Category: Science

The 150 minutes of moderate to intense aerobic activity per week recommended by the US Department of Health and Human Services can significantly reduce liver fat, according to new research.

A meta-analysis of 14 previous studies confirms that exercise leads to clinically meaningful reductions in liver fat for patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

While prior research suggested that physical activity was beneficial, it had not determined the specific amount of exercise needed to make clinically meaningful improvement.

“Our findings can give physicians the confidence to prescribe exercise as a treatment for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease,” says Jonathan Stine, associate professor of medicine and public health sciences, and hepatologist at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

“Having a target amount of physical activity to aim for will be useful for health care and exercise professionals to develop personalized approaches as they help patients modify their lifestyles and become more physically active.”

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) affects close to 30% of the global population and over time, can lead to cirrhosis, also known as liver scarring, and cancer. There are no approved drug treatments or an effective cure for this common condition; however, research has shown that exercise can improve liver fat, physical fitness, body composition, and quality of life for patients.

According to Stine, prior research had not deduced what the required “dose” of exercise was to help patients with NAFLD achieve clinically meaningful improvement—defined as at least a 30% relative reduction of liver fat, measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Stine reviewed 14 studies with a total of 551 subjects who had NAFLD and participated in randomized, controlled trials involving exercise interventions. His team evaluated data pooled from all the studies including age, sex, body mass index, change in body weight, adherence to the exercise regimen, and MRI-measured liver fat.

The researchers’ primary goal was to examine the association between exercise training and a clinically relevant improvement in liver fat. Independent of weight loss, the team found exercise training was 3 1/2 times more likely to achieve clinically meaningful treatment response (greater than or equal to 30% relative reduction in MRI-measured liver fat) compared to standard clinical care.

In its secondary analysis, the team determined what the optimal “dose” of exercise was to achieve clinically meaningful improvements in liver fat. They found that 39% of patients prescribed greater than or equal to 750 metabolic equivalents of task (for example, 150 minutes per week of brisk walking) achieved significant treatment response compared to only 26% of those prescribed lesser doses of exercise. This is the same amount of physical activity recommended by the American
Gastroenterological Association and the European Association for the Study of the Liver.

The results are published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.

According to Stine, when this amount of exercise was prescribed, clinically relevant reductions in MRI-measured liver fat were achieved at a rate similar to those reported in early-phase NASH drug trials evaluating medications that block fat production.

“Exercise is a lifestyle modification, so the fact that it might match the ability of in-development therapeutics to achieve the same outcome is significant,” says Stine, a Penn State Cancer Institute researcher.

“Clinicians counseling patients with NAFLD should recommend this amount of activity to their patients. Brisk walking or light cycling for 1/2 an hour a day five times a week is just one example of a program that would meet these criteria.”

More research, particularly controlled randomized trials, are needed to validate their findings and to compare the impact of different exercise doses head-to-head, Stine says.

Additional coauthors are from the University of California, San Diego and Penn State. Penn State researchers have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health supported the work. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Source: Penn State

A “white light” added to traffic signals could enable self-driving vehicles to help control traffic flow—and let human drivers know what’s going on.

In computational simulations, the new approach significantly improves travel time through intersections and reduces fuel consumption.

“This concept we’re proposing for traffic intersections, which we call a ‘white phase,’ taps into the computing power of autonomous vehicles (AVs) themselves,” says Ali Hajbabaie, an associate professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University, and corresponding author of the paper in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

“The white phase concept also incorporates a new traffic signal, so that human drivers know what they are supposed to do. Red lights will still mean stop. Green lights will still mean go. And white lights will tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them.”

The white phase concept rests on the fact that it is possible for AVs to communicate wirelessly with both each other and the computer controlling the traffic signal. When enough AVs are approaching the intersection, this would activate the white light.

The white light is a signal that AVs are coordinating their movement to facilitate traffic through the intersection more efficiently. Any non-automated vehicles—those being driven by a person—would simply be required to follow the vehicle in front of them: if the car in front of them stops, they stop; if the car in front of them goes through the intersection, they go through the intersection.

When too many vehicles approaching the intersection are being controlled by drivers, rather than AVs, the traffic light would revert to the conventional green-yellow-red signal pattern.

“Granting some of the traffic flow control to the AVs is a relatively new idea, called the mobile control paradigm,” Hajbabaie says. “It can be used to coordinate traffic in any scenario involving AVs. But we think it is important to incorporate the white light concept at intersections because it tells human drivers what’s going on, so that they know what they are supposed to do as they approach the intersection.

“And, just to be clear, the color of the ‘white light’ doesn’t matter. What’s important is that there be a signal that is clearly identifiable by drivers.”

The researchers first introduced a “white phase” traffic intersection concept in 2020. However, that initial concept relied on a centralized computing approach, with the computer controlling the traffic light being responsible for receiving input from all approaching AVs, making the necessary calculations, and then telling the AVs how they should proceed through the intersection.

“We’ve improved on that concept, and this paper outlines a white phase concept that relies on distributed computing—effectively using the computing resources of all the AVs to dictate traffic flow,” Hajbabaie says.

“This is both more efficient, and less likely to fall prey to communication failures. For example, if there’s an interruption or time lag in communication with the traffic light, the distributed computing approach would still be able to handle traffic flow smoothly.”

To test the performance of the distributed computing white phase concept, the researchers made use of microscopic traffic simulators. These simulators are complex computational models designed to replicate real-world traffic, down to the behavior of individual vehicles. Using these simulators, the researchers were able to compare traffic behavior at intersections with and without the white phase, as well as how the number of AVs involved influences that behavior.

“The simulations tell us several things,” Hajbabaie says. “First, AVs improve traffic flow, regardless of the presence of the white phase. Second, if there are AVs present, the white phase further improves traffic flow. This also reduces fuel consumption, because there is less stop-and-go traffic. Third, the higher the percentage of traffic at a white phase intersection that is made up of AVs, the faster the traffic moves through the intersection and the better the fuel consumption numbers.”

When only 10-30% of the traffic at a white phase intersection was made up of AVs, the simulations found there were relatively small improvements in traffic flow. But as the percentage of AVs at white phase intersections increased, so did the benefits.

“That said, even if only 10% of the vehicles at a white phase intersection are autonomous, you still see fewer delays,” Hajbabaie says. “For example, when 10% of vehicles are autonomous, you see delays reduced by 3%. When 30% of vehicles are autonomous, delays are reduced by 10.7%.”

The researchers acknowledge that AVs are not ready to adopt the new distributed computing approach tomorrow, nor are governments going to install brand new traffic lights at every intersection in the immediate future.

“However, there are various elements of the white phase concept that could be adopted with only minor modifications to both intersections and existing AVs,” Hajbabaie says. “We also think there are opportunities to test drive this approach at specific locations.

“For example, ports see high volumes of commercial vehicle traffic, for which traffic flow is particularly important. Commercial vehicles seem to have higher rates of autonomous vehicle adoption, so there could be an opportunity to implement a pilot project in that setting that could benefit port traffic and commercial transportation.”

Source: NC State

Scoring highly on racial resentment is strongly associated with believing that abortion should be illegal, research finds.

By the same token, people who had low scores on racial resentment were much less likely to believe abortion should be illegal, the study shows.

“There’s been plenty of historical analysis of the relationship between the pro-life movement and racial attitudes, but this is the first effort to demonstrate the clear, empirical relationship between racial attitudes and abortion attitudes,” says Steven Green, coauthor of the study and a professor of political science at North Carolina State University. “And we found that the strength of this relationship has increased considerably in the past decade.”

“In essence, the data tell us that beliefs about abortion rights are closely tied to beliefs about racial justice issues.”

Racial resentment is a well-established, standardized scale that is used to measure attitudes toward Black people in the United States. The higher the score on the racial resentment scale, the less an individual believes in systemic racism and the legacy of slavery.

“Some have argued that evangelicals oppose abortion not simply because of their views on the sanctity of life, but due to racial resentment against government policies and other cultural shifts related to a broader movement towards greater racial equality,” Greene says. “We wanted to explore this possible relationship, as it has only become more important to understand these attitudes in the wake of the Dobbs decision.”

In June 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that abortion is not a constitutional right, allowing states to impose restrictions on abortion and access to related medical care.

For this study, researchers drew on data from two nationally representative surveys conducted in 2020: the American National Election Study (ANES) and the Public Religion Research Institute American Values Survey. Both surveys asked respondents questions related to their attitudes about abortion, racial resentment, and religious beliefs, in addition to other demographic and political information.

“One of the things that really stood out to us was that the relationship between racial resentment and abortion attitudes was remarkably strong regardless of an individual’s partisan affiliation and political beliefs,” Greene says. “For example, conservative Republicans who had low racial resentment scores were substantially more likely to support abortion rights than their fellow conservative Republicans.”

To get a handle on how the relationship between racial resentment and abortion attitudes has changed over time, the researchers looked at ANES survey data from 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016, as well as the 2020 data.

From 2000 through 2008, the researchers found no statistically significant relationship between racial resentment and abortion rights attitudes. The relationship first showed up in 2012, and grew significantly stronger through 2016 and 2020.

“Ultimately, we found that religious beliefs are absolutely a factor in whether people think abortion should be legal,” Greene says. “However, the evidence strongly suggests that racial attitudes are also closely tied to how people view abortion.

“In essence, the data tell us that beliefs about abortion rights are closely tied to beliefs about racial justice issues,” Greene says. “Understanding this relationship offers a lens through which to view the ongoing political debates about these issues both on the national stage and in state legislatures across the country.”

The paper appears in Social Science Quarterly. Coauthors are from the Public Religion Research Institute and Augusta University.

Source: NC State

Community gardens and urban farms positively affect biodiversity, local ecosystems, and the well-being of people that work in them, a new study shows.

Traditionally, it has been assumed that cultivating food leads to a loss of biodiversity and negative impacts on an ecosystem.

For the study, researchers looked at 28 urban community gardens across California over five years and quantified biodiversity in plant and animal life, as well as ecosystem functions such as pollination, carbon sequestration, food production, pest control, and human well-being.

“We wanted to determine if there were any tradeoffs in terms of biodiversity or impacts on ecosystem function,” says Shalene Jha, an associate professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, and lead author of the study in Ecology Letters

“What we found is that these gardens, which are providing tremendous nutritional resources and increasing well-being for gardeners, are also supporting incredibly high levels of plant and animal biodiversity. It’s a win-win.”

Previous assumptions by scientists about the negative effect of food production on biodiversity have been almost entirely based on intensive rural agriculture enterprises that tend to grow only one or two types of crops, often at a massive scale.

Urban community gardens, private gardens, and urban farms and orchards tend to grow more types of plants in smaller areas. The new study is the first to explore the effects of urban gardens across a wide range of biodiversity measures and ecological services.

“It’s estimated that by 2030, about 60% of the world’s population will live in cities,” Jha says. “And urban farms and gardens currently provide about 15%-20% of our food supply, so they are essential in addressing food inequality challenges. What we’re seeing is that urban gardens present a critical opportunity to both support biodiversity and local food production.”

The study also found that the choices that gardeners make can have a large impact on their local ecosystem. For instance, planting trees outside crop beds could increase carbon sequestration without limiting pollinators or decreasing food production from too much shade. And mulching only within crop beds could help improve soil carbon services, while avoiding negative effects on pest control and pollinators.

The US Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, and grants from the University of California funded the work.

Additional coauthors are from UC Santa Cruz, Seattle University, and Water Flagship in Australia.

Source: UT Austin

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Internet-of-things startup Sateliot announced an agreement Feb. 7 with Sentrisense, an Argentine company focused on power line maintenance, to offer satellite connectivity for electric grid sensors.

The new service will allow Sentrisense to monitor sensors attached to electric towers or power lines, modify the amperage and quickly identify broken wires, fires or other dangerous conditions.

“The massive connectivity between 5G satellites and the sensors will allow far more accurate predictions on wear and tear analysis, and alert to the presence of fallen trees or ice on the lines,” Sateliot CEO Jaume Sanpera said in a statement. In addition, data from the sensors will help Sentrisense determine wire inclination and each wire’s distance from the ground “with an affordable connection of just $1 per month per device,” he added.

Traditionally, Sentrisense devices have relayed data through cellphone towers. Under the new agreement, Sateliot will offer Sentrisense service beyond the reach of cell towers. Sentrisense monitors electric wires in the United States, Australia, Belgium, Chile, Spain and Sweden.

“This connectivity agreement will allow Sentrisense Line guard sensors to connect anywhere in the world, even in remote locations,” Sentrisense CEO Sebastán Cerone said in a statement. “The electric grid, the largest engineering feat of humankind right now, is by definition is an analog asset, and we are fully digitizing it. We want to turn the grid … into a smart tool, able to predict fires and other weather and environmental hazards.”

In addition to relaying data on the condition of the wires, Sentrisense devices report ambient weather conditions like humidity, temperature, wind direction and speed. These reports will help increase the resilience of the electric grid by informing operators of heat waves or blizzard conditions, according to the news release.

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The mortality rate for pregnant people with sickle cell disease is 26 times higher than the national average, research finds. That figure hasn’t improved since the last time assessment.

Researchers have further documented an association between a substantially higher risk of maternal morbidity and mortality among those with the inherited blood disorder sickle cell disease, compared to those without it.

Their analysis, completed using a large national administrative database with records for pregnant people with sickle cell disease, appears in JAMA Network Open.

A double research disparity

The study findings highlight a need for increased disease-specific interventions for pregnant people with sickle cell disease, or SCD, as well as health disparities long known to affect people with the disorder.

In the United States, the condition is most prevalent in the Black community, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2000 to 2003, the maternal mortality rate for people with sickle cell disease was 7.2 deaths per 10,000. In this study looking at data collected 15 years later, the mortality rate among pregnant people with SCD was 13.3 deaths per 10,000.

“People with sickle cell disease are already lacking profoundly needed research and clinical care. Pregnant people with sickle cell disease are at an even greater disadvantage,” says Lydia Pecker, assistant professor of medicine specializing in hematology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Pregnancy with SCD

In the new study, researchers applied the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Severe Maternal Morbidity index to the National Inpatient Sample—a nationally representative sample of hospital admissions in the United States. Their analysis covered information collected from 2012 to 2018, which included 5,401,899 deliveries. This figure comprised 3,901 deliveries among pregnant people with SCD and 742,164 deliveries among Black people. 84% of those with sickle cell disease who delivered were Black pregnant people.

Maternal mortality—defined as death during pregnancy, at delivery, or soon after delivery—was highest among those with SCD, at 13.3 per 10,000, compared to 1.2 per 10,000 among pregnant Black people and without SCD and 0.5 per 10,000 among non-Black, non-SCD patients during the study period.

“Pregnancy can bring out negative side effects of any pre-existing condition, and sickle cell disease is no exception,” says Ahizechukwu Eke, associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Sickle cell patients require more interventions, including increased blood transfusions, and more frequent ultrasounds to assess the condition of the fetus.”

The researchers note that despite improvements in the care of people with SCD and improvements in the care of high-risk pregnancies, maternal mortality and morbidity rates of people with SCD have not improved. These findings suggest that advancements in SCD and high-risk OB care are not reaching enough pregnant people with SCD, the researchers say.

In the United States, 90% of people with SCD are Black, so pregnancies among people with SCD are often exposed to the harms of systemic and interpersonal racism. These factors contribute to high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality among pregnant Black Americans and, the investigators show, this also affects people with SCD.

“Our work demonstrates that people with sickle cell disease face risk over and above other pregnant people with Black race. Among the risks that are specific to people with sickle cell disease are a highly morbid pre-existing condition and a lack of treatment options, in part due to the insufficient research focused on pregnant people with sickle cell disease and in part to the absence of high-quality specialty care in many regions of the country,” says Macy Early, a fourth-year medical student at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and lead author of this study.

Sickle cell disease

SCD is an inherited blood disorder that is estimated to affect 70,000 to 100,000 Americans. The genetic alteration at the root of the disease affects red blood cells that contain hemoglobin, the protein responsible for transporting and delivering oxygen to the body, to become “sickled” in appearance. The disease not only causes anemia, strokes, organ damage, and shortened life spans, but also repeated and frequent episodes of severe pain when the misshapen red blood cells get stuck in small blood vessels.

Although SCD is a lifelong debilitating illness, advances in treatment have led to nearly all affected people in the United States reaching their reproductive years. As such, there is a growing population of people affected by the effects of SCD in pregnancy and study of possible treatments is needed.

For the pregnant person, SCD is linked to heightened risks of blood clots, chronic pain, anemia, and preeclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy). The researchers confirmed that babies born to people with SCD tend to be smaller than average, delivered early, and show damage to the placenta. Data from this study also affirm that SCD is associated with an increased risk of fetal death.

Researchers say they next plan to study data at the individual clinic level to analyze how outcomes for patients differ when high-quality OB care is accessible. They hope to accelerate research on risk and treatment during pregnancy, as well as continue to advocate for funding to ensure that all people in the United States receive high-quality care.

A companion paper to this study comparing outcomes in pregnant people with sickle cell disease and those with nutritional anemia also appears in JAMA Network Open.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Night staff at nursing homes had lower rates of COVID-19 testing and vaccination than day-shift staff, according to a new study.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, regular testing and vaccinations of nursing home staff have been critical strategies for containing virus outbreaks in nursing homes.

In order to assess how various structural factors affected the differences in testing rates and vaccinations, researchers analyzed data from nursing homes across the country, looking specifically at work shifts.

They found that day-shift staff had the highest testing rates and odds of primary vaccination, while night-shift staff had the lowest.

Work shift has not been recognized as a significant factor contributing to implementation of testing and vaccination programs at nursing homes, says lead author Elizabeth White, an assistant professor of health services, policy, and practice at Brown University’s School of Public Health.

“Testing and vaccination programs have been so critical to mitigating the effects of COVID-19 in nursing homes,” White says. “Our findings suggest that any future booster campaigns or testing campaigns need to consider equitable distribution of resources across shifts to reduce the variation we saw in our study.”

She emphasizes that the study findings have broader relevance beyond nursing homes as well as beyond the pandemic.

“Our findings highlight that work shift is an important structural factor to consider when implementing public health initiatives—from COVID vaccination and testing to flu vaccine—in organizations with shift-based workforces,” White says.

For the study in Health Affairs, the researchers had access to a large and unique data set, White says, due to Brown’s involvement with an initiative by the National Institute on Aging called the Imbedded Pragmatic Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias Clinical Trials (IMPACT) Collaboratory, co-led by Vincent Mor, a professor at Brown who is a senior author of the study.

They analyzed nursing home data, including staff COVID-19 testing and immunization records, from 294 facilities for the period from April 2020 to March 2021.

The researchers found significant differences in testing rates and odds of primary vaccination by work shift: Night-shift staff testing rates were 0.71 times those of the day-shift staff, and evening-shift testing rates were 0.91 times those of the day shift. Controlling for staff and facility characteristics, adjusted vaccination rates were 67% among day shift staff, 62% among evening-shift staff, and 50% among night-shift staff.

The authors note that differences in staffing levels and resources, work demands and the presence of senior and mid-level leadership across nursing home shifts may influence the implementation of organization-wide processes such as COVID-19 testing and vaccination.

Compared to staff who work during the day, staff who work the evening and night shift have less exposure to senior leaders, in particular the directors of nursing, medical directors, and nursing home administrators, White explains.

Other research throughout the pandemic has shown that those leaders, in particular, are important in building trust around vaccines and for helping to successfully implement changes in workplace health protocols.

Another important study finding, White says, was that the lower rates of COVID-19 testing among Black employees was almost entirely attributed to a disproportionate number of Black employees working on evening and night shifts.

“That tells us that shift is a structural factor contributing to a racial disparity in testing among staff,” White says.

The authors conclude that their findings highlight the need to coordinate resources and communication evenly across shifts when implementing large-scaled public health initiatives in nursing homes and other organizations with shift-based workforces.

“These results apply not only to nursing homes, but also to hospitals or even Amazon and other organizations with shift-based workforces,” White says.

This study was funded under an IMPACT Collaboratory supplement through an initiative of the National Institutes of Health called Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics for Underserved Populations (RADx-UP), aimed at reducing disparities in underserved populations who are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

The residents of nursing homes have been disproportionately affected by COVID, White says, as have the staff, who are often from underserved populations.

Additional coauthors are from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Harvard University, RAF Healthcare Solutions, Hebrew Senior, and Brown.

The National Institute on Aging funded the work.

Source: Brown University

WASHINGTON — More than 6,000 satellites are orbiting the Earth and 33,000 are projected to launch over the next decade. There are also tens of thousands of inactive objects, or space junk, requiring satellites today to have to maneuver through crowded debris fields.

But the space industry does not expect its growth to be dampened by congestion or by a doom-and-gloom narrative, executives said Feb. 7 at the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View, California.

During a panel discussion, executives said they expect that a combination of new technologies, policies and business incentives to minimize debris creation will propel the industry forward despite congestion, hazards in orbit, and the lack of global rules for sustainable space operations. 

“Last year was an interesting inflection point, when we started to see more satellite operators willing to pay for space traffic management services,” said Dan Ceperley, founder and CEO of LeoLabs, a U.S. company that uses ground-based radars to track objects in low Earth orbit.

Space internet companies like SpaceX, Amazon and others, as well as the growing remote sensing industry, are investing billions of dollars in constellations, most in low Earth orbit. “And so they are quite conscious of the fact that if they lose satellites, and especially if they lose entire orbits, their business plans start to really get hurt,” Ceperley said. 

More demand for propulsion, autonomous tech

Companies also are willing to spend more money on propulsion technology to ensure their satellites can dodge obstacles and deorbit themselves when they’re no longer needed, said Toku Sakai, chief operating officer of Pale Blue, a Japanese company that develops propulsion systems that use water as propellant. 

“We are seeing a lot of commercial demand,” said Sakai. “Much of it is driven by regulatory requirements … But there’s also commercial self interest in essentially making sure that they’re able to send up a constellation of satellites that can avoid collisions, that can deorbit on time, and so without spending an insane amount of money.”

Charlie McGillis, vice president of Los Angeles-based Slingshot Aerospace, said the company has seen interest spike in its space traffic control software known as Beacon. Satellite operators that sign up for the service receive urgent collision alerts so they’re able to coordinate satellite maneuvers and communicate with other operators in high-risk situations.

Slingshot is offering Beacon for free, and the company is positioning the platform to support the emerging Department of Commerce’s space traffic management office. The Office of Space Commerce is currently evaluating commercial technologies to provide civil space traffic management services, such as warnings of potential collisions, a function currently performed by the Defense Department.

Ceperley said it was encouraging to see the Office of Space Commerce receive a large budget “in addition to the mandate to take over the space traffic management mission in the U.S.” 

The Department of Defense has provided a “great advisory service, but it’s not empowered as a regulator to enforce any changes,” Ceperley said. 

Another trend in the industry that is helping manage congestion is the use of automated tools to operate satellites and new transportation services that can deliver spacecraft to less-congested orbits, said David Henri, founder and chief product officer of Exotrail, a space logistics company based in France.

The company on Feb. 7 announced a $58 million fundraising round to scale up production of electric thrusters and expand efforts to provide in-space transportation services.

Since he founded the company in 2017, Henri said, he has seen “a big difference in how operators are dealing with space debris.”

Customers are investing in technologies for collision avoidance and situational awareness, he said. And they are using more advanced mission software to autonomously plan operations and minimize risk.

McGillis said the future is likely to follow the SpaceX Starlink model of autonomous operations with satellites doing their own conjunction avoidance maneuvers. “I think in the future there will be more of that,” she  said. “It will be like going down Interstate 405 and seeing no drivers. You’ll have self-driving cars, and no more accidents because it just flows so nicely.”

In space, said McGillis, “I think we can get to that, and I won’t call it Nirvana, but it will be almost Nirvana in space, where we can have autonomous capability and congestion isn’t such a problem.”

Clare Martin, executive vice president of Astroscale, a space logistics company based in Japan and the U.S., said the industry is increasingly motivated to ensure the sustainability of the space environment.

Astroscale offers active debris-removal services, which the industry expects governments to pay for. However, companies are willing to invest in capabilities to prevent further debris creation. “Commercial operators are actually actively engaged in behaving responsibly and sustainably and working with companies like ourselves to move things forward in the right direction,” Martin said. 

On the government side, she said, “the conversation in the U.S. has really picked up over the last year or two which is very, very positive.”

Abandoned rockets pose big hazards

Ceperley argued that the biggest danger to satellites in orbit is not other satellites but inactive rocket upper stages that have accumulated over decades. 

“Unfortunately, abandoned rocket bodies continue to be a problem in this day and age,” he said. Last year, LeoLabs identified about 50 rocket bodies discarded in low Earth orbit. “They’re quite massive,” he said. “In a sense, they’re ticking time bombs. So when they get hit, or if they break up, they can release a very large amount of debris.”

People tend to blame the mega constellations for the debris problem, said Ceperley. “I think the mega constellations are the victims of the environment. They’re the ones that have to maneuver around debris that was left in space decades earlier.”

The removal of these upper stages should be a priority, said Martin, because a single object could explode and create thousands more pieces of junk, “which would be much harder to remediate.”

“We all know that everyone on this planet is absolutely reliant on space services now,” she said. “That should be a huge motivator to help us actually address the problem now, rather than just focus on the doom and gloom aspect that we’ve not done a great job looking after the environment.”

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Researchers have diagnosed 345 former NFL players with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) out of 376 former players studied, or 91.7%.

Among those diagnosed in the last year are two former players who once represented the teams paired in this Sunday’s Super Bowl LVII matchup—former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Rick Arrington, who played three seasons for the Eagles from 1970-73, and former Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Ed Lothamer, who played for the Chiefs in the very first Super Bowl and was a member of their winning team in Super Bowl IV.

For comparison, a 2018 Boston University study of 164 brains of men and women donated to the Framingham Heart Study found that only 1 of 164 (0.6%) had CTE. The lone CTE case was a former college football player. The extremely low population rate of CTE is in line with similar studies from brain banks in Austria, Australia, and Brazil.

The NFL player data should not be interpreted to suggest that 91.7% of all current and former NFL players have CTE, as brain bank samples are subject to selection biases. The prevalence of CTE among NFL players is unknown as CTE can only be definitively diagnosed after death. Repetitive head impacts appear to be the chief risk factor for CTE, which is characterized by misfolded tau protein that is unlike changes observed from aging, Alzheimer’s disease, or any other brain disease.

“While the most tragic outcomes in individuals with CTE grab headlines, we want to remind people at risk for CTE that those experiences are in the minority,” says Ann McKee, director of the Boston University CTE Center and chief of neuropathology at VA Boston Healthcare System. “Your symptoms, whether or not they are related to CTE, likely can be treated, and you should seek medical care. Our clinical team has had success treating former football players with mid-life mental health and other symptoms.”

McKee and her team are inviting former athletes, including women, to participate in research studies designed to learn how to diagnose and treat CTE. The BU CTE Center is collaborating with its education and advocacy partner the Concussion Legacy Foundation (CLF) to recruit former football players and other contact sport athletes to five active clinical studies.

One of the studies, Project S.A.V.E., is recruiting men and women ages 50 or older who played 5+ years of a contact sport, including American football, ice hockey, soccer, lacrosse, boxing, full contact martial arts, rugby, and wrestling.

S.A.V.E. stands for Study of Axonal and Vascular Effects from repetitive head impacts. The major goal is to determine how repeated head impacts from playing contact sports can lead to long-term thinking, memory, and mood problems. The results could highlight strategies to treat and prevent symptoms associated with head impacts from contact sports. To learn more about Project S.A.V.E. and four other studies enrolling participants, click here. To sign up for future clinical studies, enroll in the CLF research registry.

In addition, patients and families who believe they or a loved one has symptoms that may be related to prior concussions or CTE are encouraged to reach out to the CLF HelpLine, which provides referrals to doctors and care providers, educational resources, one-on-one peer support, and monthly online support groups.

“I miss my hero dearly,” says Jill Arrington, Rick Arrington’s daughter and former CBS/FOX/ESPN sideline reporter. “It pains me to know his life was cut short by the sport he loved most. As a brain donor, part of his legacy is in this research, and I want all former football players to know how important it is to contribute and sign-up for studies so Boston University CTE Center researchers and their collaborators around the world can learn how to treat, and one day cure, the disease that devastated our family.”

Research on CTE has advanced considerably over the past five years, and the BU CTE Center soon will publish its 182nd study on CTE. In part because of advances in research on CTE, in October 2022 the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), updated their position on what causes CTE: “CTE is a delayed neurodegenerative disorder that was initially identified in postmortem brains and, research-to-date suggests, is caused in part by repeated traumatic brain injuries.”

“We’d like to thank our 1,330 donor families for teaching us what we now know about CTE, and our team and collaborators around the world working to advance diagnostics and treatments for CTE,” McKee says.

Source: Boston University

TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX successfully launched the Amazonas Nexus telecoms satellite Feb. 6, which will fuel Spanish operator Hispasat’s Americas expansion while carrying a payload for the U.S. Space Force.

Amazonas Nexus lifted off on a Falcon 9 at 8:32 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, after being delayed a day because of poor weather conditions.

The satellite separated from the rocket about 36 minutes later to begin its journey to geostationary orbit over the next few months using onboard electric propulsion.

Signal acquisition was successfully achieved at 9.26 p.m. Eastern, according to Hispasat spokesperson Víctor Inchausti.

Just over eight minutes after lift-off, the Falcon 9’s first stage landed on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean for reuse. 

SpaceX had previously used the booster to launch the SES-22 broadcast satellite, a lunar lander for ispace, and three Starlink broadband missions.

It marked SpaceX’s 170th landing of an orbital class rocket, including Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions.

Amazonas Nexus is due to replace and expand the capacity of Hispasat’s Amazonas 2 satellite at 61 degrees west, covering the Americas, Greenland, and North Atlantic transportation routes.

Built by Europe’s Thales Alenia Space, Amazonas Nexus is designed to primarily provide high-throughput Ku-band capacity to Hispasat’s aviation, maritime, and rural broadband customers. The 4,500-kilogram satellite uses Ka-band feeder links for telemetry and control.

Also onboard is a high-bandwidth protected communications transponder for the Space Force called Pathfinder 2.

The hosted payload is the third Pathfinder mission designed to use existing commercial technologies to provide wideband alternatives for the Space Force’s satellite communications needs.

Hispasat, Thales, communications provider Hunter Communications, and secure network systems integrator Artel — which led the project — secured a contract for the payload in 2020.

Charlotte Gerhart, chief of Tactical SATCOM Acquisition Delta at Space Systems Command, the Space Force body overseeing the procurement of new technology, said the mission demonstrates a “high degree of partnership between military and commercial” acquisition.

“Pathfinder 2 satisfies warfighter requirements by procuring commercially provided pre-launch transponders and securing bandwidth at a lower total ownership cost,” Gerhart said in a statement.

Hispasat is also looking to use Amazonas Nexus to expand its presence in sustainability projects after investing in Spain’s largest reforestation project.

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