Orion helium leak no threat to Artemis II reentry but will require redesign

Orion helium leak no threat to Artemis II reentry but will require redesign

fivenewscrypto    avril 11, 2026   

Apart from pesky issues with the spacecraft's toilet and waste disposal system, most of the Artemis II mission has proceeded like clockwork. NASA has made few changes to the flight plan since the launch of the lunar flyby mission on April 1.

But ground controllers revamped the timeline Wednesday as the Artemis II astronauts zoomed toward Earth after a close encounter with the Moon earlier this week. The four astronauts were supposed to take manual control of their Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, for a piloting demonstration Wednesday night.

Instead, mission managers canceled the demo to make time for an additional test of the ship's propulsion system. The goal was to gather data on a "small leak" of helium gas, which Orion uses to push propellant through a series of tanks and pipes to feed the spacecraft's rocket engines, said Jeff Radigan, NASA's lead flight director for the Artemis II mission.

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RFK Jr. rewrites CDC panel's charter, opening door to anti-vaccine quacks

RFK Jr. rewrites CDC panel's charter, opening door to anti-vaccine quacks

fivenewscrypto    avril 11, 2026   

As expected, anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has significantly rewritten the charter for a federal vaccine advisory panel. The edits give him more power to appoint his like-minded allies as federal advisors, shift the panel's focus to alleged vaccine injuries and risks, and welcome fringe groups and anti-vaccine organizations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Monday, a notice in the Federal Register indicated Kennedy renewed the charter for the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which is done every two years, with the last term having ended April 1. But instead of the usual humdrum renewal process, the notice on Monday indicated big changes were coming to the defining document of the panel, which heavily influences federal vaccine policy that, in turn, influences state requirements and insurance coverage.

The new charter, published Thursday, reveals new responsibilities that redirect advisors toward topics and terms dear to anti-vaccine activists. For instance, ACIP members will now be responsible for "considering analysis of cumulative effects of vaccines and their constituent components." This wording echoes explicit goals of Kennedy's anti-vaccine allies, who aim to pin complex conditions—such as allergies, autism, and neurodevelopmental conditions—on combinations of vaccinations or common ingredients in those shots, such as aluminum adjuvants. This is a pivot from anti-vaccine activists' earlier attacks that focused on individual vaccines, such as the false, fraudulent claim that the measles vaccine is linked to autism—a claim that has been roundly debunked by dozens of high-quality studies.

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AI on the couch: Anthropic gives Claude 20 hours of psychiatry

AI on the couch: Anthropic gives Claude 20 hours of psychiatry

fivenewscrypto    avril 11, 2026   

The AI company Anthropic released a 244-page "system card" (PDF) this week describing its newest model, Claude Mythos. The model is "our most capable frontier model to date," the company says, and supposedly is so good that Anthropic has decided "not to make it generally available." (The company claims that Mythos is too good at finding unknown cybersecurity bugs, and so the model is only being released to select companies like Microsoft and Apple for now.)

Whatever the truth of this claim, the system card is a fascinating document. Anthropic is well-known as one of the more "AI might be conscious!" companies in the industry, and its new system card claims that as models become more powerful, "It becomes increasingly likely that they have some form of experience, interests, or welfare that matters intrinsically in the way that human experience and interests do."

The company isn't sure about this, it makes clear, but it says that "our concern is growing over time."

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Clinical trial shows gene editing works for β-Thalassaemia, too

Clinical trial shows gene editing works for β-Thalassaemia, too

fivenewscrypto    avril 10, 2026   

Almost as soon as researchers started exploring the capabilities of the CRISPR/Cas9 system, they recognized its potential use in targeted gene editing. But the intervening decades have seen slow progress as people worked to determine how to do so in a way that would be safe for use in humans. It was only a little over two years ago, decades after CRISPR's discovery, that the FDA approved the first CRISPR-based therapy, for sickle-cell anemia.

Now, following up on that success, a large Chinese collaboration has followed up with a description of an improved gene editing system that produces more focused changes and fewer mistakes. And they've used it to produce a therapy that addresses a disease that's closely related to sickle-cell anemia: β-Thalassaemia.

Gene editing and its limits

The CRISPR/Cas-9 system provides bacteria with a form of immunity. It uses specially structured RNAs (called guide RNAs) that can base-pair with a targeted sequence. The Cas-9 protein then recognizes this structure and cuts the DNA nearby. This is quite effective when the guide RNA can base-pair with a DNA virus, as the resulting cut will inactivate the virus.

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“Negative” views of Broadcom driving thousands of VMware migrations, rival says

“Negative” views of Broadcom driving thousands of VMware migrations, rival says

fivenewscrypto    avril 10, 2026   

Amid customer dissatisfaction around Broadcom's VMware takeover, rivals have been trying to lure customers from the leading virtualization firm. One of VMware's biggest competitors, Nutanix, claims to have swiped tens of thousands of VMware customers.

Speaking at a press briefing at Nutanix’s .NEXT conference in Chicago this week, Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami said that “about 30,000 customers” have migrated from VMware to the rival platform, pointing to customer disapproval over Broadcom’s VMware strategy, SDxCentral, a London-based IT publication, reported today.

“I think there's no doubt that the customer sentiment continues to be negative about Broadcom,” Ramaswami said, per SDxCentral.

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Ugandan chimps split into two factions, then killed rivals

Ugandan chimps split into two factions, then killed rivals

fivenewscrypto    avril 10, 2026   

In the 1970s, the late Jane Goodall observed a community of chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, breaking into two factions; the males in one group ended up killing all the males in the rival group over the next four years, along with one female chimp. But the case was considered an anomaly, although there is genetic evidence suggesting this kind of split is a rare event occurring every 500 years or so. Now researchers have observed the largest known community of Ngogo chimpanzees in Uganda also permanently splitting into two rival groups with a similar outbreak of violence, according to a new paper published in the journal Science.

"What's especially striking is that the chimpanzees are killing former group members," said co-author Aaron Sandel, an anthropologist at the University of Texas, Austin. "The new group identities are overriding cooperative relationships that had existed for years. I would caution against anyone calling this a civil war. But the polarization and collective violence that we have observed with these chimpanzees may give us insight into our own species."

The authors analyzed 24 years' worth of data from social networks, 10 years of GPS tracking, and 30 years of demographic data on the Ngogo chimps in Uganda's Kibale National Park. They identified three distinct phases to the split. First there was an abrupt shift as chimp relationships became polarized into two distinct clusters: Western and Central. The chimps then spent the next two years increasingly avoiding those in their rival cluster; there were very few interactions across clusters, and Western male chimps started patrolling their territory, showing increased aggression toward Central males. By 2018, the fissure had become permanent.

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The gravity of their experience hasn't quite set in for the Artemis II astronauts

The gravity of their experience hasn't quite set in for the Artemis II astronauts

fivenewscrypto    avril 10, 2026   

On the home stretch of their nine-day mission, the four astronauts flying aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft are just beginning to reflect on their experience of flying beyond the Moon.

Their memories of Monday's encounter with the Moon are still fresh as they return to Earth, heading for reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Friday evening.

"I'm actually getting chills right now just thinking about it. My palms are sweating," said Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II mission. "But it is amazing to watch your home planet disappear behind the Moon. You can see the atmosphere. You could actually see the terrain on the Moon projected across the Earth as the Earth was eclipsing behind the Moon. It was just an unbelievable sight, and then it was gone. It was out of sight."

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