Ask any property inspector, and they’ll tell you one of the maxims of their profession – where there’s moisture, there’s mold. That relationship also holds true for the International Space Station. The interior climate on the ISS is carefully controlled, but if thrown out of whack, potentially dangerous mold could sprout overnight. A new paper by researchers at The Ohio State University explains why – and provides some insights into how we might prevent it if it does happen. The paper’s main finding was that dust collection, when exposed to moisture for only a short time, leads to a massive increase in the microbial population and a fundamental change in the dust itself to make it easier for the microbes to grow. There is plenty of dust on the ISS, so astronauts must be careful. They already clean the screens covering the air filtration system on board regularly. The dust they collected from those screens formed the basis of the samples provided to Dr. Karen Dannemiller and her team at OSU. They separated the dust samples into different sub-samples and exposed each to a varying amount of moisture. Then, they watched as the microbes already present in the dust did their work. A picture of mold growing on the ISS.Credit – NASA Dust is naturally created in the ISS from dead human skin and, of course, the microbes that live alongside us on a daily basis. However, in closed environments, an outbreak of bacteria would cause even more severe reactions than they do on Earth, including allergies and asthma. It is even possible that the dust and associated bacteria degrade the material structure of the ISS itself. Running the collected samples through a higher moisture content is designed to mimic a possible failure on the ISS, such as an equipment malfunction. Knocking out an air ventilation fan in one part of the space station could create an environment similar to the one the dust is subjected to back on the ground. So, what does that mean for our astronauts? For now, it’s best to understand where mold could form and keep up with cleaning schedules that allow them to nip it in the bud. There are several famous pictures of mold growing in a space station, so while generally successful, that has still been a known problem for a long time in space exploration.  Bacteria were also found growing in the old Mir space station, as discussed in this Science Channel episode.Credit – Science Channel YouTube Channel Dr. Dannemiller and her colleagues have developed a model that could track mold growth in a closed environment like the ISS to combat this. They used data collected by analyzing the dust samples as part of their proof of concept for the software, but the eventual end goal is to predict where mold will grow before it begins and give the astronauts time to clean it out before it becomes a hazard.  There will be plenty of space stations to work on this system in the future. Private spaceflight companies have become increasingly involved in developing space habitats, and NASA is setting up the ambitious Lunar Gateway to help with its Artemis missions to the moon. As more enclosed, sealed environments come online, it will be increasingly important to keep them free of these potentially dangerous microbial infestations. Experimenting with them and modeling that growth is one way to stay ahead of the curve. Learn More:Phys.org – Keeping mold out of future space stationsNastasi et al – Predicting how varying moisture conditions impact the microbiome of dust collected from the International Space StationUT – How Can Biofilms Help or Hinder Spaceflight?UT – Earth’s toughest bacteria can survive unprotected in space for at least a year Lead Image:Scanning Electron Microscope image of dust from the ISS.Credit – Microbiome / Nastasi et al. The post Space Stations Get Pretty Moldy. How Can We Prevent it? appeared first on Universe Today.

Mars is known for its unique geological features. Olympus Mons is a massive shield volcano 2.5 times taller than Mt. Everest. Hellas Planitia is the largest visible impact crater in the Solar System. However, Mars’ most striking feature is Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar System. This fascinating geological feature begs to be explored, and a team of German researchers think that a swarm of robots is best suited to the task. Valles Marineris (VM) is named after NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft, which discovered the massive canyon in 1971. It’s about 4,000 km long, 8 km deep at its deepest point, and 600 km wide in some places. These measurements dwarf the Grand Canyon in the USA. From a distance, VM looks like a scab on Mars’s surface. It’s an interconnected network of chasms, faults, valleys, and probably caves. Unlike the Grand Canyon, VM wasn’t excavated by a flowing river. Instead, scientists think it was likely formed by rift faults, regions on the surface where plates receded from one another. Annotated close-up of High-Resolution Stereo Camera images of Valles Marineris. The HRSC is an instrument on the ESA’s Mars Express mission. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Michael) German scientists are developing a way to explore this unique region. It’s called the Valles Marineris Explorer (VaMEx), and the idea dates back several years. VaMEx is an initiative of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and it’s making significant progress. NASA’s Mars rovers have made great progress in understanding Mars and its potentially habitable past. They’re incredible machines that put humanity’s inventiveness on display. But they’re ill-suited to rough, obstacle-strewn terrain like Valles Mariners. Instead of building one robotic vehicle, VaMEx will build several types of vehicles and stationary units that will work together to explore VM and its chasms, valley walls, and caves. VaMEx will be a swarm of interconnected vehicles that fly, move across the ground, and visit caves in VM. They’ll be linked with a ground station that acts as a command center, and a satellite will provide communications with Earth. The vehicles will collect images and data and send them to the command center and an orbiter or satellite, then to Earth. This image outlines the different components of the VaMEx Mars Symphony concept. Image Credit: Clemens Riegler / University of Wuerzburg VaMEx is particularly aimed at caves that scientists think are likely plentiful in VM. Caves are protected from radiation, and if Mars hosted simple life in its past, there may be traces of it deep in these caves. VaMEx also includes ground repeater stations that will allow cave-exploring robots to share data and images in real time. All of this will require finely tuned communications. “We have given our sub-project the name ‘VaMEx3-MarsSymphony’ because the aim is to make the individual elements of the robot swarm play together harmoniously like an orchestra,” said project leader Professor Hakan Kayal. Kayal is a professor of Astronautics at the Satellite Mission Control Centre at the University of Würzburg. The walls of Valles Mariners are an ideal place to study Mars’ layered geology, as shown in this HiRISE image of layered deposits. Scientists can learn about the planet’s geological history without the need for excavation. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/UA/HiRISE Units called autorotation bodies are also part of the swarm. Autorotation is a term from rotary-wing (helicopter) flight. It describes a situation where power to the rotors is lost, and as the helicopter falls toward Earth, air makes the rotors spin, providing enough energy for a controlled descent. VaMEx’s autorotation bodies aren’t helicopters. They’re like maple seeds, which float gently to the ground, spinning as they descend. Once they’ve reached the surface, they’re stationary. VaMEx is also taking an unusual approach to cameras. The stationary ground station will feature a camera that monitors the Martian sky. “All previous Mars missions have focussed on the surface of the planet, but we want to look upwards for the first time,” says Hakan Kayal. The camera can monitor cloud formation and dust in the atmosphere. It will also capture any transient phenomena like unusual cloud illumination or lightning. NASA’s Mars rovers have occasionally imaged the Martian sky. The gif below is from the Perseverance rover, which used one of its navigation cameras to capture images. A purpose-built sky-monitoring camera would image the Martian sky like never before. via GIPHY It will also see incoming meteors, and data shows that one about the size of a basketball strikes Mars every day. “We could further substantiate this with data if we film the entry of meteorites with our UAP camera and correlate these events with the seismic signals,” says Hakan Kayal. VaMEx faces many technical challenges that still need to be overcome. The mobile robots will need powerful route-finding AI to maneuver through difficult terrain, especially in caves. It takes about 40 minutes for a signal to travel from Mars and back, making remote real-time control impossible. There are also communication challenges. A key challenge is getting VaMEx’s ground segments to communicate with a satellite. One company is working on special transceivers that operate in the Ka-band to handle all of the scientific data. The Ka-band is used in satellites because it allows higher bandwidth communications, but landers currently use the S or X-band. The issue is that the Ka-band usually requires more and bulkier equipment, including larger antennae, that may not be practical on a surface robot. In August, scientists tested some aspects of VaMEx at the DLR site in Oberpfaffenhofen. They tested LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) sensors for ground truth validation. This compared sensor information against known data. They also successfully tested Wi-Fi-like communication systems and radio-ranging. “One of the highlights of our field test was the live test of multi-robot SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping),” the VaMEx website says. “In a dual-robot scenario, we tested the real-time capabilities of our SLAM algorithms.” They say the results were promising and illustrate a way forward for individual robots to cooperate. This image shows several robots during tests at the DLR site. Image Credit: VaMEX/DLR Not everything in the tests went well, though. The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) encountered some challenges with so many units trying to communicate with one another. Bandwidth and synchronization were both problematic. These results are helping the VaMEx team prepare for upcoming analog tests in 2025. These will take place at a quarry in Germany, where the robot swarm will be tested after improvements gained from August’s tests. The Wurzburg UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) Skycam will be part of these tests, with its resource-hungry video data added to the mix to test the system’s overall robustness. This image shows an early version of the automated Wurzurg UAP Skycam from 2021. Image Credit: Hakan Kayal / Universität Würzburg If all goes well, the next step is to harden the VaMEx equipment. Mars has much harsher conditions, with much lower temperatures, a thin atmosphere, and global dust storms that can interrupt exploration. “In a possible follow-up project, the hardware would have to be adapted for use on Mars,” explains Hakan Kayal. The post A Swarm of Robots to Explore Mars’ Valles Marineris appeared first on Universe Today.

In a vote marred by accusations of corruption and political persecution, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador secured the passage of his controversial bid Tuesday night to amend the constitution and radically reshape the Mexican judiciary. While initially lacking one vote necessary to meet the requisite two-thirds majority necessary for constitutional amendments, the president and his allies managed to secure victory when two members of the opposition bloc failed to maintain their united front. The night of the vote, Senator Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez of the National Action Party (PAN) crossed the aisle to cast his vote in favor of the judicial reform, while Senator Daniel Barreda of Citizens’ Movement was absent from the chamber entirely due the sudden arrest of his father by the government of Campeche. A furious opposition denounced Yunes as a traitor, asserting that the politician— a member of a political dynasty from the state of Veracruz and longtime enemy of the president—had traded his vote for the protection of his family in a number of criminal investigations opened against them by the state government (now controlled by López Obrador’s party, Morena). “It is obvious that there has been a bargain for immunity,” asserted PAN’s Senate leader, Marko Cortés. Other opposition members denounced him as a “traitor to the nation.” Yunes defended himself, saying, “it is no treason to act in accordance with my principles.” The absence of Barreda created further outrage amongst the opposition, who initially believed the senator himself had been arrested and so prevented from casting his vote, an accusation denied fervently by Morena on the Senate floor. He could not be reached, however, witnesses confirmed that his father’s house had been raided by the Morena-controlled government of the state of Campeche. On Wednesday morning, Barreda confirmed to the media that his father and a local legislator had been arrested by police, and Barreda had left the capitol to secure their release, which occurred at 11pm that same evening, preventing him from attending the Senate vote. The passage of the amendment means that, starting next year, all federal judges in Mexico (including the justices of the Supreme Court) will be elected by popular vote. The post Mexican Judicial Reform Passes Senate appeared first on The American Conservative.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson canceled a planned vote Wednesday on a stopgap funding bill that could keep the government open for the next six months after more than a dozen of his fellow Republicans walked back their support for it. “We’re going to work through the weekend on that,” said Johnson, R-La., less than five hours before the scheduled vote. “No vote today because we’re in the consensus-building business here in Congress with small...

Every parent wants to see their kid get good grades in school. But now we know social success is just as important.From an early age, we're led to believe our grades and test scores are the key to everything — namely, going to college, getting a job, and finding that glittery path to lifelong happiness and prosperity.It can be a little stressful.But a study showed that when children learn to interact effectively with their peers and control their emotions, it can have an enormous impact on how their adult lives take shape. And according to the study, kids should be spending more time on these skills in school.Nope, it's not hippie nonsense. It's science.Kindergarten teachers evaluated the kids with a portion of something called the Social Competence Scale by rating statements like "The child is good at understanding other's feelings" on a handy "Not at all/A little/Moderately well/Well/Very well" scale.The research team used these responses to give each kid a "social competency score," which they then stored in what I assume was a manila folder somewhere for 19 years, or until each kid was 25. At that point, they gathered some basic information about the now-grown-ups and did some fancy statistical stuff to see whether their early social skills held any predictive value.Here's what they found.1. Those good test scores we covet? They still matter, but maybe not for the reasons we thought.Back To School GIF by IFC - Find & Share on GIPHYTraditional thinking says that if a kid gets good grades and test scores, he or she must be really smart, right? After all, there is a proven correlation between having a better GPA in high school and making more money later in life.But what that test score doesn't tell you is how many times a kid worked with a study partner to crack a tough problem, or went to the teacher for extra help, or resisted the urge to watch TV instead of preparing for a test.The researchers behind this project wrote, "Success in school involves both social-emotional and cognitive skills, because social interactions, attention, and self-control affect readiness for learning."That's a fancy way of saying that while some kids may just be flat-out brilliant, most of them need more than just smarts to succeed. Maybe it wouldn't hurt spending a little more time in school teaching kids about the social half of the equation.2. Skills like sharing and cooperating pay off later in life.Adam Sandler Pee GIF - Find & Share on GIPHYWe know we need to look beyond GPA and state-mandated testing to figure out which kids are on the right path. That's why the researchers zeroed in so heavily on that social competency score.What they found probably isn't too surprising: Kids who related well to their peers, handled their emotions better, and were good at resolving problems went on to have more successful lives.What's surprising is just how strong the correlation was.An increase of a single point in social competency score showed a child would be 54% more likely to earn a high school diploma, twice as likely to graduate with a college degree, and 46% more likely to have a stable, full-time job at age 25.The kids who were always stealing toys, breaking things, and having meltdowns? More likely to have run-ins with the law and substance abuse problems.The study couldn't say for sure that strong or poor social skills directly cause any of these things. But we can say for sure that eating too much glue during arts and crafts definitely doesn't help.3. Social behaviors can be learned and unlearned — meaning it's never too late to change.The researchers called some of these pro-social behaviors like sharing and cooperating "malleable," or changeable.Let's face it: Some kids are just never going to be rocket scientists. Turns out there are physical differences in our brains that make learning easier for some people than others. But settling disputes with peers? That's something kids (and adults) can always continue to improve on.And guess what? For a lot of kids, these behaviors come from their parents. The more you're able to demonstrate positive social traits like warmth and empathy, the better off your kids will be.So can we all agree to stop yelling at people when they take the parking spot we wanted?But what does it all mean?This study has definite limitations, which its researchers happily admit. While it did its best to control for as many environmental factors as possible, it ultimately leans pretty heavily on whether a teacher thought a kid was just "good" or "very good" at a given trait.Still, the 19-year study paints a pretty clear picture: Pro-social behavior matters, even at a young age. And because it can be learned, it's a great "target for prevention or intervention efforts."The bottom line? We need to do more than just teach kids information. We need to invest in teaching them how to relate to others and how to handle the things they're feeling inside.Ignoring social skills in our curricula could have huge ramifications for our kids down the road.This article originally appeared on 08.12.15

The Northumberland Zoo in northern England has a great marketing team.With over 184k followers on TikTok, for years they've been producing videos where the zoo animals are the stars. (The zoo's adorable snow leopards always seem to be a surefire hit with the fans!)But for a recent video, Northumberland Zoo flipped the script and put zoo directors Brian and Linda front and center.Then they let some of their younger staffers write the script and cram it full of as much Gen Z slang as possible.The result is hands-down the best and funniest virtual zoo tour you'll ever see.The video currently has over 6 million views and counting, with more than a million likes to go with housands and thousands of comments! @northumberlandzoo Our Zoo Directors didn’t understand the assignment. #genz #genzmarketing #viral #fyp #funny #marketing In complete (and impressive) deadpan, Brian and Linda give a tour of the zoo and its most popular animals using only Gen Z slang.Here's just a sampling of the lingo they were able to squeeze into the minute-long video:"hits different""poppin'""brat""slay""main character energy""menty b""it's giving"and, of course, "very demure, very mindful"There's something kind of surreal about the whole thing — like it was directed by Wes Anderson — and people all over the globe are absolutely eating up Brian and Linda's brilliant comedic timing.It's fair to say that they "understood the assignment." Photo by Janosch Diggelmann on Unsplash It feels like generational divides are bigger and more stubborn than ever — maybe that's why videos like this one hit the spot so well.Northumberland Zoo isn't the first brand to play with generational comedy in their marketing.A real estate agent went mega viral earlier this year when he let his Gen Z employee edit his promotional video with hilarious results.Pairing Gen X/Millennial/Boomer bosses with Gen Z marketing staff has been Internet gold, and right now it's one of the hottest trends on TikTok.The idea of all the staff members at the Northumberland Zoo, young and old, coming together to poke a little fun at one another is just a delight.A survey from Pew Research showed that 79% of respondents believed there was a generation gap, or “a major difference in the point of view of younger people and older people today.”Maybe that's in part because we really love putting labels on people and using those to box them in. "OK boomer" to dismiss older people, while Gen Z is "soft," Gen Alpha is "doomed," and Millennials are cringe.It's just heart-warming and fun to see a group of people of different generations that like each other and can make fun of their differences, and themselves.Realistically, will a funny TikTok heal all the world's ills? Of course not. But here's hoping all the viral attention Northumberland Zoo is getting will help with their conservation efforts, including programs to protect snow leopards and harvest mice.Those harvest mice? Extremely cute by the way. Or, as the kids say, "smol."