(Inside Science) The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was built and successfully launched in 2018 to hunt for planets outside of our solar system. The $287 million instrument has located more than 2,000 potential exoplanets, with 91 of them already confirmed.
TESS detects exoplanets by monitoring the brightness of stars. Stars dim temporarily when an object passes in front of them, like the silhouette of Santa’s sleigh on the moon. The approach is called the transit method.
Still of Earth’s radiation belt, showing the double-belt structure. Image: SAMPEX/NASA.
Most people don’t know that Earth’s magnetic field has a weak spot the size of the continental US hovering over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean.
We’re safe from any effects on the ground, but our satellites aren’t so lucky: When they zip through this magnetic anomaly, they are bombarded with radiation more intense than anywhere else in orbit. There is reason to believe that this dent in the magnetic field, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, is only getting bigger.
This anomaly is far from the only unusual feature of Earth’s magnetic field.
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BOSTON - Four years after patients with melanoma were treated with a personalized cancer vaccine, the immune response kindled by the vaccine remains robust and effective in keeping cancer cells under control, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women s Hospital, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard report in a new study.
The findings, published online today by the journal
Nature Medicine, demonstrate the staying power of the immune response generated by the vaccine, known as NeoVax, which works by targeting specific proteins on each patient s tumor cells. The researchers found that, nearly four years after vaccination, the patients immune system cells were active not only against tumor cells with those distinctive proteins, but also spread to other proteins found in those patients tumor cells.
DACAAR, Danish Technical University (DTU) and Kabul Polytechnic University (KPU) embark on a joint advanced groundwater search
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There are great perspectives for Afghanistan in a newly developed groundwater research in Afghanistan. Using remote-sensing technology (earth observations), the project aims to create an unprecedented understanding of groundwater resource availability in support efficient relief work.
DACAAR, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Kabul s Polytechnic University are proud to have been selected by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark to implement one of the most advanced satellite programmes ever approved to support groundwater search and sustainable climate adaptation.
Afghanistan has seen more than 40 years of high instability and is prone to natural disasters, that are becoming even more frequent and extreme due to climate change and poor infrastructure. Afghanistan has recently suffered a devastating drought in the Western provinces
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Fair treatment with AI
Prejudices and stereotypes can be reflected in algorithms used in the public health service. Researchers now want to develop fair algorithms.
Today, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are increasingly being used in our healthcare system. Doctors and radiologists use, for example, algorithms to support the decisions they make when diagnosing the patient. The only problem is that algorithms can be just as biased and prejudiced as people because they are based on data from previous observations. For example, if an algorithm has seen more examples of lung diseases in men than in women, it will be better trained to detect lung diseases in men.