The Nobel Prize in chemistry is being awarded Wednesday, a day after two artificial intelligence pioneers won the physics award. The Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is set to announce the chemistry prize late morning. Last year, the award went to three scientists for their work on quantum dots — tiny particles just a few nanometers in diameter that can release very bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging. Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the physics prize. The awards continue with the literature prize on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14. The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton have been awarded Nobel Prize in Physics “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences made the decision them, according toa post on the verified Facebook page of the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize in physics is being awarded, a day after 2 Americans won the medicine prize John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning. Hopfield created a structure that can store and reconstruct information. Hinton invented a method that can independently discover properties in data and which has become important for the large artificial neural networks now in use, the post said. Nobel Prize in medicine honors American duo for their discovery of microRNA Although computers cannot think, they can currently simulate capabilities like memory and learning. The 2024 Nobel Prize laureates in physics have made this feasible. They created technologies that process information using network architectures by using fundamental physics principles and procedures. The Nobel Prize in medicine opens 6 days of award announcements

Humanity is hitting the upper limit of life expectancy, according to a new study. Advances in medical technology and genetic research — not to mention larger numbers of people making it to age 100 — are not translating into marked jumps in lifespan overall, according to researchers who found shrinking longevity increases in countries with the longest-living populations. “We have to recognize there’s a limit” and perhaps reassess assumptions about when people should retire and how much money they’ll need to live out their lives, said S. Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois-Chicago researcher who was lead author of the study published Monday by the journal Nature Aging. Mark Hayward, a University of Texas researcher not involved in the study, called it “a valuable addition to the mortality literature.” “We are reaching a plateau” in life expectancy, he agreed. It’s always possible some breakthrough could push survival to greater heights, “but we don’t have that now,” Hayward said. What is life expectancy? Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, assuming death rates at that time hold constant. It is one of the world’s most important health measures, but it is also imperfect: It is a snapshot estimate that cannot account for deadly pandemics, miracle cures or other unforeseen developments that might kill or save millions of people. In the new research, Olshansky and his research partners tracked life expectancy estimates for the years 1990 to 2019, drawn from a database administered by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. The researchers focused on eight of the places in the world where people live the longest — Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland. The U.S. doesn’t even rank in the top 40. But is also was included “because we live here” and because of past, bold estimates that life expectancy in the U.S. might surge dramatically in this century, Olshansky said. Who lives the longest? Women continue to live longer than men and life expectancy improvements are still occurring — but at a slowing pace, the researchers found. In 1990, the average amount of improvement was about 2 1/2 years per decade. In the 2010s, it was 1 1/2 years — and almost zero in the U.S. The U.S. is more problematic because it is harder hit by a range of issues that kill people even before they hit old age, including drug overdoses, shootings, obesity and inequities that make it hard for some people to get sufficient medical care. But in one calculation, the researchers estimated what would happen in all nine places if all deaths before age 50 were eliminated. The increase at best was still only 1 1/2 years, Olshansky said. Eileen Crimmins, a University of Southern California gerontology expert, said in an email that she agrees with the study’s findings. She added: “For me personally, the most important issue is the dismal and declining relative position of the United States.” Why life expectancy may not be able to rise foreverThe study suggests that there’s a limit to how long most people live, and we’ve about hit it, Olshansky said. “We’re squeezing less and less life out of these life-extending technologies. And the reason is, aging gets in the way,” he said. It may seem common to hear of a person living to 100 — former U.S. President Jimmy Carter hit that milestone last week. In 2019, a little over 2% of Americans made it to 100, compared with about 5% in Japan and 9% in Hong Kong, Olshansky said. It’s likely that the ranks of centenarians will grow in the decades ahead, experts say, but that’s because of population growth. The percentage of people hitting 100 will remain limited, likely with fewer than 15% of women and 5% of men making it that long in most countries, Olshansky said.

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams will make history by casting her vote in the upcoming US Presidential election while aboard the International Space Station (ISS), over 400 kilometres above Earth. Currently serving as the commander of the ISS, Williams will exercise her democratic right through a process that has been in place since 1997, when the Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing NASA astronauts to vote from space. She will join a select group of space-based voters, including David Wolf, who was the first American to vote from space while aboard the Mir Space Station, and Kate Rubins, who cast her vote from the ISS during the 2020 US elections. Williams, following a similar procedure to other US citizens voting from abroad, will begin by completing a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot. Once received, she will fill out the electronic ballot on the ISS’s computer system, utilising NASA’s advanced Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) Program. The completed ballot will be transmitted through NASA’s Near Space Network, using the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. From space, it will be sent to a ground antenna at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, before being securely transferred to the Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The encrypted ballot will then be sent to the appropriate county clerk for processing. Only Williams and the county clerk will have access to the ballot, ensuring its integrity and security. The process underscores NASA’s commitment to enabling its astronauts to remain connected to their civic responsibilities despite the challenges of long-duration spaceflight. It also demonstrates the capabilities of NASA’s cutting-edge communication technologies, which support this remarkable feat of long-distance democracy. The upcoming US Presidential election is set to feature incumbent Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris as the primary candidates. As Williams prepares to participate from space, her actions serve as a reminder of the importance of democratic participation, even from the most extraordinary locations.

SpaceX launched a rescue mission for the two stuck astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday, sending up a downsized crew to bring them home but not until next year. The capsule rocketed into orbit to fetch the test pilots whose Boeing spacecraft returned to Earth empty earlier this month because of safety concerns. The switch in rides left it to NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov to retrieve Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Since NASA rotates space station crews approximately every six months, this newly launched flight with two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams won’t return until late February. Officials said there wasn’t a way to bring them back earlier on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions. By the time they return, the pair will have logged more than eight months in space. They expected to be gone just a week when they signed up for Boeing’s first astronaut flight that launched in June. NASA ultimately decided that Boeing’s Starliner was too risky after a cascade of thruster troubles and helium leaks marred its trip to the orbiting complex. The space agency cut two astronauts from this SpaceX launch to make room on the return leg for Wilmore and Williams. Williams has since been promoted to commander of the space station, which will soon be back to its normal population of seven. Once Hague and Gorbunov arrive this weekend, four astronauts living there since March can leave in their own SpaceX capsule. Their homecoming was delayed a month by Starliner's turmoil. Hague noted before the flight that change is the one constant in human spaceflight. “There’s always something that is changing. Maybe this time it’s been a little more visible to the public,” he said. Hague was thrust into the commander’s job for the rescue mission based on his experience and handling of a launch emergency six years ago. The Russian rocket failed shortly after liftoff, and the capsule carrying him and a cosmonaut catapulted off the top to safety. Rookie NASA astronaut Zena Cardman and veteran space flier Stephanie Wilson were pulled from this flight after NASA opted to go with SpaceX to bring the stuck astronauts home. The space agency said both would be eligible to fly on future missions. Gorbunov remained under an exchange agreement between NASA and the Russian Space Agency. “I don’t know exactly when my launch to space will be, but I know that I will get there," Cardman said from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where she took part in the launch livestream. Wilson joined her there for the early afternoon liftoff. Moments before liftoff, Hague paid tribute to his two colleagues left behind: “Unbreakable. We did it together.” Once in orbit, he called it a ”sweet ride" and thanked everyone who made it possible. Earlier, Hague acknowledged the challenges of launching with half a crew and returning with two astronauts trained on another spacecraft. “We’ve got a dynamic challenge ahead of us,” Hague said after arriving from Houston last weekend. “We know each other and we’re professionals and we step up and do what’s asked of us.” SpaceX has long been the leader in NASA’s commercial crew program, established as the space shuttles were retiring more than a decade ago. SpaceX beat Boeing in delivering astronauts to the space station in 2020 and it’s now up to 10 crew flights for NASA. Boeing has struggled with a variety of issues over the years, repeating a Starliner test flight with no one on board after the first one veered off course. The Starliner that left Wilmore and Williams in space landed without any issues in the New Mexico desert on Sept. 6, and has since returned to Kennedy Space Center. A week ago, Boeing’s defense and space chief was replaced. Delayed by Hurricane Helene pounding Florida, the latest SpaceX liftoff marked the first for astronauts from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX took over the old Titan rocket pad nearly two decades ago and used it for satellite launches, while flying crews from Kennedy’s former Apollo and shuttle pad next door. The company wanted more flexibility as more Falcon rockets soared.

Boeing’s first astronaut mission ended Friday night with an empty capsule landing and two test pilots still in space, left behind until next year because NASA judged their return too risky. Six hours after departing the International Space Station, Starliner parachuted into New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, descending on autopilot through the desert darkness. It was an uneventful close to a drama that began with the June launch of Boeing's long-delayed crew debut and quickly escalated into a dragged-out cliffhanger of a mission stricken by thruster failures and helium leaks. For months, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ return was in question as engineers struggled to understand the capsule’s problems. Boeing insisted after extensive testing that Starliner was safe to bring the two home, but NASA disagreed and booked a flight with SpaceX instead. Their SpaceX ride won’t launch until the end of this month, which means they’ll be up there until February — more than eight months after blasting off on what should have been a quick trip. Wilmore and Williams should have flown Starliner back to Earth by mid-June, a week after launching in it. But their ride to the space station was marred by the cascade of thruster trouble and helium loss, and NASA ultimately decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner. So with fresh software updates, the fully automated capsule left with their empty seats and blue spacesuits along with some old station equipment. “She’s on her way home,” Williams radioed as the white and blue-trimmed capsule undocked from the space station 260 miles (420 kilometers) over China and disappeared into the black void. Williams stayed up late to see how everything turned out. “A good landing, pretty awesome,” said Boeing's Mission Control. Cameras on the space station and a pair of NASA planes caught the capsule as a white streak coming in for the touchdown, which drew cheer. There were some snags during reentry, including more thruster issues, but Starliner made a “bull’s-eye landing,” said NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich. Even with the safe return, “I think we made the right decision not to have Butch and Suni on board,” Stich said at a news conference early Saturday. “All of us feel happy about the successful landing. But then there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it.” Boeing did not participate in the Houston news briefing. But two of the company's top space and defense officials, Ted Colbert and Kay Sears, told employees in a note that they backed NASA's ruling. "While this may not have been how we originally envisioned the test flight concluding, we support NASA’s decision for Starliner and are proud of how our team and spacecraft performed," the executives wrote. Starliner’s crew demo capped a journey filled with delays and setbacks. After the space shuttles retired more than a decade ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX for orbital taxi service. Boeing ran into so many problems on its first test flight with no one aboard in 2019 that it had to repeat it. The 2022 do-over uncovered even more flaws and the repair bill topped $1 billion. SpaceX’s crew ferry flight later this month will be its 10th for NASA since 2020. The Dragon capsule will launch on the half-year expedition with only two astronauts since two seats are reserved for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg. As veteran astronauts and retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams anticipated hurdles on the test flight. They’ve kept busy in space, helping with repairs and experiments. The two are now full-time station crew members along with the seven others on board. Even before the pair launched on June 5 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Starliner’s propulsion system was leaking helium. The leak was small and thought to be isolated, but four more cropped up after liftoff. Then five thrusters failed. Although four of the thrusters were recovered, it gave NASA pause as to whether more malfunctions might hamper the capsule’s descent from orbit. Boeing conducted numerous thruster tests in space and on the ground over the summer, and was convinced its spacecraft could safely bring the astronauts back. But NASA could not get comfortable with the thruster situation and went with SpaceX. Flight controllers conducted more test firings of the capsule’s thrusters following undocking; one failed to ignite. Engineers suspect the more the thrusters are fired, the hotter they become, causing protective seals to swell and obstruct the flow of propellant. They won’t be able to examine any of the parts; the section holding the thrusters was ditched just before reentry. Starliner will be transported in a couple weeks back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where the analyses will unfold. NASA officials stressed that the space agency remains committed to having two competing U.S. companies transporting astronauts. The goal is for SpaceX and Boeing to take turns launching crews — one a year per company — until the space station is abandoned in 2030 right before its fiery reentry. That doesn’t give Boeing much time to catch up, but the company intends to push forward with Starliner, according to NASA. Stich said post-landing it’s too early to know when the next Starliner flight with astronauts might occur. “It will take a little time to determine the path forward," he said.

Beijing has launched a "rocket street" project, aiming to establish a national-level scientific research and production hub to support China's commercial space development. "Beijing Rocket Street" project will be located in Beijing E-town, an economic and technological development area in the southeast of the capital city, with a total floor space of 140,000 square meters. A common technological platform, a high-end manufacturing center and an innovation research and development center are some of the major facilities. It also plans to build an interactive exhibition hall for science and technology that will offer visitors immersive virtual reality experiences. Chinese lunar probe returns to Earth with world's first samples from far side of moon The local government anticipates that the project will assist rocket enterprises in exploring new technologies and expanding their application scenario. Meanwhile, it has spearheaded a commercial space alliance, bringing together businesses, universities, institutions and cooperatives. Beijing E-town hosts a cluster of over 70 aerospace companies including 75 percent of China's private rocket makers. In 2023, the country's private commercial rocket enterprises, all headquartered in Beijing, carried a total of 13 space launches. Since China's government work report earlier this year highlighted the inclusion of the commercial space industry as a significant driver for new growth, many regions such as Shanghai, Hunan and Sichuan have also released development plans to boost the industry. Solar storm puts on brilliant light show across the globe, but no serious problems reported Data shows that China's commercial space market has experienced rapid growth since 2015, with an average annual increase of over 20 percent from 2017 to the first half of this year. This year, the country's commercial space market is expected to be worth 2.34 trillion yuan (about 328 billion U.S. dollars).  

China's Chang'e 6 probe returned on Earth on Tuesday with rock and soil samples from the little-explored far side of the moon in a global first. The probe landed in northern China on Tuesday afternoon in the Inner Mongolian region. “I now declare that the Chang’e 6 Lunar Exploration Mission achieved complete success," Zhang Kejian, Director of the China National Space Administration said shortly in a televised news conference after the landing. China prepares for return of lunar probe with moon samples Chinese scientists anticipate the returned samples will include 2.5 million-year-old volcanic rock and other material that scientists hope will answer questions about geographic differences on the moon's two sides. The near side is what is seen from Earth, and the far side faces outer space. The far side is also known to have mountains and impact craters, contrasting with the relatively flat expanses visible on the near side. China to launch Chang'e-5 lunar probe in 2020 While past U.S. and Soviet missions have collected samples from the moon's near side, the Chinese mission was the first that has collected samples from the far side. The moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the U.S. — still the leader in space exploration — and others, including Japan and India. China has put its own space station in orbit and regularly sends crews there. China lunar probe sheds light on the 'dark' side of the moon China's leader Xi Jinping sent a message of congratulations to the Chang'e team, saying that it was a “landmark achievement in our country's efforts at becoming a space and technological power.” The probe left earth on May 3, and its journey lasted 53 days. The probe has drilled into the core and scooped rocks from the surface. The samples “are expected to answer one of the most fundamental scientific questions in lunar science research: what geologic activity is responsible for the differences between the two sides?” said Zongyu Yue, a geologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement issued in the Innovation Monday, a journal published in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. China in recent years has launched multiple successful missions to the moon, collecting samples from the moon’s near side with the Chang’e 5 probe previously. They are also hoping that the probe will return with material that bear traces of meteorite strikes from the moon’s past. With the successful reentry of the probe, scientists will begin studying the samples.

African elephants call each other and respond to individual names — something that few wild animals do, according to new research published Monday. The names are one part of elephants’ low rumbles that they can hear over long distances across the savanna. Scientists believe that animals with complex social structures and family groups that separate and then reunite often may be more likely to use individual names. “If you’re looking after a large family, you’ve got to be able to say, ‘Hey, Virginia, get over here!’” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who was not involved in the study. It’s extremely rare for wild animals to call each other by unique names. Humans have names, of course, and our dogs come when their names are called. Baby dolphins invent their own names, called signature whistles, and parrots may also use names. A wild orangutan used a medicinal plant to treat a wound, scientists say Each of these naming species also possesses the ability to learn to pronounce unique new sounds throughout their lives — a rare talent that elephants also possess. For the study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, biologists used machine learning to detect the use of names in a sound library of savanna elephant vocalizations recorded at Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park. The researchers followed the elephants in jeeps to observe who called out and who appeared to respond — for example, if a mother called to a calf, or a matriarch called to a straggler who later rejoined the family group. Analyzing only the audio data, the computer model predicted which elephant was being addressed 28% of the time, likely due to the inclusion of its name. When fed meaningless data, the model only accurately labeled 8% of calls. “Just like humans, elephants use names, but probably don’t use names in the majority of utterances, so we wouldn’t expect 100%,” said study author and Cornell University biologist Mickey Pardo. Elephant rumbles include sounds that are below the range of human hearing. The scientists still don’t know which part of the vocalization is the name. Researchers tested their results by playing recordings to individual elephants, who responded more energetically, ears flapping and trunk lifted, to recordings that contained their names. Sometimes elephants entirely ignored vocalizations addressed to others. First person to receive a genetically modified pig kidney transplant dies nearly 2 months later “Elephants are incredibly social, always talking and touching each other — this naming is probably one of the things that underpins their ability to communicate to individuals,” said co-author and Colorado State University ecologist George Wittemyer, who is also a scientific adviser for nonprofit Save the Elephants. “We just cracked open the door a bit to the elephant mind.”

Ten candidates, including eight space pilots and two payload specialists, have been selected for China's fourth batch of astronauts, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced on Tuesday. Of the two payload specialists, one is from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the other is from the Macao Special Administrative Region, said the CMSA. It added this is first time it has selected payload specialists in Hong Kong and Macao, a move which has garnered strong support and enthusiastic participation from local communities. Boeing is on the verge of launching astronauts aboard new capsule, the latest entry to space travel These candidates will undergo comprehensive and systematic training at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center. The selection of the fourth batch of Chinese astronaut candidates began in the second half of 2022. Astronauts from Turkey, Italy and Sweden return to Earth, ending private space station trip China selected 14 astronauts from air force pilots in 1998 and an additional seven in 2010. In 2020, it completed the selection of the third batch of 18 astronauts, which included space pilots, flight engineers and payload specialists. The CMSA said that China's astronaut selection and training system has become more sophisticated and well-established. As international cooperation in crewed space exploration deepens, foreign astronauts will be invited to participate in the selection and training process, and subsequently carry out missions in China's space station. China sends its youngest-ever crew to space as it seeks to put astronauts on moon before 2030