The Orion mission at the end of its Artemis I mission: preparing for a chaotic transition when COVID tests are relaxed in China

The Chinese government will ease some of its strict zero-COVID policies following protests in several cities. People who have mild or no symptoms of the disease can travel to their homes instead of in centrally managed facilities, because of testing requirements being relaxed. But researchers worry that the swift transition — without enough time to ramp up vaccinations — could overwhelm the health-care system. “These measures will very likely lead to a messy and hasty transition process where local governments ditch all the zero-COVID measures without investing seriously in preparing for the transition,” says health-policy researcher Yanzhong Huang.

Over the past three weeks, NASA’s Orion spacecraft has flown to the Moon and most of the way back, in a near-flawless test of a new spaceship. It now faces its biggest challenge since launching atop a massive rocket as part of the Artemis I mission — surviving a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the sea on 11 December. This will be the first time that a re-entries for a spaceship intended to carry passengers has ever been done. NASA needs to get Orion home safely to keep on track with its Artemis programme, which aims to eventually return humans to the Moon’s surface.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04413-w

Can AI stop robots? Studies of dogs using genetic sequences to identify their predilection for aggression and nervousness: the case of Herding Sheep Dogs

A study that combined behavioural data from 47,000 dogs with 4,000 of them’ genes has pinpointed genetic variations that are linked to nervousness and predatory behavior. The researchers scrapped the conventional breed categories — which had been found to be a poor predictor for behaviour — and sorted dogs into ten genetic lineages. Herding sheep dogs and mice had genes that were related to the mothers instinct to protect their pups.

Some people can beat AlphaCode at competitive programming. The system, created by Google company DeepMind, was trained on human answers from software-writing competitions. But researchers say that AlphaCode can’t replace software engineers, because there’s no simple way to specify the needs of the people who are going to use the end product.

If there was strict supervision to prevent the use of robots, it would be more likely to be acceptable. Readers in the US linked its history of mass shooting to the debate over police weaponry. And those who replied recoiled en masse from the concept — which is not at play in the San Francisco decision — that an artificial intelligence might pull the trigger, rather than a trained police officer.

Readers suggested there are other ways to use machines that are less severe. They could be used to evaluate and monitor the situation in real time. It could be used to incapacitate by other non-lethal means.”

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04413-w

How living beings came to life in the Arctic: from the DNA to biosensors to tattooing inks and biosensing

One-quarter of all plant and animal species are threatened with extinction owing to factors such as climate change and pollution. More than 190 countries have gathered in Canada for a United Nations summit called COP15 to start talks on securing 30% of the world’s land and sea by the end of the century. How to finance conserve is one of the unresolved issues. A US$100-billion aid fund for low- and middle-income countries has not gone over well with wealthier nations.

New regulations for tattoo inks in the European Union ban the use of some 4,200 chemicals known to be harmful to human health. Scientists want to know more about how chemicals in inks interact with skin tissue over time. New ink methods, ways of delivering them and even tattooable biosensors are being developed.

Andrew Robinson picked out the top five books to read this week, and they include a detailed account of the cell across living beings, and why doubt is the main essence of knowing.

Two-million-year-old DNA recovered from permafrost has revealed that the Arctic desert of northern Greenland was once a lush forest ecosystem inhabited by surprisingly large animals. Geneticist Eske Willerslev tells the Nature Podcast what it was like to see this ecosystem come to life: “There were mastodons running around, reindeers, geese, hares, also marine animals like the horseshoe crab, which suggested a much warmer environment.” He thinks that, eventually, scientists will be able to look back further in time by sequencing even older DNA.

Yusaku Maezawa chose a group of amateur astronauts, including music artist Steve Aoki, science advocate Tim Dodd and snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington, to go on a moon mission in 2020. (Space News | 4 min read)

Nature Briefing: Science, Mathematical Approaches and the Global COVID-19 pandemic (Newton, September 10 – 11)

This week, a team of researchers working with the World Health Organization have used statistical modelling to estimate the number of excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The work estimates that there were almost 15 million deaths either directly or indirectly attributed to the pandemic, almost three times higher than the official toll.

Stark figures show that the representation of scientists from minority ethnic groups dwindles at each stage of UK academia. To find out more about the issue and what can be done, we spoke to a PhD student named mahrukh Shameem who was an advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion.

We discuss some of the things in the Nature Briefing. This time it is about the success of the tested NASA’s Orion capsule and how text-generating machine learning can spell the end for essays.

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Lovelock’s Trans-Atlantic Correspondence: A History of Telemedicine and Greene’s Physician’s Clinic during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In 1966, independent scientist James Lovelock proposed that Earth’s climate and the chemistry of its surface, air and sea “have evolved with life to provide optimum conditions for its survival”. The concept was developed by him and Lynn Margulis. The book edited by Sébastien Dutreuil and Bruce Clarke has information on their trans-Atlantic correspondence. At the time, the idea had little backing from Earth and life scientists; now, notables in the field contribute essays of support.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, physician Jeremy Greene converted his clinic to telemedicine, with mixed results. He was interested in the history of communications technology, including the telephone. The stethoscope of 1910 was used to monitor hearts, lungs, and abdomens. It was useless to many patients who did not have a telephone even decades later. This vibrant, highly readable but US-focused history describes how many other technologies tried “to democratize access to healthcare”.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00211-0

Parasites in the Americas: The Discovery of Venus’s Supernatural Predictions Across Latinx, Black and Latinx Cultural Rigidity

Only four Maya books survived the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica. There are three Europeans who proved key to decoding Maya glyphs. The fourth, discovered in the 1960s, remains in Mexico. The authenticity of the book was debated until it was found to be the oldest book of the Americas from 1100. Andrew Turner and contributors give a fascinating analysis of the science and book’s supernatural predictions based on Venus’s movements with a vivid facsimile.

Parasite originally meant ‘next to food’, but later signified sitting next to a host to get free food. Scott and Gabor Rcz and Judy Diamond wrote that it describes a longterm relationship between species, in which the host and parasites are harmed, although in practice the latter is only a slight benefit. Their study focuses on the three abundant types of parasites, and illustrated it by the photographer, Brenda Lee.

US Black and Latinx populations experience illness and COVID-19 deaths at a higher rate and earlier age than the national average. This collection of articles was written by 27 US academics to bring attention to the extent of racial inequality in the United States. So did George Floyd’s murder in 2020. There are two events that highlight the issue of inequality in healthcare, policing, education, employment, housing and credit markets.