In 2007, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the SELENE lunar orbiter, better known by its nickname Kaguya. As the most ambitious moon mission since the Apollo program, Kaguya spent 20 months surveying the moon and photographing its surface, until JAXA instructed the orbiter to impact near the Gill crater in 2009.

Using those images, video artist Seán Doran recently published two videos depicting a "real-time" lunar orbit that spans more than eight hours.

Kaguya was the first spacecraft to capture high-definition images of the moon. The orbiter was outfitted with two 2.2 megapixel CCD HDTV cameras, one equipped with a telephoto lens, the other a wide-angle. These cameras helped JAXA construct a detailed topography of the moon, with "data points 10 orders larger than the previous model of the lunar surface," NASA noted.

To create the new videos, Doran synthesized the Kaguya images and polished them up by denoising, repairing, grading, retiming and upscaling them to 4k, as he wrote on Twitter.

As a self-taught artist, Doran has created dozens of space-art videos using images collected by instruments like the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC).

"I use Photoshop for 2D work as well as batch processing frames for animation," Doran wrote in a blog post published on the HiRISE website. "I use 3DS Max and Blender for 3D work. I use After Effects, Premiere and Audition for video. I also use a plethora of plugins for each software stack as well as numerous apps for specific tasks. I'm always testing new methods and love trying out new software."

"Making content with HiRISE data has sparked a new chapter in my creative expression, bringing datasets to life through mosaics, animations, VR experiences and short films set to music."

Space has captured the imagination of artists for centuries. Humans living during the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods painted constellations on cave walls. In medieval Europe, artists often personified the planets, viewing the cosmos in a religious context, with Earth at the center of a divine universe. As science progressed, so did space art.

The 20th century saw artists from Pablo Picasso to Andy Warhol capture the cosmos in varying forms. The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky hinted at the planets abstractly in his 1926 painting "Several Circles," while artists like Agnes Denes used a more mathematical approach to illustrate our own planet from outer space.

Doran's fascination with the cosmos was sparked by a luminary in science education.

"I've been interested in astronomy since being introduced to the concept watching Ann Druyan & Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series," he wrote. "It was a welcome distraction from the civil war raging in Belfast during the 1980s."

You can check out more of Doran's work on his Flickr account and YouTube channel.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

From shrimp to whales, marine animals use sound to communicate with each other and interpret their underwater environment. But since the Industrial Revolution, noise from human activity has been polluting the ocean soundscape, stressing animals and disrupting their behaviors.

A new paper published in the journal Science examined thousands of prior studies on how noise pollution has been impacting marine life, and it offered solutions for how humans could quiet their impact on the ocean soundscape. According to the paper, Earth's marine animals are living in the Anthropocene ocean, a geological term used to describe the planet's current period in which humans have a dominant influence on the environment.

The illustrations from top to bottom show ocean soundscapes from before the industrial revolution that were largely composed of sounds from geological (geophony) and biological sources (biophony), with minor contributions from human sources (anthrophony), to the present Anthropocene oceans, where anthropogenic noise and reduced biophony owing to the depleted abundance of marine animals and healthy habitats have led to impacts on marine animals

"Ocean soundscapes are rapidly changing because of massive declines in the abundance of sound-producing animals, increases in anthropogenic noise, and altered contributions of geophysical sources, such as sea ice and storms, owing to climate change," the authors wrote. "As a result, the soundscape of the Anthropocene ocean is fundamentally different from that of preindustrial times, with anthropogenic noise negatively impacting marine life."

Humans pump noise into the ocean in many ways, including sounds from shipping and fishing vessels, sonar devices, oil drilling, construction, acoustic deterrents, warfare and sea-bed mining. Noise pollution can span great distances in some cases. For example, the U.S. Navy's Low Frequency Active Sonar system, used to detect submarines, reaches over 1,505,800 square-miles.

Noise pollution not only stresses marine animals, but also hinders their ability to sense prey and predators, and connect with their family members and groups. For example, species like bluefish tuna rely on sound to communicate with each other, and research has shown that noise from boats disrupts their schooling structure, making it harder for them to migrate to spawning and feeding grounds.

But direct human activity isn't the only thing changing the ocean soundscape. The paper noted that human-caused climate change is "affecting geophony (abiotic, natural sounds)," such as noise caused by waves and melting ice. Taken together, there's clear evidence that noise pollution is disrupting marine life, though "there is lower confidence that anthropogenic noise increases the mortality of marine animals and the settlement of their larvae," the authors wrote.

Solutions for ocean noise pollution

While noise pollution poses serious threats to marine life, it's also a relatively easy thing to reverse. After all, noises can be eliminated almost immediately, unlike climate change or the trillions of pieces of plastic and garbage that litter the oceans.

The authors of the recent paper noted several strategies that could alleviate ocean noise pollution, including floating wind turbines, quieter boat propellers, decreased shipping traffic, and seafloor-based seismic survey technology. Some solutions may soon become cost effective, while others would likely require new policies. Currently, there are no international laws restricting ocean noise pollution.

"Existing evidence shows that anthrophony affects marine animals at multiple levels, including their behavior, physiology, and, in extreme cases, survival," the authors wrote. "This should prompt management actions to deploy existing solutions to reduce noise levels in the ocean, thereby allowing marine animals to reestablish their use of ocean sound as a central ecological trait in a healthy ocean."

To help quiet the oceans and curb greenhouse gas emissions, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) suggests enforcing speed limits on ships.

"The most effective solution that we advocate is to implement speed restrictions for ships because this not only reduces ocean noise, but also minimizes gas emission and ship strikes," IFAW wrote in 2020.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

After former U.S. President William Henry Harrison delivered his inaugural speech on March 4, 1841, he posed for a daguerreotype, the first widely available photographic technology. It became the first photo taken of a sitting American president.

As for the eight presidents before Harrison, history can see them only through artistic renderings. (The exception is a handful of surviving daguerreotypes of John Quincy Adams, taken after he left office. In his diary, Adams described them as "hideous" and "too true to the original.")

But a recent project offers a glimpse of what early presidents might've looked like if photographed through modern cameras. Using FaceApp and Airbrush, Magdalene Visaggio, author of books such as "Eternity Girl" and "Kim & Kim", generated a collection of convincing portraits of the nation's first presidents, from George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant.

Modern Presidents George Washington https://t.co/CURJQB0kap — Magdalene Visaggio (@Magdalene Visaggio)1611952243.0

What might be surprising is that Visaggio was able to generate the images without a background in graphic design, using freely available tools. She wrote on Twitter:

"A lot of people think I'm a digital artist or whatever, so let me clarify how I work. Everything you see here is done in Faceapp+Airbrush on my phone. On the outside, each takes between 15-30 mins. Washington was a pretty simple one-and-done replacement."

Ulysses S Grant https://t.co/L1IGXLI3Vl — Magdalene Visaggio (@Magdalene Visaggio)1611959480.0

Visaggio added:

"Other than that? I am not a visual artist in any sense, just a hobbyist using AI tools see what she can make. I'm actually a professional comics writer."

Did another pass at Lincoln. https://t.co/PdT4QVpMbn — Magdalene Visaggio (@Magdalene Visaggio)1611973947.0

Of course, Visaggio isn't the first person to create deepfakes (or "cheap fakes") of politicians.

In 2017, many people got their first glimpse of the technology through a video depicting former President Barack Obama warning: "We're entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time." The video quickly reveals itself to be fake, with comedian Jordan Peele speaking for the computer-generated Obama.

While deepfakes haven't yet caused significant chaos in the U.S., incidents in other nations may offer clues of what's to come.

The future of deepfakes

In 2018, Gabon's president Ali Bongo had been out of the country for months receiving medical treatment. After Bongo hadn't been seen in public for months, rumors began swirling that his condition. Some suggested Bongo might even be dead. In response, Bongo's administration released a video that seemed to show the president addressing the nation.

But the video is strange, appearing choppy and blurry in parts. After political opponents declared the video to be a deepfake, Gabon's military attempted an unsuccessful coup. What's striking about the story is that, to this day, experts in the field of deepfakes can't conclusively verify whether the video was real.

The uncertainty and confusion generated by deepfakes poses a "global problem," according to a 2020 report from The Brookings Institution. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense released some of the first tools able to successfully detect deepfake videos. The problem, however, is that deepfake technology keeps improving, meaning forensic approaches may forever be one step behind the most sophisticated forms of deepfakes.

As the 2020 report noted, even if the private sector or governments create technology to identify deepfakes, they will:

"...operate more slowly than the generation of these fakes, allowing false representations to dominate the media landscape for days or even weeks. "A lie can go halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on," warns David Doermann, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Buffalo. And if defensive methods yield results short of certainty, as many will, technology companies will be hesitant to label the likely misrepresentations as fakes."

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

NASA's Perseverance is 18 days from landing on Mars and starting its mission of searching for ancient alien life in the planet's Jezero Crater.

But first Perseverance has to stick the landing. The spacecraft carrying the rover will be flying roughly 3.5 miles per second when it's approaching the thin Martian atmosphere. To slow the descent, the spacecraft will deploy a parachute and activate thrusters, while a shield will protect it from heat caused by friction. After separating from a protective capsule, a "skycrane" vehicle will lower the rover to the ground.

Perseverance will perform its EDL (entry, descent and landing) autonomously, the first spacecraft to ever do so. To save mission time and land safely, the rover will use Terrain-Relative Navigation technology to quickly identify and move to an optimal landing site within Jezero Crater.

But while Perseverance is the most technologically advanced rover ever launched into space, there's no guarantee it'll land safely on the Red Planet. After all, only 40 percent of missions sent to Mars have succeeded. What's more: NASA won't instantly know whether the landing succeeded because of the radio communication delay between Earth and Mars.

It's maybe no wonder NASA often describes Mars landings as "seven minutes of terror."

"Don't let anybody tell you different – landing on Mars is hard to do," John McNamee, project manager for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission, said in a NASA blog post. "But the women and men on this team are the best in the world at what they do. When our spacecraft hits the top of the Mars atmosphere at about three-and-a-half miles per second, we'll be ready."

NASA plans to livestream the landing, starting at 2:15 p.m. EST on February 18.

"If all goes well, the public will be able to experience in high-definition what it's like to land on Mars – and hear the sounds of landing for the first time with an off-the-shelf microphone," NASA wrote.

Within days of landing, Perseverance is set to transmit high-resolution images of the Martian surface back to Earth. The rover is equipped with 19 specialized cameras, more than any mission before it.

"Mastcam-Z's cameras can zoom in on rock textures from as far away as a soccer field, while SuperCam will use a laser to zap rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) to study their composition in the resulting vapor," NASA wrote. "RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment) will use radar waves to probe geological features underground."

Perseverance, accompanied by a drone helicopter named Ingenuity, has four main scientific objectives:

• Looking for habitability: identify past environments capable of supporting microbial life.
• Seeking biosignatures: seek signs of possible past microbial life in those habitable environments, particularly in special rocks known to preserve signs over time.
• Caching samples: collect core rock and "soil" samples and store them on the Martian surface.
• Preparing for humans: test oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere, and test the viability of five spacesuit materials.

But the key focus is to determine whether life ever existed on Mars. That's why NASA plans to land the rover in Jezero Crater, which 3.5 billion years ago contained a body of water roughly the size of Lake Tahoe. NASA scientists think sediments in the crater may contain traces of organic molecules and, potentially, ancient microbial life.

There's good reason to think Mars may have once harbored life. Although the Red Planet is cold and barren today, it once had an atmosphere that was likely substantial enough to support a greenhouse effect and liquid water. But that was billions of years ago, so it's hard to nail down the specifics, especially without soil and rock samples.

"We know Mars had more atmosphere," Timothy Livengood of the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told NASA. "We know it had flowing water. We do not have a good estimate for the conditions apart from that — how Earthlike was the Mars environment? For how long?"

Perseverance could help clear up some of these mysteries about the Red Planet, the biggest of which is whether life exists outside of Earth. And if the rover finds no signs of ancient life? As microbiologist Andrew Steele told the Smithsonian Magazine:

"If you find a habitable environment and don't find it inhabited, then that tells you something," he said. "If there is no life, then why is there no life? The answer leads to more questions."

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

For the 20 percent of people with a mental illness, early identification of the condition is key to getting the best treatment. But people often suffer symptoms for months, even years, without receiving clinical attention. Part of the problem is that psychiatrists have few tools to identify mental illnesses; they rely mostly on self-reported data and observations from friends and family.

The field is, in some ways, "stuck in the prehistoric age," according to Michael Birnbaum, MD, an assistant professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and an attending physician at Zucker Hillside Hospital and Lenox Hill Hospital at Northwell Health.

But digital tools could help bring psychiatry into the modern age.

"It became apparent, in my work with young folks, that social media was ubiquitous," Dr. Birnbaum told Big Think. "So, we started to think about ways that we could potentially explore the utility of the internet and social media in the way we diagnose our patients and the care that we provide."

The results of a recent study, conducted by Feinstein Institutes researchers and IBM Research, suggest that social media activity can provide useful insights into who's at risk of developing mental illnesses like mood disorders and schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Published in the journal njp Schizophrenia, the study used machine-learning algorithms to analyze millions of Facebook messages and images, which were provided voluntarily by participants, ages 15 to 35. The data represented participants' Facebook activity for 18 months prior to hospitalization.

...the health disparity between people with mental illness and those without is larger than disparities attributable to race, ethnicity, geography or socioeconomic status.

Identifying psychiatric disorders

The goal was for the algorithms to analyze patterns in these datasets, then predict which group participants belonged to: schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), mood disorders (MD), or healthy volunteers (HV). The results were promising, showing that the algorithms correctly identified:

• The SDD group with an accuracy of 52% (chance was 33%)
• The MD group with an accuracy of 57% (chance was 37%)
• The HV group with an accuracy of 56% (chance was 29%)

The study also showed interesting differences in Facebook activity among the groups, such as:

• The SSD group was more likely to use language related to perception (hear, see, feel).
• The MD and SSD groups were far more likely to use swear words and anger-related language.
• The MD group was more likely to use language related to biological processes (blood, pain).
• The SSD group was more likely to express negative emotions, use second-person pronouns and write in netspeak (lol, btw, thx).
• The MD group was more likely to post photos containing more blues and less yellows.

These differences tended to become more apparent in the months before a patient was hospitalized. But even 18 months before hospitalization, the results revealed signals that hinted participants might be on the path to developing a psychiatric disorder. That's where these tools may someday help improve early-identification efforts.

"In psychiatry, we often get a snapshot of somebody's life, for 30 minutes once a month or so," he said. "There's the potential to get much greater granularity with some of these new assessment tools. Facebook, for example, can allow us to understand somebody's thoughts and behaviors in a more real-time, longitudinal fashion, as opposed to cross-sectional moments in time."

Dr. Birnbaum noted that everyone has a unique style of online behavior and that certain behavioral changes may contain clues about mental health.

"The way that we're understanding this is that everybody has a digital baseline, a way they typically act and behave on social media and the internet," he said. "So, ultimately here we would want to identify this baseline for each individual—a fingerprint—and then monitor for changes over time, and identify which changes are concerning, and which are not."

Using digital tools to better identify psychiatric conditions could someday reduce the number of people who suffer without treatment.

"There's an alarming gap between the number of people who experience mental illness and those who receive care," said Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health. "It's especially troubling when you consider that the health disparity between people with mental illness and those without is larger than disparities attributable to race, ethnicity, geography or socioeconomic status."

A step toward the future of psychiatry

Although previous research has examined the relationship between online activity and psychiatric disorders, the new study is unique because it paired online behavior with clinically confirmed cases of psychiatric disorders.

"The vast majority of the data thus far has been extracted from anonymous, or semi-anonymous individuals online, without any real way to validate the diagnosis or confirm the authenticity of the symptoms," Dr. Birnbaum said.

But before clinicians can use these kinds of digital approaches, researchers have more work to do.

"I think that we need much larger datasets," Dr. Birnbaum said. "We need to repeat these findings. We need to better understand how demographic differences, like age, ethnicity and gender, can play a role."

Privacy is another consideration. Dr. Birnbaum emphasized that these kinds of approaches would only be conducted on a voluntary basis, and that the Facebook data used in the recent study was anonymized, and the algorithms examined only individual words, not the context or meaning of sentences.

"This isn't about surveillance, or that Facebook should somehow be monitoring us," Dr. Birnbaum said. "It's about giving the power to the patient. I imagine a world where patients could come into the doctor's office and express their concerns, but also provide some additional clinically meaningful information that they own."

Dr. Birnbaum said the long-term goal isn't for algorithms to make official diagnoses or replace physicians, but rather to serve as supplementary tools. He added that these tools would be used only for people seeking help or information about their risk of developing a psychiatric condition, or suffering a relapse.

"Hopefully one day, we'll be able to incorporate this and other information to inform what we do, the same way you go to a doctor and you get an X-ray or a blood test to inform the diagnosis," he said. "It doesn't make the diagnosis, but it informs the doctor. That is where psychiatry is heading, and hopefully this is a step in that direction."

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

It can be hard to conceptualize the total damage caused by Alzheimer's. The neurodegenerative disease is a leading cause of death in the U.S., killing more than 100,000 people each year. And as Alzheimer's progresses in the brain it not only erodes memory but also causes troubling symptoms like agitation, paranoia, and aggression.

These burdens fall not only on patients but also on their loved ones, doctors, and caregivers. Economically, the cost of caring for Alzheimer's patients hit an estimated $305 billion in 2020, according to a report from the Alzheimer's Association. And that figure doesn't include an estimated $244 billion in unpaid caregiving provided by family and friends.

The number of Alzheimer's patients in the U.S. is expected to double by 2050, affecting about 14 million people. That's one reason why hospitals and health professionals are already working to bolster how they care for the elderly and Alzheimer's patients. It takes 15 years to develop new treatments, so today's research needs adequate funding.

"Caring for our older adults is a big responsibility, one that we take great pride in," said Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health. "Our aging population will face health issues, including and especially Alzheimer's, that will require the right care at the right time. That's why we have increased our services, including at Glen Cove Hospital, and research at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research."

... the real suffering comes from the changes that happen in the personality...

What causes Alzheimer’s disease?

While the costs of Alzheimer's are clear, its exact causes remain frustratingly mysterious. Currently, there's no cure for the disease, nor treatments that stop its progression.

"Alzheimer's is this brain problem, and everyone sort of knows what's probably causing the problem, but nobody's been able to do anything about it," said Dr. Jeremy Koppel, a geriatric psychiatrist and co-director of the Litwin-Zucker Alzheimer Research Center.

But in recent decades, researchers have zeroed in on likely contributors to the disease. The brains of Alzheimer's patients reliably show two abnormalities: build-ups of proteins called abnormal tau and beta-amyloid. As these proteins accumulate in the brain, they disrupt healthy communication between neurons. Over time, neurons get injured and die, and brain tissue shrinks.

Still, it's unclear exactly how these proteins, or other factors such as inflammation, may drive Alzheimer's.

"We are dealing with very complicated components," said Dr. Philippe Marambaud, a professor at the Feinstein Institutes and co-director of the Litwin-Zucker Alzheimer Research Center. "The actual culprit is not clearly defined. We know there are three possible culprits [tau, beta-amyloid, inflammation]. They're working in concert, or maybe in isolation. We don't know precisely."

Many Alzheimer's researchers have spent years developing therapies that target beta-amyloid, which can accumulate to form plaques in the brain. The Alzheimer's Association writes:

"According to the amyloid hypothesis, these stages of beta-amyloid aggregation disrupt cell-to-cell communication and activate immune cells. These immune cells trigger inflammation. Ultimately, the brain cells are destroyed."

Unfortunately, clinical trials of therapies that target beta-amyloid haven't been effective in treating Alzheimer's.

Anti-tau immunotherapies: The holy grail of Alzheimer’s?

At the Feinstein Institutes, Dr. Marambaud and his colleagues have been focusing on the lesser-explored Alzheimer's component: abnormal tau.

In healthy brains, tau plays several important functions, including stabilizing internal microtubules in neurons. But in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, a process called phosphorylation changes the structure of tau proteins. This blocks synaptic communication.

Dr. Marambaud said there are good reasons to think anti-tau therapies may effectively treat Alzheimer's.

"The main argument around why [anti-tau therapies] could be more beneficial is that we've known for a very long time that tau pathology in the brain of the Alzheimer's patient correlates much better with the disease progression, and the loss of neuronal material in the brain," compared to beta-amyloid, Dr. Marambaud said.

"The second strong argument is that there are inherited dementias, called tauopathies, which are caused by mutations in the gene coding for the tau protein. So, there is a direct genetic link between dementia and tau pathology."

To better understand how this protein interacts with Alzheimer's, Dr. Marambaud and his colleagues have been developing immunotherapies that target abnormal tau.

Immunotherapies, such as vaccines, typically target infectious diseases. But it's also possible to use the body's immune system to prevent or treat some non-infectious diseases. Scientists have recently succeeded in treating certain forms of cancer with immunotherapies, for example.

"We have developed a series of monoclonal antibodies, which are basically the therapeutics that are required when you want to do immunotherapy," Dr. Marambaud said.

Currently, Feinstein Institutes researchers are conducting promising ongoing clinical trials with anti-tau antibodies, some of which are in phase III trials under the Food and Drug Administration. Patients receive these therapies intravenously over several hours and would undergo multiple rounds of treatment. It's similar to chemotherapy.

In the short term, it's more likely that anti-tau therapies would help to stabilize Alzheimer's, not cure it.

"Just stabilization of the disease's progression will save a huge societal, but also financial, burden," Dr. Marambaud said. "As research progresses, we would improve upon these stabilization approaches to make them more and more efficacious."

Even if anti-tau therapies don't prove to be the holy grail of Alzheimer's treatments, they could potentially alleviate severe behavioral symptoms of the disease, and potentially illuminate some of the mechanisms behind psychosis.

Alzheimer’s and psychosis

When most people think of Alzheimer's, they tend to focus on the erosion of memory. But the darkest effects of the disease are often psychotic symptoms like agitation, aggression and paranoia, according to Dr. Koppel, who, in addition to researching Alzheimer's, spent decades treating Alzheimer's patients as a clinician.

"My research focus comes out of 20 years of sitting with Alzheimer's families and listening to what the primary issue is," said Dr. Koppel. "It's never memory. It starts out with memory as a diagnostic issue. But the real suffering comes from the changes that happen in the personality and the belief system that make Alzheimer's patients" ostracized or even become violent toward their loved ones.

At the Feinstein Institutes, Dr. Koppel's research focuses on alleviating Alzheimer's-related psychotic symptoms through anti-tau immunotherapies.

"It's our hypothesis that abnormal tau proteins in the brain somehow, downstream, impact the way that people think," Dr. Koppel said. "And the impact that it has is this paranoid, agitated, psychotic phenotype."

Supporting this hypothesis is research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease that involves the accumulation of abnormal tau. CTE, common among professional football players, also causes psychotic symptoms like agitation, aggression and paranoia.

What's more, research shows that as Alzheimer's patients accumulate more abnormal tau in their brains, as measured through cerebrospinal fluid, they exhibit more psychotic symptoms, and are more likely to die sooner than patients with less abnormal tau.

Given these strong connections between psychosis and abnormal tau, Dr. Koppel and his colleagues hope that anti-tau immunotherapies will alleviate psychosis in Alzheimer's patients, who currently lack safe and effective treatment options and are often given medication that is meant to alleviate psychosis in people with schizophrenia.

"We are giving medications to Alzheimer's patients that hasten their cognitive decline and lead to bad outcomes, like stroke and sudden death," Dr. Koppel said. "Nonetheless, the schizophrenia medications do treat some of the psychotic symptoms and aggressive behavior related to Alzheimer's disease, and for many families this is crucial. We just don't have many options, and we desperately need more."

Beyond treating Alzheimer's patients, anti-tau immunotherapies may shed light on other mental illnesses.

"Alzheimer's may give us a window into what happens in the brain that makes people psychotic," Dr. Koppel said. "Once you have a biologic treatment for psychosis that gets at an underlying pathophysiology, believe me, you could look at schizophrenia in new ways. Maybe it's not going to be tau, but it may be a paradigm for treating mental illness."

The future of Alzheimer’s treatments

Dr. Marambaud said the long-term goal of anti-tau immunotherapies is to prevent Alzheimer's. But that's currently impossible because scientists lack the biomarkers and diagnostic tools needed to detect the disease before cognitive symptoms appear. It could take decades before prevention becomes possible, if it ever does.

In the short term, stabilizing Alzheimer's is a more realistic goal.

"Our hope is that the treatments will be aggressive enough so that we can at least stabilize the disease in patients identified to be already affected by dementia, with cognitive tests that can be done by the clinicians," Dr. Marambaud said. "And even better, maybe reduce the cognitive impairments."

Dr. Marambaud said he encourages the public not to lose faith.

"Be patient. It's a very complicated disease," he said. "A lot of labs are really committed to making a difference. Congress has also realized that this is a huge priority. In the past five years, [National Institutes of Health] funding has increased tremendously. So the scientific field is working very hard. The politicians are behind us in funding this research. And it's a complicated disease. But we will make a difference in the years to come."

In the meantime, the Alzheimer's Association notes that physical activity and a healthy diet can reduce the chances of developing Alzheimer's, though more large-scale studies are needed to better understand how these factors interact with the disease.

"Many of these lifestyle changes have been shown to lower the risk of other diseases, like heart disease and diabetes, which have been linked to Alzheimer's," the association wrote. "With few drawbacks and plenty of known benefits, healthy lifestyle choices can improve your health and possibly protect your brain."

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

Can money buy happiness?

In 2010, a Princeton University study added nuance to that adage by showing that money does indeed affect happiness, but it stops mattering after you're making about $75,000 a year. People who earned less than that amount tended to report lower levels of emotional well-being, potentially because of stress related to meeting basic needs. But when earning more than $75,000, everyone's more or less equally happy.

However, new research casts doubt on those widely cited findings.

"It's a compelling possibility, the idea that money stops mattering above that point, at least for how people actually feel moment to moment," Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, told Penn Today. "But when I looked across a wide range of income levels, I found that all forms of well-being continued to rise with income. I don't see any sort of kink in the curve, an inflection point where money stops mattering. Instead, it keeps increasing."

Income and well-being

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study surveyed 33,391 employed U.S. adults ages 18 to 65. As in past studies, the participants answered questions about income and life satisfaction. But the study offered new insights because Killingsworth created a smartphone app that asked participants the question "How do you feel right now?" at random points throughout the day.

This captured the participants' experienced well-being, which is a measure of happiness in the moment. Another way that researchers measure happiness is through evaluative well-being, which examines the "global evaluation" people make of their lives, including general life satisfaction. The new study measured both experienced and evaluative well-being.

Unlike the 2010 study, the new research found that neither evaluative nor experienced well-being plateaued at the $75,000 income level. In fact, the results showed that both measures of well-being rose along with logarithmic income (which differs from raw income).

"This means that two households earning $20,000 and $60,000, respectively, would be expected to exhibit the same difference in well-being as two households earning $60,000 and $180,000, respectively," Killingsworth wrote. "The logarithmic relationship implies that marginal dollars do matter less the more one earns, while proportional differences in income have a constant association with well-being regardless of income."

​Why does money matter?

The study couldn't offer any conclusive explanations for the money-happiness correlation, but Killingsworth suggested a few possibilities.

One is that extra money helps people reduce suffering and increase enjoyment. Another explanation centers on life control: Responses to the question "To what extent do you feel in control of your life?" accounted for 74 percent of the association between income and experienced well-being. Finally, financial insecurities, measured by participants reporting their difficulty in paying bills, accounted for 38 percent of the income-happiness association.

But while income may affect well-being more than previously thought, the new findings don't suggest you should assign more importance to money, or tie your ideas of personal success to income.

After all, "the more people equated money and success, the lower their experienced well-being was on average (P < 0.00001), and there did not appear to be any income level at which equating money and success was associated with greater experienced well-being," Killingsworth wrote.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

Why does catnip have such a strong effect on cats? For at least 300 years, humans have observed that when cats encounter the plant, the majority behave as if they're high, becoming playful and hyperactive before reliably slumping into a nap. But catnip also elicits another strange behavior: Cats rub their faces and bodies against the plant, seemingly trying to cover their fur with it.

A new study proposes cats do this because catnip acts as a chemical defense against mosquitos.

Published in Science Advances, the findings suggest that cats evolved specific olfactory receptors to detect the bioactive compounds in catnip, which produces euphoria while protecting them from irritating bites and diseases. This protection might've helped the stealthy animals better stalk and ambush prey.

The findings shed light not only on feline behavior, but also on how nepetalactol—the main bioactive component of catnip and silver vine—might be used to protect humans against insects.

In the study, researchers from Iwate University in Japan exposed nepetalactol-laced paper to different types of felids, including domestic and feral cats, a leopard, two jaguars, and two lynx. The team also exposed nepetalactol to dogs and mice, but only the cats elicited the expected behavioral response.

To find out why cats react uniquely to nepetalactol, the researchers measured the animals' endorphin levels before and after they were exposed to the substance. The results showed that nepetalactol raised endorphin levels in cats.

But when cats were given drugs that blocked opioid receptors, their endorphin levels didn't rise, and their behavior didn't change. This suggests that cats' "μ-opioid system is stimulated by an increase in endogenous β-endorphin secretion when olfactory neurons are activated by these iridoids," the team wrote.

Nepetalactol as a mosquito repellent

To test the efficacy of nepetalactol as a mosquito repellant, the researchers anesthetized two groups of cats. For one group, the researchers applied nepetalactol to the cats' heads. The other group was left untreated to serve as a control. The researchers then exposed the cats to Asian tiger mosquitos and counted the number of times the insects bit each group.

The results showed that the group treated with nepetalactol was much less likely to get bitten, sometimes by as much as 50 percent. The same proved true in a "more natural" experiment, in which cats were allowed to rub their faces on the plants themselves.

"This is convincing evidence that the characteristic rubbing and rolling response functions to transfer plant chemicals that provide mosquito repellency to cats," the team wrote.

The world's deadliest animal

While the researchers don't fully understand why nepetalactol activates the μ-opioid system in cats, they think the compound could help humans avoid mosquito bites. After all, some of the study contributors have applied for a patent covering the use of nepetalactol as an insect repellent. Gizmodo reports that the researchers even tried applying the compound to their arms, which seemed to prevent mosquito bites.

For thousands of years, humans have aimed to protect themselves from mosquitos. The Egyptian queen Cleopatra was said to sleep surrounded by a mosquito net. The Romans used vinegar mixtures. And Mississippians turned to the American beautyberry plant.

Today, DEET is the most widely used mosquito repellent, but it's slightly toxic and can cause side effects, including seizures, though rarely. Developing better mosquito repellents could save many lives. The World Mosquito Program reports that mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria and yellow fever affect more than 700 million annually and kill approximately one million.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

NASA plans to scrap its Mobile Launcher Platform-2 (MLP-2), the gigantic structure that helped launch more than 50 missions, including Apollo 12 and 14, and the tragic 1986 Challenger mission.

NASA is getting rid of the historic platform to make room for a newer mobile launcher that, unlike MLP-2, will be capable of supporting the agency's Artemis-era Space Launch System (SLS).

"We're getting rid of MLP-2 now not because there were no customers [for its use]. We're getting rid of it because we're running out of parking places," Scott Tenhoff, project manager for MLP-2's demolition at Kennedy Space Center, told collectSpace. "That there's a contract out now to build Mobile Launcher-2, something had to go."

The agency tried seeing whether institutions like the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum were interested in preserving parts of MLP-2, which measures 25 feet high, 160 feet long, and 135 feet wide, and weighs more than 8 million pounds when unloaded. But with no takers, NASA chose to scrap it to make room for the new infrastructure.

"We ran out of parking spots, so that's why we chose to get rid of MLP-2," Tenhoff said.

MLP-2 is one of three platforms constructed in the 1960s, the other being MLP-1 and MLP-3. NASA will use MLP-1 to condition the crawlerway, the road on which crawler-transporters carry platforms, rockets and spacecraft at a speed of 1 mph. The crawlerway is 130 feet wide, nearly the size of an eight-lane highway.

To ensure the crawlerway can handle massive weights for the upcoming Artemis 1 mission, NASA is loading its MLP-1 with concrete blocks that weigh as much as SLS and its umbilical launch tower.

A crawler and 2 mobile launcher platforms at the MSS park site at @NASAKennedy, Jan. 4. One CT and MLP are assistin… https://t.co/rao5GWB6eQ — NASA's Exploration Ground Systems (@NASA's Exploration Ground Systems)1609946268.0

The agency plans to use MLP-1 for future crawlerway conditioning, and to store the MLP-3 in Kennedy Space Center. As for the MLP-2? Tenhoff said there's not much to salvage, given that the structure was built for the specific purpose of launching Apollo-era rockets.

Those launches included:

• 1969—Apollo 9: The third crewed Apollo mission.
• 1969—Apollo 12: The second crewed mission to land on the Moon.
• 1971—Apollo 14: The third crewed mission to land on the Moon.
• 1973—Skylab: The first U.S. space station, launched aboard a modified Saturn V rocket.
• 1986—Challenger: A failed Space Shuttle mission which resulted in an explosion that killed all seven crew members.

A new era for NASA

The Artemis program aims to land the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024, and after that a voyage to Mars. While it's unclear whether President Joe Biden will change the timelines of the program, the overall goal is to establish a moon base from which astronauts can conduct long-term research and experiments.

"After 20 years of continuously living in low-Earth orbit, we're now ready for the next great challenge of space exploration — the development of a sustained presence on and around the moon," former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. "For years to come, Artemis will serve as our North Star as we continue to work toward even greater exploration of the moon, where we will demonstrate key elements needed for the first human mission to Mars."

In November 2021, NASA plans to launch Artemis 1, which will be the first flight using SLS and Orion. The mission aims to send the Orion spacecraft, uncrewed, to orbit the moon. In 2023, Artemis 2 aims to send a crewed mission to fly by the Moon, while Artemis 3 plans to put American astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

Like the Sun, the stars scattered throughout our Milky Way and beyond produce unfathomable amounts of energy. But so, too, do the objects we can't see: black holes.

For decades, scientists have wondered whether it's possible to extract energy from black holes, which are the mysterious regions of spacetime that form when stars collapse into themselves. Siphoning energy from these areas of ultra-condensed matter could provide a virtually endless power supply for deep-space civilizations, if physically and practically possible.

While undoubtedly the stuff of science fiction, the idea is far from new.

In 1969, the physicist and Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose proposed it might be possible to extract energy from a rotating black hole. He thought this could occur in a black hole's ergosphere.

The ergosphere

The ergosphere is a region just outside a black hole's event horizon, the boundary of a black hole beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape. But light and matter just outside the event horizon, in the ergosphere, would also be affected by the immense gravity of the black hole. Objects in this zone would spin in the same direction as the black hole at incredibly fast speeds, similar to objects floating around the center of a whirlpool.

The Penrose process states, in simple terms, that an object could enter the ergosphere and break into two pieces. One piece would head toward the event horizon, swallowed by the black hole. But if the other piece managed to escape the ergosphere, it could emerge with more energy than it entered with.

The movie "Interstellar" provides an example of the Penrose process. Facing a fuel shortage on a deep-space mission, the crew makes a last-ditch effort to return home by entering the ergosphere of a blackhole, ditching part of their spacecraft, and "slingshotting" away from the black hole with vast amounts of energy.

In a recent study published in the American Physical Society's Physical Review D, physicists Luca Comisso and Felipe A. Asenjo used similar ideas to describe another way energy could be extracted from a black hole. The idea centers on the magnetic fields of black holes.

"Black holes are commonly surrounded by a hot 'soup' of plasma particles that carry a magnetic field," Comisso, a research scientist at Columbia University and lead study author, told Columbia News.

In the ergosphere of a rotating black hole, magnetic field lines are constantly breaking and reconnecting at fast speeds. The researchers theorized that when these lines reconnect, plasma particles shoot out in two different directions. One flow of particles shoots off against the direction of the spinning black hole, eventually getting "swallowed" by the black hole. But the other flow shoots in the same direction as the spin, potentially gaining enough velocity to escape the black hole's gravitational pull.

The researchers proposed that this occurs because the breaking and reconnecting of magnetic field lines can generate negative-energy particles. If the negative-energy particles get "swallowed" by the black hole, the positive particles would theoretically be exponentially accelerated.

"Our theory shows that when magnetic field lines disconnect and reconnect, in just the right way, they can accelerate plasma particles to negative energies and large amounts of black hole energy can be extracted," Comisso said. "It is like a person could lose weight by eating candy with negative calories."

While there might not be immediate applications for the theory, it could help scientists better understand and observe black holes. On an abstract level, the findings may expand the limits of what scientists imagine is possible in deep space.

"Thousands or millions of years from now, humanity might be able to survive around a black hole without harnessing energy from stars," Comisso said. "It is essentially a technological problem. If we look at the physics, there is nothing that prevents it."

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

President-elect Joe Biden has appointed Dr. Eric Lander, a pioneer in human genome sequencing, as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and presidential science adviser within his cabinet. It's the first time the adviser position has been elevated to cabinet level.

"This is the most exciting announcement I've gotten to make," Biden said on Friday. "This is a team that is going to help restore your faith in America's place in the frontier of science and discovery."

The move signals a departure from the Trump administration's posture toward science. President Trump went 18 months without a science adviser before nominating meteorologist Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier to the position.

To some scientists, elevating the adviser role is long overdue.

"This guarantees a seat at the table when the most important, consequential decisions are made," wrote Roger Pielke Jr. and Neal Lane in an article published by Nature. "It will also signify the importance of the role to federal agencies, to Congress and to the public."

In his announcement, Biden promised that "science will always be at the forefront" of his administration.

"Their trusted guidance will be essential as we come together to end this pandemic, bring our economy back and pursue new breakthroughs to improve the quality of life of all Americans," he said. "Their insights will help America chart a brighter future, and I am grateful they answered the call to serve."

​Who is Dr. Eric Lander?

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Lander started his academic career as a mathematician, often arriving at high school an hour early to do math. He won multiple awards in mathematics in his teens, including the Mathematical Olympiad in 1974.

Finding mathematics "too monastic" to pursue as a career, he began teaching managerial economics at Harvard Business School. Then, at the encouragement of his brother, a neurobiologist, Dr. Lander became interested in studying neurobiology and microbiology. This pushed him to his main lifelong pursuit: unraveling the mysteries of the human genome.

Dr. Lander spent more than a decade as a leader within the Human Genome Project, which provided the world a complete map of all human genes in 2003. In 2004, he founded the Broad Institute, a biomedical and genomic nonprofit research center that partners with M.I.T. and Harvard University.

Broad's mission is to "fulfill the promise of genomics by creating comprehensive tools for biology and medicine, making them broadly available to the world and applying them to the understanding of human biology and the diagnosis, treatment, and cure of human diseases." The institute aims to diminish diseases by better understanding cellular mechanisms, rather than simply treating symptoms.

Despite some minor controversies and patent disputes, Dr. Lander remains a monumental figure in American science, and also previously served as co-chairman of former President Barack Obama's science advisory council.

​What will Dr. Lander do in the Biden administration?

If confirmed by the Senate, it's not exactly clear what Dr. Lander will do in his role as cabinet science adviser and head of the OSTP. But his primary focus likely won't be COVID-19, considering Biden has already established a task force dedicated to shaping policy and recommendations related to the pandemic.

But Biden revealed some of his expectation in an open letter that posed five questions for the Office of Science and Technology Policy to explore:

1. What can we learn from the pandemic about what is possible—or what ought to be possible— to address the widest range of needs related to our public health?
2. How can breakthroughs in science and technology create powerful new solutions to address climate change—propelling market-driven change, jump-starting economic growth, improving health, and growing jobs, especially in communities that have been left behind?
3. How can the United States ensure that it is the world leader in the technologies and industries of the future that will be critical to our economic prosperity and national security, especially in competition with China?
4. How can we guarantee that the fruits of science and technology are fully shared across America and among all Americans?
5. How can we ensure the long-term health of science and technology in our nation?

The president-elect wrote that it's essential to "refresh and reinvigorate our national science and technology strategy to set us on a strong course for the next 75 years," concluding:

"I believe that the answers to these questions will be instrumental in helping our nation embark on a new path in the years ahead—a path of dignity and respect, of prosperity and security, of progress and common purpose. They are big questions, to be sure, but not as big as America's capacity to address them. I look forward to receiving your recommendations—and to working with you, your team, and the broader scientific community to turn them into solutions that ease everyday burdens for the American people, spark new jobs and opportunities, and restore American leadership on the world stage."

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

A new study shows that treating perovskite solar cells with capsaicin—the organic compound that makes chili peppers spicy—makes them more efficient.

The study, published in the journal Joule, may help to advance the viability of perovskite solar cells, an emerging type of solar technology that's not yet widely used, but promises to be more efficient and scalable than current photovoltaic technologies.

In the study, a team of scientists from China and Sweden added small amounts of capsaicin (1 percent by weight) to the chemical precursor used to make perovskite solar cells. The team then measured how efficiently the capsaicin-treated cells converted ultraviolet and visible light into electricity, as compared to untreated perovskite solar cells.

The results showed that the treated cells were 21.88 percent efficient, compared to the untreated cells rating of 19.1 percent. The treated cells were also more stable, showing 90 percent of their initial efficiency after 800 hours of storage in ambient air. That's significant, considering one of the main things preventing perovskite solar cells from becoming economically viable is their tendency to degrade relatively quickly in the environment.

Using biomaterials to boost solar technology

The team needs to conduct more research to determine exactly why capsaicin boosts the efficacy and stability of perovskite solar cells, but they hypothesized that the compound increases the density of electrons on the perovskite film due to the way it interacts with lead ions in the solar cell.

Biomaterials like capsaicin could someday make perovskite solar cells economically viable, but the techniques still need to be improved.

"In the future, green and sustainable forest-based biomaterial additive technology will be a clear trend in non-toxic lead-free perovskite materials," Qinye Bao, a senior author of the study from East China Normal University, said in a statement. "We hope this will eventually yield a fully green perovskite solar cell for a clean energy source."

The recent study isn't the first time scientists have used biomaterials to boost the performance of perovskite solar cells: Caffeine and the protein bacteriorhodopsin (bR) have also shown benefits. The main appeal of biomaterials is that they're abundant in the environment, so they're relatively cheap and easy to obtain compared to synthetic materials.

The future of perovskite solar cells

Since perovskite absorbers were first used in solar cells in 2006, efficiency rates have climbed from just 3 percent to over 25 percent. Research also suggests that pairing perovskite solar cells with silicon could boost efficiency levels to nearly 30 percent.

Joe Berry, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said:

"The potential impact for perovskite solar cells is basically transformational," he said, adding that the long term goal is to cut manufacturing costs and make them ubiquitous. "That is to say, you can put them everywhere. You can literally paint them on the side of a building and everything then become something that can produce electricity and power."

In 2022, the U.K.-based startup Oxford PV plans to become the first company to bring perovskite solar cells to market (though the cells would also include silicon). If such companies can demonstrate that perovskite solar cells, or hybrid approaches, can produce cheap electricity and won't break down over years of use, it could nudge industries and utilities to start adopting solar at a quicker pace.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

Imagine it's 2045. You start hearing rumors from your well-heeled friends about a mysterious corporation based on an undisclosed island that's offering an unprecedented service: the ability to genetically design your baby.

The baby will have some of your genetics, and some genetics from a sperm or egg donor, selected by you. But the rest of your child's genetic profile will be engineered by science. These changes will make it impossible for your child to develop genetic diseases. They'll also allow you to customize your child for dozens of traits, including intelligence level, emotional disposition, sexual orientation, height, skin tone, hair color, and eye color, to name a few.

This raises unsettling philosophical questions for some customers. "When does my child stop being my child?" they ask the corporate representatives. These wary customers are reminded of how risky it is to reproduce the old-fashioned way. The Better Genetics Corporation's motto sums it up: "Only God plays dice—humans don't have to."

This is the world described in a new science-fiction series by Eugene Clark titled "Genetic Pressure", which explores the moral and scientific implications of a future in which designer babies are becoming a major industry. The first book begins with the story of Rachel, a renowned horse breeder who befriends a billionaire client, and soon gets the funding to visit the tropical island on which the Better Genetics Corporation is headquartered.

There, corporate executives walk her through the process of designing a baby—an experience that feels like an uncanny mix between visiting a doctor and designing a luxury car. The series is told from multiple perspectives, serving as a deep dive into a complex moral web that today's scientists may already be weaving.

[T]he introduction of designer babies would create a labyrinth of philosophical dilemmas that society is only beginning to explore.

Case in point: In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he had helped create the world's first genetically engineered babies. Using the gene-editing tool CRISPR on embryos, He Jiankui modified a gene called CCR5, which enables HIV to enter and infect immune system cells. His goal was to engineer children that were immune to the virus.

It's unclear whether he succeeded. But what's certain is that the experiment shocked the international scientific community, which generally agreed that it's unethical to conduct gene-editing procedures on humans, given that scientists don't yet fully understand the consequences.

"This experiment is monstrous," Julian Savulescu, a professor of practical ethics at the University of Oxford, told The Guardian. "The embryos were healthy. No known diseases. Gene editing itself is experimental and is still associated with off-target mutations, capable of causing genetic problems early and later in life, including the development of cancer."

Importantly, He Jiankui wasn't treating a disease, but rather genetically engineering babies to prevent the future contraction of a virus. These kinds of changes are heritable, meaning the experiment could have major downstream effects on future generations. So, too, would a designer-baby industry, even if scientists can do it safely.

With major implications on inequality, discrimination, sexuality, and our conceptions of life, the introduction of designer babies would create a labyrinth of philosophical dilemmas that society is only beginning to explore.

Tribalism and discrimination

One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.

"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."

For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product."

Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with.

Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate?

Sexuality dilemmas

Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.

But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.

But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image.

When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc.

Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.

"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.

But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme.

Regulating designer babies

On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.

In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough."

After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations into the 1970s). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century.

Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies.

But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits.

If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the opposites of those traits are undesirable. As the International Bioethics Committee wrote, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."

"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps" by Eugene Clark is available now.

Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps List Price: $3.00 New From: $3.00 in Stock

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

One of the most devastating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been unpredictability. The nation's health systems—especially those in hard-hit areas like New York City—have had to adapt to sudden surges of COVID-19 cases, all while dealing with limited resources, existing patients, and a novel virus that's still not fully understood.

But what if health systems were able to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks before they occur? Northwell Health, the largest health care system in New York state, recently deployed a predictive tool that does just that.

Northwell Health's surveillance dashboard is able to predict COVID-19 hospitalizations by using insights from machine learning. In March, Northwell Health's Customer Insights Group developed an algorithm that's been mining data from online traffic to the Northwell.edu website, which has received more than 20 million hits since March.

The algorithm collects data through 15 different indicators, each of which reflects the online behavior of the website's visitors. For example, the tool analyzes metrics such as the length of time users spend on certain pages, searches for emergency department wait times, and specific symptoms users search for. Combined, this information translates into something like the "public mood" of the website on any given day.

Since Northwell Health began using the predictive tool in September, it's predicted COVID-19 hospitalizations with an accuracy of about 80 percent.

To understand how this mood relates to future COVID-19 cases, Northwell Health began comparing its data with a timeline of COVID-19 hospitalizations across 23 hospitals and nearly 800 outpatient facilities and in the metro New York area. This enabled the Customer Insights Group to see patterns of online activity that precede future increases or decreases in hospitalizations.

Since Northwell Health began using the predictive tool in September, it's predicted COVID-19 hospitalizations with an accuracy of about 80 percent.

"This is really the first tool that I've been exposed to that gives me a sort of guestimate of what two weeks from now may look like," said Dr. Eric Cruzen, chief medical informatics officer of Northwell's emergency medicine services and chair of the emergency department at Lenox Health Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

"Even if the data can provide an idea of whether to expect an increase, decrease, or stasis, that's valuable. Because every day we're working to estimate what tomorrow's going to bring. Any tool that's going to shed light on that is a good tool in my book."

The value of forecasting

One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:

• Making space for an influx of patients
• Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed
• Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge
• Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients

The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop personalized care plans for diabetes patients, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at elevated risk of suicide, to name a few applications.

Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how machine learning can help battle the pandemic, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.

Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.

"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."

Making machine-learning tools openly accessible

Northwell Health has made its predictive tool available for free to any health system that wishes to utilize it.

"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."

Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.

"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."

In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.

"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

Mars is home to the solar system's largest canyon system: Valles Marineris. The gorge stretches, at points, about 2,500 miles long, 125 miles wide and 4 miles deep, making it roughly 10 times longer and three times deeper than Earth's Grand Canyon.

Newly published photos show the canyon system in spectacular detail. Captured by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the images could help scientists better understand how the system formed.

Over the decades, scientists have proposed many explanations for the origin of Valles Marineris, including erosion by water and the withdrawal of subsurface magma.

But the most widely accepted theory is that the canyon was formed by geologic faulting caused by volcanic activity in the Tharsis region, a volcanic plateau near the Red Planet's equator. (The Tharsis region is home to Olympus Mons, one of the largest volcanoes in the solar system.)

"As the Tharsis bulge swelled with magma during the planet's first billion years, the surrounding crust was stretched, ripping apart and eventually collapsing into the gigantic troughs of Valles Marineris," wrote the European Space Agency (ESA).

The ESA noted that landslides and "strong water flows" may have also played a role in carving the canyon into the planet's rusty red surface, adding that mineralogical data collected by spacecraft show that water altered the terrain millions of years ago.

Launched in 2005, HiRISE is the most powerful camera sent to another planet. It's able to capture high-resolution images of objects the size of a kitchen table, in both visible and near-infrared wavelengths. Scientists use these images to study topography and mineral groups on the Martian surface, and to help select potential landing sites for future missions.

In February 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover is set to land on Mars, where it will collect rock and soil samples, take high-resolution microscopic images of the surface and search for signs of ancient alien life. The rover will also carry the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, a small 4-pound drone designed to help scientists learn more about the feasibility of achieving flight on Mars, a planet with an atmosphere that's 99 percent less dense than Earth's.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

When COVID-19 began spreading across the U.S. in early 2020, the nation's telehealth infrastructure entered a trial by fire.

It was paramount for hospitals to minimize in-person care—not only to limit the spread of the virus, but also to ensure hospitals wouldn't become overwhelmed, like they had in Italy. That's a key reason why, in March, Medicare and most private insurers sought to increase access to telehealth by relaxing restrictions, waiving fees, and reimbursing practitioners for virtual visits at the same rate as in-person visits.

Soon after the establishment of these temporary measures, telehealth visits skyrocketed. A report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found, for example, that about 43 percent of primary care visits were conducted through telehealth in April, compared to just 0.1 percent in February.

How did that transition go? Despite having just weeks to prepare, most U.S. health care organizations managed to massively increase their virtual caseload with astounding seamlessness. Dr. Martin Doerfler, senior vice president of clinical strategy and development at Northwell Health, was one of the thousands of health care professionals who witnessed the transition.

"We went from the proverbial 'zero to 60' over a matter of weeks, and provided good care with very high degrees of patient satisfaction," Doerfler said.

Prior to the pandemic, Northwell Health—the largest hospital system in New York—was conducting about 150 telehealth visits per month between 20 to 40 physicians. But in May alone, Northwell had conducted approximately 65,000 visits with roughly 8,000 health care professionals across the health system.

Doerfler cited an example of a single mother whose young child had chronic illnesses, including respiratory problems, which made in-person visits especially dangerous during the pandemic. The pediatrician was able to evaluate the child, speak to the mother through a telehealth translation service, and provide the family with the necessary steps to keep the child healthy. The mother was happy to avoid having to take her child on public transportation to visit a hospital in person and still receive the care she needed.

Three hours to drive 200 miles is no different than three hours to take two trains, two buses and a cab.

Clinicians at Northwell have used telehealth to adapt to the pandemic in many ways, from sending phlebotomists to elderly patients' homes after virtual visits, to connecting new mothers with lactation specialists via secure, encrypted telehealth channels.

"There are all sorts of examples throughout health care where this technology, and the willingness of patients and clinicians to embrace it, allowed for care of the type of issues that are normally done face-to-face," Doerfler said.

Telehealth programs that existed before the pandemic also helped to keep both patients and hospital staff safe by minimizing in-person visits. For example, Northwell's TelePsychiatry Department connects people in crisis, who might typically go to the emergency department, with a behavioral health specialist in about 45 minutes, any time of day or week. That is a considerable improvement since emergency department staffing typically does not include psychiatrists or other specialists who can help someone experiencing a behavioral health emergency.

The success of telehealth during the pandemic begs the question: Why hasn't US health care already embraced virtual care?

What are the obstacles facing telehealth?

One of the biggest obstacles to widespread adoption of telehealth has been a lack of national legislation providing financial incentive for health centers to adopt it.

States laws vary on how practitioners are paid for telehealth visits. In some states, laws require insurance providers to cover telehealth visits at parity—at the same rate as in-person visits. But in states without parity laws, there's little incentive for health care organizations to invest in telehealth infrastructure and training.

Access is also a major obstacle. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) generally reimburse practitioners for telehealth visits only when patients live in "designated rural underserved areas."

But not all underserved areas are in small, remote places. After all, a single parent living in Brooklyn, New York, might also have trouble accessing quality health care.

"Three hours to drive 200 miles is no different than three hours to take two trains, two buses and a cab," Doerfler said. "So access is almost certainly going to be improved by the greater availability of telehealth in that direct-to-patient, in-their-home-or-office, setting."

Lack of internet access is also a problem. A paper published by the JAMA Network in August found that 41 percent of Medicare beneficiaries don't have a computer at home with access to high-speed internet, and roughly the same number don't have a smartphone with an unlimited data plan.

What is the future of telehealth?

Lawmakers in both parties and health care professionals have indicated a desire to make permanent some of the regulatory changes to telehealth enacted during the pandemic. That's key, because without the financial incentives to continue expanding telehealth, health care providers may revert to the pre-pandemic approach.

"One issue, which is important for health care and non-health-care folks to know, is that telehealth will continue to expand dramatically as long as there's funding and reimbursement for it," said Michael Dowling, Northwell's president and CEO. "If the insurance companies and government decide, 'We don't want to pay for telehealth going forward or virtual visits,' then it's going to slow down. If there is no delivery system, no health care system, hospital, or doctor is going to continue to expand telehealth if they don't get reimbursed for it."

Yet some of the nation's biggest insurers have already stopped waiving telehealth deductibles and copays for some customers, even though there's no clear end in sight for the pandemic.

The long-term solution, Doerfler said, is for CMS to start paying for telehealth services, at parity, up and down the chain, and passing federal legislation that requires self-insured health care plans to pay for telehealth services as they would in-person visits.

Telehealth is proven to work for urgent care, primary care and some specialty care, and it clearly expands access to behavioral health care, according to Doerfler. "Some have said that costs of providing telehealth are lower than face-to-face care, but most of the costs are unchanged, and new ones are added with technology requirements. When the patient receives a very specific service there are billing codes used to define that service. If the service is less, the code represents that. If the service is the same, the code will represent that and needs to be paid at parity."

Doerfler added that, while telehealth can't replace all traditional health care services, it should be "in the toolbox" for patients and physicians.

"In the modern world, where this type of technology is being used for all sorts of personal and business uses, excluding something as personal as your care between you and your doctor from fitting into that modern paradigm makes no sense," Doerfler said.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

No matter your stance on the Vermont senator, it's hard to deny that Bernie Sanders has rightfully earned a reputation for not changing his politics over his four-decade career. In speeches and interviews, Sanders reliably returns to mantras about the one percent, voter turnout, and affordable healthcare and education, to name a few. These views have long been divisive, and it's up for debate whether his unwavering politics is indeed a virtue.

But one of Sanders' long-held views seems uniquely uncontroversial: that the structure of news media makes it hard, if not impossible, to discuss important political topics in a meaningful way. Speaking in 1988 at an event honoring the Vermont Vanguard, an independent newspaper, Sanders spoke about how hard it is to cram coherent ideas into TV-news soundbites.

"If you are a serious public official, how do you deal with the complex issues that your city faces or your state faces?" Sanders said. "And you look at that camera and you say, 'Oh god, I got 30 seconds to do it.' And then you understand why politicians become morons. It's not necessarily their fault. You try it sometime. Try to deal about a complex and serious issue, and get it into the 24 seconds that you need to get it into to get it onto the tube. It drives you a little bit crazy."

Echoing this idea in a 2019 interview with The Nation, Sanders said:

"This country faces enormous crises, and you can't do it in 45 seconds or a minute. That's just the simple reality. And I understand the problem of how many candidates are running. But we need a political structure in this country which allows serious debate about serious issues, and the structure of those debates makes it impossible I think for any candidate to do more than shout out a sound bite."

This "politics by soundbite" nature of TV news has changed not only the media, but also the way politicians think, Sanders said in 1988.

"You have politicians who then think in 30-second tidbits, which leads you to Ronald Reagan," he said. "The deep issues, the hard issues, are not as exciting as simplistic stuff."

Sanders' critiques of TV and corporate media extend further back than this speech. In a 1979 op-ed titled "Social Control and the Tube," Sanders said control of TV should be considered a political issue, and that public ownership would enable "serious writers" and "people with all kinds of views" to produce better work for the public.

"What the owners of the TV industry want to do, and are doing, in my opinion, is use that medium to intentionally brainwash people into submission and helplessness," Sanders wrote. "With considerable forethought they are attempting to create a nation of morons who will faithfully go out and buy this or that product, vote for this or that candidate, and faithfully work for their employers for as low a wage as possible."

Still, in his 1988 speech, Sanders said he doesn't support government control of the media, but that "corporate control over the media is equally dangerous, and that's very clearly the trend to which we're moving today."

Media consolidation

Three decades later, Sanders said: "In 1983, the largest 50 corporations controlled 90 percent of the media. Today, as a result of massive mergers and takeovers, six corporations control 90 percent of what we see, hear, and read [...] These powerful corporations also have an agenda, and it would be naive not to believe that their views and needs impact coverage of issues important to them."

The consolidation of media companies was accelerated by changes to the Federal Communications Commission, with two major deregulatory shifts that occurred under Reagan and then Clinton, whose administration passed the 1996 Telecommunications Act. That law raised the cap on the number of local news stations and newspapers media corporations could buy.

Fewer Americans trust mass media

What also adds to the homogeneity of news media is shrinking revenues and a trend toward click-bait content. Big Think's Reuben Jackson recently noted:

"One effect of the contraction of the news industry is that journalists are networking with fewer peers and sources. In one recently published study, "Sharing Knowledge and 'Microbubbles': Epistemic Communities and Insularity in US Political Journalism," researchers from the University of Illinois explore the extent to which groupthink bias is increasingly being built into the content we consume."

These factors may help explain why Americans' trust in news media is declining. A 2020 Gallup survey found that six in 10 Americans have "not very much" trust (27 percent) or "none at all" (33 percent) trust in mass media. It's not a new trend: Gallup notes that trust in mass media hovered just above the majority level until 2005, and since it hasn't risen above 47 percent.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

What would it take for you to eat less meat? The answer might be as simple as taking a couple hours to learn about and discuss the ethics of the meat industry.

That's the takeaway of a new study published in Cognition. For the study, the researchers divided 1,332 philosophy students into two groups. One group spent a day in class learning about the ethics of eating meat, while the other learned about the ethics of charitable giving.

Both groups were asked to read an article, participate in a 50-minute discussion, and watch an optional video about their respective topics.

The meat-ethics group was asked to watch this video on factory farming and to read James Rachel's philosophical article "The Basic Argument for Vegetarianism." In the article, Rachel lays out a simple moral argument:

• It's wrong to cause pain without a good enough reason.
• The meat industry causes terrible suffering for animals.
• We can be healthy on a vegetarian diet.
• Our enjoyment of meat is not a good enough reason to cause pain, so we should give up meat.

Tracking students' eating habits

The researchers tracked both groups' dining hall purchases, using data gathered before and after the ethics lessons. After examining about 14,000 receipts from 495 students, the researchers found a surprising difference between groups: meat consumption among students who had recently studied the ethics of eating meat dropped from 52 to 45 percent over a few weeks. Meanwhile, the other group's eating habits didn't change.

So, did the students suddenly decide to ditch meat altogether? Not necessarily. But the researchers inferred, "somewhat surprisingly," that "the decline in meat purchases among the meat ethics group reflects a broad-based moderate reduction in meat purchases rather than the conversion of several students to vegetarianism."

The reduction might be moderate, but it's significant, given the relatively small intervention: just a couple hours of study.

​Why it's hard to curb meat consumption

The simple answer? Burgers, fried chicken, and steaks are delicious. That's perhaps the main reason why 95 percent of Americans eat some kind of meat, while only 5 percent have identified as vegetarians over the past couple decades, according to Gallup surveys.

Beyond taste preferences, it's also hard for people to give up meat because of culinary traditions and social norms, as noted in a 2019 study on consumers' attitudes toward environmental concerns of meat consumption.

But consumer preferences are changing. A 2020 Gallup survey found that 25 percent of Americans have cut back on meat, while more recent data show that people worldwide have been eating less meat during the pandemic, likely due to economic concerns.

Setting the pandemic aside, the 2020 Gallup survey found that people are cutting back primarily because of health concerns and also because of environmental concerns. The meat industry, after all, is one of the world's biggest contributors to climate change.

But despite changing habits and growing concerns about climate change, there's no indication that most meat-eaters are going to turn vegetarian anytime soon. Why? It likely hinges on the simple answer: meat tastes good.

One force that could curb consumption is the alternative meat industry, which includes newer companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, as well as meat-industry titans like Tyson, Smithfield, and Perdue.

These companies are betting not on consumers' ethics, but mainly on their taste buds: When an Impossible Whopper tastes, more or less, as good as the real thing, consumers might start preferring meatless products.

Speaking at Web Summit 2020, Impossible Foods CEO Patrick O. Brown said the two biggest threats to humanity are rapidly progressing climate change and the catastrophic loss of biodiversity.

"By far, the biggest factor in both [of those problems] is the use of animals as a food technology, globally," Brown said. "It's by far the most destructive technology in human history." He added that the animal food-product industry is more damaging to the environment than fossil fuels.

"By next year, I think our mainstream product will actually, if we do a side-by-side comparison with nothing by meat eaters, will be preferred by a majority of them."

Will that happen? Maybe. But the reality is that the future of meat consumption will be up to meat eaters, not environmentalists or ethicists.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

A new study suggests the novel coronavirus can be killed cheaply and efficiently by ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs). By using UV-LEDs in ventilation and air-conditioning systems, the technology could help disinfect air in spaces like buildings, planes, and subways. Robots equipped with UV-LEDs could also be used to disinfect surfaces.

Using ultraviolet light to kill viruses isn't a new idea. In the 1930s, epidemiologist William F. Wells showed that ultraviolet ermicidal irradiation could kill microorganisms. Soon after, schools began using UV mercury-vapor lamps to reduce the spread of measles. In the 1990s, UV was used to kill tuberculosis in homeless shelters.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, ultraviolet light has been used to disinfect subway cars and other spaces. There are several types of germicidal-ultraviolet-light technology, including excimer lamps, low-pressure mercury lamps, and pulsed xenon lamps. The newest in the bunch is UV-LED.

"UV light-emitting diodes (UV LEDs) are an emerging UV source for disinfection," wrote the researchers behind the new study, published in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology. "UV-LEDs allow for flexibility of design due to their small size and control of radiation patterns, have very short turn-on time, and require low voltage (and thus can be operated by a battery or a solar panel)."

But lower-wavelength UV-LEDs require high amounts of power, making the technology costly. That's one reason why the new study aimed to find the range of wavelengths in which UV-LEDs most effectively kill coronaviruses.

The researchers, from Tel Aviv University, found that a wavelength of 285 nanometers was about as effective at killing coronaviruses as a wavelength of 265 nanometers. That means cheaper LED bulbs could be used to kill the virus.

"We discovered that it is quite simple to kill the coronavirus using LED bulbs that radiate ultraviolet light," study author Hadas Mamane told Tel Aviv University American Friends News. "We killed the viruses using cheaper and more readily available LED bulbs, which consume little energy and do not contain mercury like regular bulbs. Our research has commercial and societal implications, given the possibility of using such LED bulbs in all areas of our lives, safely and quickly."

To be sure, the researchers didn't experiment on the novel coronavirus, but rather HCoV-OC43, which causes the common cold. But they wrote that "both human Coronaviruses HCoV-OC43 and SARS-CoV-2 are very similar, thus it is reasonable to suggest a human Coronavirus HCoV-OC43 as a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2, and our future work will confirm these results by testing the impact of LEDs and their combinations on SARS-CoV-2."

Safety concerns

UV-LEDs may effectively kill bacteria and coronaviruses. But the main way coronaviruses spread is through respiratory droplets passed from human to human, so the technology wouldn't be able to stop that kind of spread.

What's more, like all ultraviolet light, light from UV-LED bulbs is dangerous to humans. That's why the technology, if it becomes widely available, would need to be safely integrated into the infrastructure of buildings to disinfect air, or used by robots that can be sent into spaces to quickly disinfect surfaces.

"The entire world is currently looking for effective solutions to disinfect the coronavirus," Mamane said. "The problem is that in order to disinfect a bus, train, sports hall, or plane by chemical spraying, you need physical manpower, and in order for the spraying to be effective, you have to give the chemical time to act on the surface. Disinfection systems based on LED bulbs, however, can be installed in the ventilation system and air conditioner, for example, and sterilize the air sucked in and then emitted into the room."

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson

A new study suggests a modified version of the psychedelic drug ibogaine could help treat addiction and depression.

The ibogaine variant has yet to be tested on humans, but rodents who were treated with it showed decreased symptoms of depression and significantly fewer drug relapses, especially for opioids.

What's also encouraging is that the variant is far less toxic and hallucinogenic than ibogaine, meaning it has the potential to become a more widespread treatment than its psychedelic relative.

First, what's ibogaine?

Ibogaine is a uniquely powerful psychedelic drug that produces hallucinations and other effects that can last 24 hours. It's the active compound in the iboga plant, which has been used for medicinal and religious purposes in West Africa for centuries. The drug is central to the Bwiti spiritual discipline, practiced by Bantu peoples in Gabon.

In the 19th century, French Christian missionaries sought to rid the Bantu of their religious practices, causing some of the Bantu tribespeople to flee deep into the jungle, where they encountered Pygmies. The Pygmies showed igoba to the Bantu, who later incorporated it into Bwiti initiation rites.

Despite its religious applications, ibogaine is neurotoxic and can cause irregular heartbeat. At high doses, the substance can be lethal.

But it's also thought to have a unique therapeutic effect: For decades, people have reported that ibogaine seems to significantly—and in some cases, completely—rid addicts of cravings for drugs.

How? One hypothesis is that psychedelics like ibogaine help the brain grow more dendritic spines, which promote communication between neurons. This strengthened communication may benefit addicts, who often show decreased synaptic connections in the prefrontal cortex.

To explore ibogaine's potential as an addiction treatment, the researchers behind the recent study, published in the journal Nature, aimed to create safer, less toxic analogues of the drug.

The team created an ibogaine variant that, like ibogaine, had an element called a tetrahydroazepine ring, which seems to be involved in promoting the growth of dendritic spines. This variant—a compound called tabernanthalog (TBG)—was less toxic and less hallucinogenic.

Experiments on mice suggested TBG has antidepressant and anti-addiction potential.

One test showed that mice subjected to a series of stressors showed less depression symptoms after one treatment, effects similar to ketamine, another psychedelic drug. More surprising was a test on opioid addiction: TBG seemed to virtually eliminate relapses in mice who had become addicted to heroin, a protective effect that lasted about two weeks.

Therapeutic potential

The researchers suspect TBG might be able to treat multiple conditions simultaneously.

"We've been focused on treating one psychiatric disease at a time, but we know that these illnesses overlap," David Olson, assistant professor of chemistry at UC Davis and senior author on the paper, told UC Davis News. "It's unbelievable how little we know about them." "It might be possible to treat multiple diseases with the same drug."

But before drugs like TBG could be used to treat addiction or depression in humans, more research will be needed to better understand the drug, its safety and whether its therapeutic effects extend beyond rodents. Another interesting question, though not explored by the study, is whether the psychedelic properties of ibogaine possess therapeutic benefits; by removing the trip aspect, would users be missing out?

The psychedelic aspect

Maybe. Psychedelic experiences are mysterious and highly subjective, with some people reporting terrifying and negative trips, while others gain useful insights. Here's one account of a positive experience posted on Erowid:

"[1 hour 20 minutes after ingestion] I am having an intense communion with a spirit in the shape of a purple-colored, brain-shaped cloud of vapor, which shows me the interconnection of myself and all things in the universe. It must sound comical to read it in words, but it was the most profound and beautiful experience in my life."

"[7 hours after ingestion] [...] something interesting has started happening in my brain. I feel as if there is a distinct second consciousness inside me, and I can carry on internal conversations with it, asking questions, receiving answers. The other consciousness seems extremely wise, I sense it is another part of me that has never been encumbered by fears or doubts [...]"

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Stephen Johnson