Recently, NASA developed a plan to send a crew of astronauts to an Earth-approaching asteroid, called Prospects for Future Human Space Flight Missions to Near-Earth Asteroids. The plan has its origins in a speech delivered by President Obama at the Kennedy Space Center in 2010.
Obama’s remarks were meant to quell a firestorm he created when he canceled the Constellation Program, the last attempt to go back to the moon. As a consolation prize, he proposed sending a crew of astronauts to an Earth-approaching asteroid before launching a crewed expedition to Mars. The new proposal, not yet funded, is an updated version of the Obama plan, using the SpaceX Starship instead of an Orion launched from a Space Launch System rocket.
The Obama proposal was not a serious one. It quickly devolved into something called the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which envisioned diverting a small asteroid or maybe a boulder from an asteroid into lunar orbit, where it would be visited by an Orion with a crew. No one took the idea seriously.
Dr. Richard Binzel of MIT, one of the world’s leading experts in small, celestial bodies such as asteroids and comets, was especially scornful. Instead, he suggested a survey of Earth-approaching asteroids, some of which might prove to be a threat to Earth.
The Asteroid Redirect Mission died a quick and unlamented death when President Trump assumed office and started the Artemis program that redirected NASA to send astronauts back to the moon before sending crewed expeditions to Mars. Unlike previous attempts to return to the moon, Artemis has met with considerable technical and political success. Artemis 1, an uncrewed mission around the moon, succeeded brilliantly.
President Biden, soon after assuming office, made Artemis his own. A crew has been selected for the Artemis II circumlunar mission to take place no earlier than late 2024. READ MORE...
There are three different kinds of long COVID, and all have their own set of symptoms, according to researchers.
In a new preprint study — which means it has yet to be peer reviewed — on MedRxiv, a site that distributes unpublished research in the health sciences, scientists from King’s College in London analyzed the experiences of thousands of people across the U.K that were infected with the virus.
Researchers focused on 1,459 people living with post-COVID syndrome — which study crafters defined as having symptoms for at least 12 weeks after being infected with the virus — and were able to place patients into three main “symptom profiles.”
PCS patients — which are also referred to colloquially as long COVID patients — placed in the first group suffered from respiratory symptoms like chest pain and shortness of breath or palpitations.
The second group was made up of long COVID patients who experienced neurological symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, poor memory and headaches, which researchers said was experienced most commonly among those that had been infected with the alpha or delta variants, according to the study. READ MORE...
A retirement bill currently under negotiation in the Senate gives rich Americans a tax break by bringing forward the payment schedule to remain revenue-neutral within the 10-year budget window, but will ultimately add to the national deficit unless a future Congress raises taxes.
The Senate’s Enhancing American Retirement Now (EARN) Act raises the age at which taxpayers must start making withdrawals from 72 to 75, allowing them three extra years of tax-free growth.
Most Americans start living off their retirement accounts well before the age of 75, so the bumped-up age requirement really only affects the wealthy, who often use their retirement accounts as tax-sheltered investment vehicles rather than as savings to cover the cost of living in old age.
The bill throws another bone to rich taxpayers — and the Wall Street fund managers who look after their money — by allowing them to deposit an additional $10,000 a year into their retirement accounts beginning between the ages of 60 and 63. Setting aside an extra $10,000 a year is something most Americans can’t afford to do. READ MORE...
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday called on Justice Clarence Thomas to resign or face impeachment for what she depicted as a pattern of ethical breaches.
“Clarence Thomas should resign,” she wrote on Twitter. “If not, his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment.”
Ocasio-Cortez is just the latest in a series of Democratic lawmakers and legal experts to intensify ethical scrutiny of Thomas in the wake of explosive reports last week that exposed his wife’s aggressive efforts to help overturn former President Trump’s electoral defeat.
Those revelations raised fresh questions about the justice’s refusal to step aside from related cases before the Supreme Court, including at least 10 rulings concerning the 2020 presidential election, without any indication of him recusing.
The ruling that has drawn the sharpest criticism came in January, when Thomas was the only justice who dissented in an 8-1 ruling that cleared the way for House investigators probing the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to obtain Trump-era White House records. READ MORE...
Scientists in California tried to study Alzheimer’s disease from a different perspective and the results may have led them to the cause of the disease.
Researchers at the University of California- Riverside (UCR) recently published results from a study that looked at a protein called tau. By studying the different forms tau proteins take, researchers discovered the difference between people who developed dementia and those who didn’t.
The tau protein was critical for researchers because they wanted to understand what the protein could reveal about the mechanism behind plaques and tangles, two critical indicators doctors look for when diagnosing people with Alzheimer’s.
By analyzing donated brain samples, researchers found that those with brain buildup, like plaques and tangles, but had no dementia had a normal form of tau. However, those who had a “different-handed” form of tau and developed plaques or tangles did have dementia.
Ryan Julian, a chemistry professor at UCR, said in a press release, “roughly 20% of people have the plaques, but no signs of dementia. This makes it seem as though the plaques themselves are not the cause.”
The amino acids that make up proteins like tau can either be right-handed or left-handed isomers, and normally proteins in living things are made from all left-handed amino acids, explained Julian.
However, most proteins only survive for less than 48 hours in the body, and if they hang around too long, certain amino acids can convert into the other-handed isomer. So that means a left-handed isomer could inadvertently convert into a right-handed isomer, which can lead to serious problems.
“If you try to put a right-handed glove on your left hand, it doesn’t work too well. It’s a similar problem in biology; molecules don’t work the way they’re supposed to after a while because a left-handed glove can actually convert into a right-handed glove that doesn’t fit,” said Julian. READ MORE...
