Day: August 19, 2023

An “abnormal situation” occurred at Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft Saturday as it was preparing to transfer to its pre-landing orbit, Russia’s national space agency Roskosmos said. 

The Russian spacecraft is scheduled to land on the south pole of the moon Monday, part of a big power race to explore a part of the moon that scientists think might hold frozen water and precious elements. 

“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” Roskosmos said in a short statement. 

Specialists are analyzing the situation, it said, without providing further details. 

Images of moon’s craters

Earlier, Roskosmos said it had received the first results from the Luna-25 mission and that they were being analyzed. 

The agency also posted images of the moon’s Zeeman crater taken from the spacecraft. The crater is the third deepest in the moon’s southern hemisphere, it said, measuring 190 kilometers (118 miles) in diameter and eight kilometers (five miles) in depth. 

Roskosmos said data it had received so far had provided information about the chemical elements in the lunar soil and would also facilitate the operation of devices designed to study the near-surface of the moon. 

It added that its equipment had registered “the event of a micrometeorite impact.” 

Craft enters moon’s orbit

The Luna-25 entered the moon’s orbit Wednesday, the first Russian spacecraft to do so since 1976. 

Roughly the size of a small car, it will aim to operate for a year on the south pole, where scientists at NASA and other space agencies in recent years have detected traces of frozen water in the craters. 

The presence of water has implications for major space powers, potentially allowing longer human sojourns on the moon that would enable the mining of lunar resources. 
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Phil Durst recalled clawing at his face after a chemical from a commercial dishwashing machine squirted into his eyes, causing “the most indescribable pain I’ve ever felt — ever, ever, ever.”

His left eye bore the brunt of the 2017 work accident, which stole his vision, left him unable to tolerate light and triggered four to five cluster headaches a day.

Then he underwent an experimental procedure that aims to treat severe injuries in one eye with stem cells from the other.

“I went from completely blind with debilitating headaches and pondering if I could go another day — like really thinking I can’t do this anymore” — to seeing well enough to drive and emerging from dark places literally and figuratively, he said, choking up.

The 51-year-old from Homewood, Alabama, was one of four patients to get stem cell transplants as part of the first U.S. study to test the technique, which could someday help thousands. Although additional treatment is sometimes needed, experts say stem cell transplant offers hope to people with few if any other options.

Results of the early-stage research were published Friday in the journal Science Advances, and a larger study is now underway.

The procedure is designed to treat “limbal stem cell deficiency,” a corneal disorder that can occur after chemical burns and other eye injuries. Patients without limbal cells, which are essential for replenishing and maintaining the cornea’s outermost layer, can’t undergo corneal transplants that are commonly used to improve vision.

Dr. Ula Jurkunas, an ophthalmologist at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston who was the principal investigator for the study, said the experimental technique involves taking a small biopsy of stem cells from the healthy eye, then expanding and growing them on a graft in a lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

A couple of weeks later, they’re sent back to be transplanted into the injured eye. Durst was the first patient to undergo the procedure.

“The great part of it is that we’re using a patient’s own tissue,” not donor tissue the body might reject, Jurkunas said.

She said this method is better than a different procedure that takes a very large piece of stem cells from a healthy eye for use on an injured eye — but risks damaging the good eye.

Both of Durst’s eyes were hurt in the accident, which happened while the former chemical company manager was visiting a client having problems with the dishwashing machine. For six to eight months, his overall vision was so bad his wife or son had to lead him around. But his right eye was less injured than his left and could provide stem cells for the transplant.

Jurkunas, who is also affiliated with Harvard Medical School, said Durst’s 2018 surgery was the culmination of almost two decades of research, “so we felt immense happiness and excitement to finally do it.”

All patients in the study saw their cornea surfaces restored. Durst and another patient were then able to get transplants of artificial corneas, while two others reported much-improved vision with the stem cell transplant alone. A fifth patient didn’t get the procedure because the stem cells weren’t able to adequately expand.

At this point, Durst said, the vision in his right eye is nearly perfect but the vision in his left eye is blurry; he’s scheduled for a different procedure in September to address that.

Jurkunas estimates about 1,000 people in the United States per year could potentially benefit from this sort of stem cell transplant, which has also been studied in Japan.

“There’s definitely an unmet clinical need for this effort — there’s no question,” said Dr. Tueng Shen, an ophthalmology professor at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research. She added that doctors currently have no reliable source of cultivated limbal stem cells.

Researchers are finalizing the next phase of the clinical trial, which includes 15 patients. One is Nick Kharufeh, whose left eye was injured in 2020. He was watching fireworks being set off in the street when a spark hit his eyeball.

Kharufeh moved from California to Boston to take part in the study, and the 26-year-old real estate agent can see well enough to fly a small plane.

Although he’s given up on plans of becoming a commercial pilot, “I still fly whenever I get back to California. I love it,” he said. “I’m just really thankful that they gave me the opportunity to be part of the trial because it’s really helped me out.”
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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he will visit the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant on Sunday before setting a release date for its treated radioactive wastewater, as his government continues working to promote understanding over the controversial plan at home and abroad.

“The government has reached the final stage where we should make a decision,” Kishida told reporters in Washington on Friday after wrapping up his summit with U.S. and South Korean leaders at the American presidential retreat of Camp David.

Since the government announced the release plan two years ago, it has faced strong opposition from Japanese fishing organizations, which worry about further damage to the reputation of their seafood as they struggle to recover from the accident. Groups in South Korea and China have also raised concerns, turning it into a political and diplomatic issue.

The government and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., say the water must be removed to make room for the plant’s decommissioning and to prevent accidental leaks from the tanks because much of the water is still contaminated and needs further treatment.

The release “cannot be postponed,” Kishida said.

Japan has obtained support from the International Atomic Energy Agency to improve transparency and credibility and to ensure the plan by TEPCO meets international safety standards. The government has also stepped up a campaign promoting the plan’s safety at home and through diplomatic channels.

IAEA, in a final report in July, concluded that the TEPCO plan, if conducted strictly as designed, will cause negligible impact on the environment and human health, encouraging Japan to move ahead.

While seeking understanding from the fishing community, the government has also worked to explain the plan to South Korea to keep the issue from interfering with their relationship-building. Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are working to bolster trilateral ties in the face of growing Chinese and North Korean threats.

Kishida said the outreach efforts have made progress, but he did not mention a starting date for the water release, which is widely expected to be at the end of August. He said the decision will factor in safety preparations and measures for possible reputation damage on the fisheries. Japanese media reports say his ministers will decide the date at a meeting next week.

“Before making a final decision, I want to have a firsthand look on the ground and see if utmost safety measures are taken for the release, and if everyone involved is committed with a strong sense of responsibility for the project,” Kishida said.

He added that he wants to make sure TEPCO executives share a strong commitment to the plant’s decommissioning and Fukushima’s recovery.

A massive March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt and contaminating their cooling water, which has since leaked continuously into reactor basements and mixed with groundwater. The water is collected, filtered and stored in around 1,000 tanks, which will reach their capacity in early 2024.

The water is being treated with what’s called an Advanced Liquid Processing System, which can reduce the amounts of more than 60 selected radionuclides to government-set releasable levels, except for tritium, which the government and TEPCO say is safe for humans if consumed in small amounts.

Scientists generally agree that the environmental impact of the treated wastewater would be negligible, but some call for more attention to dozens of low-dose radionuclides that remain in it, saying data on their long-term effects on the environment and marine life are insufficient and the water requires close scrutiny.
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A British nurse who described herself as a “horrible evil person” was found guilty on Friday of murdering seven newborn babies and trying to kill another six in the neonatal unit of a hospital in northwest England where she worked.

Lucy Letby, 33, was convicted of killing five baby boys and two baby girls at the Countess of Chester hospital and attacking other newborns, often while working night shifts, in 2015 and 2016.

The verdict, following a harrowing 10-month trial at Manchester Crown Court, makes Letby Britain’s most prolific serial child killer in modern history, local media said.

She was found not guilty of two attempted murders while the jury, who spent 110 hours deliberating, were unable to agree on six other suspected attacks.

“We are heartbroken, devastated, angry and feel numb, we may never truly know why this happened,” the families of Letby’s victims said in a statement.

Prosecutors told the jury Letby poisoned some of her infant victims by injecting them with insulin, while others were injected with air or force-fed milk, sometimes involving multiple attacks before they died.

“I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them,” said a handwritten note found by police officers who searched her home after she was arrested. “I am a horrible evil person,” she wrote. “I AM EVIL I DID THIS.”

Some of those she attacked were twins — in one case she murdered both siblings, in two instances she killed one but failed in her attempts to murder the other.

The youngest victim was just 1 day old.

‘Malevolent presence’

Letby will be sentenced on Monday and faces a lengthy prison term, possibly a rare full life sentence.

Her actions came to light when senior doctors became concerned at the number of unexplained deaths and collapses at the neonatal unit, where premature or sick babies are treated, over 18 months from January 2015.

With doctors unable to find a medical reason, police were called in. After a lengthy investigation, Letby, who had been involved in the care of the babies, was pinpointed as the “constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse,” said prosecutor Nick Johnson.

Pictures of Letby on social media portrayed a happy and smiling woman with a busy social life, and in one photo she was seen cradling a baby. But, during months of often distressing evidence, her trial heard she was a determined killer.

The jury was told how Letby had tried on four occasions to murder one baby girl before she finally succeeded. When another of the victim’s mothers walked in on her attacking twin babies, she said “Trust me, I’m a nurse.”

At her home after her arrest, detectives found paperwork and medical notes with references to the children involved in the case. She had also carried out social media searches for the parents and families of the murdered babies.

Letby wept when she gave evidence over 14 days, saying she had never tried to hurt the babies and had only ever wanted to care for them, blaming unsafe staffing levels on the hospital ward and its dirty conditions.

She also claimed four doctors had conspired to pin the blame on her for the unit’s failings and said she had written the “I am evil” message because she had felt overwhelmed.

‘They could have stopped it’

But the prosecution said she was a cold, cruel, calculating liar who had repeatedly changed her account of events and said her notes should be treated as a confession.

Detectives said they had found nothing unusual about Letby’s life and could not determine any motive.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever know unless she just chooses to tell us,” said Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, who led the investigation.

One senior doctor at the neonatal unit, Stephen Brearey, told the BBC that hospital bosses had failed to investigate allegations against Letby and failed to act on his and his colleagues’ concerns.

“Our staff are devastated by what has happened, and we are committed to ensuring that lessons continue to be learned,” said Nigel Scawn, medical director at Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

The government said it had ordered an independent inquiry, which would include how concerns raised by clinicians were dealt with.

The father of twins who survived Letby’s attempts to kill the children demanded answers from the hospital.

“They could have stopped it,” said the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Police are carrying out further investigations into all the time Letby had worked as a nurse at the hospital and at another hospital in Liverpool where she had trained, to identify if there were any more victims.

“There is a number of cases that are active investigations that parents have been informed of,” Hughes said.
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