For the first time, astronomers have confirmed the existence of a lone black hole," reports Science News — "one with no star orbiting it." It's "the only one so far," says Kailash Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. In 2022, Sahu and his colleagues discovered the dark object coursing through the constellation Sagittarius. A second team disputed the claim, saying the body might instead be a neutron star. New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope now confirm that the object's mass is so large that it must be a black hole, Sahu's team reports in the April 20 Astrophysical Journal.... [And that second team has revised its assessment and now agrees: the object is a black hole.]

While solitary black holes should be common, they are hard to find. The one in Sagittarius revealed itself when it passed in front of a dim background star, magnifying the star's light and slowly shifting its position due to the black hole's gravity. This passage occurred in July 2011, but the star's position is still changing. "It takes a long time to do the observations," Sahu says. "Everything is improved if you have a longer baseline and more observations." The original discovery relied on precise Hubble measurements of star positions from 2011 to 2017. The new work incorporates Hubble observations from 2021 and 2022 as well as data from the Gaia spacecraft.

The upshot: The black hole is about seven times as massive as the sun, give or take 0.8 solar masses.... Located 5,000 light-years from Earth, this black hole is much closer than the supermassive one at the Milky Way's center, which also lies in Sagittarius but about 27,000 light-years from us. The star-rich region around the galactic center provides an ideal hunting ground for solitary black holes passing in front of stars. Sahu hopes to find additional lone black holes by using the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, slated for launch in 2027.

There was excitement when biotech company Collosal announced genetically modified grey wolves (first hailed as a "de-extinction" of the Dire wolf species after several millennia). "But bioethicists and conservationists are expressing unease with the kind of scientific research," writes the Chicago Tribune. [Alternate URL here.] "Unfortunately, as clever as this science is ... it's can-do science and not should-do science," said Lindsay Marshall, director of science in animal research at Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the U.S.... Ed Heist, a professor at Southern Illinois University and a conservation geneticist, said the news bothered him. "This is not conservation, but people conflate it," he said. "The point is entertainment...."

Naomi Louchouarn [program director of wildlife partnerships at Humane World for Animals], has dedicated her studies and research to the relationship between humans and animals, specifically carnivores like gray wolves. "The reason our current endangered species are becoming extinct is because we don't know how to coexist with them," she said. "And this doesn't solve that problem at all." Humans can treat the symptoms of wildlife conflict with "big, flashy silver bullets" and "in this case, advanced, inefficient science," she said, but the real solution is behavioral change. "Assuming that we could actually bring back a full population of animals," Louchouarn said, "which is so difficult and so crazy — that's a big if — I don't understand the point of trying to bring back a woolly mammoth when we already can't coexist with elephants."
The article notes that even Colossal's chief science officer says their technology is at best one of several tools for fighting biodiversity loss, calling it a battle which humans are 'not close to winning'... We as a global community need to continue to invest in traditional approaches to conservation and habitat preservation, as well as in the protection of living endangered species."

But the article adds that the Trump administration "is citing the case of the dire wolf as it moves to reduce federal protections under the Endangered Species Act of 1973." (Wednesday U.S. interior secretary Doug Burgum has even posted on X "The concept of 'de-extinction' can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.")

And the article adds that "During a livestreamed town hall with Interior Department employees on April 9, Burgum said: "If we're going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back. Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal. Ken Angielczyk, curator of mammal fossils at the Field Museum who researches extinct species that lived 200 to 300 million years ago, said it's a misguided approach. "If that's the basis ... for changing regulations related to the endangered species list, that is very, very premature," he said. "Because we can't resurrect things.... If the purpose is to restore the damage to the shared ecosystem, we have that opportunity right now," she said. "And that's the necessity immediately...."

"This whole idea that extinction is reversible is so dangerous," Marshall said, "because then it stops us caring."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd for sharing the news.

"Honeybee colonies are under siege across much of North America..." reported the New York Times last week. [Alternate URL here.] Last winter beekeepers across America "began reporting massive beehive collapses. More than half of the roughly 2.8 million colonies collapsed, costing the industry about $600 million in economic losses..."

America's Department of Agriculture says "sublethal exposure" to pesticides remains one of the biggest factors threatening honeybees, according to the article — but it's one of several threats. "Parasites, loss of habitat, climate change and pesticides threaten to wipe out as much as 70% or more of the nation's honeybee colonies this year, potentially the most devastating loss that the nation has ever seen." Some years are worse than others, but there has been a steady decline over time. Scientists have named the phenomenon colony collapse disorder: Bees simply disappear after they fly out to forage for pollen and nectar. Illness disables their radar, preventing them from finding their way home. The queen and her brood, if they survive, remain defenseless.

The precise causes remain unknown.

Bee colonies have become even more vulnerable because of the increase in extreme weather conditions, including droughts, heat waves, monster hurricanes, explosive wildfires and floods that have damaged or destroyed the bees and the vegetation they pollinate. If that isn't bad enough, parasites — and other creatures researchers refer to as "biotic" threats that prey on bees — proliferate when there is damage to ecosystems.

All that means that the U.S. beekeeping industry has contracted by about 2.9% over the past five years, according to data collected by IBISWorld, a research firm. Annual loss rates have been increasing among all beekeepers over the past decade with the most significant colony collapses in commercial operations happening during the past five years.
The article notes that "compounding the troubles for the bee industry are recent federal cuts" proposed by DOGE to America's Department of Agriculture, "where researchers were studying ways to protect the nation's honeybees." And while federal policies like tariffs could make farming more expensive, "Beekeepers also often depend on immigrants to manage their hives and to help produce commercial honey..."

"Using electrochemistry, University of Oregon researchers have developed a way to make iron metal for steel production without burning fossil fuels..." the University of Oregon wrote last year. "Decarbonizing this step would do roughly as much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as converting every gas-guzzling vehicle on the roads to electric... If scaled up, the process could help decarbonize one of the largest and most emissions-intensive industries worldwide," replacing carbon-spewing industrial blast furnaces.

Paul Kempler, their research assistant chemistry professor, added "The reason we got excited about this chemistry, is that our reactants are two things that are very cheap: saltwater and iron oxide." And this week he announced that "We actually have a chemical principle, a sort of guiding design rule, that will teach us how to identify low-cost iron oxides that we could use in these reactors."

"Those reactions conveniently also produce chlorine, a commercially valuable byproduct," writes SciTechDaily, in a new follow-up report this week: In their latest study, the researchers focused on improving the process by identifying which types of iron oxides make the reaction more cost-effective, an essential step toward scaling the method for industrial use.... In lab tests, the difference was striking: "With the really porous particles, we can make iron really quickly on a small area," Goldman said. "The dense particles just can't achieve the same rate, so we're limited in how much iron we can make per square meter of electrodes...."

To take their process beyond the lab, Kempler's lab is working with researchers in other fields. A collaboration with civil engineers at Oregon State University is helping them better understand what's needed for the product to work in real-world applications. And collaboration with an electrode manufacturing company is helping them address the logistical and scientific challenges of scaling up an electrochemical process. "I think what this work shows is that technology can meet the needs of an industrial society without being environmentally devastating," Goldman said.

"We haven't solved all the problems yet, of course, but I think it's an example that serves as a nucleation point for a different way of thinking about what solutions look like. We can continue to have industry and technology and medicine, and we can do it in a way that's clean — and that's awesome!"

Discover magazine reports that a team of researchers have produced evidence that the ancient building blocks for water have been here on earth "since early in the planet's history, according to a study published in the journal Icarus." Pinpointing when and where Earth's hydrogen [originated] is an essential key to understanding how life arose on the planet. Without hydrogen, there's no water, and without water, life can't exist here. Ironically, researchers turned to a meteorite containing hydrogen to prove that such former bodies did not provide the H2 ingredient of water's H2O recipe. They examined a rare type of meteorite — known as an enstatite chondrite — that was built similarly to early Earth 4.5 billion years ago and the team discovered hydrogen present in the chemical. The logic is that if this material resembling early Earth's composition can contain hydrogen, so too could the young planet....

Since the proto-Earth was made of material similar to enstatite chondrites, by the time the immature planet had grown large enough to be struck by asteroids, it would have already stashed enough hydrogen to explain Earth's present-day water supply.Although this study likely won't resolve the debate over Earth's original water source, it tilts the ta ble toward an internal, not external one. "We now think that the material that built our planet — which we can study using these rare meteorites — was far richer in hydrogen than we thought previously," James Bryson, an Oxford professor and an author of the paper, said in a press release. "This finding supports the idea that the formation of water on Earth was a natural process, rather than a fluke of hydrated asteroids bombarding our planet after it formed."

"Seismologist Deborah Kilb was wading through California earthquake records from the past four decades when she noticed something odd," reports CNN, "a series of deep earthquakes that had occurred under the Sierra Nevada at a depth where Earth's crust would typically be too hot and high pressure for seismic activity..." Kilb flagged the data to Vera Schulte-Pelkum, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and an associate research professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder... Using the newfound data, the researchers imaged the Sierra Nevada through a technique known as receiver function analysis, which uses seismic waves to map Earth's internal structure. The scientists found that in the central region of the mountain range, Earth's crust is currently peeling away, a process scientifically known as lithospheric foundering. Kilb and Schulte-Pelkum reported the findings in December in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The hypothesis lined up with previous speculation that the area had undergone lithospheric foundering, which happens when Earth's outermost layer sinks into the lower layer of the mantle. Now, the study authors believe that the process is ongoing and is currently progressing to the north of the mountain range, according to the study... What's happening under the Sierra Nevada could offer rare insight into how the continents formed, Schulte-Pelkum said. The finding could also help scientists identify more areas where this process is happening as well as provide a better understanding of earthquakes and how our planet operates, she added...

Evidence for this process has been hard to come by. It is not visible from above ground, and it's an extremely slow process. Scientists theorize that the south Sierra finished the process of lithospheric foundering about 4 million to 3 million years ago, according to the study. It appears that these natural events happen occasionally around the world, Schulte-Pelkum said. "Geologically speaking, this is a pretty quick process with long periods of stability in between. ... This (lithosphere foundering) probably started happening a long time ago when we started building continents, and (the continents) have gotten bigger over time. So it's just sort of this punctuated, localized thing," she added...

Further study within this area could also help scientists better understand how the Earth evolves on long timescales. If the lithospheric foundering continues underneath the mountain range, one can speculate that the land will continue to stretch vertically, changing the way the landscape looks now [said Mitchell McMillan, a research geologist and postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, who was not involved with the study]. But that could take anywhere from several hundred thousand to a few million years, he added.

CNN looks at "one field that's really benefitting" from the use of AI: "the discovery of new medicines".

The founder/CEO of London-based LabGenius says their automated robotic system can assemble "thousands of different DNA constructs, each of which encodes a completely unique therapeutic molecule that we'll then test in the lab. This is something that historically would've had to have been done by hand." In short, CNN says, their system lets them "design and conduct experiments, and learn from them in a circular process that creates molecular antibodies at a rate far faster than a human researcher."

While many cancer treatments have debilitating side effects, CNN notes that LabGenius "reengineers therapeutic molecules so they can selectively target just the diseased cells." But more importantly, their founder says they've now discovered "completely novel molecules with over 400x improvement in [cell] killing selectivity."

A senior lecturer at Imperial College London tells CNN that LabGenius seems to have created an efficient process with seamless connections, identifying a series of antibodies that look like they can target cancer cells very selectively "that's as good as any results I've ever seen for this." (Although the final proof will be what happens when they test them on patients..) "And that's the next step for Labgenius," says CNN. "They aim to have their first therapeutics entering clinics in 2027."

Finally, CNN asks, if it succeeds is their potential beyond cancer treatment? "If you take one step further," says the company's CEO/founder, "you could think about knocking out senescent cells or aging cells as a way to treat the underlying cause of aging."

Billions of years ago Mars "had a warm, habitable climate with liquid water in lakes and flowing rivers," writes Ars Technica.

But "In order for Mars to be warm enough to host liquid water, there must have been a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," says Benjamin Tutolo, a researcher at the University of Calgary. "The question we've been asking for at least 30 years was where the record of all this carbon is." Tutolo led a new study of rock samples collected by the Curiosity rover that might have answered this question...

Curiosity rover was called Mars Science Laboratory for a reason. It went to the red planet fitted with a suite of instruments, some of which even the newer Perseverance was lacking. These enabled it to analyze the collected Martian rocks on the spot and beam the results back to Earth. "To get the most bang for the buck, NASA decided to send it to the place on Mars called the Gale Crater, because it was the tallest stack of sediments on the planet," Tutolo says. The central peak of Gale Crater was about 5 kilometers tall, created by the ancient meteorite impact... The idea then was to climb up Mount Sharp and collect samples from later and later geological periods at increasing elevations, tracing the history of habitability and the great drying up of Mars.

On the way, the carbon missed by the satellites was finally found...

It turned out the samples contained roughly between 5 and 10 percent of siderite... The siderite found in the samples was also pure, which Tutolo thinks indicates it has formed through an evaporation process akin to what we see in evaporated lakes on Earth. This, in turn, was the first evidence we've found of the ancient Martian carbon cycle. "Now we have evidence that confirms the models," Tutolo claims. The carbon from the atmosphere was being sequestered in the rocks on Mars just as it is on Earth. The problem was, unlike on Earth, it couldn't get out of these rocks... A large portion of carbon that got trapped in Martian rocks stayed in those rocks forever, thinning out the atmosphere.
"While it's likely the red planet had its own carbon cycle, it was an imperfect one that eventually turned it into the lifeless desert it is today," the article points out.

But the study still doesn't entirely explain what warmed the atmosphere of Mars — or why Martian habitability "was seemingly intermittent and fluctuating".

For combining machine learning with astronomy, high school senior Matteo Paz won $250,000 in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, reports Smithsonian magazine: The young scientist's tool processed 200 billion data entries from NASA's now-retired Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope. His model revealed 1.5 million previously unknown potential celestial bodies.... [H]e worked on an A.I. model that sorted through the raw data in search of tiny changes in infrared radiation, which could indicate the presence of variable objects.
Working with a mentor at the Planet Finder Academy at Caltech, Paz eventually flagged 1.5 million potential new objects, accoridng to the article, including supernovas and black holes.

And that mentor says other Caltech researchers are using Paz's catalog of potential variable objects to study binary star systems.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

Launched in 1958, the "awkward-looking" Vanguard-1 satellite ("the size of a grapefruit") is the oldest artificial object orbiting Earth.

"A team of researchers and engineers want to retrieve the satellite for closer inspection and are currently working to find a way to bring Vanguard-1 home," writes Gizmodo: Other satellites of its time have reentered through Earth's atmosphere, burning up in a fiery death, but Vanguard-1 is still in orbit, silently zooming through the void of space... A team of researchers and engineers from Virginia-based consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton have put together a proposal on how to retrieve the satellite from space, bringing it back to Earth to study how its equipment has fared over the years, according to a report by Space.com. The team's proposal is detailed in a study published in the Aerospace Research Center earlier this year...

Considering how old Vanguard-1 is, the astronauts would need to handle it with care, according to the team behind the proposal. Before a retrieval attempt, the team suggests that a spacecraft be sent to rendezvous with the satellite to inspect its condition up-close. The engineers suggested partnering with a wealthy space enthusiast willing to fund the outer space venture, or using a SpaceX vehicle to bring the satellite home. Once it's brought back to Earth, experts would examine Vanguard-1 to assess its condition — whether it was struck by space debris, if it's still holding together, and how its time in orbit has affected the satellite. The satellite could then be placed at the Smithsonian for display as a sort of time capsule, a reminder of the history of spaceflight, the team suggests.

"Future missions (space debris removal, materials capture for on-orbit manufacturing, and even deep space exploration) could build on techniques demonstrated in the retrieval of Vanguard 1," the paper read. "Retrieving Vanguard 1 would be a challenge, but an achievable and invaluable step forward for the entire U.S. space community."
"The researchers suggest that the satellite can be placed in a lower orbit and snagged from space, or reeled into the International Space Station," according to the article.

Space.com shares this assessment from Bill Raynor, the associate superintendent of the Naval Research Laboratory's spacecraft engineering division. "For material and radiation effects scientists and engineers, it would be an unprecedented opportunity for investigating the effects of long-term space environmental exposure."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

Researchers at UC Berkeley claim to have induced a previously unseen color by using lasers to stimulate only the M cones in the retina, creating a visual experience beyond the natural limits of human perception. Called olo, the color is described as a highly saturated blue-green but is only visible through direct retinal manipulation. The Guardian reports: "We predicted from the beginning that it would look like an unprecedented color signal but we didn't know what the brain would do with it," said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. "It was jaw-dropping. It's incredibly saturated."

The researchers shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the color, which they named olo, but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina. "There is no way to convey that color in an article or on a monitor," said Austin Roorda, a vision scientist on the team. "The whole point is that this is not the color we see, it's just not. The color we see is a version of it, but it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of olo." The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: American composer Alvin Lucier was well-known for his experimental works that tested the boundaries of music and art. A longtime professor at Wesleyan University (before retiring in 2011), Alvin passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. However, that wasn't the end of his lifelong musical odyssey. Earlier this month, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, a new art installation titled Revivification used Lucier's "brain matter" -- hooked up to an electrode mesh connected to twenty large brass plates -- to create electrical signals that triggered a mallet to strike the varying plates, creating a kind of post-mortem musical piece. Conceptualized in collaboration with Lucier himself before his death, the artists solicited the help of researchers from Harvard Medical School, who grew a mini-brain from Lucier's white blood cells. The team created stem cells from these white blood cells, and due to their pluripotency, the cells developed into cerebral organoids somewhat similar to developing human brains. "At a time when generative AI is calling into question human agency, this project explores the challenges of locating creativity and artistic originality," the team behind Revivification told The Art Newspaper. "Revivification is an attempt to shine light on the sometimes dark possibilities of extending a person's presence beyond the seemed finality of death."

"The central question we want people to ask is: could there be a filament of memory that persists through this biological transformation? Can Lucier's creative essence persist beyond his death?" the team said.

Bruce66423 shares a report: Toothpaste can be widely contaminated with lead and other dangerous heavy metals, new research shows.

Most of 51 brands of toothpaste tested for lead contained the dangerous heavy metal, including those for children or those marketed as green. The testing, conducted by Lead Safe Mama, also found concerning levels of highly toxic arsenic, mercury and cadmium in many brands.

About 90% of toothpastes contained lead, 65% contained arsenic, just under half contained mercury, and one-third had cadmium. Many brands contain a number of the toxins. The highest levels detected violated the state of Washington's limits, but not federal limits. The thresholds have been roundly criticized by public health advocates for not being protective -- no level of exposure to lead is safe, the federal government has found. Bruce66423 asks: "As ever the question that should be asked is: 'What level is worth worrying about and why?'"

Nature has published an analysis of the 21st century's most-cited scientific papers, revealing a surprising pattern: breakthrough discoveries like mRNA vaccines, CRISPR, and gravitational waves don't make the list. Instead, a 2016 Microsoft paper on "deep residual learning" networks claims the top spot, with citations ranging from 103,756 to 254,074 depending on the database.

The list overwhelmingly features methodology papers and software tools rather than groundbreaking discoveries. AI research dominates with four papers in the top ten, including Google's 2017 "Attention is all you need" paper that underpins modern language models.

The second-most-cited paper -- a 2001 guide for analyzing gene expression data -- was explicitly created to be cited after journal reviewers rejected references to a technical manual. As sociologist Misha Teplitskiy noted, "Scientists say they value methods, theory and empirical discoveries, but in practice the methods get cited more."

Sage has retracted 678 more papers from the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems (JIFS), concluding an investigation that has now purged 1,561 articles -- the most ever removed from a single journal. The publisher, which acquired JIFS from IOS Press in November 2023, began investigating the journal in early 2024 after discovering "indicators that raised concerns about the authenticity of the research and the peer review process."

This final batch follows 467 articles retracted in August and another 416 in January. Problems in the retracted papers included citation manipulation, "tortured phrases," unauthorized third-party involvement in submissions, and evidence suggesting collusion between authors and reviewers. Most authors were from India and China, with some from Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Cengiz Kahraman of Istanbul Technical University, who authored 20 of the retracted papers, disputed the decision, telling Retraction Watch that Sage acted "without any reason and evidence." The journal has now resumed publishing.

Longtime Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: German public news outlet Tagesschau reports (source: YouTube) on an ESA video game that helps train a future moon lander's guidance AI to spot craters. Games have already helped collect visual data on millions of craters. The University Darmstadt developed the game, called IMPACT, to support ESA's efforts to establish a base on the moon. An older article from August 2024 provides further details on the project.

Astronomers have detected what may be the strongest evidence yet of extraterrestrial life on K2-18b, a massive exoplanet orbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. The research team, led by Cambridge astronomer Nikku Madhusudhan, published their findings today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers found significant concentrations of dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide in K2-18b's atmosphere. On Earth, these sulfur compounds are exclusively produced by living organisms, particularly marine algae. "It is in no one's interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life," said Madhusudhan, though he described the findings as "a revolutionary moment" and "the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet."

The team detected the signals during two separate observations, with the second showing an even stronger signature. Their analysis suggests K2-18b may be a "Hycean" planet -- covered with warm oceans and wrapped in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere -- with concentrations of dimethyl sulfide thousands of times higher than Earth levels.

Other scientists remain cautious. Christopher Glein of the Southwest Research Institute suggested K2-18b could instead be "a massive hunk of rock with a magma ocean and a thick, scorching hydrogen atmosphere." Further observations with Webb and future NASA telescopes will be necessary to confirm whether K2-18b is truly habitable or inhabited, though planned budget cuts may impact follow-up research.

Further reading: Water Found On a Potentially Life-Friendly Alien Planet (2019).

In a recent interview with Wired, Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan discusses his book Why We Die, in which he argues that death is not genetically programmed but rather a consequence of evolution favoring reproduction over longevity. Here are some of the most thought-provoking excerpts: WIRED: Professor Ramakrishnan, the crucial question in your book is why we die. But exactly what is death?
Venki Ramakrishnan: By death, we mean the irreversible loss of the ability to function as a coherent individual. It is the result of the failure of a critical system or apparatus, for example, heart, brain, lung, or kidney failure. In this sense there is an apparent paradox: When our organism, as a whole, is alive, millions of cells within us are constantly dying, and we do not even realize it. On the other hand, at the time of death, most of the cells in our bodies are still alive, and entire organs are still functioning and can be donated to people in need of transplantation. But at that point the body has lost the ability to function as a whole. In this sense, it is therefore important to distinguish between cell death and death of the individual.

Speaking of death and aging, you say in your most recent book that you "wanted to offer an objective look at our current understanding of the two phenomena." What was the biggest surprise or most deeply held belief that you had to reconsider while writing and researching this work?
There have been several surprises, actually. One is that death, contrary to what one might think, is not programmed by our genes. Evolution does not care how long we live, but merely selects the ability to pass on our genes, a process known as "fitness" in evolutionary biology. Thus, the traits that are selected are those that help us survive childhood and reproduce. And it is these traits, later in life, that cause aging and decline. Another curious finding was the fact that aging is not simply due to wear and tear on cells. Wear and tear happens constantly in all living things, yet different species have very different lifespans. Instead, lifespan is the result of a balance between the expenditure of resources needed to keep the organism functioning and repairing it and those needed to make it grow, mature, and keep it healthy until it reproduces and nurtures offspring.

Do you think there is an aspect of the biology of aging that is still deeply misunderstood by the general public?
Certainly the indefinite extension of life. Although in principle there are no laws or constraints that prevent us from living much longer than we do currently, great longevity or "eternal youth" are still far off, and very significant obstacles to increasing our maximum life expectancy remain. We must also beware of the pseudoscience -- and business -- around the concepts of "anti-aging" or the "reversal of aging." These are often baseless concepts, unsupported by hard evidence, even though they may use language that sounds scientific. Unfortunately, we are all afraid of growing old and dying, so we are very sensitive to any claim that promises to help us avoid it. [...]

What do you think are the social and ethical implications of our desire to live longer?
Ever since we became aware of our mortality, we have desired to defeat aging and death. However, our individual desires may conflict with what is best for society. A society in which fertility rates are very low and lifespans are very high will be a stagnant society, with very slow generational turnover, and probably much less dynamic and creative. The Nobel Prize-winning South American novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who recently passed away, expressed it best: "Old age on the one hand terrifies us, but when we feel anxious, it is important to remember how terrible it would be to live forever. If eternity were guaranteed, all the incentives and illusions of life would vanish. This thought can help us live old age in a better way."

After more than a decade of development, Harvard's insect-sized flying robot, RoboBee, has successfully learned to land using dragonfly-inspired legs and improved flight controls. The researchers see RoboBee as a potential substitute for endangered bees, assisting in the pollination of plants. From a report: RoboBee is a micro flying robot that Harvard has been developing since 2013. As the name suggests, it is the size of a bee, capable of flying like a bee and hovering in mid-air. Its wings are 3 cm long and it weighs only 0.08 g. The weight was reduced by using light piezoelectric elements instead of motors. Piezoelectric elements change shape when an electric current flows through them. The researchers were able to make RoboBee flap its wings 120 times per second by turning the current on and off, which is similar to actual insects.

While RoboBee exhibited flight capabilities comparable to those of a bee, the real problem was landing. Being too light and having short wings, it could not withstand the air turbulence generated during landing. It is easy to understand if you think about the strong winds generated when a helicopter approaches the ground. Christian Chan, a graduate student at Harvard who participated in the research, said, "Until now, it was a matter of shutting off the robot while it attempted to land and praying for a proper touchdown."

To ensure RoboBee's safe landing, it was important to dissipate energy just before touchdown. Hyun Nak-Seung, a professor at Purdue University who participated in the development of RoboBee, explained, "For any flying object, the success of landing depends on minimizing speed just before impact and rapidly dissipating energy afterward. Even for tiny flapping like RoboBee's, the ground effect cannot be ignored, and after landing, the risk of bouncing or rolling makes the situation more complex." The findings have been published in the journal Science Robotics.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created what they believe is the largest single piece of lab-grown meat to date: a chicken nugget-sized chunk measuring 7 centimeters long, 4 centimeters wide, and 2.25 centimeters thick, weighing 11 grams. The breakthrough, reported today in Trends in Biotechnology, uses an artificial circulatory system to overcome a fundamental limitation in cultured meat production.

The team, led by biohybrid system engineer Shoji Takeuchi, grew cells around a network of semipermeable hollow fibers -- similar to those used in water filters and dialysis machines -- that deliver nutrients and oxygen throughout the tissue. Unlike most commercial approaches that produce tiny meat fragments later assembled with binders or scaffolds, this method creates a single coherent piece with more natural structure and texture.

This is the first working model using tubes to grow muscle tissue into a thick slab, according to Mark Post, chief science officer at Mosa Meat, who created the world's first lab-grown hamburger in 2013. Significant hurdles remain before commercialization. The hollow fibers aren't edible and must be manually removed. Researchers are exploring automating this process or creating edible alternatives using cellulose.