World's first astronaut with disability to begin training

Former UK Paralympian John McFall, a surgeon for the UK's NHS public health service, was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) last year when it announced its new class of astronauts.

Shortly after his selection last year, McFall stated, "The message I would give to future generations is that science is for everyone and space travel hopefully can be for everyone."

He will spend the next two years forming part of a feasibility study carried out by ESA and NASA to assess the conditions required for people with disabilities to go to space.

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Ecological 'doom loops' edging closer, study warns

Extreme weather events such as wildfires and droughts will accelerate change in stressed systems leading to quicker tipping points of ecological decline, according to a new study.

Using computer modeling, the U.K. research team, looked at four ecosystems under threat to work out what factors might lead to tipping points, beyond which collapse was inevitable. In some systems, the combination of adding new extreme events on top of other ongoing stresses brought the timing of a predicted tipping point closer to the present by as much as 80%.

Ultimately, say the authors, a "perfect storm" of continuous stress from factors such as unsustainable land use, agricultural expansion and climate change, when coupled with disruptive episodes like floods and fires, will act in concert to rapidly imperil natural systems.

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Physicists Discover a New State of Matter Hidden in The Quantum World

You're familiar with the states of matter we encounter daily – such as solid, liquid, and gas – but in more exotic and extreme conditions, new states can appear, and scientists from the US and China just found one.

They're calling it the chiral bose-liquid state, and as with every new arrangement of particles we discover, it can tell us more about the fabric and the mechanisms of the Universe around us – and in particular, at the super-small quantum scale.

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Scientists are developing a smart skin for use in robots in space

As robots continue to show up all around the world they also take center stage in space. This requires that the machines work well with their human colleagues and that they are also able to withstand the harshness of space with its radiation, low pressure, and violent temperature fluctuations.

“We will design and test a smart skin that will make robots more suitable for future space exploration. It involves testing advanced surface sensors and alarm panels that can enable the robots to detect and avoid potential collisions with objects in the environment. This will make them robust and safe helpers for astronauts in space."

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Space travel can alter gene expression in white blood cells, weakening our immune system

Evidence is mounting that astronauts are more susceptible to infections while in space. For example, astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) commonly suffer from skin rashes, as well as respiratory and non-respiratory diseases. Astronauts are also known to shed more live virus particles; for example, the Epstein-Barr virus, varicella-zoster responsible for shingles, herpes-simplex-1 responsible for sores, and cytomegalovirus. These observations suggest that our immune system might be weakened by space travel. But what could cause such an immune deficit?

"Here we show that the expression of many genes related to immune functions rapidly decreases when astronauts reach space, while the opposite happens when they return to Earth after six months aboard the ISS..."

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The next big advance in cancer treatment could be a vaccine

After decades of limited success, scientists say research has reached a turning point.

These aren't traditional vaccines that prevent disease, but shots to shrink tumors and stop cancer from coming back. Targets for these experimental treatments include breast and lung cancer, with gains reported this year for deadly skin cancer melanoma and pancreatic cancer.

"We're getting something to work. Now we need to get it to work better," said Dr. James Gulley.

More than ever, scientists understand how cancer hides from the body's immune system. Cancer vaccines, like other immunotherapies, boost the immune system to find and kill cancer cells. And some new ones use mRNA, which was developed for cancer but first used for COVID-19 vaccines.

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Astronomers find first direct evidence of gravitational wave background

Scientists have heard the "chorus" of gravitational waves emanating throughout the universe for the very first time, and it's louder than they expected.

The new discovery was made by scientists using the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav).

To reach their findings, they closely observed stars called pulsars that essentially act as cosmic metronomes, allowing scientists to measure a great deal of space phenomena.

Crucially, the new findings constitute the first direct evidence for the gravitational wave background, which only existed in theories until now.

"This is just the beginning"

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ESA’s Euclid telescope is on the move!

The near $1 billion telescope is currently being transported along public roads towards the Cape and it’s ultimate destination at SLC-40.
Source: @_mgde_

Europe's space telescope to target universe's dark mysteries

After a month-long journey through space, Euclid will join its fellow space telescope James Webb at a stable hovering spot around 1.5 million kilometers (more than 930,000 miles) from Earth called the second Lagrangian Point.

From there, Euclid will chart the largest-ever map of the universe, encompassing up to two billion galaxies across more than a third of the sky.

By capturing light that has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth, the map will also offer a new view of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe's history.

Scientists hope to use this information to address what the Euclid project manager Giuseppe Racca calls a "cosmic embarrassment": that 95 percent of the universe remains unknown to humanity.

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