A seemingly routine photo of a bilateral meeting between Iran and Pakistan has ignited a digital firestorm, and not for the reasons the Foreign Office might have anticipated.
Iran, which often faces the heat for its restrictive laws on women, sent Minister for Roads and Urban Development Farzaneh Sadegh to the negotiation table. While Sadegh was accompanied by two other women in her delegation, the Pakistani side showcased a male-only team.
An image showing Sadegh seated across a row of six Pakistani male officials, including Pakistan’s Federal Ministers for Communications Abdul Aleem Khan, Commerce Jam Kamal Khan, and Railways Hanif Abbasi, has gone viral on X.
What was meant to mark a promising step forward in regional connectivity through initiatives like the Gwadar-Chabahar route and the revival of the Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul railway has instead become a stark visual reminder of the glaring absence of Pakistani women in positions of power.
“Can’t believe Iran’s cabinet is more gender balanced than Pakistan’s,” wrote one user.
“It would come as a surprise to many, but Iran is more progressive than us. A true conservative culture. Not vile and extremist,” added another.
For a country that considers itself more “moderate” or “secular” than its neighbour, the optics are damning. “Such a sad picture for a country which considers itself more secular than Iran,” said one user.
Others were quick to highlight that moments like these are becoming all too common.
“You almost never see Pakistani women leading in any of these government-level meetings with other countries. The last time something visible was when [Benazir Bhutto] was the PM or during PTI’s time with the likes of Shireen Mazari, Sania Nishtar, etc.”
As important talks are held about trade corridors, transport modernisation, and regional integration, women, who make up nearly half the population, are systematically shut out from the very tables where their futures are being decided.
Pakistan, a country that takes pride in having had a female prime minister long before many Western democracies — the late Benazir Bhutto — now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of being outpaced by Iran when it comes to female political representation.
The absence of women from high-level negotiations not only undermines Pakistan’s image on the global stage but also raises serious concerns about the inclusivity of policymaking.
“The West and Zionist-controlled media will never show you this,” wrote one user, highlighting how Iran’s perceived conservatism is often overblown in global media narratives.
“But saar, Iranian women are not allowed to work in government, their life is hell, maybe these women are from another planet,” quipped another.
The Iranian cabinet has three women ministers at the moment. Pakistan currently has one woman serving as a federal minister and two ministers of state. But that’s not enough.
This meeting, meant to celebrate regional cooperation and economic ambition, has unintentionally turned into an embarrassing moment for Pakistan as well as a reminder that progress isn’t just about trade routes and railway lines, but also about who gets to help chart them.
Until women are routinely present at tables of power, not as anomalies, but as equals, talk of progress may remain just that — talk.
United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would increase the tariff charged on imports from India from the current rate of 25 per cent “very substantially” over the next 24 hours, given India’s continued purchases of Russian oil.
“India has not been a good trading partner, because they do a lot of business with us, but we don’t do business with them. So we settled on 25pc but I think I’m going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours, because they’re buying Russian oil,” he told CNBC in a televised interview.
“They’re fuelling the war machine, and if they’re going to do that, then I’m not going to be happy,” Trump said, adding that the main sticking point with India was that its tariffs were too high.
He did not provide a new tariff rate for India.
Trump last week said he would impose a 25pc tariff on goods imported from India and added that the world’s fifth-largest economy would also face an unspecified penalty, but gave no details. Later, Trump mounted a sharp attack and said: “I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.”
Over the weekend, two Indian government sources told Reuters that India will keep purchasing oil from Russia despite Trump’s threats. In turn, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller had accused India of effectively financing Russia’s war in Ukraine by purchasing oil from Moscow.
Trump had made the same threat about substantially raising tariffs a day ago.
Responding to the threat, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued a statement claiming that the US and the European Union “targeted” New Delhi for purchasing Russian oil after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
“India began importing from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the conflict,” the statement read. “The US at that time actively encouraged such imports by India for strengthening global energy market stability.”
The MEA highlighted in its statement that the very nations criticising India were engaging in trade with Russia themselves, adding that the goods exchanged include energy, fertilisers, mining products, chemicals, iron and steel and machinery and transport equipment.
“Where the United States is concerned, it continues to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its electric vehicle industry, fertilisers, as well as chemicals,” the MEA statement added.
“In this background, the targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable. Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security.”
India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, is the biggest buyer of seaborne Russian crude, a vital revenue earner for Russia as it wages war in Ukraine for a fourth year.
The US levy on India exceeds those agreed by some other nations in deals with the Trump administration. For example, the tariff on Vietnam is set at 20pc and on Indonesia at 19pc, with levies of 15pc on Japanese and European Union exports.
Last week, Trump said Washington had reached a trade deal with India’s arch-rival Pakistan that Islamabad said would lead to lower tariffs on its exports.
Since India’s short but deadly conflict with Pakistan in May, New Delhi has been unhappy about Trump’s closeness with Islamabad and has protested, casting a shadow over trade talks.
Despite former public displays of bonhomie between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has taken a slightly harder stance against the US in recent weeks.
Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the India-Pakistan ceasefire he announced on social media on May 10, but India disputes his claim that it resulted from his intervention and trade threats.
By declaring the Indian economy dead in the water, Trump has put Modi and his party in a bind. Until recently, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was canvassing support for the US president’s election. Its supporters were holding special prayers and muttering mystical chants for Trump’s victory. There was at least one temple created where a sculptured image of Trump was worshipped.
But Trump has ignored the lavish praise and called out India’s energy imports from Russia and its tariff regime as non-negotiable.
The Indian government said it was trying to figure out a response by consulting all the “stakeholders”, a euphemism for angry businesses whose hopes were riding on Modi’s daring ability to play both sides of the street.
This article was originally published on our sister-site, HCPLive.com
New research is shedding light on sex disparities in liver complication risk among patients with cirrhosis, highlighting increased risks of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), liver transplantation (LT), and decompensated cirrhosis (DC) among male patients compared with female patients.1
Leveraging data for > 400,000 adult patients from the Merative MarketScan Research Databases, the study found that males had > 100% greater risk of HCC, a 63% greater risk of LT, and a 16% greater risk of DC than females. Of note, the sex difference in the risk of adverse liver events was more pronounced in nonviral cirrhosis than viral cirrhosis.1
“A firm recognition of the scope and degree of sex-based differences in cirrhosis outcomes is required to begin the important work to address and eliminate these disparities,” Jeremy Louissaint, MD, an assistant professor in the department of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, wrote in an invited commentary about the research.2 “This impactful study is a major step forward toward achieving sex-based equity in cirrhosis outcomes.”
With the prevalence of cirrhosis projected to increase > 50% by 2030, understanding factors potentially predisposing patients to a heightened risk of adverse outcomes is essential.3 Recognizing the importance of understanding sex disparities for optimizing disease management and promoting health equity, Mindie Nguyen, MD, a transplant hepatologist and professor of medicine at Stanford University, and a team of investigators sought to compare the risk of adverse liver events between male and female patients with cirrhosis.1
To do so, they conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study of adult patients with cirrhosis identified from the Merative MarketScan Research Databases from January 2007 to December 2022. For inclusion, patients were required to have ≥ 1 inpatient or 2 outpatient diagnoses of cirrhosis or its complications based on ICD codes.1
The main outcome was the incidence of adverse liver events, including DC, HCC, and LT. Patients were followed up to the occurrence of the primary outcomes or censored at the insurance enrollment end date, the last follow-up date, or the end of the study period, whichever came first.1
Propensity score matching for age, etiologies of cirrhosis, geographic region, insurance type, specialty type, alcohol use disorder, obesity, baseline status of DC, and Charlson Comorbidity Index score yielded 169,711 pairs of female and male patients with similar baseline characteristics for subsequent analyses of adverse liver event incidence.1
What You Need To Know
Males with cirrhosis have significantly higher risks of HCC, LT, and DC compared to females, especially in nonviral cirrhosis cases.
The study utilized a large cohort from the Merative MarketScan Research Databases, ensuring robust data analysis through propensity score matching.
Male sex was associated with the highest risk of adverse liver events in alcohol-related liver disease, followed by metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease and hepatitis C.
During a total follow-up of 258,178.2 person-years (PYs) for females and 228,004.2 PYs for males, DC was identified in 113,334 females (265,766.1 PYs), HCC in 125,033 females (377,919.8 PYs), and LT in 124,409 females (373,369.7 PYs); among males, 108,790 (236,352.3 PYs) were identified with DC, 121,861 (344,422.4 PYs) with HCC, and 120,931 (338,305.7 PYs) with LT.1
Compared with females, investigators noted males had significantly higher incidence rates per 1000 PYs for DC (65.77; 95% CI, 64.74-66.81 vs 55.35; 95% CI, 54.46-56.25; P <.001), HCC (6.98; 95% CI, 6.71-7.27 vs 3.35; 95% CI, 3.17-3.54; P <.001), and LT (10.23; 95% CI, 9.89-10.58 vs 6.27; 95% CI, 6.01-6.52; P < .001).1
In a Cox proportional hazards regression analysis, male sex was associated with a 16% higher risk of DC (hazard ratio [HR], 1.16; 95% CI, 1.14-1.19; P <.001), a 63% higher risk of LT (HR, 1.63; 95% CI, 1.54-1.71; P <.001), and a 110% higher risk of HCC (HR, 2.10; 95% CI, 1.96-2.25; P <.001).1
Subgroup analyses stratified by major liver disease etiologies revealed male sex was associated with the greatest risk of adverse liver events in patients with alcohol-related liver disease, including DC (HR, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.08-1.19; P <.001), HCC (HR, 2.40; 95% CI, 2.01-2.88; P <.001), and LT (HR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.21-1.53; P <.001), followed by metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease and hepatitis C virus infection, but not in patients with HBV except for those with HCC (HR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.08-2.36; P = .02).1
“Considering the shifting etiologies of cirrhosis from viral to nonviral in recent years, future prevention and surveillance strategies for cirrhosis-related complications should incorporate these sex differences,” Nguyen concluded.1
References
1.Shi Y, Zhang X, Wong T, et al. Sex Differences in Risk of Adverse Liver Events in Patients With Cirrhosis. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(7):e2523674. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.23674
2.Spann A, Louissaint J. Sex-Based Disparities in Cirrhosis Outcomes—From Recognition to Action. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(7):e2523685. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.23685
3.Estes C, Razavi H, Loomba R, et al. Modeling the epidemic of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease demonstrates an exponential increase in burden of disease. Hepatology. doi:10.1002/hep.29466
Injury forces Arshad Nadeem out of Diamond League in Poland – Daily Times
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As giant planet HIP 67522 b orbits its host star, it triggers its own doom. The planet orbits HIP 67522, a young star slightly larger than the Sun, in just 7 Earth days. At just 17 million years old, the star is far more active than our Sun, regularly flaring and releasing massive amounts of energy and stellar material.
By using observations from three exoplanet telescopes, scientists have found that these flares don’t occur at random times and locations like on our Sun. Instead, they are concentrated at a particular time in the planet’s orbit, which suggests that the planet itself could be triggering the flares. What’s more, the flares are also pointed at the planet, bombarding it with nearly 6 times more radiation than it would experience if the flares occurred at random.
“We want to understand the space weather of these systems in order to understand how planets evolve over time, how much high-energy radiation they get, how much wind they’re exposed to, what consequences that has on the evolution of their atmospheres, and, down the line, habitability,” said Ekaterina Ilin, lead researcher on the discovery and an astronomer at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) in Dwingeloo.
Magnetic Interactions
Space weather is common in our solar system. At Earth’s relatively safe distance from the Sun, space weather manifests as aurorae and enhanced solar wind that, nonetheless, can wreak havoc on navigation and communication systems.
But in exoplanet systems, space weather can be far more deadly. Stars have strong magnetic fields, which are even stronger and more turbulent when stars are young. A star’s magnetic field lines stretch out from its surface, carrying superheated plasma along with them. Field lines regularly twist and tangle and coil until they eventually snap back into place, releasing stored energy and stellar material in a flare or coronal mass ejection (CME).
Astronomers have observed exoplanets orbiting so close to their stars that their atmospheres or even rocky surfaces are being blasted away by intense stellar radiation, winds, and flares. But for decades, astronomers have theorized that the connection between stars and close-in planets can go both ways.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory detected this X1-class solar flare from the Sun on 22 March 2024. This video was taken in extreme-ultraviolet light that highlights hot material in the flare. Credit: NASA/SDO
According to the theory, some planets orbit so close to their star that they are inside the star’s magnetic boundary, the so-called sub-Alfvénic zone. Such a so-called short-period planet could gather up magnetic energy like a windup toy as it orbits and release it in waves along the star’s magnetic field lines. When the energetic waves reach the star’s surface, they could trigger a flare back toward the planet.
The idea was born after the discovery of the first exoplanet—51 Pegasi b—in 1995 showed astronomers that planets could orbit extremely close to their host stars (51 Pegasi b has a 4.23-day orbit). Ilin said that although the theory has existed since the early 2000s, it has taken a while to find even one exoplanet that might fit the bill because most planets discovered thus far orbit much older stars with few flares and weak magnetic fields.
Too Close for Comfort
Ilin and her colleagues combed through thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets detected by the now-retired Kepler Space Telescope and the extant Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). They looked for young, flaring stars with close-in giant planets—a very broad search with hundreds of results—and narrowed their search down by looking for planets that might orbit within the sub-Alfvénic zone and for stars with strange flare timings.
“It was really a shot in the dark,” Ilin said.
After a long, tedious search, the team homed in on HIP 67522 and its two planets: planet HIP 67522 b, with its 7-day orbit, and a second giant planet with a 14-day orbit. The star’s flares were clustered together, but only barely within the margin of significance.
“The expectation was that it would have one of the strongest magnetic interactions based on how close the star is to the [inner] planet, how big the star is, how big the planet is, how young it is, [and] how strong a magnetic field we expect,” Ilin said. Despite the marginal significance, she thought, “Oh, actually, it might be worth a second look.”
“Statistically, almost impossible.”
The researchers observed the star with the European Space Agency’s Characterising Exoplanets Satellite (CHEOPS) for 5 years. They characterized 15 stellar flares during that period, a typical number for this size and age of star, but found that the flares clustered together when the innermost planet passed between the star and the telescope’s vantage point at Earth.
“When the planet is close to transit, the flaring goes up by a factor of 5 or 6, and that should not happen,” Ilin explained. “Statistically, almost impossible.”
“It is fascinating to see clustered flaring following the planet as it orbits its star,” said Evgenya Shkolnik, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University in Tempe who was not involved with this research. Some of Shkolnik’s past work investigated enhanced stellar activity in Sun-like stars with hot Jupiters, but those stars were much older and did not flare as much as HIP 67522. “It makes sense that more flares could be triggered through the same type of magnetic star-planet interactions we observed,” she said.
“It makes its life even worse by whipping up this interaction…and firing all these CMEs directly into the planet’s face.”
Like other short-period giant planets, HIP 67522 b likely would have been losing its atmosphere to stellar radiation no matter what because of how closely its orbits—indeed, the planet is about the size of Jupiter but just 5% its mass. But because the flares are synced with HIP 67522 b’s orbital period, Ilin’s team calculated that HIP 67522 b is experiencing roughly 6 times the stellar radiation that it would if the flares were randomly distributed, and the corresponding CMEs are pointed directly at it.
The team’s simple estimates show that because of this increased radiation, the planet is losing its atmosphere about twice as fast as it would otherwise.
“It makes its life even worse by whipping up this interaction…and firing all these CMEs directly into the planet’s face,” Ilin said. These results were published in Nature.
“This discovery is extremely exciting,” said Antoine Strugarek, an astrophysicist at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission in Paris who was not involved with the research. “Such magnetic interactions are clearly the prime candidate to explain the observed phenomenon, and no other theories are really convincing to explain these observations, to the best of my knowledge.”
Expanding the Search
Strugarek explained that the magnetic interaction observed in the HIP 76522 system has a few analogs in our own solar system. The Sun experiences “sympathetic flares,” he said, in which a solar flare in one spot can trigger another one nearby—they account for about 5% of solar flares. And in the Jupiter system, the Galilean moons Io, Ganymede, and Europa propagate waves along their orbits that trigger polar aurorae on Jupiter.
For HIP 76522, “the theory is that the perturbation originates from the exoplanet. This is definitively a possibility, and extremely exciting for future research,” Strugarek said. He added that he would like to see future work constrain the geometry of HIP 76522’s magnetic field to better understand the star-planet connection.
“We need to scrutinize all the compact star-planet systems with large flares for such occurrences. This should be ubiquitous for very compact systems.”
He also wants to go back into the archives to look for more exoplanets like this. “Now that we have one tentative system, we need to scrutinize all the compact star-planet systems with large flares for such occurrences,” Strugarek said. “This should be ubiquitous for very compact systems.
Shkolnik added, “I would love to see dedicated observing programs at both higher- and lower-energy wavelengths, namely, in the far-ultraviolet, submillimeter, and radio wavelengths.” The far ultraviolet is more sensitive to flares, and finding more flares might confirm the theory that the planet is triggering them.
Thus far, HIP 76522 b is the only planet discovered to be magnetically influencing its star. Ilin said that when her team started looking into HIP 76522 b, it was the youngest short-period planet in their catalogs. TESS has since observed several more, and Ilin’s team is ready to investigate them.
The researchers also hope to flip the script on star-planet interactions. Instead of starting with an exoplanet and looking for clustered stellar flares, they want to first look for flare patterns and then find the planet causing them. The untested technique could detect exoplanets around stars that other detection methods struggle with: young, active stars.
“It is a bit of a statistically tough cookie,” she said, “but it will be quite exciting if we can make that happen.”
—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@astrokimcartier.bsky.social), Staff Writer
Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2025), Exoplanet triggers stellar flares and hastens its demise, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250284. Published on 5 August 2025.
KHARO CHAN, Sindh: Salt crusts crackle underfoot as Habibullah Khatti walks to his mother’s grave to say a final goodbye before he abandons his parched island village on Pakistan’s Indus delta.
Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in the south of the country, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities.
“The saline water has surrounded us from all four sides,” Khatti told AFP from Abdullah Mirbahar village in the town of Kharo Chan, around 15 kilometers (9 miles) from where the river empties into the sea.
As fish stocks fell, the 54-year-old turned to tailoring until that too became impossible with only four of the 150 households remaining.
“In the evening, an eerie silence takes over the area,” he said, as stray dogs wandered through the deserted wooden and bamboo houses.
Kharo Chan once comprised around 40 villages, but most have disappeared under rising seawater.
The town’s population fell from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023, according to census data.
Khatti is preparing to move his family to nearby Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, and one swelling with economic migrants, including from the Indus delta.
In this aerial photograph taken on June 25, 2025, abandoned houses are pictured in one of the villages of Kharo Chan town, in the Indus delta, south of Pakistan. (AFP/File)
The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, which advocates for fishing communities, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the delta’s coastal districts.
However, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the overall Indus delta region in the last two decades, according to a study published in March by the Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by a former climate change minister.
The downstream flow of water into the delta has decreased by 80 percent since the 1950s as a result of irrigation canals, hydropower dams and the impacts of climate change on glacial and snow melt, according to a 2018 study by the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water.
That has led to devastating seawater intrusion.
The salinity of the water has risen by around 70 percent since 1990, making it impossible to grow crops and severely affecting the shrimp and crab populations.
In this photograph taken on June 25, 2025, Haji Karam Jat (L), a fisherman, uses bamboo sticks to build his new house in Keti Bandar town of Thatta district near the Indus delta, in the south of Pakistan. (AFP/File)
“The delta is both sinking and shrinking,” said Muhammad Ali Anjum, a local WWF conservationist.
Beginning in Tibet, the Indus River flows through disputed Kashmir before traversing the entire length of Pakistan.
The river and its tributaries irrigate about 80 percent of the country’s farmland, supporting millions of livelihoods.
The delta, formed by rich sediment deposited by the river as it meets the sea, was once ideal for farming, fishing, mangroves and wildlife.
But more than 16 percent of fertile land has become unproductive due to encroaching seawater, a government water agency study in 2019 found.
In the town of Keti Bandar, which spreads inland from the water’s edge, a white layer of salt crystals covers the ground.
Boats carry in drinkable water from miles away and villagers cart it home via donkeys.
“Who leaves their homeland willingly?” said Hajji Karam Jat, whose house was swallowed by the rising water level.
He rebuilt farther inland, anticipating more families would join him.
“A person only leaves their motherland when they have no other choice,” he told AFP.
n this photograph taken on June 25, 2025, Habibullah Khatti, a local resident, walks over the salt crusts deposited in Abdullah Mirbahar village in Kharo Chan town, in the Indus delta, south of Pakistan. (AFP/File)
British colonial rulers were the first to alter the course of the Indus River with canals and dams, followed more recently by dozens of hydropower projects.
Earlier this year, several military-led canal projects on the Indus River were halted when farmers in the low-lying riverine areas of Sindh province protested.
To combat the degradation of the Indus River Basin, the government and the United Nations launched the ‘Living Indus Initiative’ in 2021.
One intervention focuses on restoring the delta by addressing soil salinity and protecting local agriculture and ecosystems.
The Sindh government is currently running its own mangrove restoration project, aiming to revive forests that serve as a natural barrier against saltwater intrusion.
Even as mangroves are restored in some parts of the coastline, land grabbing and residential development projects drive clearing in other areas.
Neighboring India meanwhile poses a looming threat to the river and its delta, after revoking a 1960 water treaty with Pakistan which divides control over the Indus basin rivers.
It has threatened to never reinstate the treaty and build dams upstream, squeezing the flow of water to Pakistan, which has called it “an act of war.”
Alongside their homes, the communities have lost a way of life tightly bound up in the delta, said climate activist Fatima Majeed, who works with the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum.
Women, in particular, who for generations have stitched nets and packed the day’s catches, struggle to find work when they migrate to cities, said Majeed, whose grandfather relocated the family from Kharo Chan to the outskirts of Karachi.
“We haven’t just lost our land, we’ve lost our culture.”
SEATTLE and HAWTHORNE, Calif., Aug. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Interlune, a natural resources company, and Astrolab, a multi-planetary mobility and logistics company, today announced that an Interlune payload will fly on Astrolab’s FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform (FLIP) rover on its upcoming mission to the Moon.
The Interlune payload is a multispectral camera built, tested, and developed in partnership with NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, whose images will be used to estimate helium-3 quantities and concentration in Moon dirt, or regolith.
A rendering of Astrolab’s FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform (FLIP) rover on the Moon after egress from Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. FLIP will test technologies for future lunar mobility systems and deliver science payloads to the Lunar South Pole. (Image courtesy of Astrolab)
Interlune aims to be the first company to commercialize natural resources from space, starting with harvesting helium-3 from the Moon.
“This is our first lunar mission and a seminal milestone toward being the first company to harvest natural resources from space,” said Interlune cofounder and CEO, Rob Meyerson. “Astrolab’s ability to provide reliable mobility on the Moon to partners like Interlune is the quintessential example of the collaboration and innovation building the lunar economy.”
“This is exactly the kind of mission we built Astrolab for—delivering breakthrough science to the lunar surface,” said Jaret Matthews, founder and CEO, Astrolab. “We’re thrilled to be carrying Interlune’s multispectral camera to the Moon, and proud to help make this kind of exploration possible.”
Founded in 2020, Astrolab is pioneering new ways to explore and operate on distant planetary bodies, focusing on designing, building, and operating a fleet of multi-purpose commercial planetary rovers to extend and enhance humanity’s presence in the solar system.
Current knowledge about the quantity and concentration of helium-3 on the Moon is based on data from regolith samples returned to Earth for analysis, such as those collected during the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s. A large sample was collected by Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt, the Interlune cofounder and executive chairman, the only geologist to have ever visited the Moon. In addition to helium-3 (an isotope), data from the samples includes measurements of the quantity of ilmenite, a mineral rich in titanium. The analysis revealed a close correlation between the amount of helium-3 and the amount of titanium in each sample. The ilmenite traps the helium atoms. It was also correlated with the maturity of the regolith, or the length of time it had been on the surface and exposed to the solar wind, which contains helium-3.
Data collected with the multispectral camera will add to this knowledge and refine Interune’s helium-3 estimates by producing images that will be used to detect titanium and regolith maturity. With these two measurements, Interlune can predict the amount of helium-3 present without bringing the regolith back to Earth for analysis.
Helium-3, an isotope of helium, is extremely scarce on Earth but abundant on the Moon. The government and industry have been seeking a new and scalable source of helium-3 since the U.S. government identified a severe shortage around 2010. Applications of the isotope include sensors for national security, cooling systems essential for quantum computing, medical imaging, and as a fuel for fusion energy.
Interlune plans to demonstrate its harvesting technology on the Moon in several demonstration missions before returning industrial quantities of lunar helium-3 to Earth for commercial and government customers in the 2030s. Interlune will ultimately harvest other resources such as industrial metals, rare Earth elements, and water to support a long-term presence on the Moon and a robust in-space economy. The company has raised $18 million to date and has garnered support from NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as several commercial customers.
On May 7, the company announced its first commercial and government customers purchasing helium-3, as well as a partnership with industrial equipment manufacturer Vermeer Corporation to develop novel excavation equipment and technology.
About Interlune Interlune is a privately funded natural resources company committed to sustainable and responsible harvesting of natural resources from space to benefit humanity. Based in Seattle, Interlune was founded in 2020 by a team of highly experienced government and industry experts. Aiming to be the first U.S. company to commercialize resources from space, Interlune has developed patent-pending technology that harvests materials from the lunar soil, or regolith, using the smallest, most energy-efficient machinery of its kind. Ultimately, Interlune will offer these valuable resources to commercial and government customers on Earth and establish an in-space economy using the resources on the Moon and beyond. Follow Interlune on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.
About Astrolab Astrolab is on a mission to move humanity forward to the next horizon by designing, building, and operating a fleet of multi-purpose rovers for all planetary surface needs. Formed by a highly specialized team of NASA veterans, former SpaceXers and JPL engineers, Astrolab is laser-focused on providing adaptive mobility solutions essential for life beyond Earth. The team has industry leading experience in terrestrial and planetary robotics, electric vehicles, human spaceflight and more. Astrolab’s depth of experience and strategic partnerships with a wide array of world-class institutions, including electric vehicle pioneer Venturi Group, enables the delivery of Lunar and Mars mobility offerings at maximum reliability, flexibility, and cost effectiveness. The company is headquartered in Hawthorne, California. For more information, visit astrolab.space and follow us on X, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram.
A recent multicenter case series published in JAMA underscores the severity and rapid progression of influenza-associated acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ANE) in children. The study, led by Molly Wilson-Murphy, MD, and Rachel Walsh, MD, of Boston Children’s Neuroimmunology Center, examined 41 pediatric cases from 23 U.S. hospitals during the 2023 to 2025 influenza seasons and found a 27% mortality rate, with most deaths occurring within three days of symptom onset.1,2
ANE is a rare but life-threatening neurologic condition that can occur in otherwise healthy children following influenza infection. Characterized by brain inflammation, encephalopathy, and distinctive thalamic lesions, ANE often presents with fever, seizures, and altered mental status. “While rare, ANE is potentially devastating and can progress very quickly,” said Wilson-Murphy. “It is incredibly important for providers to be able to recognize ANE and to act immediately, as rapid treatment may save lives and minimize long-term difficulties.”
The majority of children in the study had no prior medical history. Median patient age was 5 years, and 76% had no preexisting conditions. Of the 41 patients, 95% had influenza A and 5% had influenza B. Among those with influenza A, the H1N1 2009 strain was most common. Despite the severity of illness, only 16% of patients had received an age-appropriate influenza vaccination for the season in which they were diagnosed, and only one of the 11 children who died had been vaccinated.
The investigation revealed that nearly all patients experienced encephalopathy and fever, and 68% presented with seizures. Neuroimaging findings commonly showed thalamic injury, with 88% of patients displaying brainstem involvement. Additionally, 63% of patients had thrombocytopenia, and elevated cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) protein was present in an equal proportion. Electroencephalography indicated generalized slowing in 95% of patients.
Despite aggressive treatment efforts, including corticosteroids (95%), intravenous immunoglobulin (66%), tocilizumab (51%), and plasmapheresis (32%), the mortality rate remained high. Among survivors, outcomes were also concerning. At 90-day follow-up, 63% of survivors had moderate to severe disability. Functional limitations included spasticity (60%), epilepsy (20%), and the need for feeding or breathing support. Only 43% of patients regained the ability to walk unassisted within three months.
“These findings emphasize the need for prevention, early recognition, intensive treatment, and standardized management protocols,” the authors wrote. The study also found genetic predispositions in a subset of patients, with 47% of those tested carrying variants potentially linked to ANE, including heterozygous RANBP2 mutations in 34%.
The data highlight a critical gap in influenza prevention through vaccination. “Vaccination may be important in helping to prevent ANE,” Wilson-Murphy noted. The results support earlier findings from international studies, such as a large Japanese epidemiologic analysis, which demonstrated that mass influenza vaccination of school-aged children significantly reduced mortality from influenza-associated encephalopathy, likely due to reduced viral transmission within communities.
The authors called for improved public health surveillance of ANE and more research into treatment strategies. Given that most deaths occurred rapidly after presentation, with a median of three days from symptom onset to death, largely due to cerebral herniation, the need for rapid diagnosis and aggressive critical care is paramount. “There is still so much we have yet to learn about ANE, but we hope this study has helped raise awareness and pave the way for more surveillance and recognition and, ultimately, to advances in treatment,” said Wilson-Murphy.
References:
Boston Children’s Hospital. Study highlights the severity of acute necrotizing encephalopathy in kids with the flu. Eurekalert. July 30, 2025. August 4, 2025. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1093106
Silverman A, Walsh R, Santoro JD, et al. Influenza-Associated Acute Necrotizing Encephalopathy in US Children. JAMA. Published online July 30, 2025. doi:https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2025.11534
