James' World 2

Click the link below the bottom picture

.

After a record-breaking trip around the moon and back, the Artemis II mission is on its way home to Earth, and preparations are in full swing for its final descent. NASA is targeting splashdown—the moment that the capsule holding the crew will hit the Pacific Ocean—for Friday at 8:07 P.M. EDT. But the hours and minutes leading up to that moment are all critical.

The four Artemis II astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen—will begin their day at 11:35 A.M. Shortly after that, at approximately 1:50 P.M., they will be working to configure the capsule’s cramped cabin for reentry, stowing away baggage and making sure that everything they need for their journey through the Earth’s atmosphere is ready to go.

Next, NASA has scheduled a final trajectory-course-correction burn for 2:53 P.M. if needed to keep the mission’s Orion capsule, named Integrity by the crew, on track for its final target—Earth.

The astronauts will also review their reentry checklist to make sure that they are each properly in their space suit, which will help protect them on the potentially bumpy ride down, and clear on their responsibilities during the fall.

NASA will livestream the entire process, with the space agency’s own broadcast coverage beginning at around 6:30 P.M.—a little more than an hour before the capsule is due to reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

Moments before it does, the capsule will ditch its bulky service module at about 42 minutes before splashdown. Then, at approximately 7:37 P.M., the Orion capsule will perform a quick burn to maneuver into the right position and attitude for reentry and splashdown. Subsequently, at around 7:53 P.M., Orion will reenter Earth’s upper atmosphere some 400,000 feet above the surface, kicking off a 13-minute descent. At this time, the capsule will be traveling at about 24,000 miles an hour.

.

NASA

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Sixteen weeks into my second pregnancy, I had a miscarriage alone at home on an otherwise unremarkable autumn afternoon. I had officially entered the supposed “safe zone” of the second trimester, the point in pregnancy where risks of fetal complications and loss drop dramatically. By the time I saw bright red blood, I was certain I was “out of the woods.” I had finally begun to wrap my mind around the idea of having another child. My husband and I were excited to introduce a newborn into the confident rhythm we had established with our 3 1/2-year-old son. It was the beginning of one of the most devastating and profound experiences of my life. As a clinical psychologist who specializes in reproductive and maternal mental health, I was well aware that up to 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. I knew the heart-wrenching reality of that experience as well as I could without having yet lived through it myself. Throughout my own pregnancy, I’d listened to heartbreaking stories of pregnancy loss, including chemical pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, twin loss, infant loss, stillbirths, and terminations for medical reasons. I’d sat with countless women as they processed their grief, how their histories and experiences compounded those feelings, and how the unfortunate silence, stigma, and shame that so often follows pregnancy and infant loss heightened their pain. Now, however, my theoretical knowledge of the experience became corporeal.

Despite the fact that up to 25% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage (the actual number being likely much higher due to chemical pregnancies and underreporting), research shows that a majority of women feel a sense of shame, self-blame, and guilt in the aftermath of pregnancy loss. Cultural ideas about women’s bodies and patriarchal messages have wormed their way into women’s own perceptions of themselves, firmly planting the idea that if we haven’t “successfully” carried a healthy baby to term, our bodies must be somehow defective or inadequate, or we must have done something “wrong” to cause the loss. However, most miscarriages are the result of fetal chromosomal abnormalities, not the result of anything a woman did or didn’t do. Despite this, a national survey found that people believed miscarriage could be caused by going through a stressful event (76% of responders), lifting a heavy object (64%), previously having an intrauterine device (IUD) (28%), or taking birth control pills (22%). The misconceptions surrounding miscarriage get even wilder: The survey found 21% of people believed it could be caused by getting into an argument, 7% thought it could be caused by moderate exercise, and 4% thought it could be caused by having sex.

In my practice, I’ve found that the impulse to blame ourselves is often about perceptions of control. If I did something wrong and this is my fault, that means maybe I can do things differently the next time around and therefore change the outcome. There is shame in those thoughts, but perversely, there is also a sense of agency. That grasp for control is closely related to the cultural stigma attached to pregnancy loss that prevents women from talking about it openly and breeds isolation and misinformation. But when women know the facts about miscarriage and why it happens, they are less likely to blame themselves.

While I fully believe in the importance of talking about stigmatized issues like pregnancy loss, sexual trauma, anxiety and depression, and aging, I know from experience that doing so is hard.

 

We live in a culture that tells women that so many of the challenges they face are somehow our fault and that whatever we’re feeling about those challenges should be kept quiet. That cultural message often keeps us from talking about the most important and real experiences in our lives, overwhelmed by the fear that if we do speak our truths, we will be met with stunned stares or awkward lapses in conversations. But in the absence of real, nuanced, and sometimes messy conversations about the truth of our experiences, we feel ashamed and often end up turning our pain inward, convinced we should be able to swallow it and push through.

Even as someone who fully believes in the importance of talking about stigmatized issues like pregnancy loss, sexual trauma, anxiety and depression, and aging, I know from experience that doing so is hard. There’s no single source of the pressure to stay silent about these taboo subjects; it’s in the water, so to speak. Women go through so many potentially momentous transitions over the course of their lives, inhabiting many roles and navigating continually changing bodies while fielding messages from a culture hell-bent on telling them how to look, how to feel, how to act, how to be at every available opportunity. In so many moments in a woman’s life, there’s an insidious whisper: This is too messy. Don’t talk about it.

.

MTStock Studio/E+/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

By Julian E. Barnes

Julian E. Barnes reports on national security and has been tracking the Iranian effort to mine the Strait of Hormuz.

April 10, 2026

Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials.

The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance meet in Pakistan this weekend for peace talks.

Iran used small boats to mine the strait last month, soon after the United States and Israel began their war against the country. The mines, plus the threat of Iranian drone and missile attacks, slowed the number of oil tankers and other vessels passing through the strait to a trickle, driving up energy prices and providing Iran with its best leverage in the war.

Iran left a path through the strait open, allowing ships that pay a toll to pass through.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has issued warnings that ships could collide with sea mines, and semiofficial news organizations have published charts showing safe routes.

Those routes are limited in large part because Iran mined the strait haphazardly, U.S. officials said. It is not clear that Iran recorded where it put every mine. And even when the location was recorded, some mines were placed in a way that allowed them to drift or move, according to the officials.

As with land mines, removing nautical mines is far more difficult than placing them. The U.S. military lacks robust mine removal capabilities, relying on littoral combat ships equipped with mine sweeping capabilities. Iran also does not have the capability of quickly removing mines, even the ones it planted.

In a social media post on Tuesday discussing a pause in the American-Israeli war with Iran, President Trump said a two-week cease-fire was contingent on the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING” of the Strait of Hormuz.

On Wednesday, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said that the strait would be open to traffic “with due consideration of technical limitations.” American officials have said Mr. Araghchi’s comment about technical limitations was a reference to Iran’s inability to quickly find or remove the mines.

Mr. Araghchi is now in Islamabad for meetings on Saturday with Mr. Vance. Given Mr. Trump’s demands to open the strait, the issue of how quickly safe passage through the waterway can be increased is likely to be a point of discussion.

The U.S. military sought to destroy Iran’s navy, sinking ships and targeting naval bases. But Iran has hundreds of small boats that it can use to harass ships or lay mines. Destroying all of those small boats has proved impossible.

Even before Iran began laying mines, threats from its leaders quickly disrupted global shipping and sent oil prices up sharply. On March 2, a senior official with the Revolutionary Guards announced that the strait was closed and claimed Iran would set ships “ablaze” if they entered the waterway, according to state media.

In the days after that threat, Iran began mining the strait, even as the United States intensified strikes on Iranian naval assets. At the time, American officials said Iran was not planting mines quickly or efficiently.

Because it was difficult to track the small boats deploying the mines, the United States is uncertain precisely how many Iran has placed in the strait or where they are located.

.

Cargo ships near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen last month from northern Ras al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates. 

Credit…Reuters.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Say you accidentally cut the tip of your finger off. Especially if this happened to you as a child, there’s a good chance it would regrow—skin, nail, and all. The same is true for other mammals such as monkeys and mice. Unfortunately, however, our regenerative abilities stop there. While some other creatures, most notably salamanders and starfish, can regenerate entire limbs, mammals don’t have this evolutionary superpower.

“The big question is: Why are mammals limited?” says Jessica Whited, an associate professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University.

Part of the reason why our cells only have a limited ability to regenerate may have to do with our genes. But according to new research, two key environmental mechanisms may be at play, too.

How rich a tissue is in hyaluronic acid and how well it can sense oxygen may affect its ability to regrow and heal, a pair of new studies published in Science on Thursday suggest. The results could lead to better wound treatments and possibly the ability to one day regrow larger pieces of human tissue—even limbs.

In one study, researchers investigated what might makes the mammalian fingertip special: Why can only the tip of the finger regrow, whereas the rest of it can’t? “Same finger, two entirely different outcomes,” says Byron Mui, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The researchers found that mice with a partial finger amputation could regrow part of their finger more easily and with less scarring when there were higher levels of hyaluronic acid in the animals’ “extracellular matrix”—the material between cells. Hyaluronic acid may be familiar to some readers: it is a common ingredient in face creams and moisturizers that claim to reduce wrinkles.

The study “elegantly challenges” the idea that scarring is a given in mammals that have lost a limb or digit, according to a related commentary in Science that was co-authored by Whited, who was not involved with either study.

In the other study, researchers compared two species: African clawed frog tadpoles and embryonic mice. Tadpoles can regenerate their limbs; embryonic mice can’t.

The researchers subjected amputated tissues from tadpoles and embryonic mice to various laboratory tests, explains molecular biologist Georgios Tsissios, the study’s lead author. In a low-oxygen environment—similar to that of tadpoles’ usual aquatic habitat—mice tissue healed better than when it was exposed to more oxygen.

“These experiments showed that lowering oxygen in embryonic mouse limbs can make them mimic frog tadpole limbs, enabling them to activate the very early regenerative responses,” Tsissios says.

Tsissios and his colleagues found, however, that tadpole cells appear to be worse at sensing oxygen than embryonic mice cells do—suggesting that tissue regeneration may be influenced by both levels of oxygen and the animals’ ability to sense it.

The results are preliminary: in neither study did the researchers regrow entire mammalian limbs. And any kind of tissue regeneration therapy for humans based on these findings is a long way off, Whited says. But the studies do offer hope for human research because they offer clues to what factors—both in the animals’ biology and their environment—may determine their tissue’s regenerative powers.

“As a field, the way that we piece all of these puzzle pieces together will eventually lead to human limb regeneration,” Whited predicts.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Click unmute on the 17-minutes + video for sound!

Welcome back to the Fluctus Channel, as we explore China’s massive Goupitan shiplift, one of the world’s tallest ship elevators, and the advanced elevator operations onboard US Aircraft Carriers. Fluctus is a website and YouTube channel dedicated to sea geeks. Whenever you are curious or an incorrigible lover of this mysterious world, our videos are made for you ! We publish 3 videos a week on our YouTube channel and many more articles on our website. Feel free to subscribe to not miss any of our updates and visit our website to discover additional content. Don’t forget to follow us on twitter: Please keep the comments section respectful. Any spam, insults, or troll will be deleted. To contact us, make sure to use our email in the about section of this channel.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article (17 minutes + video):

.

__________________________________________