Tackling rare genetic disorders with patient-focused science - MIT News

image: Discarded plastic food packaging lies among seaweed and other materials on a coastal beach. Plastic waste reaching shorelines can persist, weather and fragment into smaller particles, extending its environmental impacts beyond visible litter. Plastic pollution is often framed as a waste problem, but a paper published in National Science Review argues that this view is too narrow. Plastics move through land, water and air, change as they weather, release and transport chemicals, and provide new habitats for microorganisms. Their consequences include harm to wildlife, potential risks to human health, and disruptions of climate-relevant processes and carbon and nitrogen cycling. The paper connects this evidence with strategies spanning the entire plastics life cycle, from production and product design to reuse, recycling, waste treatment, cleanup, and global governance.

RIYADH: The Kingdom has launched the first biological samples from the Middle East to space as part of the BioGravity-1 mission aboard a SpaceX resupply flight to the International Space Station, the Saudi Press Agency reported recently. The launch, led by the Saudi Space Agency and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, marks the first phase of a long-term research program aimed at advancing studies into Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative conditions. The mission was carried into orbit aboard the SpaceX CRS-35 mission to the International Space Station with support from NASA. BioGravity-1 is designed to establish a scientific baseline for future research by sending biological samples from healthy donors into the microgravity environment of space. Researchers will study how cells respond to conditions that cannot be replicated on Earth and examine biological changes linked to aging and neurological diseases. The mission includes two experiments, SSA-1 and SSA-2, developed by KAUST.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

Milky Way’s first microblazar candidate sits 12,000 light-years away, offering a rare ground-level lab for studying relativistic jetsA black hole 12,000 light-years away is firing a jet of plasma almost directly toward Earth. At that distance, no known or expected danger to Earth has been identified by the researchers or the institutions involved. What astronomers have actually found is rarer and more interesting than a threat. Researchers have identified IRAS 18293-0941 as a compelling candidate for the Milky Way’s first microblazar, a class of object that gives astrophysicists a close-up laboratory for studying some of the most violent physics in the galaxy. What Astronomers FoundThe discovery centers on a binary system whose black hole expels plasma jets at close to three-quarters the speed of light, pointed almost directly toward Earth. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a black hole that completes a full orbit roughly every 11.38 days. Material drawn from the companion star feeds the black hole, and some of that matter gets expelled outward as opposing jets traveling at approximately three-quarters the speed of light. Terminology matters here.