Category: Science

WASHINGTON — Danti, a startup that developed a geospatial data search engine, was awarded a $1.2 million contract by the U.S. Space Force to further develop its AI-enabled technology.

The contract, announced Oct. 18, is a Small Business Innovation Research Phase 2 award. 

Atlanta-based Danti previously won a $75,000 prize challenge from the National Security Innovation Network, sponsored by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. NGA was seeking a software application that would allow non-expert users with no geospatial background to quickly prioritize, analyze, and organize information into actionable intelligence.

The Danti search engine uses natural language to search vast amounts of satellite imagery and other data that government analysts cannot easily find, said Jesse Kallman, the company’s founder and CEO. 

AI-enabled natural language search

Kallman said the SBIR contract will help the company expand its reach to more military users of geospatial data. Natural language and AI-powered search capabilities will help military analysts “easily search and discover imagery, analytics, reports, news, social media and many other diverse data types,” he said. The engine digs through government and commercial data partner repositories. 

Danti also announced that Humba Ventures, a venture fund run by Susa Ventures, has made an unspecified investment in the company. Humba Ventures invests in early-stage companies focused on critical national sectors like defense, manufacturing and energy. 

“We are thrilled to partner with the Danti team on its mission to make searching for and discovering the right data on Earth as easy as searching the internet itself,” said Leo Polovets, general partner at Susa Ventures and Humba Ventures.

Danti’s platform, said Polovets, has national security applications and is also suited for commercial industries in the property, insurance and large-scale infrastructure sectors.

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G. Ryan Faith is a Washington-based space policy analyst and writer who has worked for the House Science Committee, the Space Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was the defense and security editor at VICE Media from 2013-2016. He is currently writing a dissertation on American public attitudes toward space prior to World War II.

Strategists and planners at NASA are mulling over questions of tempo for future human expeditions to the moon. Should Artemis involve a yearly campaign of smaller missions or consolidate expeditions, launching more ambitious (and, therefore, sporadic) efforts less often?

Exploration, at its core, is about making the unknown a little more familiar and comfortable. Whether a destination becomes more meaningful as a scientific site, historical landmark, or economic opportunity, exploration involves integrating a distant place into our larger human world. The first human voyage into space, Yuri Gagarin’s 1961 Vostok flight, captured the world’s headlines and imagination. Over the course of less than two hours, Gagarin proved that the immense, terrifying void above our Earthly home had become a place that we humans, the merely mortal, could now dare to tread. Sixty-two years later, SpaceX and NASA can bring together four astronauts from all over the world and fly them to the immense International Space Station, and the feat attracts little attention beyond the press release. Low Earth orbit is now less exotic and more familiar. After more than half a century of work, humans have made it a place for people to visit and work.

As clearly shown by the collapse of interest in human lunar exploration after the dazzling Apollo 11 mission, the public sometimes loses interest in increasingly ordinary expeditions to ever-more-familiar destinations. That lesson was highlighted again by the Space Shuttle program’s clear demonstration that without purpose, routine renders ongoing missions boring and mundane even if they become no easier or more routine. This is one of the central paradoxes that define space exploration. The first expeditions are animated by curiosity and excitement. Subsequent expeditions to that once-captivating destination become trivial and tedious even as the journey remains every bit as challenging and perilous.

But human nature also suggests a solution. Throughout history, people have turned to ritual to invest the regular and otherwise ordinary with meaning and purpose. Rituals can renew a sense of wonder and awe, recharging and revitalizing the habitual.

This is where the conversation turns back to mission tempo. The rhythmic yearly passage of time is deeply ingrained into human culture, second in importance only to the day/night cycle. Passing years mark an entirely familiar passage and celebration of life’s most important events. That holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays are celebrated annually seems so obvious that it escapes mention.

Pomp and Happenstance

Doing something every other year (or so) is not acting at a natural, customary pace. Even our language seems to rebel at the idea. Biennial? Biannual? Semiannual? All just different, mutually confusing ways that people struggle in everyday conversation to articulate the idea of “not once per year.” If the history of fickle human interest is any guide, a planned biennial pace will, in time, see launches drift from every 24 months to every 36 or so, eventually sputtering off into quiet irrelevance. If planners want to forestall that slowing rhythm of decay, perhaps instead of naming them numerically, Artemis missions should be named after the relevant session of Congress. Then, perhaps, Congress or someone else on a biennial cycle might remember that America has committed to an ongoing campaign of lunar expeditions.

But launching every year around the same time? This is a tremendous opportunity for NASA to renew its promise to the world and the future. Of course, weather and launch windows would never conspire to let Artemis planners freely pick a specific day, years in advance. It is, however, within NASA’s considerable planning and operational abilities to launch at roughly the same time each year. Perhaps the week of Memorial Day? Can NASA mark that friendly, cheerful celebration of summer’s arrival with the spectacle of launching those daring few into the heavens, ready to set foot on another world? If NASA wants the public to celebrate space exploration, then there is no better way to do it than to make a regular holiday of it. And there is no easier way to make it a regular holiday than by starting with a public holiday celebrated nationally.

Commitment and Conviction

Launching the same time every year allows America to reaffirm that its promise to send humanity to the moon is a matter of commitment and conviction. Without that promise, epic voyages turn into a kind of strange, sporadic—almost furtive—sneaking. Missions will start to slip and slide around the planning calendar with awkward grace, surrounded by a haze of uncertainty. With annual expeditions, the United States—through the hard work of NASA—can visibly recommit itself every year (somewhere around the time of spring break and graduation) to sending four of the best and brightest and most dedicated people it can find on a voyage, a pilgrimage even, to climb into the sea of night atop a blinding pillar of flame to dwell, at least for a while, in the celestial firmament.

Rendering each launch as a celebration recommitting to hope for a brighter future can fundamentally shape how lunar exploration sparks and inspires the national, even global imagination. Springtime is already the season of hope, growth, and rebirth—why not let that set the tone for the future of exploration? Imagine if every student, from grade school to college, could count on a regular springtime Artemis lunar mission as a symbolic promise that the country is renewing its commitment to discovery, science, and a brighter future for all. Every fall semester could start with a review of what those brave heroes we sent into the void—those few who lived and worked for a time on the bright, silvery moon—have learned from all their voyaging and brought back to Earth to share with a world that watched them expectantly from afar.

What about the cost? It’s entirely possible that appropriators feel it is not worth allocating a single dollar per American per week for such a dramatic, profound commitment to the future and act of public diplomacy. Perhaps plans to reduce SLS launch costs from exorbitant to merely expensive are overambitious. Or, per the recommendation of the recent NASA OIG report, is competition the way to go? Can NASA sustain an annual tempo by mixing SLS and commercial launch? Or mixing surface sorties with south polar infrastructure building? Congress, the White House, and NASA have a rare, fleeting chance to make a dramatic, bold promise about humanity’s future on behalf of their country. Or will our leaders choose the quieter, safer path, laying the groundwork for disenchantment and eventual cancellation?

Stripped to its core, space exploration is about an appeal to hope and a brighter future. Whether or not any specific expedition produces a stunning triumph of science or engineering—even art or culture—NASA must propose to the world that the ongoing exploration fundamentally makes our world a little bit better. In the face of the essential, irreducible uncertainty of exploration, NASA can weave hope for a better future into our culture by ritualizing the most visceral, fundamental, and visible phenomenon of space exploration: Launch.

With the end of every human mission of space exploration, whether safe or tragic, there is always the lingering, unspoken question about whether we can hope to see another such miracle again. We can create in culture and custom a world in which the response will always be “Next spring, when the flowers are in bloom,” or a world in which it’s maybe 24 or 31 or 39 months… or whenever the mood next strikes? Establishing Artemis as an off-again, on-again, episodic flight of fancy will give rise to a program that will forever carry around the unmistakable scent of inevitable obsolescence. If America is going to promise the moon to our world, then it should be proud of its commitment. Make Artemis into an annual celebration of hope for whatever bright promises the future may someday hold.

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Grouping English learners together in classrooms has no impact—positive or negative—on reading development for elementary school students, a new study shows.

The research casts doubt on the longtime academic practice of segregating English learning students, researchers say.

“When I taught middle school 20 years ago, I noticed that my English learner students were separated from their native English-speaking peers all day long,” says study lead author Michael Kieffer, associate professor at New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

“Data show that this practice continues in many places today, encouraged by policies and educators’ good intentions to provide targeted services. Our study challenges this approach by demonstrating it has no association with reading growth.”

“English learners” (ELs) are students identified as having limited English proficiency and who are receiving services designed to teach English language skills.

For the study, published in Educational Researcher, Kieffer and coauthor, Andrew Weaver, a doctoral student at NYU Steinhardt, analyzed the progress of 783 ELs from a large national sample of students whose development was tracked from kindergarten through fifth grade.

The National Center for Educational Statistics collected the data as part of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten 2010-2011 Cohort. Using teacher reports on the percentage of ELs in their classrooms, the researchers examined whether high EL concentrations were linked to reading development. Their analysis controlled for students’ socioeconomic status and academic and social-emotional skills, as well as school-level variables, such as percentages of POC students.

Their findings indicated neither a positive nor negative relationship between EL concentration and reading development.

“The absence of positive effects raises questions about the common assumptions that underlie educators’ efforts to separate ELs into distinct classrooms,” the authors write.

The positive and negative effects of grouping EL students cancelling each other out may explain the results, the researchers say. For example, the benefit of more targeted language instruction in a primarily EL classroom might be negated by the benefits that come with engaging with fluent English speakers.

“In future research, we hope to look more closely into classrooms to understand how teachers modify their instruction when teaching ELs in more and less integrated settings. This work will aim to unpack how and when grouping ELs together may have more specific benefits and disadvantages,” Kieffer says.

The research was supported, in part, by the Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the US Department of Education.

Source: NYU

WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency has awarded York Space a $615 million contract for 62 satellites for DoD’s low Earth orbit constellation.

These satellites are for the portion of SDA’s mesh network known as Transport Layer Tranche 2 Alpha, SDA’s director Derek Tournear said Oct. 19 at the MilSat Symposium in Mountain View, California.

Tranche 2 Alpha is projected to have about 100 satellites. Tournear said a second vendor has been selected to produce additional satellites for Tranche 2 Alpha but its name can’t be disclosed until contract negotiations are completed. 

York’s latest contract makes the Colorado-based manufacturer currently SDA’s largest supplier of satellites, with 124 ordered to date. The $615 million agreement includes an incentive payment for on-time delivery.

SDA, an organization under the U.S. Space Force, is building a layered network of military satellites. The Transport Layer will serve as a tactical network to move data to users around the world, transmitting classified data such as early warnings of missile launches.

Alpha satellites carry optical communications terminals, Ka-band communications and Link 16 data transmission payloads. The Transport Layer Tranche 2 satellites are projected to launch in 2026.

Transport Layer Tranche 2 also includes 72 Beta satellites that were recently ordered from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. These carry more complex communications payloads. 

Tournear said the agency was on track to also acquire 44 Gamma satellites for Transport Layer Tranche 2 but is revising plans. The Gamma satellites require Advanced Tactical Datalink payloads to communicate with U.S. military tactical aircraft and other platforms.  

SDA is in discussions with a third Beta vendor to produce an additional 24 satellites that would have “some of the capabilities of Gamma,” said Tournear. A solicitation will be issued for only 20 Gamma satellites.

“We would move essentially 24 from Gamma to Beta,” he said.  When completed, the Transport Layer Tranche 2 will provide global communications.

Planning a network of 500 satellites

The overall constellation, which SDA calls the proliferated warfighter space architecture, is made up of small satellites supplied by multiple vendors, all interconnected via optical laser links.

Tournear said the architecture is projected to have about 500 satellites — 400 in the Transport Layer and 100 in the Tracking Layer. 

These satellites are built to last about five years in orbit so SDA will buy replacement batches every two years to replenish the constellations and, in the process, add new features and payloads as they become available. 

 Tournear during his presentation at MilSat brought up recent pushback SDA has received inside the Pentagon for its “go fast” procurement methods. 

He pointed out that the DoD procurement culture still has a hard time adapting to commercial-like approaches such as those used by SDA. 

The Pentagon’s cost accounting office, for example, recently asked SDA to submit its projected procurement plans over the next 20 years. This is how the traditional procurement apparatus works, Tournear said, whereas SDA is trying to field new technologies in months or single-digit years, rather than the decades-long timelines that have become customary for major defense programs.

“And so that mentality is what we’re breaking,” Tournear said.

“There’s just no way that you can expect to stay ahead of the adversary If you have to know exactly what you’re going to be doing 20 years from now,” he added. 

The Beta satellites solicitation, for example, was released in April and the contracts were awarded in August. The Alpha solicitation was posted in July and awards made in October.

The Pentagon doesn’t normally operate at that speed, he said. But DoD needs to have these new space systems in orbit as soon as possible to counter China’s rapid military modernization. The agency also wants to incentivize suppliers to innovate faster and keep program costs down, Tournear said. 

Traditionally military satellite constellations have been built by a single vendor and that has proven to drive up costs, he said. “So we need to make sure that the marketplace is competitive.” 

Tournear said there is still skepticism about SDA being able to buy Transport Layer satellites for about $15 million per unit. “People have told me that the only reason we’re able to do that for that price point is because the industry is losing their shirt on all these contracts.”

Companies have to be aggressive with pricing, but Tournear doesn’t believe they’re losing money in order to win contracts. “We’ll see what happens in Tranche 2,” he said. “That’s the whole point of Tranche 2, is to convince the Pentagon that this actually is the price that we will pay in perpetuity, because that is where the commercial price point is at.”

For SDA, “it’s important to make this business case work,” he added. The Pentagon’s cost accounting office warned SDA that prices will go up “if you don’t pick one vendor and stick with them,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure to just go with a single vendor … I contend that’s not the capitalist way. I contend that if we have competition, we can keep costs down, we can keep the market stable and make sure that there’s a good industrial base.”

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The ratings for home health care companies do correspond with patient health outcomes, a study indicates.

Jun Li, a health economist at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, wanted to see if Medicare’s Quality of Patient Care home health star ratings have an impact on patient care.

Critics have argued that these ratings are inaccurate. But since Medicare’s ratings provide the only source of systematically and publicly available information on home health agency quality, it is important for patients to have access to valid ratings to find high-quality care.

For the paper in the journal Medical Care, Li studied more than 1.8 million Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries who used home health care from July 2015 to July 2016 in the United States and evaluated whether patients treated by higher-rate agencies had better health outcomes.

Li looked at how many days patients were able to live independently at home after receiving home health care as well as if they needed hospitalization, visited an emergency department, had to be institutionalized, or died in the short-term.

In the study, Li found that patients treated by higher-rate agencies did better both in the short-term and long-term outcomes.

“Rates of hospitalization, emergency department use, institutionalization generally decreased,” says Li. “Patients treated by higher-rate agencies spent more time at home.”

With these findings, policymakers should work to increase awareness and use of the ratings by patients and their caregivers, says Li.

The star rating was created in 2015 with the aim of distinguishing high from low-quality home health agencies. Home health care plays an important role in caring for the elderly. For both the government and patients, Medicare’s home health visits are one of the least expensive ways to provide care, but assessing quality is often challenging for patients and their doctors, who must select an agency, often just as patients are leaving the hospital. Furthermore, many people tend to be less familiar with the reputation of home health agencies than they are with hospitals and other institutions within their communities.

While the rating system works, there are still issues with patients in rural areas who don’t live near highly rated agencies.

“While this study shows that the rating systems helps connect patients with effective home health agencies, there are still issues for some patients in accessing high-quality home health care, especially in rural settings,” says Li. “For example, 15% of patients live in zip codes where the best-rated home health options was only average. Knowing that the star ratings provide valuable signals of quality only means that we need to work harder at making sure that all people have access to high-quality care.”

Source: Syracuse University

TAMPA, Fla. — The U.K. is funding nearly half the cost of replacing the government-backed cubesat that British maritime surveillance venture Horizon Technologies lost in January in Virgin Orbit’s final launch attempt before bankruptcy.

Horizon said in an Oct. 19 news release that the UK Space Agency awarded the company a £1.2 million ($1.5 million) grant to help launch the spy satellite in mid-2024. The U.K. would use the replacement satellite to scan for radio frequencies (RF) from ships attempting to avoid detection.

Using revenues from equipping spy planes and drones to track satellite phones and radars, Horizon plans to provide the rest of the £2.8 million funding the Amber Phoenix satellite program needs to meet manufacturing, ground segment, launch, and other costs.

AAC Clyde Space (ACS) is building Amber Phoenix, the UK Space Agency announced separately, and a launch provider has not yet been booked. Publicly listed ACS is headquartered in Sweden but builds small satellites in Scotland.

John Becker, Horizon’s CEO, said Amber Phoenix would have undisclosed improvements over the lost Amber IOD-3 (In-Orbit Demonstration) satellite that ACS also provided.

Amber IOD-3, a 6U cubesat like its successor, was part of a program led by British government-backed nonprofit Satellite Applications Catapult that used Horizon as a prime contractor.

Becker told SpaceNews Horizon spent more than £4 million on the technology needed for what was to be its first satellite, supported by a £600,000 grant from U.K. government’s innovation agency.

The uninsured Amber IOD-3 was one of nine small satellites lost when Virgin Orbit’s Launcher One failed to reach the proper orbit in its first and only launch from British soil. Virgin Orbit collapsed into bankruptcy three months later.

Bad launch bet

Horizon had initially planned to launch Amber IOD-3 aboard a SpaceX Cargo Dragon mission in 2021 for deployment from the International Space Station.

After missing this launch opportunity following pandemic-related production delays, Becker said Amber IOD-3 was moved to Virgin Orbit partly to support its first U.K. launch.

Amber IOD-3 was originally due to launch with Virgin Orbit in July 2022, he added, but was delayed while the launcher sought permission to fly from the United Kingdom.

Without the grant from the UK Space Agency to partly fund a replacement satellite, Becker said Horizon would have had to shut down plans to expand its business into space.

Horizon ordered two other Amber surveillance satellites from ASC in 2021, initially slated to launch in 2022 but also suffered production delays. 

Only preliminary work has been done on these cubesats, according to Becker, and the company expects to announce a deployment date for them once a launch provider has been nailed down for Amber Phoenix.

Horizon envisages a constellation of more than 20 Amber payloads in low Earth orbit, enough to provide worldwide RF data with 30-minute latency.

The U.K. Royal Navy’s Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC) plans to use the constellation to tackle piracy, smuggling, and other illegal activities.

Becker said Horizon is seeking to sell its space-based detection services to other governments and commercial customers.

He said the constellation will also include RF-tracking payloads integrated into partner Earth observation and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellations.

Sensors on these constellations could be tasked to capture more data on areas RF payload has identified as of interest.

Horizon has a memorandum of understanding with a U.S.-based Earth observation company to add payloads on satellites due to launch next year, Becker added, and is closing in on a deal with a separate SAR company.

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Middle-aged women who eat a diet designed to lower blood pressure were about 17% less likely to report memory loss and other signs of cognitive decline decades later, a new study finds.

The new findings suggest that a mid-life lifestyle modification—adoption of the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, or DASH diet—may improve cognitive function later in life for women, who make up more than two-thirds of those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the most prevalent form of dementia.

The findings, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, have implications for the approximately 6.5 million Americans over age 65 diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2022. That number is expected to more than double by 2060.

“Subjective complaints about daily cognitive performance are early predictors of more serious neurocognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s,” says senior author Yu Chen, professor in the population health department at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine.

“With more than 30 years follow-up, we found that the stronger the adherence to a DASH diet in midlife, the less likely women are to report cognitive issues much later in life.”

The DASH diet includes a high consumption of plant-based foods that are rich in potassium, calcium, and magnesium and limits saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and sugar. Longstanding research shows that high blood pressure, particularly in midlife, is a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia.

“Following the DASH diet may not only prevent high blood pressure, but also cognitive issues.”

For the study, the researchers analyzed data from 5,116 of the more than 14,000 women enrolled in the NYU Women’s Health Study, one of the longest running studies of its kind that examines the impact of lifestyle and other factors on the development of the most common cancers among women, as well as other chronic conditions.

The researchers asked the study participants’ about their diet using questionnaires between 1985 and 1991 at study enrollment when the participants were, on average, 49 years old. The participants were followed for more than 30 years (average age of 79) and then asked to report any cognitive complaints. Participants that did not return questionnaires were contacted by phone.

Self-reported cognitive complaints were assessed using six validated standard questions that are indicative of later mild cognitive impairment, which leads to dementia. These questions were about difficulties in remembering recent events or shopping lists, understanding spoken instructions or group conversation, or navigating familiar streets.

Of the six cognitive complaints, 33% of women reported having more than one. Women who adhered most closely to the DASH diet had a 17% reduction in the odds of reporting multiple cognitive complaints.

“Our data suggest that it is important to start a healthy diet in midlife to prevent cognitive impairment in older age”, says Yixiao Song, a lead author of the study.

“Following the DASH diet may not only prevent high blood pressure, but also cognitive issues,” says Fen Wu, a senior associate research scientist who co-led the study.

According to the investigators, future research is needed across multiple racial and ethnic groups to determine the generalizability of the findings.

Additional coauthors are from NYU and Columbia University. The National Institutes of Health supported the work.

Source: NYU

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Los Angeles startup Machina Labs is expanding its role in the space sector by working with satellite and hypersonic vehicle manufacturers.

Since Machina Labs was founded in 2019, the company has worked with NASA, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and SpaceX to apply robotics and artificial intelligence to space-related manufacturing processes.

Work with AFRL focused on developing robotic technology for manufacturing metal tooling for composite structures. For NASA, Machina Labs developed machine learning-based software for in-space manufacturing with autonomous articulated robots. 

Now, Machina Labs is working with satellite manufacturers to help them rapidly iterate designs.

“I can try out a design of a tank and then see if it works,” Edward Mehr, Machina Labs CEO and co-founder, told SpaceNews at Satellite Innovation 2023. In addition, Machina Labs helps customers manufacture “things that were traditionally not possible,” he added.

For example, doughnut-shaped toroidal propellant tanks, popular decades ago, have rarely been produced in recent years because they are difficult and time-consuming to manufacture. Machina Labs’ process, called Roboforming, reduces the cost and speeds up manufacturing of toroidal tanks, said Mehr, a former Relativity program manager and SpaceX software engineer.

Hypersonic Vehicles

For hypersonic vehicles, Machina Labs works with materials tough enough to withstand the heat of reentry.

“With our technology, we can process some of those materials like titanium or Inconel,” Mehr said.

AI and ML

Machina Labs machines, which use Nvidia chips, rely on machine learning to replicate the work of people who incrementally deform metals or composites to create shapes.

“We need to replicate what happens in the mind of a craftsman,” Mehr said.

To do that, the company built empirical models of how materials deform throughout the shaping process. Then, Machina Labs engineers determine the appropriate set of processes.

“For every geometry, what are the right process parameters and where does the robot need to go to get to the right part?” Mehr asked.

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Researchers have developed a genome-scale metabolic model or “subway map” of key metabolic activities of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.

Using this map, they have successfully identified two compounds that selectively target routes only used by Lyme disease to infect a host.

While neither medication is a viable treatment for Lyme because they have numerous side effects, the successful use of the computational “subway map” to predict drug targets and possible existing treatments demonstrates that it may be possible to develop micro-substances that only block Lyme disease while leaving other helpful bacteria untouched.

Genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) collect all known metabolic information on a biological system, including the genes, enzymes, metabolites, and other information. These models use big data and machine learning to help scientists understand molecular mechanisms, make predictions, and identify new processes that might be previously unknown and even counterintuitive to known biological processes.

Killing Lyme bacteria, and only Lyme

Currently, Lyme disease is treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics that kill the Lyme bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, but simultaneously also kill a wide range of the other bacteria that inhabit a host’s microbiome and perform many helpful functions. Some people with chronic Lyme symptoms or recurring Lyme disease take antibiotics for years, although it is against medical guidelines and there is no proof that it works.

“Most of the antibiotics we still use are based on discoveries that are decades old, and antibiotic resistance is an increasing problem across many bacterial diseases,” says Peter Gwynne, research assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine and the Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative and first author of the paper in mSystems.

“There is a growing movement to find micro-substances that target a specific pathway in a single bacterium, rather than treating patients with broad spectrum antibiotics that wipe out the microbiome and cause antibiotic resistance.”

The two compounds identified using the “subway map” computational model are an anticancer drug with significant side effects that make it impractical to use in treating Lyme, and an asthma medication taken off the market because of its side effects. The researchers tested both drugs identified by the model in the lab and found they successfully kill Lyme bacteria—and only Lyme—in culture.

“The Lyme bacterium is a great test case for narrow spectrum drugs because it is so limited in what it can do and so highly dependent upon its environment. This leaves it vulnerable in ways other bacteria are not,” says senior author Linden Hu, a professor of immunology and of molecular biology and microbiology.

Maps for more bacteria

Use of the computational model—which Gwynne and collaborators developed during COVID when they couldn’t work onsite in the lab—has the potential to enable scientists to skip some painstaking basic science steps and lead to swifter testing and development of more targeted treatments.

“We can now use this model to screen for similar compounds that don’t have the same toxicity of the anticancer and asthma medications but could potentially stop the same or another part of the Lyme disease process,” Gwynne says.

The researchers are conducting other research to determine whether people with chronic Lyme symptoms are still infected or are suffering from an immune malfunction that creates chronic symptoms.

“I can imagine a day when people take a targeted Lyme treatment for two weeks rather than a broad-spectrum antibiotic, are tested and determined to be clear of the infection, and then take drugs to tame their immune response if chronic symptoms persist,” Gwynne says.

Similar computational “subway maps” can be developed for other bacteria with relatively small genomes, such as those that cause the sexually transmitted diseases syphilis and chlamydia, and rickettsia, which causes Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Gwynne says. His team is looking at developing maps for some of these bacteria.

The Bay Area Lyme Foundation and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health funded the work.

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders.

Source: Tufts University

WASHINGTON — The cybersecurity firm SpiderOak has signed an agreement with the U.S. Space Development Agency to research the use of the company’s software to protect ground systems that control military satellites.

SpiderOak, a software company focused on satellite cybersecurity, said Oct. 17 the agreement is a so-called Other Transaction Authority contract. It allows the Space Development Agency (SDA) to research the integration of the company’s OrbitSecure software suite into a military ground system currently in development called the Rapid Resilient Command and Control program. 

SDA, an agency under the U.S. Space Force, is building a large constellation of communications and missile-tracking satellites in low Earth orbit. 

The Rapid Resilient Command and Control program, or R2C2 — a new initiative led by the Space Force’s Space Rapid Capabilities Office — is an effort to develop a modern software-based ground control system for military satellites. 

SpiderOak’s technology is known as zero-trust cybersecurity, where all data is encrypted and the encryption keys are only known to the client.

Contract value not disclosed

A spokesman for SpiderOak said the company is not disclosing the value of SDA’s contract or the performance period. “They are variable and based on our success in delivering an exemplary zero-trust solution,” the spokesman said. “We expect a durable and growing project as we demonstrate OrbitSecure can safeguard satellite operations.”

SpiderOak previously demonstrated OrbitSecure on a Ball Aerospace prototype payload and on the International Space Station using an Amazon Web Services’ edge computing device provided by Axiom Space.

Dave Pearah, CEO of SpiderOak, said the company’s zero-trust mechanisms allow data to travel securely on networks and infrastructure with different owners and variable-security protocols. 

“The Space Force wants to ensure that communications are secure and there are redundancies in the event an adversary attempts to poke holes in communications networks, which are increasingly dependent on space,” he said.

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