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So far, America has remained ahead in the new space race. But its biggest rival is making continual steps to catch up. China announced another step in that direction with the unveiling of its first ever reusable five-meter-wide composite propulsion module, announced in a press release on April 11th.

This social media fad promises to supercharge your sleep and make you healthier than healthy, when in fact it probably does significantly more harm than good.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A major discovery is reshaping how scientists think about catalysts. Researchers have, for the first time, captured oxygen atoms moving through the interior of a catalyst—not just along its surface. This reveals that the bulk material can actively participate in reactions, opening a new frontier in catalyst design. The finding could lead to smarter, more efficient systems by harnessing this hidden internal pathway.

“We are on a slippery slope now: For the first time, the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment to bless a risk of therapeutic harm to children by limiting the State’s ability to regulate medical providers who treat patients with speech.” Justice Jackson, dissenting

The post SCOTUS conversion therapy decision “opens a dangerous can of worms” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Using the eROSITA space telescope, MPE researchers have successfully isolated the X-ray glow from our Solar System, revealing its impact on the soft X-ray sky. The findings, published in Science, underscore the importance of considering Solar System processes when analyzing X-ray data and highlight eROSITA’s role in advancing not only astrophysics but also heliophysics.

A feature length documentary film, released in December 2025, has revived an oft-touted claim of strong evidence of the supernatural. The Case For Miracles1 is based on the 2018 book of the same title by Christian evangelist Lee Strobel.2 Since the film has been criticized for being long on drama and short on evidence, I decided to look for documentation in the book. Unfortunately, when it comes to presenting specific cases of miraculous cures, this is limited to a single chapter, titled “A Tide of Miracles.”3

Among the dramatic cases cited by Strobel is that of a woman identified only as “Barbara” who was suffering from multiple sclerosis to the point that she had been confined to bed for seven years. She heard a voice telling her to rise and walk, which she did. She was sure this was the voice of Jesus. The documentation of this miracle, along with other claims in the chapter, however, is less than impressive, since they all consist entirely of testimonials; nor did the end notes to that chapter provide any medical documentation.4

Among the problems with testimonials as accurate histories are the imprecision of human memory, the tendency of narratives involving storytelling to arise among a group of those witnessing the same event, and bias on the part of witnesses. For example, consider the testimony of Tim Ley and members of his family regarding the appearance of the Phoenix Lights (thought by some to be UFOs) in 1997. He, along with his wife Bobbi, his son Hal, and his grandson Damien Turnidge, initially saw them as five lights in an arc shape. They soon realized the lights were moving toward them. As they did so, over the next ten minutes the lights resolved into a V shape similar to a carpenter’s square, or like two sides of an equilateral triangle. They, like other witnesses, reported a huge object, discernible not only by five lights on its leading edge, but as well because it blotted out stars in the night sky as it passed silently over the city. Soon, the object appeared to be coming right down the street where they lived, only about 100 to 150 feet above them, traveling so slowly it appeared to hover. 

It would appear that much of what witnesses saw resulted from the perceptual centers of their brains automatically filling in the spaces between the lights to create a whole object. 

Fortunately, in addition to the testimony of many witnesses, we have videos taken of the 1997 incident,5 which show a series of lights appearing in the sky, one by one, then winking out one at a time. In one of the videos, the man filming it exclaims, “Another one just showed up!” In that video the first three lights form a line, then a fourth appears in such a position as to make a shallow angle. In another video, this one without sound, one light appears, then another, then more, up to five, then six lights. These are first in shallow “V” shape, then in a more or less straight line. Then the lights wink out, one by one. None of the videos shows a solid V-shaped object blotting out the stars as it moves overhead. In fact, in most of them the lights simply hover, rather than moving in any discernible direction.6 It would appear that much of what witnesses saw resulted from the perceptual centers of their brains automatically filling in the spaces between the lights to create a whole object. 

The images of the lights in these videos support the claim by the Air Force that the “Phoenix Lights” were not alien spaceships but military flares dropped by an Air Force reserve unit on a training mission. These flares are used in combat to illuminate a battlefield at night. As such, they were dropped by parachutes, which allowed them to hover for some time. They were dropped west of the Estrella Mountains, which lie west of Phoenix. They seemed to suddenly wink out as they slowly drifted downward, and their images were blocked by the darkened, hence invisible, mountains. 

More to the point of miracle cures, consider the claim that the Indian mystic and holy man, Sathya Sai Baba, raised a devotee of his, Walter Cowan, from the dead on Christmas 1971. The narrative of this miraculous healing begins with Walter Cowan and his wife Elsie, followers of Sathya Sai Baba, arriving in Madras, India, on December 23, 1971. Walter, an elderly man, suffered a massive heart attack on Christmas Eve and was taken to a hospital, where he died. Then, on Christmas Day, Sai Baba entered the hospital room where Mr. Cowan’s body lay. After a time, he left. Then, friends of Cowan’s arrived and found him alive. This miracle was attested to by a medical doctor, Dr. John Hislop. His wife reported: 

When we reached the hospital with the vibhuti, Mrs. Cowan said, “Walter took a very bad turn just a little while ago. I thought he was dead, and I was terrified. I at once called Baba in a loud voice. Now, Walter seems a little improved. When I called Baba I felt his presence at once.”7

The validity of this dramatic testimony is somewhat undone by Elsie’s statement that she thought her husband was dead and that he was then “a little improved.” In any case, both she, along with Dr. Hislop and his wife, were devotees of Sai Baba, rendering the objectivity of their testimonies suspect. 

Since I wasn’t able to find more rigorous evidence than testimonies in Strobel’s book, I decided to look online for medical reports of miraculous healing, specifically healing attributed to the effect of intercessory prayer. In an article in the medical journal Heliyon from 2023 I found an article titled “The remote intercessory prayer, during the clinical evolution of patients with COVID-19, randomized double-blind clinical trial.”8 The article states the objective of the study as follows: 

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of intercessory prayer performed by a group of spiritual leaders on the health outcomes of hospitalized patients with Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, specifically focusing on mortality and hospitalization rates. Design: This was a double-blinded, controlled, and randomized trial conducted at a private hospital in São Paulo, Brazil. 

Here are the results of the study: 

A total of 199 participants were randomly assigned to the groups. The primary outcome, in-hospital mortality, occurred in 8 out of 100 (8.0 percent) patients in the intercessory prayer group and 8 out of 99 (8.1 percent) patients in the control group […] The study found no evidence of an effect of intercessory prayer on the primary outcome of mortality or on the secondary outcomes of hospitalization time, ICU time, and mechanical ventilation time. 

In another study, doctors measured the healing effects of intercessory prayer on patients recovering from cardiac bypass surgery: 

Patients at 6 U.S. hospitals were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: 604 received intercessory prayer after being informed that they may or may not receive prayer; 597 did not receive intercessory prayer also after being informed that they may or may not receive prayer; and 601 received intercessory prayer after being informed they would receive prayer. Intercessory prayer was provided for 14 days.9

The study yielded the following results and conclusions: 

In the 2 groups uncertain about receiving intercessory prayer, complications occurred in 52 percent (315/6o4) of patients who received intercessory prayer versus 51 percent (304/597) of those who did not […] Complications occurred in 59 percent (352/601) of patients certain of receiving intercessory prayer compared with the 52 percent (315/6o4) of those uncertain of receiving intercessory prayer […] Major events and 30-day mortality were similar across the 3 groups. 

Conclusions: 

Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery […] but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications. 

Another clinical double-blind study gave more positive results,10 in which intercessory prayers were made by a group that did not know the patient for whom they were praying, nor did any of the patients know whether or not they were the subjects of intercessory prayers. The researchers concluded that remote, intercessory prayer was associated with lower CCU scores (a metric used to evaluate severity of cardiac illness), suggesting that prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care. While this study suggested that intercessory prayer aided recovery, the benefits gained were far from dramatic: 

Using the unweighted MAHI-CCU score, which simply counted elements in the original scoring system without assigning point values, the prayer group had 10 percent fewer elements […] than the usual care group. There were no statistically significant differences between groups for any individual component of the MAHI-CCU score. 

While a ten percent improvement sounds good, it hardly equals Strobel’s claimed miracle case of the woman with multiple sclerosis, bedridden for seven years, suddenly walking. 

Effects of emotions or psychological states on the brain … can result in the transmission of healing by way of the nervous system acting on the body through the endocrine system. 

Far more dramatic and positive results occurred in a notable Dutch study on the efficacy of intercessory prayer as an instrument of healing: “A Dutch Study of Remarkable Recoveries After Prayer: How to Deal with Uncertainties of Explanation.”11 The study encompasses in-depth interviews of 14 people selected from a group of 27 cases, which were evaluated by a medical assessment team at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. Each of the participants had experienced a remarkable recovery immediately after, or even during, intercessory prayer sessions. So, is this evidence of miraculous, supernatural healing? Not necessarily. 

The article begins with a description of one of these healings, experienced by a woman named Julia who was diagnosed in 1990 with post-traumatic dystrophy, also known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). She was wheelchair bound due to intense pain. In 2007, after 17 years of suffering, she and her husband took part in a prayer healing session led by a well-known Dutch evangelist. After the session, Julia stood up and started walking without a trace of pain. She was still free of pain 15 years later, when the study was conducted. 

Julia’s CRPS is initially acute pain caused by an injury, that persisted long after the injury was healed. Among the causes of this syndrome are psychological factors and a neurologically triggered autoimmune response.12 In autoimmune disorders, the immune system goes from attacking foreign invaders, such as viruses and bacteria, to attacking the person’s own body. Other patients in the study also suffered from autoimmune disorders. Among these were muscular dystrophy, psoriatic arthritis, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s Disease. Some of the patients also suffered from purely psychological problems, such as anorexia nervosa and alcoholism. 

All of these diseases can be induced by malfunctioning of the nervous system. This is not to say these disorders are all in the patients’ heads. However, the effects of emotions or psychological states on the brain-such as taking part in a prayer session and states of belief-can result in the transmission of healing by way of the nervous system acting on the body through the endocrine system. 

Three other patients suffered from brain injuries or malfunction. One patient had Parkinson’s Disease, which is caused by the failure of certain brain cells to produce dopamine. Another had suffered from a stroke. Another patient suffered from deafness. While the healing of these problems cannot be so simply assigned to the effect of a psychological state on the nervous system and transmission of these effects to the body by way of the endocrine system, they all do involve central nervous system functioning, which could be affected by an induced emotional state. 

Only four of the patients suffered from complaints seemingly separate from the nervous system. One suffered from iatrogenic aortic dissection—an injury or scarring suffered during a surgical procedure, such as the insertion of a stent. This is usually treated with beta blockers. These medications block adrenaline, thus relaxing the heart and easing stress on the aorta. So, a changed psychological state could, likewise ease this stress. 

Another patient suffered from pelvic instability, which often results from pregnancy and is caused by a weakening of the ligaments at the pelvic floor. This is a basin-shaped structure, consisting of the sacrum, pubis, and hip bones, all held together by ligaments. When these ligaments are overstretched or injured, the bones of the pelvic floor move excessively during physical activities, resulting in pain in the groin, hip, or back. This makes even simple activities difficult and painful. This condition is usually treated by various stretching exercises. 

Another patient suffered from drug induced hepatitis. This is inflammation of the liver caused by various medications, treated by simply stopping the use of these medications. Finally, one patient suffered from rotator cuff rupture. While this is caused by traumatic injury, its protracted pain results from inflammation. Thus, just as in Julia’s case, all four of these disorders involve chronic inflammation. 

There are three problems imputing the dramatic healings to divine intervention. One is that they all seem to stem, one way or another, from either chronic pain or nervous system dysfunction. We do not see in them people being healed of drastic infectious diseases, such as COVID-19. Nor do any of them involve permanent remission of metastasizing cancers. 

It is too far a leap to extrapolate divine intervention from a few healings we can’t explain. 

Another problem is that of patient involvement. In both the study involving patients with COVID-19 and the one dealing with patients recovering from cardiac bypass surgery, the intercessory prayers were remote for the purposes of performing objective double-blind studies. Particularly in the case of Julia’s healing, the patients in the Dutch study were actively involved in the prayer sessions, thus clouding any clear evidence of cause and effect. Finally, it is too far a leap to extrapolate divine intervention from a few healings we can’t explain. 

One last problem with seemingly miraculous cures as evidence of the Judeo-Christian God, is that such a deity would seem to be acting in a rather haphazard manner, healing some people here and there, while not bothering to intervene in horrific atrocities, for example, either the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide. In the latter event, the Armenians were targeted specifically because they were Christians.13 Between one and two million of them perished at the hands of the Turks and other of their Muslim neighbors. 

Thus, these now and again, possibly miraculous, healings hardly constitute proof of the God of the Bible.

Experiment with nanodiamonds reveals that they are less rigid than other diamonds, adding to our understanding of how they could be used in new technologies

Water is critical to life because cells need liquid to function. That's why scientists focus on finding and studying exoplanets in habitable zones. But even if they're in habitable zones, exoplanets need lots of water to support their carbon cycles. So without water, exoplanets become inhospitable greenhouse planets, regardless if they're in habitable zones or not.

Filtering a protein that may cause sepsis out from the blood has shown promising signs for improving survival

An injured kea with just half a beak has used what's left as a weapon that gives him dominance over a captive colony of the birds

Just. a quick update on yesterday’s peramublations, which included sightseeing and food.

We’ve rented an Air BnB equivalent in downtown Savannah, and it’s on this lovely tree-lined street:

Only half a block away is Clary’s Cafe, an eatery made famous because it’s in the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a semi-true tale of life and a murder in  Savannah in the 1980s.  I read it before I came here, and it was pretty good.

Here’s Clary’s with an old-time sign. When I went to get coffee at 8 a.m. it was empty, but when we returned at 10 a.m. there was a 25-minute wait. The cafe became a lot more popular after it was featured in the novel as well as in the eponymous film directed by Clint Eastwood. From Wikipedia:

The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt, described Clary’s as “a clearinghouse of information, a bourse of gossip,” where he came to know the characters who would animate his narrative.  James Gandolfini made an uncredited appearance as the cook in the two scenes filmed at the cafe.

A photograph of the cast hangs inside the restaurant, featuring Alison Eastwood (who plays Mandy), her father, Clint Eastwood (director), The Lady Chablis, John Cusack (John Kelso), Kevin Spacey (Jim Williams) and Jack Thompson (Sonny Seiler).

The unprepossessing interior, which does serve up good food.

Since one of my goals here is to eat as much Southern food as I can, I had that classic staple for breakfast: biscuits in sausage gravy. Very filling–and good.

And I decided to have dessert as well: bread pudding. (Do not food shame me! I don’t eat like this all the time!)

In the afternoon we spent walking around the Wormsloe Historic Site, From Wikipedia:

The Wormsloe State Historic Site, originally known as Wormsloe Plantation, is a state historic site near Savannah, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. The site consists of 822 acres (3.33 km2), protecting part of what was once the Wormsloe Plantation, a large estate established by one of the founders of colonial Georgia, Noble Jones. The site includes a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) dirt road lined with southern live oaks, the ruins of a small house with fortified walls built of tabby, a museum, and an area with recreations of colonial structures such as a blacksmithing forge and a house similar to those first built in the colony of Georgia (or as housing for enslaved people).

It was atmospheric even though not many of the original structures remain. Here’s part of the long and famous alley of live oaks. I love the Spanish Moss, which for some reason doesn’t seem to hang on the palm trees. Perhaps a botanical reader knows the reason.

I’m visiting with my oldest friends Tim and Betsy, whom I stay with when I go back to Cambridge, MA.  I’ve known Tim since 1967 when we lived in the same dorm at William and Mary; Betsy arrived as a transfer student two years later.

Here are the remains of Noble Jones’s house, a fortified structure built in 1745 not only as a home, but to withstand attacks by the Spanish and to monitor traffic passing through the narrows of the adjacent Skidaway River.  The walls were built of “tabby,” an early form of cement made of equal volumes of water, sand, lime, and ground oyster shells. (The shells were obtained from copious Native American middens.)

And after considerable discussion in the morning, we decided to have dinner at a place of great repute—the Driftaway Cafe, known for its seafood and excellent cooking. And yes, it lived up to its reputation.

As soon as I saw shrimp and grits on the menu, I wanted it. I asked the waiter if the portion was large, as I was famished, and she replied, “Yes, it’s very big.” And it was: a huge bowl of grits made with four types of cheese, loaded with plump fresh shrimp, and studded with bacon bits. I could barely finish it (washed down with sweet tea, of course), and I was glad I didn’t order the fried green tomatoes (another Southern dish) as an appetizer. All evening long I would groan sporadically, “Oy, am I full!”

This was by far the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever had: a Platonic dish!

New missions mean new capabilities - and one particularly interesting new mission is finally up and running. Data is starting to come in from SPHEREx, the medium-class surveyor that is mapping the entire sky every six months. A paper based on some of that early data was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal, mapping ice and compounds called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) throughout some interesting regions of our Milky Way.

A traditional vaccine primes the immune system to build better defences. Researchers think we can do something similar to increase our resilience to the pressures and worries of life

Stress is linked to many of our biggest killers, but a growing body of research suggests that certain types can sharpen the mind and strengthen the body. Here’s how to find your perfect dose

“I’m stressed” is a phrase that many of us use, but now there are ways to shed light on how stressed you actually are

Regeneration is one of the futuristic tropes of science-fiction, because it is both incredibly powerful and not theoretically impossible. Imagine the ability to regrow a lost limb, or simply to replace a diseased or worn out limb. There are about a million limb amputations worldwide every year, so it is a very common medical problem. What if we could regenerate organs? This would be a game-changer for medicine.

There are several approaches to addressing missing limbs or failing organs. One is the cyborg approach – make a mechanical version to replace the biological one. We are making progress here, with brain machine interfaces, mechanical hearts, and other advances. Or you could transplant the body part from another person, or even an animal that has been genetically modified to be compatible. You can also regrow the missing or failing body part from the intended recipient’s own tissues and then transplant that. Or you could inject stem cells programed to regrow the needed part inside the recipient. All of these options are active research programs, have shown some incredible promise, but are also years or even decades away, especially in their mature form.

Let’s now add one more technology to the list – genetic therapy that triggers natural regeneration, meaning from the person’s own tissue. This has long been a target of potential therapy, inspired by the fact that there are many animals that can already naturally do this. Most extreme is the axolotl (a type of salamander that for some reason has become very population with the young generation), which can regenerate just about any of its body parts. They form a blastoma of pluripotent stem cells at the site of injury that can quickly regrow into a missing limb, heart, spinal cord, parts of the brain, etc. in weeks. There are also zebrafish, which can regrow their tail fins. Mice can also regrow missing digits, which is important because they are mammals showing that regeneration can happen even within the mammal clade. You don’t have to be a salamander.

The amazing regenerating ability of the axolotls was first documented in 1768. Molecular and genetic studies of the regeneration process go back to the end of the 20th century. But now with modern genetics tools, like CRISPR, genetic research is really taking off. A recent study tried to find if there were any genetic similarities in the regeneration abilities of axolotls, zebrafish, and mice. If these three animals share the same genetic basis of their regeneration that this would suggest that these genetic abilities are highly conserved, all the way from fish to mammals. This would be good for the prospects of regeneration in humans, because we would likely share some of these same highly conserved genetic infrastructure. As you may have guessed, these researchers hit pay dirt (which is why I am writing about this today). They found that they shared SP6 and SP8 transcription factors. They confirmed the relevance of these factors by making knockout mice missing SP6 and SP8, which impaired their ability to regenerate lost digits. Knocking out sp8 in the axolotl also impaired their ability to regenerate – so the same factor seems critical for both species.

They then took a factor from the zebrafish which has been shown to enhance regeneration – FGF8, whose gene is normally turned on by SP8. Replacing the missing FGF8 then partially restored the regeneration ability of mice missing SP6 and SP8.

Do humans have SP6 and SP8 genes? Yes, we do. Again, these are highly conserved genes with basic biological function. They are the Specificity Protein family of genes that are involved in regulating the development of limbs, teeth, skin, and even organs. That is essentially how development works – there is a suite of genes with all the information to make, for example, a human arm (or a bird’s wing, or a the antenna of a moth). This suite of genes is turned on by a regulatory gene, that essentially says – build an arm here. Regeneration in a creature like the axolotl essentially involved going back to this developmental stage, creating a blob of stem cells, and then saying – build a limb here.

Obviously this entire process is more complicated than just tweaking one gene or replacing one missing factor. It is very complex. Humans form scar tissue to repair a wound, they do not form a blastema. This is partly driven by differences in the availability and sensing of oxygen in the tissues. Further, scar formation is driven by the immune reaction, involving macrophages, which are actively suppressed in salamanders. And finally, the reason we do not already have the ability for unlimited regeneration, is that there is a tradeoff between regenerative ability and cancer suppression. It is likely that our ancestors sacrificed regenerative abilities for cancer suppression mechanisms – this was the best evolutionary tradeoff. In other words – we simply went down a different evolutionary path than the axolotl. Gaining the ability to regenerate limbs or organs would therefore probably involve a complex coordination of multiple factors, while simultaneously preventing cancer formation.

Interestingly, at present there is nothing we know that would make it theoretically impossible to have full regeneration in humans. However, it is extremely complex. It is the perfect sci-fi technology – possible, but likely only in the distant future. I suspect it will take decades to perfect this technology.

The post The Prospect of Regenerating Limbs first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

I was pretty much spot on about predicting when Vashti and Armon’s brood would hatch. I guessed Saturday or Sunday and, sure enough, some time between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Sunday, a brood of eight was seen in Botany Pond.  I wasn’t there, but my colleague Peggy Mason, neuroscientist and member of Team Duck, spotted them.

Sadly, one duckling was “off,” and couldn’t swim or hold its head up. It got stuck in the drain, and then in the rocks, and finally expired. Peggy removed the little carcass from the pond and we were all very sad.

The good news is that we’re left with seven healthy ducklings, whose first job was a swimming tour of the pond behind Vashti to get their bearings (they do learn the layout of Botany Pond within a day, as they’re smart as well as cute).

Vashti is a good mom, even trying to help the “off” duckling by nudging it, but she couldn’t help it.  She’s very solicitous towards the ducklings, and Armon stays nearby but doesn’t bother them.

Two members of Team Duck will be feeding them and looking out for them until my return. Everybody got fed yesterday (tiny pellets for the ducklings), though it’s not clear that the ducklings ate, as they survive on the remaining yolk in their bellies during their first day on the water. They will be fed twice a day.

And so, here are Vashti and her hard-won brood of seven; all photos by Peggy Mason. I am jealous as I was not there to see Hatch Day.

Vashti and the Magnificent Seven:

They are of course heavily imprinted on Mom and stay very close to her.

I was glad to see that they all made it onto the rocks and then from the rocks to the ground, where they huddled under Vashti to get warm as well as to get coated in her feather oil, which waterproofs them until they’re old enough to produce their own

Huddling under Mom.  I hope they all make it to fledging!  But Vashti has proven to be a good mom.

Pushing against years of scepticism, an analysis suggests quantum computers may offer real advantages for running machine learning and similar algorithms in the near future

AI-powered personas are becoming so realistic that they can infiltrate online communities and subtly steer public opinion. Unlike traditional bots, they adapt, coordinate, and refine their messaging at a massive scale, creating a false sense of consensus. Early warning signs—like deepfakes and fake news networks—have already appeared in global elections. Researchers warn that the next election could be the true test of this technology’s power.

Although some of the criticisms of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s MAHA movement are spot on, why did KevinMD platform a functional medicine quack to make them?

The post KevinMD platforms criticism of MAHA by a “functional medicine” practitioner first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.