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Blood Test Could Predict Risk of Leukemia Years in Advance – SciTechDaily

Posted: July 27, 2022 at 11:53 am

According to a new study, a blood test could predict the risk of developing leukemia years in advance.

By identifying changes in blood cell production, a blood test could predict the risk of developing leukemia in the elderly population years in advance, according to new research.

Experts say that identifying those most at risk should make it possible to provide preventive or early treatment in the future to improve patient outcomes.

Leukemia is often caused by the disruption of the delicate balance in blood cell production where new cells are manufactured and old blood cells die.

Mutations in blood stem cells as we age can mean that the altered cells can have a growth benefit over other blood cells and outnumber them in what is referred to as fitness advantage.

Scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow investigated how changes in fitness advantage that occur in blood production might provide clues to the risk of developing leukemia depending on the type of mutation that occurs.

We measured changes in the blood samples of 83 older individuals of the Lothian Birth Cohorts, taken every three years over a 12-year period. Using the combined knowledge of mathematicians, biologists, and genome scientists, we set out to understand what these changes mean for our risk of developing leukemia as we grow older, said Dr. Tamir Chandra, a chancellors fellow at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh.

The Lothian Birth Cohorts 1921 and 1936 are longitudinal studies of brain, cognitive and general aging which have followed up individuals every 3 years between the ages of 70 and 82 for the 1921 cohort and the ages of 79 to 92 for 1936.

The research team then combined these complex genomic data with a machine-learning algorithm to link different mutations with different growth speeds of blood stem cells carrying these mutations.

They discovered that specific mutations give distinct fitness advantages to stem cells measured in people without leukemia, which can then be used to forecast how quickly the mutated cells will grow, and therefore determine leukemia risk.

According to the scientists, further research is needed to validate these results in a larger population due to the limited sample size in the current study.

Dr. Kristina Kirschner, co-lead author and Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgows Institute of Cancer Sciences, said: In knowing an individual patients risk of developing leukemia, clinicians can schedule shorter gaps between appointments in those most likely to develop the disease and provide early treatment, which is more likely to be successful.

Dr. Linus Schumacher, co-lead author and Chancellors Fellow at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine of the University of Edinburgh, said: To understand leukemia risk, we need to consider the balance between the different cells involved in blood cell production and how this balance changes as we grow older. By linking genomic data with machine learning we have been able to predict the future behavior of blood cells based on the mutations they develop.

Reference: Longitudinal dynamics of clonal hematopoiesis identifies gene-specific fitness effects by Neil A. Robertson, Eric Latorre-Crespo, Maria Terradas-Terradas, Jorge Lemos-Portela, Alison C. Purcell, Benjamin J. Livesey, Robert F. Hillary, Lee Murphy, Angie Fawkes, Louise MacGillivray, Mhairi Copland, Riccardo E. Marioni, Joseph A. Marsh, Sarah E. Harris, Simon R. Cox, Ian J. Deary, Linus J. Schumacher, Kristina Kirschner and Tamir Chandra, 4 July 2022, Nature Medicine.DOI: 10.1038/s41591-022-01883-3

These findings have been published in the journal Nature Medicine. This research was funded by the Medical Research Council, Leukemia UK, and Cancer Research UK.

The Lothian Birth Cohort receives funding from Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, Age UK, Wellcome, the Royal Society, the Medical Research Council and the University of Edinburgh.

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COVID-19 Can Make the Brain Age by 2 Decades; Here’s 1 Way to Reverse Aging – The Epoch Times

Posted: at 11:53 am

A new British study found that the original SARS-CoV-2 virus (i.e. Wuhan strain) can impair cognitive ability in a way equivalent to making the brain age by two decades. Currently, 67 percent of the worlds population has been vaccinated against the COVID-19 pandemic. Is it possible that the vaccines themselves can also cause aging damage?

Nevertheless, theres no need to worry, aging is proven to be a process, and there is a way to help reverse the aging process.

The study was published in the journal EClinicalMedicine. Experts from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London Medical School evaluated the cognitive effects of the COVID-19 infection in humans.

The research subjects consisted of COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized for severe illness between March and July 2020.

After these patients recovery from acute infection, the researchers conducted follow-up visits for an average of six months to analyze and evaluate their anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. The researchers discovered a significant decline in the patients attention, complex problem solving skills, and memory, along with reduced accuracy, and prolonged reaction time.

These cognitive deficits are similar to the cognitive decline a person would experience between the ages of 50 to 70, which is equivalent to aging by two decades and losing 10 IQ points.

In addition, the recovery of cognitive ability is very slow in patients with COVID-19 infections.

Why does COVID-19 infection cause abnormal aging? Lets first take a look at one concept.

The relationship between genes and epigenetics are like seeds and soil. Genes are like seeds, while epigenetics is like soil. Genes in the human body do not usually change after birth. They are like seeds that lie dormant in the soil, and some will grow, and some will not. What determines whether these seeds will grow or not are the genetic switches, or epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of these factors that affect genes being turned on or off. Specifically, one common type of gene switchDNA methylationcan change the expression of genes, shutting them down and making them non-functional. Methylation is a somewhat complex biochemical process in the body, the important thing to remember is that it is one of the ways epigenetic takes place and a process by which genes get turned on and off.

As a result of DNA methylation, there are variations in whether the same genes can be expressed in different organs and at different ages, and the amount of expression.

Cells become senescent as we age. That means they stop dividing and enter a kind of stasis. Instead of dying off as they normally would, they persist, but change shape and size andsecrete inflammatory molecules that cause other nearby cells to become senescent.

In an article published in Nature Reviews Genetics, Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics and biostatistician at the University of California Los Angeles, concluded that as people age and have more senescent cells, there are characteristic changes in the methylation status of human DNA.

Human beings experience birth, aging, illness, and death, which is now discovered by our scientists to be controlled by our internal epigenetic clock. This is similar to the observations that everything in our universe has its cycle of formation, stasis, degeneration, and destruction.

Professor Horvath summarized the DNA methylation profiles associated with aging in an epigenetic clock of aging. While our years on Earth are are chronological age, how we live and inherent factors affect how long we will actually live, which is our biological age, or the age of our body. Biological ages can be estimated by using the methylation profiles of aging-related genes. In other words, scientists can focus in on genes linked to aging and then look at how those genes are methylating and from this gauge how far along the person is in that process of degeneration and death. These genetic focal points were carefully selected by scientists, independent of gender, body part, comorbidities, and other factors. And the results have been highly accurate, with a precision of over 95 percent in gauging a persons biological age.

Humans have a normal aging methylation curve. If a persons DNA methylation is above the curve, he or she will age faster than his or her peers; if it is below the curve, he or she will appear younger than his or her peers.

So, what factors can accelerate aging, i.e. epigenetic clock of aging?

A study conducted in Belgium was published in 2018 in the journal Aging. It found that the following factors accelerate epigenetic aging in humans:

This makes us wonder if COVID-19 infection can accelerate the epigenetic aging clock.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications answers this question. The study collected blood samples from 232 healthy individuals, 194 non-severe COVID-19 patients and 213 severe COVID-19 patients for DNA methylation analysis and found that the epigenetic age of COVID-19 patients was significantly accelerated.

In addition, the epigenetic age acceleration in COVID-19 patients is related to the stage of the disease. The age acceleration is fastest during the acute inflammatory phase, when the body and the virus are in intense combat; and it is slightly reversed during the recovery phase.

Even after the infection is over, many people still have symptoms of long COVID. Is this related to the aging caused by COVID-19?

Epigenetic aging is seen in the graying of hair and loosening of teeth. However, on a cellular level, cells in the human body also gradually age.

Cellular senescence refers to a state of cell cycle arrest when cells are stressed, as well as the secretion of various inflammatory cytokines at the same time. In a paper published in Nature Aging, a Japanese research team stated that senescent cells do not die immediately, but instead, they spread inflammatory cytokines to nearby uninfected cells, causing more cells to senesce as well.

So, what are the effects of cellular senescence on our health?

Cellular senescence plays an important role in many age-related diseases, such as degenerative diseases of the nerves, eyes, lungs, and heart.

The aforementioned study was conducted prior to the Omicron variant outbreak, and the Omicron variant is clearly less pathogenic than the old strain. In fact, some of the mutation sites of the Omicron variant counteracted the factors that caused cellular senescence. It is estimated that Omicron causes significantly less accelerated senescence or sequelae than the old strain.

However, the vaccines we are currently administering are still developed using the spike proteins of the old strain of early 2020, so is there a risk of accelerated aging?

The COVID-19 vaccines mainly express spike proteins in the human body. In a study published in the Journal of Virology in 2021, researchers from Saint Louis University in Missouri transfected spike proteins of the old strain into cells in vitro. It was later discovered that a large number of cellular senescence markers (including specific cytokines, interleukins, and specific enzymes, etc) were found in the spike-transfected cells, compared to the control group.

In addition, the spike proteins increase inflammatory factors, cause mitochondrial damage, produce misfolded proteins, and cause genomic instability, all of which accelerate cellular aging.

Reversing aging sounds like a dream come true for everyone. We have already understood so many mechanisms related to aging, so is it possible to find a way to slow down or even reverse aging?

In fact, our daily diet, work habits, and lifestyle all affect the epigenetic aging clock. For instance, during high-temperature cooking, red meat produces glycosylated end products, which are associated with cellular aging; poultry and fish are relatively healthy; and the vitamins in fruits and vegetables help keep cells young, which can help slow down or reverse the aging clock.

In addition, an article published in 2017 in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, American and French scholars investigated whether or not sitting in meditation affects the epigenetic aging clock.

The studys subjects were 18 individuals who had been meditating for at least 10 years and meditated for at least 30 minutes a day, and 20 non-meditators. They were divided into two groups: under and over 52 years of age, respectively. The researchers measured the DNA methylation in their blood cells for estimation of their epigenetic aging acceleration.

The results showed that the epigenetic aging acceleration increased in elderly non-meditators, while the acceleration in elderly meditators was more similar to that of younger people and was not affected by the epigenetic aging effect.

Gene expression is also associated with changes in our appearance, so meditators appear younger than their actual age. Furthermore, meditators also have younger brains.

The University of California Los Angeles and the Australian National University jointly published a study in 2016 in the journal NeuroImage. The studys subjects were 250 meditators and 50 non-meditators, both groups with an average age of 51.4 years.

The researchers analyzed and compared the brain ages of the two groups and found that the brain age of the meditators was younger than their actual age. For instance, 50-year-old meditators had the same brain age as a 42.5-year-old non-meditator, while 60-year-old meditators had the same brain age as the 51-year-old non-meditators in the control group.

Interestingly, for the meditators over 50, each additional year of their actual age would make their brain age one month and 22 days younger than their actual age.

In summary, damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 to the human body speeds up the human epigenetic clock of aging and dumbs down the brain. Vaccines based on the old strains in 2020 may also harm the human body in this regard.

At least 67 percent of the worlds people have now been vaccinated; will people in the future get older more quickly? No. It is too early to conclude anything based on cellular data alone rather than human studies. However, the cellular data is a clear reminder for us to take precautions to prevent this.

Meanwhile, it is quite worrisome that when we discussed this topic during a Health 1+1 live broadcast on July 12 2022, quite a few audience members had commented that they themselves or their friends or relatives had become obviously older after receiving the jabs.

The good news is that aging is a long process. During this process, for example, we can develop the habits of healthy living, including eating well, exercising,and daily meditation, which can help slow down or even reverse the aging process, and furthermore bring us various positive health benefits, which will be detailed in future articles.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.

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Dietary regulation in health and disease | Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy – Nature.com

Posted: at 11:53 am

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Kallyope and Brightseed Enter Collaboration to Identify and Validate Novel Plant-Based Bioactives – Business Wire

Posted: at 11:53 am

NEW YORK & SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kallyope, a leading biotechnology company focused on identifying and developing therapeutics targeting the gut-brain axis, and Brightseed, creators of Forager, a pioneering artificial intelligence platform that illuminates the connections between nature and human health, have entered a strategic research collaboration to screen plant compounds to identify and validate active agents that can be further derived into potential therapeutics targeting weight loss management and glucose control.

Brightseeds Forager is building the worlds largest library of small molecule bioactive compounds mapped to human biological targets. The research collaboration will leverage Brightseeds novel insights on bioactives and the Kallyope Klarity platform, comprising the worlds broadest set of integrated end-to-end capabilities to further unlock gut and brain biology and the gut-brain axis. Should early-stage research result in the identification of any lead compounds candidates, Kallyope has rights to derivatize and develop therapeutics in humans while Kallyope and Brightseed will share rights to consumer applications of identified compounds.

This collaboration brings together two leading, diverse technological platforms and teams for the discovery of novel consumer products that may have therapeutic benefits for Type 2 diabetes and obesity, said Jay Galeota, president and CEO, Kallyope. We are excited to have the opportunity to work with Brightseed, whose capabilities are highly synergistic with our lead metabolism therapeutics program and deep drug discovery and development expertise. This partnership is also consistent with our strategy to leverage our platform via collaborations in non-core areas that broaden our impact on public health.

Kallyope and Brightseed scientists will initially collaborate to leverage validated biology for the discovery of lead plant-derived compounds that may modulate body weight and glucose control. The teams will then iterate on the lead and determine optimal plant sources of compounds using their sophisticated computational platform.

Seventy-five percent of our current healthcare spending in the U.S. goes towards treating chronic health conditions that severely impair the quality of life of millions of people. We need to reimagine more scalable approaches to combat the scourge of diet-induced chronic conditions, said Jim Flatt, co-founder and CEO, Brightseed. Kallyope is one of the visionary pharmaceutical companies that recognize the need to develop health products that can prevent or reduce the risk of certain chronic diseases. Historically, nature has provided the majority of small molecules that are used to inform our medicines. In partnership with Kallyopes high value gut-brain axis biological targets and technology platform, we will discover the next generation of natural bioactives to improve health and reduce the incidence of diet-related chronic disease.

About Bioactives

Bioactives are small molecule compounds produced by plants, fungi, and microbes that grow in and adapt to environments that present a wide range of challenges to their survival. Bioactives also benefit the health of humans they are the enlivening caffeine in tea, the powerful antioxidant lycopene in tomatoes, and they inform active ingredients in medicines like Taxol, Aspirin, and Metformin, a first-line treatment for Type 2 diabetes, derived from the French lilac flower. Science has long known that bioactives are critical to human health, yet the vast majority remain unknown and uncharted. Brightseeds A.I., Forager, discovers bioactives in nature and maps them to human health outcomes at a rate and accuracy that was previously impossible.

About Kallyope

Kallyope, headquartered at the Alexandria Center for Life Science in New York City, is a biotechnology company dedicated to unlocking the therapeutic potential of the gut-brain axis. The companys cross-disciplinary team integrates advanced technologies in sequencing, bioinformatics, neural imaging, cellular and molecular biology, and human genetics to provide an understanding of gut-brain biology that leads to transformational therapeutics to improve human health. The companys founders are Charles Zuker, Ph.D., Lasker Award winner Tom Maniatis, Ph.D., and Nobel laureate Richard Axel, M.D. For more information visit http://www.kallyope.com.

About Brightseed

Brightseed illuminates nature to restore human health. Brightseeds Forager is a pioneering computational platform and A.I. that discovers and maps the bioactive compounds in nature and understands which of them have the greatest impact on human health. Discoveries undergo safety and regulatory review, clinical evaluation, and commercial development to deliver powerful, natural health solutions. To date, Forager has mapped more than 2 million plant compounds, and Brightseed is working with brands and organizations that impact the health of millions of people every day. Interested organizations can contact Brightseed by visiting https://brightseedbio.com/partner.

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When does life begin? Here are five critical points in a pregnancy and the misconceptions surrounding them – Genetic Literacy Project

Posted: at 11:53 am

Like most aspects of biology, early human development involves many complex processes. Despite the rhetoric around these issues, clear lines between having a heart and not having a heart or being able to survive outside of the uterus are scarce, or nonexistent.

There arent these set black-and-white points for much of this, says obstetrician-gynecologist Nisha Verma, a fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Washington, D.C.

Heres whats known about five key aspects of pregnancy biology that often come up in abortion debates.

Thats because how dates are determined is supremely confusing. The standard pregnancy clock actually starts ticking before a sperm cell encounters an egg, two weeks before, on average.

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A Texas law bans abortions after detection of an unborn childs heartbeat. But the rhythmic sounds heard on an ultrasound early in pregnancy arent caused by the opening and closing of heart valves as they move blood through the hearts chambers, the motion that produces a typicallub dubsound. Thats because those chambers havent yet developed. On early ultrasounds, the heartbeat-like sounds are created by the ultrasound machine itself.

The word viability is often used as a sharp cut-off point to mark the age at which a fetus could survive outside of the uterus. The problem is that one clear cut-off does not exist.

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NASA’s Lunar Orbiter spots comfortably warm ‘pits’ all over the Moon – The Register

Posted: at 11:49 am

Data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has led scientists to conclude that the Moon hosts around 200 "pits" that offer stable and human-friendly temperatures.

The pits "always hover around a comfortable 63F/17C, NASA stated on Wednesday.

A steady 17C contrasts markedly with the rest of the Moon's surface, which fluctuates between 127C/260F to -173C/-280F across a full Lunar day.

Coping with those temperatures vastly complicates lunar exploration, for machines and humans.

Warm spots on the Moon are therefore hot property.

Since the discovery of pits on the Moon by JAXA's SELENE spacecraft in 2009, there has been interest in whether they provide access to caves that could be explored by rovers and astronauts, wrote researchers who published information on the pits in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The paper's three authors, UCLA professor of planetary science David Paige, Paul Hayne of the University of Colorado Boulder, and UCLA researcher Tyler Horvath, used data from The Diviner instrument onboard the LRO, which had monitored temps on the lunar surface for more than 11 years.

The researchers focused on a mostly cylindrical pit inside Mare Tranquillitatis, the same region visited by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, as its thermal environment was more hospitable than any other place on the lunar surface.

The group ran time-dependent 2-D and 3-D models using the data to understand the geometry and heat transfer that could lead to the elevated temperatures.

The researchers concluded that the temperature inside the pit was not only a comfortable temperature, it was very possibly attached to a cave that would also have a similar stable environment.

The Mare Tranquillitatis pit crater. Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. Click to enlarge.

If a cave extends from a pit such as this, it too would maintain this comfortable temperature throughout its length, varying by less than 1C over an entire lunar day, wrote the researchers, who hypothesized the pit and others like it were created by the ceiling of a collapsed cave.

For long term colonization and exploration of the Moon, pits may provide a desirable habitat: they are largely free from the constant threats of harmful radiation, impacts, and extreme temperatures, wrote the researchers. Thus, pits and caves may offer greater mission safety than other potential base station locales, providing a valuable stepping stone for sustaining human life beyond Earth.

Better still, the boffins have spotted many pits on the Moons nearside, a location that offers the chance for direct-to-Earth communications.

NASA is returning to the Moon with commercial and international partners to both further scientific knowledge and expand human presence in space.

The space orgs Artemis program aims to take humans to the lunar south pole by 2025 in the first crewed lunar landing since 1972s Apollo 17.

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Will 3D Printing Be Used for the First Commercial Mission to Mars? – 3Dnatives

Posted: at 11:49 am

If you have been following along for a while, you certainly know that additive manufacturing is playing an important role in the aerospace sector and especially in space travel. Already it is being used for applications in missions to both Mars and the moon and now there is another we can add to the list. Impulse Space and Relativity Space have announced the first commercial mission to Mars where Relativitys 3D printed launch vehicle, Terran R will be used to deliver Impulses Mars Cruise Vehicle and Mars Lander. The companies note that they hope the partnership will help to rapidly advance their shared goal of a multiplanetary existence for humanity.

Relativity Space is one of the leading companies using additive manufacturing for space travel. They are especially known for their Terran R which is the first entirely 3D printed rocket in the world. Though the Terran R is not expected to launch from Cape Canaveral, FL until 2024, already its younger, partially 3D printed sibling Terra 1 is undergoing testing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The company strongly believes in using 3D printing as a way to make more innovative, optimized rockets for cheaper, allowing for lower-cost space travel.

The Terran 1 (left) and Terran R (right) side by side (photo credits: Relativity Space)

As fellow commercial providers working on more affordable space travel, the partnership between Impulse and Relativity is a logical one. Under the deal, Relativity will launch Impulses Mars Cruise Vehicle and Mars Lander in Terran R from Cape Canaveral, FL until 2029. By working together, the two companies hope to overcome the difficulties in landing on Mars as well as enable research and development on the surface which will help build toward humanitys multiplanetary future. This mission will be the first commercial flight to Mars, a huge step forward for the industry, though it should be noted that commercial launches are already underway through companies like SpaceX for travel to the moon.

The Importance of 3D Printing for Multiplanetary Existence and Travel to Mars

The idea of multiplanetary existence is one that has been around since humanity achieved space flight in the 60s. Whether through speculation over whether other species might be alive somewhere else in the galaxy or if it would be possible for humans to live on another planet, as a species we are consistently fascinated with the idea of space colonization. But it is an idea that is increasingly coming closer to fruition at least partly thanks to 3D printing. In this latest case, Relativitys 3D printed rockets are helping pave the way for Impulse to explore Mars in the coming years.

Though it may seem that the traditional methods of constructing rockets may be preferable, additive manufacturing actually has a number of benefits that are enabling this impressive feat. In order to travel to Mars, rocket designs need to be more complicated in order to include an aeroshell for the necessary glide stage before landing. The more intricate a design, the harder it is to make using traditional methods, whereas additive manufacturing is often used for more optimized, geometrically complex parts. Not to mention, additive manufacturing should enable cheaper production of rockets faster and more efficiently, both key factors in space travel.

Tim Ellis, Cofounder and CEO of Relativity concluded, We believe building a multiplanetary future on Mars is only possible if we inspire dozens to hundreds of companies to work toward a singular goal. This is a monumental challenge, but one that successfully achieved will expand the possibilities for human experience in our lifetime across two planets. With the delivery capabilities of Terran R coupled with Impulses in-space transportation, we are bringing humanity one step closer to making Mars a reality. This is a historic, impactful partnership with Tom and the entire Impulse team through the collaboration of two low-cost commercial providers that will establish and expand our presence on Mars.You can find out more about the mission in Impulse Spaces press release HERE.

What do you think of Relativity Space and Impulse Spaces announcement for the first commercial mission to Mars? Do you think 3D printing is playing a critical role in the future of space travel? Let us know in a comment below or on ourLinkedIn,Facebook,andTwitterpages! Dont forget to sign up for our free weeklyNewsletter here, the latest 3D printing news straight to your inbox! You can also find all our videos on ourYouTubechannel.

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Abe Leaves Behind Complex Legacy in Japan’s Neighborhood – The Diplomat

Posted: at 11:49 am

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The assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, as widely reported, caused a ripple of sadness in public opinion internationally. It also invited thinking into the legacy of Japans longest-serving prime minister. The overwhelming opinion both in Japan and internationally is that Abe, who held the prime ministers office twice in the past two decades, first in 2006-7 and then from 2012 to 2020 succeeded in bringing his country to a prominent position on the global stage.

Considered an astute practitioner of diplomacy, Abe was respected in the West for playing a seminal role in expanding Japans role including its military role as a more forward-leaning defender of the liberal order. The academic journal Telos, well known for its New Left theoretical leanings, has described Abes assassination as an incredible loss for Japan and for the rest of the world.

However, given the Japanese militarys recent history of brutal attacks and war crimes beginning in the late 19th century in China and in the first half of the 20th century in both Korea and China there have been mixed reactions to the assassination and Abes legacy in China and South Korea. In both China and South Korea, public reactions to Abes gruesome killing were heavily marked by the word but. As one Chinese commentator noted, No doubt Abe, especially during his first term as prime minister, did a few things beneficial to China-Japan relations but overall, he was a far-right, staunch anti-China politician.

While far-away foreign leaders rushed to send their sympathies as soon as the news of the brutal killing of Abe spread, Chinese President Xi Jinping and incumbent South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol reacted relatively slowly. While the two leaders did maintain diplomatic protocols, they took time in conveying condolences and personal sympathies to the aggrieved family. Similarly, while some of Japans closest allies and partner countries observed one day of flying national flags at half-staff to honor the assassinated global statesman, those reactions were starkly at variance in Japans two closest neighboring countries.

Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific.

The lack of reverence for the late prime minister was a reflection of Abes having repeatedly angered the Chinese and Korean people with his visits six in total to Yasukuni Shrine.

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The shrine honors Japanese war dead including 14 designated war criminals and the affiliated museum glorifies the Japanese militarys actions during World War II. Conservative, right-wing Japanese politicians visits to the shrine are perceived in China and the two Koreas as glorifying Japans war of aggression. A visit to Yasukuni Shrine also serves the purpose of reminding China and the Koreas that Japan continues to be proud of its colonial past.

Abes Relations With South Korea

Just as President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol was preparing to send a goodwill delegation to Tokyo in late April, indicative of a potential turnaround and departure from the outgoing anti-Japan Moon Jae-in government, Abe paid a visit to Yakusuni Shrine. At the time, Abe was out of office yet remained the most influential voice in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The Korean government expressed regret over the provocative move and urged Japans responsible figures to face up to history and show humble and genuine reflection on history with appropriate actions.

On three contentious issues the people of Korea feel most sensitive about Koreans forced into labor by Japan during the war, Korean women coerced into sexual slavery as comfort women, and Japans adamant, rigid defense of distortion of history in its textbooks Abe unabashedly downplayed the Korean sentiments. While he was prime minister, he not only downplayed the extent to which Japan used Koreans as enslaved labor, but he even suggested that the Japanese colonization helped modernize the Korean Peninsula. Additionally, throughout his tenure, his government denied Japan had forcibly recruited Korean (and other) comfort women or that they were sex slaves.

As a sign of how strongly the Korean people feel about this issue, it is important to recall that, since 1992, a crowd has gathered once every week in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, demanding that the government in Tokyo acknowledge that the imperial Japanese military forced Korean women into sexual enslavement during World War II.

Chinas Relationship With Abe

Abe was even more disliked in China than in South Korea. As mentioned, the Abe governments policy of denying Imperial Japans war crimes and refusal to acknowledge the forced recruitment of comfort women and enslavement of hundreds and thousands of Asian men as slave labor caused fury in China as well, as many Chinese were also victims.

Moreover, owing to the century-old feud between China and Japan, few Chinese people felt deeply sad about Abes murder. Some Chinese social media users even welcomed the news of his death with open joy.

However, what did not get mentioned in the international press is that some Chinese intellectuals also cited the Confucian classic Book of Rites and asked fellow citizens to view Abes death with rationality. Furthermore, the news of Japan-based Chinese reporter Zeng Ying crying bitterly while breaking the news of Abes assassination was widely circulated in the Chinese media even though some harshly criticized her for it on Weibo, Chinas largest social media, calling her unpatriotic.

Nevertheless, people in China, in general, are not in mourning over Abes killing, and they rationalize it for the following reasons. First, as one Chinese commentator pointed out, the joy of [some] Chinese toward Abes death shows their true feelings about Japan.

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More specific to Abe personally, he was known to most Chinese as a far-right nationalist closely connected with the Japanese ruling class remilitarization drive. As prime minister, Abe not only did not apologize for Japans war of aggression against China, but he also downplayed the Nanjing Massacre, or Rape of Nanjing (1937-38), when Japanese soldiers rampaged for over a month and a half through the then-Chinese capital city, killing an estimated 300,000 Chinese.

For many Chinese, though, more than Abes defense of Imperial Japans military brutalities, his more recent anti-China belligerence was a cause for concern. Abe challenged the One China policy by working to increase ties with Taiwan and suggesting Japan would become involved in any cross-strait conflict. He advocated introducing U.S. nuclear weapons to Japan in order to thwart the threat posed by China. He also exerted all efforts to achieve constitutional reform in the Diet, including establishing the legality of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and the eventual abolition of Article 9, in order to more aggressively coordinate with U.S. war preparations targeting China. While Abe did not succeed at this last point during his tenure, the current government is well-positioned to achieve his dream.

To conclude, Seoul now has a newly elected leader willing to put aside past acrimony toward Tokyo and keen to join a Japan-South Korea-U.S. security alliance aimed at containing China. Yet Abes strain of historical revisionism could still scuttle that. The South Korean government is not willing to interfere in the lawsuit filed against Japanese companies by Koreas wartime forced laborers, as Japan is demanding.

On the other hand, the majority of Japanese affairs specialists in China believe Abes passing away will further strengthen the conservative trend in Japanese politics. Pointing out that since stepping down in late 2020 Abe proactively continued his belligerent attitude toward China, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) researcher L Yaodong pointed out that Abes visit to Nara [the city near Osaka where he was fatally shot] was to promote the ruling Liberal Democratic Partys constitutional revision program.

After Abes death, some in China might have been quiet simply out of cultural etiquette, recalling the ancient saying: When there is a funeral in the neighborhood, dont sing work songs when pounding rice, and dont sing in the alleys. But there is no denying that in China and South Korea, Abes death evoked little sympathy or empathy for a leader the whole world is eulogizing.

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This Might Be the Weirdest-Looking Rocket We’ve Ever Seen – Futurism

Posted: at 11:42 am

Earlier this month, a Romanian rocket startup called ARCA Space showed off one of the strangest rocket designs we've ever seen. Adding to the general sense of eccentricity hovering over the project, it says the venture will be funded by selling crypto tokens that can later be exchanged for ore that we're serious, this is the pitch it'll obtain via asteroid mining.

We should emphasize that the concept, dubbed the EcoRocket Heavy, looks extremely peculiar. It's powered by steam and stuffed to the gills with boosters, making it technically wider than it is tall,which gives the impression of a large, lumpy wedding cake, or possibly an art deco skyscraper (in ARCA's vision, an attached spacecraft dubbed the AMi Cargo will take care of the asteroid mining).

In short, it looks like something you'd see dreamed up by a teenager on Kerbal Space Program.

In the space community, the response was swift and brutal.

"This is possibly the dumbest space thing I've ever seen, and that's saying something," Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger tweeted.

"ARCA Space just revealed the updated concept for EcoRocket Heavy and I'll certainly be having nightmares about it for months," another user noted.

Another simply exclaimed: "wtf."

We were curious how ARCA Space founder Dumitru Popescu felt about that type of feedback. But in an interview, he remained steadfast.

"Each time you propose an innovative design, you should definitely expect people's reaction to be, let's say reserved," he told Futurism.

"I mean, if you if you see a car with five wheels, your reaction will not be necessarily positive," he added.

ARCA does have at least a little bit of experience. It's successfully launched two partially reusable and steam-powered rockets into the stratosphere so far albeit a far shot from orbit.

It's also worth noting that it was awarded a contract by the European Space Agencyto develop a parachute system for the agency's ExoMars spacecraft. The spacecraft didn't make it, however, and crashed on the Martian surface in 2016,with ARCA taking some of the heat.

The company has an extremely colorful history. In 2015, for instance, it racked up headlines for a battery-powered hoverboard that never appears to have materialized.

Other adventures have been less lighthearted. Popescu was arrested and jailed in New Mexico back in 2017 on 13 counts of fraud, five counts of embezzlement, and one count of forgery.

In a 2018 video posted to Facebook, Popescu claimed the arrest was the result of his second ex-wife and a former ARCA board director who had colluded against him. Prosecutors later dropped the charges against him although not before Popescu fired his attorney and represented himself in court.

The company even alluded to the arrest in a new white paper about the asteroid mining plans, writing that the story "sounds pretty unbelievable, but unfortunately it is true" in an eyebrow-raising footnote.

In the same footnote, Popescu went as far as to say that his time incarcerated was "one of the best things that ever happened to me," because it gave him "time to think and focus on how I'm going to restart ARCA," with "only $300."

His arrest, despite "being very difficult" for him, "was also a good experience," because it made him reevaluate his approach to rocketry, Popescu told Futurism.

As laid out in the white paper, ARCA's EcoRocket Heavy would be made up of a dizzying number of "Propulsion Modules" 540 total, spread out across several levels that, once put together, form an awkward stack that's much wider at the bottom than the top.

That means the rocket is girthy as hell, measuring some 113 feet across at the base, which is an ungainly four times the width of SpaceX's Starship.

The rationale behind this strange design? It'll save money that would otherwise be spent on a large crane.

"Of course, the taller the rocket, the larger the crane," the white paper reads. "And when we looked at Starship/Super Heavy that is using these insanely tall cranes, it was clear for us that this must be avoided by all means, because the rental or manufacturing of those cranes is seriously expensive."

"It absolutely is a unique design, which came from some constraints," Popescu told Futurism, noting that working on a single body requires "a lot of supporting equipment."

Popescu also said that "we are not actually the first to propose this idea," pointing to German rocket maker OTRAG. That company, which went defunct in 1987, similarly suggested using mass-produced units spread out across several stages to launch heavy payloads into orbit in the 1970s.

The idea was tested at several German and African test sites, with rockets reaching suborbital altitudes on at least 14 occasions before the company shut down.

Popescu also said that simulations showed the extremely wide structure of the EcoRocket Heavy had a surprisingly low drag penalty.

But as YouTuber and rocket scientist Scott Manley explained in a 2020 video about OTRAG, the German company's designs "always seemed to come out below what was required," adding that there were some substantial "technical challenges."

For instance, "clustering all these units together would be a slow task because they would have to get them perfectly aligned if there was any skew any twists they would pick up roll."

Both OTRAG and ARCA Space aimed to greatly reduce the amount of money it cost to launch payloads into orbit. But ARCA took the idea even further, focusing its efforts on using water a resource that's orders of magnitude cheaper than liquid or solid rocket propellants as a way to get its giant rocket off the ground.

To that end, the EcoRocket's name suggests that it was designed with the environment in mind,but Popescu said that wasn't the original intent.

"Actually, I need to admit that the first drive for us to build the EcoRocket was not actually the pursuit of the ecological aspect," Popescu told Futurism, adding that it was actually "cost reduction."

The EcoRocket Heavy's first two stages use steam from heated water to create thrust which has turned out to be a bit of a headache for ARCA.

The team quickly noticed that steam performed significantly worse than other "polluting or toxic propellants," according to Popescu.

Launching heavy payloads using steam alone clearly wasn't going to work.

"And at some point, honestly, we were thinking, 'Okay, this is not going anywhere,'" he said. "'This is a dumb idea.'"

That's when the team decided to have only the upper stages use polluting fuels a hydrogen peroxide mix that includes kerosene to give payloads the extra lift they need to enter orbit once past the atmosphere.

Besides, in Popescu's thinking, once the rocket blasts past the stratosphere, who cares about expelling pollutants into outer space?

In short, the EcoRocket is a gargantuan construction made up of hundreds of hot water tanks a comparison Popescu agreed was accurate enough with a couple of traditional rocket stages mixed in.

"We traded basically the performance for cost reduction and environment protection," Popescu told Futurism, something the company sees as "a fair trade."

Tradeoffs aside, does ARCA's vision actually amount to a rocket that can perform in the real world, nevermind reach a distant asteroid?

ARCA is betting big, promising that its EcoRocket Heavy will be "the heaviest and has the highest thrust compared to any other vehicle ever built," according to the company's website. "It also promises the lowest cost/kg ever recorded."

Of course, that all relies on the company managing to raise a planned $73 million by selling crypto investors on the idea of mining asteroids for resources.

ARCA is planning to kick off its token sale in August, which in the year 2022 should give anybody pause following an endless list of scams luring victims into first buying tokens, promising various benefits or returns, and then pulling the rug from underneath them.

Popescu insists that the math checks out, though. He says thatlaunching an asteroid mining mission will cost "in the range of $100 million"in a "very high risk, but also high reward initiative," which is something that would scare away "classic investors."

That's why ARCA Space turned to crowdfunding, he said, since individual investors wouldn't be asked to contribute "big amounts of money."

To succeed, the company would have to generate immense interest, raise a ton of money, launch a massive rocket for pennies on the dollar, find a resource-rich asteroid, extract its precious resources, and safely bring back the spoils.

And that's not even mentioning the intricacies of international space law, which could undermine such pursuits before they even get off the ground.

"Good luck, I guess?" Berger offered in a recent Ars post about the venture and, indeed, they'll certainly need it.

More on super heavy rockets: SpaceX Finally Lifts Super Heavy Booster Using Giant Robot Arms

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Gigabit Networks brings futuristic broadband to Wolverhampton – ComputerWeekly.com

Posted: at 11:42 am

After claiming to have successfully launched no less than a digital revolution in neighbouring Coventry and Derby, Gigabit Networks is bringing its ultra-high speed 930Mbps broadband service to Wolverhampton, claiming a marked improvement on the citys current average speeds of 87Mbps.

Based in the city of Leicester, the regional provider has a mission to empower the Midlands with faster, future-proofed, ultra-reliable internet connectivity, and wants to bring more opportunities for growth, business, community and investment to the region. It argues that its service area has not yet experienced the endless possibilities that come with gigabit-capable PureFibre broadband as the cabling and infrastructure simply hasnt existed.

Theregional providersaid that partnering with carrier-neutral wholesale full-fibre provider CityFibre has allowed it to improve local infrastructure and bridge the UKs digital divide by giving the people of the Midlands the internet speeds and reliability they deserve.

The company also said that by rolling out near-gigabit broadband services it is satisfying demand. It cited recent research, which suggested that by 2023, the average UK household will have 50 smart devices online and competing for bandwidth, putting a strain on household broadband.

It added that in March 2021, the median average download speed of UK home broadband connections was a mere 50.4 Mbps, and that the roll-out will see residents and businesses in nine postcode areas in Wolverhampton making the most of this ultrafast technology to seamlessly stream HD TV, download large files, and participate in video calls more quickly and reliably than ever before.

The turbulent nature of the past two years has proven the need for reliable internet connection and speed we continue to seek entertainment, social connection and education online, saidGigabit Networks co-founder David Yates.

Now, the cost-of-living crisis is showing that people need more room to innovate and generate multiple streams of income the best way to do this is through the internet. Wolverhampton is now in an exciting position where it can leverage these exclusive speeds to generate more opportunities for the city.

Adding further context to what the roll-out could achieve, the company offered the example of local resident Shiv Passap, who was one of the first to have the new service live in his home. I recently had GigaFast Pro installed into my home in Wolverhampton, he said.

Since being connected, I have experienced exceptional performance in speed and reliability. As a homeworker, it is paramount that I can access data instantly, make landline calls away from home and stream effortlessly throughout the day all of which is now possible and more with the help of Gigabit Networks.

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