A digest of popular science news for the week that we haven't written about
NASA Confirms It Won't Be Able to Protect Earth from Asteroid Impact in 14 Years
NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which is charged with the mission of finding, tracking, and protecting Earth from asteroids and comets, published a reportaccording to which NASA does not have the necessary infrastructure to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts.
in the report is told about internal exercises conducted by NASA on a proposed asteroid impact scenario. The proposed scenario was as follows: Let's say we have a 72% chance of an asteroid impact 14 years from now, in July 2038, and the impact avoidance requirements are unknown. The asteroid's diameter is between 60 and 800 m, but more likely between 100 and 320 feet.
The probability that the impact will result in no casualties is 45%, the probability that more than 1,000 people will be injured is 47%, 100,000 people is 28%, more than 1 million people is 8%, and 10 million people is 0.04%. The affected area covers many populated areas, such as Mexico, the United States, Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
“Sustaining the space mission, disaster preparedness, and communications efforts for 14 years will be challenging due to budget cycles, changing political leadership, personnel, and constantly changing world events,” the report states.
Multiple internal organizations involved in the exercise found critical deficiencies in NASA’s response to the scenario, with many of the major problems centering on internal planning and communications departments. For example, the report found that there was no clearly defined process for responding to an asteroid, and that only one test to avoid impact with Earth (the Double Asteroid Redirection Test) was demonstrated.
“The decision-making process for space missions in the event of an asteroid threat remains unclear. This process has not been adequately defined either in the United States or internationally,” the report says.
To address these issues, NASA recommended “periodic briefings and exercises to continue to increase planetary defense awareness and improve readiness to prepare for and respond to an asteroid impact threat.”
AI Creates Radical Rare Earth-Free Magnet in Just 3 Months
Electric cars and other green technologies don't come without a trace and have an impact on the environment. That impact could be reduced with a new design for a rare earth-free magnet created using artificial intelligence in just three months.
Rare earth metals are essential components of modern gadgets and electronics, including cars, wind turbines and solar panels, but extracting them from the earth comes at a cost in money, energy and environmental impact.
Therefore, technologies that do not use these metals can help us move faster to a greener future. The British company Materials Nexus, using the artificial intelligence platform it developed, created MagNex is a permanent magnet that does not require rare earth metals.
This is not the first magnet of its kind, but discovering such materials usually requires a lot of trial and error and can take decades. Using artificial intelligence sped up the process by about 200 times – in just three months, the new magnet was developed, synthesized and tested.
The AI analyzes more than 100 million compositions of possible rare-earth-free magnets, weighing not only potential performance, but also supply chain security, production costs and environmental concerns.
“AI-powered materials design will impact not just magnetics, but the entire field of materials science,” says physicist Jonathan Bean, CEO of Materials Nexus.
“We have now identified a scalable method for developing new materials for all kinds of industrial needs.”
To create the magnet, Materials Nexus collaborated with a team from the Henry Royce Institute at the University of Sheffield in the UK. It is believed that similar techniques could be used to develop other devices and components that do not use rare earth magnets.
A boy from the UK was the first in the world to receive a brain implant to control epilepsy attacks.
A UK teenager with severe epilepsy became the first person in the worldwho received a brain implant designed to control his seizures.
The Oran Knowlson neurostimulator sits under the skull and sends electrical signals deep into the brain, which has reduced daytime seizures by 80%.
His mother, Justine, said that since having the device installed, her son has become happier, more talkative and his quality of life has improved significantly. “The future looks hopeful in a way that I couldn’t have predicted six months ago,” she said.
Martin Tisdall, a consultant paediatric neurosurgeon who led the surgical team at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, said: “For Oran and his family, epilepsy has completely changed their lives and to see him riding a horse and regaining his independence is absolutely amazing. We couldn't be more delighted to have been part of their journey.”
Oran, 13, from Somerset, had the operation in October as part of a trial run at Gaucher in partnership with University College London, King's College Hospital and Oxford University. Oran has Lennox-Gastout syndrome, an external, treatment-resistant form of epilepsy, which he developed when he was three.
Since he had the device installed, he has not had a single day without a seizure, sometimes having hundreds in a day. He often loses consciousness and stops breathing, requiring resuscitation. This means Oran needs 24-hour care, as seizures can occur at any time of day, and he has a significantly increased risk of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP).
The neurotransmitter Picostim is made by the British company Amber Therapeutics. During the operation, Tisdall and his team inserted two electrodes deep into Oran’s brain until they reached the thalamus, a highly connected center in the brain. The wires, which had to be placed with sub-millimeter precision, were connected to a neurostimulator. This square device, 3.5 cm in size and 0.6 cm in thickness, was placed in a gap in Oran’s skull where the bone had been removed, and secured with screws into the surrounding skull. It can be recharged via wearable headphones.
Once Oran recovered from surgery, the device was turned on, providing constant, low-level electrical stimulation to the brain to block the electrical pathways that allow seizures to develop.
New study confirms chemicals are permanently absorbed through human skin
Study of 17 Commonly Used Synthetic “Forever Chemicals” showedthat these toxic substances can be easily absorbed through human skin.
New studypublished today in the journal Environment International, provides the first evidence that a wide range of PFAS (perfluoroalkyl substances) – chemicals that do not break down in nature – can penetrate the skin barrier and enter the human bloodstream.
PFAS are widely used in industrial and consumer products – from school uniforms to personal care products – due to their water- and stain-repellent properties. While some substances have been banned by government regulations, others are still widely used and their toxic effects are not yet fully understood.
PFAS are already known to enter the body through other routes, such as inhalation or ingestion in food or drinking water. They are known to cause adverse health effects such as decreased immune response to vaccines, liver dysfunction, and decreased birth weight.
It is generally accepted that PFAS are unable to penetrate the skin barrier, but recent studies have shown an association between the use of personal care products and the concentration of PFAS in human blood and breast milk. The new study represents the most comprehensive assessment of the absorption of PFAS into human skin and confirms that the majority of them can enter the body through this route.
Lead author of the study, Dr Oddni Ragnarsdottir, conducted the research while completing her PhD at the University of South Africa.
Researchers Develop Dry Transfer Printing Technology for Flexible Electronics
Researchers from the Institute of Basic Science (IBS), South Korea, have developed an innovative dry transfer printing technology for flexible electronic devices. Study published in the journal Nature Materials.
This method, developed by Professor Kim Dae-hyun, Dr. Lee Sangkyu (IBS Center for Nanoparticle Research) and Professor Kim Jihoon (Pusan University), allows the transfer of high-quality electronic materials without damage, which is a significant achievement in the field.
Typically, high-quality electronic materials are synthesized and processed at high temperatures to achieve the desired crystal structures and electrical properties. However, these high temperatures make it difficult to process such materials directly on flexible or stretchable substrates.
To create flexible/stretchable devices, electronics must be “transferred” from a hard substrate to a soft substrate. Current transfer printing technologies have their own problems, such as the use of toxic chemicals and potential mechanical damage during the transfer process.
To solve this problem, various methods have been developed, such as laser or thermal processes and aqueous exfoliation. However, these methods require expensive equipment, involve additional post-processing, or are limited to certain conditions. It is also difficult to use conventional transfer printing for high-quality electronic materials that require high-temperature processing to form crystalline structures.
To overcome these challenges, the research team developed a damage-free dry transfer printing method that controls the stress in thin films. The new method enables the transfer of metal and oxide thin films processed at high temperatures onto flexible substrates without damage.
By adjusting the deposition parameters, the team controlled the type and magnitude of stress in the thin film. They created bilayer structures with alternating stress to maximize the stress gradient and applied additional tensile stress through external bending deformation. This process maximizes the rate of strain energy release, ensuring reliable delamination by exceeding the interfacial strength between the thin film and the substrate.
