(NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU via SWNS)
By Dean Murray
A mysterious “helmet” has been spotted on Mars.
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover snapped an unusually shaped object on the Red Planet this month.
Space fans voted the image as NASA’s Image of the Week and debated online about what it could be.
The photo, selected by public vote, was taken on August 5 by the rover’s Left Mastcam-Z camera — one of a pair located high on the rover’s mast.
One online suggestion was that it resembles a medieval-looking helmet, while another referenced Harry Potter with the comment: “The Planet of the Sorting Hats has been found!”
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU via SWNS)
Other guesses included it looking like a “landed weather balloon” or “a relic from an ancient sea that was once on Mars”.
Meanwhile, Facebook user Sid Niknezhad playfully suggested it was “Martian buffalo’s dung — nothing abnormal about it.”
The object is most likely a naturally formed rock shaped as a result of natural geological processes such as wind erosion, volcanic activity, and mineral precipitation from ancient groundwater. The rock is covered in small spherical mineral deposits called spherules.
Nick Mashiter, BBC Sport
It is a deal Aston Villa and Unai Emery would have preferred not to have done in an ideal world.
However, this is not that world but one in which teams must abide by profit and sustainability rules, and finances are tight at Villa Park.
A youth product like Ramsey would always be the asset to sell to generate pure profit and £40m will undoubtedly help Villa comply with the rules.
It was the same last year when they had to sell Douglas Luiz despite qualifying for the Champions League.
It would be churlish to call Villa purely a selling club now but they are not immune to financial pressures, as has been obvious over the past 18 months, and the failure to reach the Champions League this season will naturally have an effect.
Emery was a fan of Ramsey – he would have like to have kept him – but the manager is living in reality. He knows the landscape Villa must navigate, even if it may seem rocky.
Striker Evann Guessand has joined from Nice and there are likely to be more arrivals, perhaps even the return of Marco Asensio after his successful loan last season, but Villa must continue to outthink the bigger spenders.
Lithium-sulphur batteries are expected to be lighter, cheaper and more sustainable than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Today’s lithium-ion batteries achieve energy densities of around 250 Wh/kg. Lithium-sulphur batteries, on the other hand, could achieve over 700 Wh/kg. This means that for the same amount of energy, the battery would be much lighter, an advantage for electric cars, drones, aircraft and space technology. Sulphur is also abundant as a raw material and replaces critical metals such as cobalt and nickel.
However, there are still hurdles that are slowing down this technology. For example, relatively little is known about the mechanisms that can lead to the failure of such Li-S batteries. A research team at the Helmholtz Centre Berlin (HZB) has now investigated this problem in more detail, focusing on the electrolyte.
For a battery to work, it needs a liquid electrolyte. This spreads between the electrodes and enables the transport of charged particles. If you want to build a particularly light battery, you have to reduce this liquid as much as possible. However, too little electrolyte means that some areas inside remain ‘dry’. This disrupts the chemical processes and can drastically shorten the service life.
‘It is crucial how the electrolyte wets the electrodes, penetrates their pores and distributes itself in the Li-S cells. However, due to the closed design of the batteries, it is extremely difficult to observe this without causing damage,’ says HZB chemist Prof. Dr. Yan Lu, who led the study.
Normally, it is not possible to see how the electrolyte is distributed inside a closed battery – unless you cut it open and destroy it in the process. At best, such a procedure provides a snapshot. The researchers at HZB therefore used a special technique: neutron tomography. This method works similarly to a CT scan in a hospital – only instead of X-rays, neutrons are used. These penetrate materials to varying degrees, depending on the atoms they are composed of. Light elements such as lithium and hydrogen in the electrolyte can be visualised particularly well with this method.
The team built special lithium-sulphur pouch cells with little electrolyte and examined them at the Laue-Langevin Institute in Grenoble. This allowed the researchers to observe in real time how the liquid distributes itself during charging and discharging. The recordings showed that at the beginning, there are often poorly wetted areas – comparable to dry spots in a sponge. If the battery is left to rest for a while, the electrolyte distributes itself more evenly. However, a very long rest period brings little improvement. Only when the battery is in operation, being charged or discharged, does the liquid distribute itself much better. This leads to more active use of the sulphur and an increase in capacity.
The process “enabled us to observe for the first time, how the liquid electrolyte behaves in real time and how the wetting changes locally in the different layers of a pouch cell over time. We gained some interesting insights from this,” said Yan Lu. Particularly exciting: the researchers discovered a periodic rhythm in wetting that is related to the formation and dissolution of sulphur compounds. This behaviour differs significantly from that of today’s lithium-ion batteries.
With these findings, the technology can now be improved in a more targeted manner. The aim is to build lithium-sulphur batteries that are lightweight, high-energy and durable. This could not only make electric vehicles more efficient but also open up new possibilities in aerospace. The project was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the EU.
There is already a lot of movement in the field of lithium-sulphur batteries: for example, the EU research project TALISSMAN has recently begun working on the development of innovative lithium-sulphur batteries for electric vehicles. And US battery developer Lyten, which is currently acquiring Swedish cell manufacturer Northvolt, already operates an automated pilot line for Li-S batteries in San Jose, California, which opened in May 2023. There, Lyten also produced its A-samples of its 6.5 Ah pouch cells, which were delivered to Stellantis and other car manufacturers in May 2024.
helmholtz-berlin.de
Cornell researchers have developed a low-power microchip they call a “microwave brain,” the first processor to compute on both ultrafast data signals and wireless communication signals by harnessing the physics of microwaves.
Detailed Aug. 14 in Nature Electronics, the processor is the first true microwave neural network and is fully integrated on a silicon microchip. It performs real-time frequency domain computation for tasks like radio signal decoding, radar target tracking and digital data processing, all while consuming less than 200 milliwatts of power.
“Because it’s able to distort in a programmable way across a wide band of frequencies instantaneously, it can be repurposed for several computing tasks,” said lead author Bal Govind, M.S. ’24, a doctoral student who conducted the research with Maxwell Anderson ’20, M.S. ’24, also a doctoral student. “It bypasses a large number of signal processing steps that digital computers normally have to do.”
That capability is enabled by the chip’s design as a neural network, a computer system modeled on the brain, using interconnected modes produced in tunable waveguides. This allows it to recognize patterns and learn from data. But unlike traditional neural networks that rely on digital operations and step-by-step instructions timed by a clock, this network uses analog, nonlinear behavior in the microwave regime, allowing it to handle data streams in the tens of gigahertz – much faster than most digital chips.
“Bal threw away a lot of conventional circuit design to achieve this,” said Alyssa Apsel, the Ellis L. Phillips Sr. Director of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who was co-senior author with Peter McMahon, associate professor of applied and engineering physics. “Instead of trying to mimic the structure of digital neural networks exactly, he created something that looks more like a controlled mush of frequency behaviors that can ultimately give you high-performance computation.”
The chip can perform both low-level logic functions and complex tasks like identifying bit sequences or counting binary values in high-speed data. It achieved at or above 88% accuracy on multiple classification tasks involving wireless signal types, comparable to digital neural networks but with a fraction of the power and size.
“In traditional digital systems, as tasks get more complex, you need more circuitry, more power and more error correction to maintain accuracy,” Govind said. “But with our probabilistic approach, we’re able to maintain high accuracy on both simple and complex computations, without that added overhead.”
The chip’s extreme sensitivity to inputs makes it well-suited for hardware security applications like sensing anomalies in wireless communications across multiple bands of microwave frequencies, according to the researchers.
“We also think that if we reduce the power consumption more, we can deploy it to applications like edge computing,” Apsel said, “You could deploy it on a smartwatch or a cellphone and build native models on your smart device instead of having to depend on a cloud server for everything.”
Though the chip is still experimental, the researchers are optimistic about its scalability. They are experimenting with ways to improve its accuracy and integrate it into existing microwave and digital processing platforms.
The work emerged from an exploratory effort within a larger project supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility, which is funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
Syl Kacapyr is associate director of marketing and communications for Cornell Engineering.
Dead Sea, where physics throws a pool party and salt is the guest of honor. It’s the lowest point on Earth’s surface, the deepest hypersaline lake on the planet, and the only place where salt giants are born in real time.
Yes, salt giants. Not the kind that stomp around in fantasy novels, but colossal underground formations that stretch for kilometers and stack up thicker.
Other seas like the Mediterranean and Red Sea have salt deposits too, but they’re ancient fossils compared to the Dead Sea’s live-action drama. Only in the Dead Sea, researchers can tackle the physical processes behind massive salt formations and, in particular, the spatial and temporal variations in their thickness.
UC Santa Barbara researchers dove deep into the physics of the Dead Sea and uncovered how the fluid dynamical and associated sediment transport processes currently governing the Dead Sea. These processes are influenced by factors such as the fact that the Dead Sea is a saltwater lake with no outlet, meaning water can only leave through evaporation.
Study on the climate history of Dead sea
Over thousands of years, this has caused the lake to shrink and leave behind salt deposits. In recent times, the damming of the Jordan River, which supplies water to the lake, has made the situation worse, causing the water level to drop by about 1 meter (3 feet) each year.
Temperature differences in the Dead Sea’s water layers also affect how salt structures like salt giants, domes, and chimneys form. The lake used to be “meromictic,” meaning it stayed layered all year round, with lighter, warmer water on top and heavier, saltier, cooler water below.
Temperature differences in the Dead Sea’s water layers help shape salt formations like salt giants, domes, and chimneys. In the past, the lake was meromictic, meaning it stayed layered all year. Warm, less salty water sat on top, while cooler, saltier water stayed below, even in winter. This stable layering kept the salt separated.
But in the early 1980s, things changed. The Jordan River’s flow was partially diverted, and evaporation began to outpace the amount of freshwater coming in. As a result, the surface water became just as salty as the deeper water, allowing the layers to mix. The lake shifted from meromictic to holomictic, a state where the water layers overturn once a year.
The struggle for life in the Dead Sea sediments
Today, the Dead Sea still forms layers, but only during the warmer eight months of the year.
In 2019, researchers discovered something unusual happening in the Dead Sea during summer: halite crystals, basically rock salt, were forming, a process usually seen in cooler months. Typically, halite “snow” appears when the water becomes so salty that it can’t dissolve any more salt, especially in the deeper, colder parts of the lake.
But in summer, even though evaporation was making the surface water saltier, the warmer temperatures kept the salt dissolved in the upper layer. So despite high salinity, crystal formation was delayed because heat helped the water hold more salt.
This creates a process called double diffusion, where the warmer, saltier water at the top cools and sinks, while the cooler, less dense water at the bottom warms up and rises. As the top layer cools, salt starts to form and fall like “salt snow.”
Earliest Evidence of Human Impact on Earth’s Geology Has Been Found in The Dead Sea
According to the researchers, a mix of evaporation, temperature changes, and shifting water densities, along with currents and waves, work together to build salt deposits in different shapes and sizes. Unlike other salty lakes, where this happens mainly in the dry season, the Dead Sea sees the strongest salt formation in winter. This ongoing “salt snow” helps explain how massive salt structures, like the salt giants, form, similar to those found deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea, which dried up millions of years ago during the Messinian Salinity Crisis.
UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineering professor Eckart Meiburg said, “There was always some inflow from the North Atlantic into the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar. But when tectonic motion closed off the Strait of Gibraltar, there couldn’t be any water inflow from the North Atlantic.”
“The sea level dropped 3-5 km (2-3 miles) due to evaporation, creating the same conditions currently found in the Dead Sea and leaving behind the thickest of this salt crust that can still be found buried below the deep sections of the Mediterranean. But then a few million years later, the Strait of Gibraltar opened up again, and so you had inflow coming in from the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean filled up again.”
Researchers say that underwater springs and shifting salinity help form unique salt structures like domes and chimneys. Studying these processes not only reveals how salty lakes behave but also offers clues about coastal erosion, sea level changes, and possible resource extraction.
Journal Reference:
A new drug-releasing system, TAR-200, eliminated tumors in 82% of patients in the phase II SunRISe-1 trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT04640623) for individuals with high-risk non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer whose disease had previously resisted treatment. In the majority of cases, the cancer disappeared after 3 months of treatment, and almost half the patients were cancer-free 1 year later.
“Traditionally, these patients have had very limited treatment options. This new therapy is the most effective one reported to date for the most common form of bladder cancer,” said Sia Daneshmand, MD, Director of Urologic Oncology at Keck Medicine of USC and lead author of a report detailing the results published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. “The findings of the clinical trial are a breakthrough in how certain types of bladder cancer might be treated, leading to improved outcomes and saved lives.”
More on TAR-200
TAR-200 is a miniature, pretzel-shaped drug-device duo containing the chemotherapy gemcitabine, which is inserted into the bladder through a catheter. Once inside the bladder, the TAR-200 slowly and consistently releases gemcitabine into the organ for 3 weeks per treatment cycle.
Traditionally, gemcitabine has been delivered to the bladder as a liquid solution that stays in the bladder for a few hours, which had limited effect destroying the cancer, said Dr. Daneshmand, who is also a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“The theory behind this study was that the longer the medicine sits inside the bladder, the more deeply it would penetrate the bladder and the more cancer it would destroy,” he said. “And it appears that having the chemotherapy released slowly over weeks rather than in just a few hours is a much more effective approach.”
SunRISe-1
The phase II SunRISe-1 trial was conducted at 144 locations globally. It included 85 patients with high-risk non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer. The standard treatment of this type of bladder cancer is an immunotherapy drug, bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), which may be ineffective in a percentage of patients. All patients in the clinical trial had been previously treated with BCG, but their cancer had returned.
“The standard treatment plan for these patients was surgery to remove the bladder and surrounding tissue and organs, which has many health risks and may negatively impact patients’ quality of life,” said Dr. Daneshmand.
To offer patients a better option, urologic oncologists treated patients with TAR-200 every 3 weeks for 6 months and then four times a year for the next 2 years. In 70 of the 85 patients, the cancer disappeared, and for almost half the patients, it was still gone 1 year later. The treatment was reported to be well tolerated, with few side effects.
The study also showed that administering TAR-200 along with the monoclonal antibody cetrelimab did not prove as effective as TAR-200 on its own and resulted in more side effects.
Although participants in the clinical trial will be followed for another year, the study is closed to new participants.
The Future of Slow-Release Systems
This clinical trial is one of several ongoing ones investigating the effect of TAR-200 and the slow release of cancer-fighting drugs into the bladder to fight cancer.
“We are at an exciting moment in history,” said Dr. Daneshmand, who has been researching this novel treatment since 2016. “Our mission is to deliver cancer-fighting medications into the bladder that will offer lasting remission from cancer, and it looks like we are well on our way toward that goal.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted TAR-200 a new drug application Priority Review.
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit ascopubs.org.
Another MasterChef contestant has been edited out of the latest series after the controversy over the conduct of its sacked presenters, raising further questions about the BBC’s decision to broadcast the show.
Banijay, the production company behind the cooking contest, confirmed to the BBC that a second contestant had asked to be edited out of the programme.
It comes two weeks after the Guardian revealed that Sarah Shafi had agreed to be removed from the show, having said that it should not be aired. She said that after allegations were made against Gregg Wallace and John Torode its broadcast would send the wrong message about the treatment of women and inappropriate behaviour by prominent figures.
Wallace was dropped by the BBC after an independent report substantiated 45 allegations made against him, including claims of inappropriate sexual language and one incident of unwelcome physical contact. He has apologised “for any distress caused” but said the report cleared him of “the most serious and sensational accusations”.
Torode was also dropped as a presenter after he said he was the subject of a substantiated complaint over the use of racist language, which he believes never happened.
A spokesperson for Banijay said: “One other contributor decided that given recent events they would like not to be included. We have of course accepted their wishes and edited them out of the show.”
The series, which began airing last week, was filmed before Wallace and Torode were sacked. The BBC claimed it was “the right thing” to broadcast it, for the amateur chefs that took part.
It had already been forced to edit the programme to reduce the prominence of Wallace and Torode and remove Shafi’s appearance. It has now been edited further to remove another contestant, who has asked not to be identified, according to the BBC.
The BBC is facing fresh criticism on social media about its decision to broadcast the series amid speculation about whether it would continue if more contestants asked to be removed.
In a statement last month, the BBC said: “This has not been an easy decision in the circumstances and we appreciate not everyone will agree with it. In showing the series, which was filmed last year, it in no way diminishes our view of the seriousness of the upheld findings against both presenters. We have been very clear on the standards of behaviour that we expect of those who work at the BBC or on shows made for the BBC.
“However, we believe that broadcasting this series is the right thing to do for these cooks who have given so much to the process. We want them to be properly recognised and give the audience the choice to watch the series.”
Brooklyn Beckham recently renewed his wedding vows with his wife, Nicola Peltz. The ceremony took place in Westchester County, New York, on August 2. While the couple appeared very much in love in the photos, none from the groom’s family attended the event. The news comes amid rumors of a feud between Beckham and his family, especially his parents, David and Victoria Beckham.
As per Rob Shuter’s exclusive #ShuterScoop report, none from the Beckham family attended Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz’s vow renewal ceremony . While “The Last Airbender” star’s family was seen on stage, her husband’s family was nowhere to be seen. The tabloid stated how Beckham has now fully become a part of his wife’s family, with his family skipping his important day.
An insider shared, “Nicola planned every detail herself.” They continued, “Brooklyn’s been fully embraced by the Peltzes — they make sure he knows she’s the star.” The Beckham family prioritizing an Italian holiday over their son’s renewal ceremony has added fuel to the feud buzz. Moreover, they were not even present at the afterparty of the intimate event. While the speculations are never-ending, the Beckhams are yet to address anything, and the reason behind their absence.
Talking about Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz’s remarriage, the ceremony took place at the Peltz family estate. The actor recreated her mother’s 1985 wedding gown paired with a modern corset. On the other hand, the former photographer looked dapper in a black suit over a white shirt. The couple has shared multiple pictures from the ceremony where they are unable to take their eyes off one another.
Beckham also opened up about the ceremony at the Airbnb Originals Experience hosted by him. He told PEOPLE, “It was beautiful. We just wanted a really beautiful experience — a really cute memory.” The 26-year-old continued, “To be honest, I could renew my vows every single day with her. I think the most important thing that someone can do is find that person that they’re going to spend the rest of their life with. It definitely shapes you as a person. Yeah, it was really, really cute. It was really fun.”