages from more than 2,700 T-Mobile users in just nine hours of recording. The researchers also obtained data from airline passengers using in-flight Wi-Fi, communications from electric utilities and offshore oil and gas platforms, and US and Mexican military communications that revealed personnel locations and equipment details. The exposed data resulted from telecommunications companies using satellites to relay signals from remote cell towers to their core networks. The researchers examined only about 15% of global satellite transponder communications and presented their findings at an Association for Computing Machinery conference in Taiwan this week. Most companies warned by the researchers have encrypted their satellite transmissions, but some US critical infrastructure owners have not yet added encryption. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SpaceX finally got exactly what it needed from Starship V2
Science - Posted On:2025-10-14 04:15:00 Source: arstechnica
SpaceX closed a troubled but instructive chapter in its Starship rocket program Monday with a near-perfect test flight that carried the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world from South Texas to the Indian Ocean.
The rocket's 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines roared to life at 6:23 pm CDT (7:23 pm EDT; 23:23 UTC), throttling up to generate some 16.7 million pounds of thrust, by large measure more powerful than any rocket before Starship. Moments later, the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket began a vertical climb away from SpaceX's test site in Starbase, Texas, near the US-Mexico border.
From then on, the rocket executed its flight plan like clockwork. This was arguably SpaceX's most successful Starship test flight to date. The only flight with a similar claim occurred one year ago Monday, when the company caught the rocket's Super Heavy booster back at the launch pad after soaring to the uppermost fringes of the atmosphere. But that flight didn't accomplish as much in space.
NASA Unit JPL To Lay Off About 550 Workers, Citing Restructure
science - Posted On:2025-10-14 03:15:00 Source: slashdot
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is laying off around 550 employees, or roughly 11% of its workforce, as part of an effort to "restructure and establish an appropriate size to ensure future success." According to JPL Director Dave Gallagher, the job cuts "are not related to the current government shutdown." CNBC reports: JPL is a research and development lab funded by NASA -- the federal space agency -- and managed by the California Institute of Technology. "While not easy, I believe that taking these actions now will help the Lab transform at the scale and pace necessary to help achieve humanity's boldest ambitions in space," Gallagher wrote in a separate mekor to JPL employees and contractors. Gallagher, in the public announcement, noted that the reorganization of JPL began in July, and "over the past few months, we have communicated openly with employees about the challenges and hard choices ahead." "This week's action, while not easy, is essential to securing JPL's future by creating a leaner infrastructure, focusing on our core technical capabilities, maintaining fiscal discipline, and positioning us to compete in the evolving space ecosystem -- all while continuing to deliver on our vital work for NASA and the nation," Gallagher wrote. Gallagher said that JPL employees will be notified of their status on Tuesday, and the "new Lab structure ... will become effective Wednesday." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SpaceX Starship Hits Key Milestones Before Stunning Splashdown
science - Posted On:2025-10-13 21:45:00 Source: slashdot
SpaceX's Starship megarocket successfully completed its 11th test flight, achieving major milestones like engine relight, satellite deployment, and a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. From a report: This mission marks the second clean test run for Version 2, following a successful showing during its last test mission in August. Earlier this year, however, Starship Version 2 suffered three in-flight failures and an explosive accident during ground testing. Today's test mission is expected to be the last for the current iteration of Starship prototypes. The company has said it will debut a scaled up Version 3 for the next flight. You can watch a recording of the launch on YouTube. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Starship’s elementary era ends today with mega-rocket’s 11th test flight
Science - Posted On:2025-10-13 16:30:00 Source: arstechnica
SpaceX is set to launch the 11th full-scale test flight of the company's Starship rocket Monday evening, with hopes of capping a tumultuous year with a successful one-hour voyage from South Texas to the Indian Ocean.
Liftoff of the Super Heavy booster with the Starship upper stage is scheduled for 6:15 pm CDT (7:15 pm EDT; 23:15 UTC). SpaceX has a 75-minute window to launch Monday. You can watch a livestream of the flight here.
SpaceX's control team, positioned a couple of miles away from the launch pad at Starbase, Texas, will oversee the loading of more than 10.5 million pounds of super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into the two-stage rocket beginning about an hour before liftoff. In the final minutes of the countdown, the world's largest rocket will undergo a steering check, and the launch director will give a final "go" for launch.