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NASA is working with private industry partners and small businesses under Artemis to produce scalable, affordable, and advanced laser communications systems that could enable greater exploration and discovery beyond Earth for the benefit of all.

Laser, or optical, communications provide missions with increased data rates – meaning that missions using laser technology can send and receive more information in a single transmission compared with those using traditional radio waves. When a spacecraft uses laser communications to send information, infrared light packs the data into tighter waves so ground stations on Earth can receive more data at once. Laser communications systems can provide 10 to 100 times higher data rates than the radio systems used by space missions today.

As science instruments evolve to capture high-definition data, missions will need expedited ways to transmit information to Earth. It would take roughly nine weeks to transmit a complete map of Mars back to Earth with current radio frequency systems. With lasers, it would only take about nine days.

Antibodies are used in many kinds of cancer treatments but have only been able to reach proteins on the outside of cancer cells—until now. According to a new study, scientists have designed antibodies that can barge into cancer cells and drag abnormal proteins out, ultimately slowing tumor growth in mice.

The approach is a novel way of targeting cancer-fueling proteins that are buried inside cancer cells, several experts said.

Most antibodies can’t get inside cells. Yet most cancer-fueling proteins are tucked deep inside cancer cells. One type of antibody, however, called IgA, can glide through certain cells like a ghost walking through a wall.

NCI researchers have found a persistent decline in rates of both smoking-related and non-smoking-related lung cancer deaths.


In the U.S., lung cancer death rates have declined for decades, primarily due to decreases in cigarette smoking. However, it is unclear whether rates of smoking-unrelated lung cancer deaths are also decreasing. If the rates are increasing, that may suggest increases in exposure to other lung carcinogens that need to be investigated. Meredith Shiels, Ph.D., M.H.S., senior investigator in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch, and colleagues in the Biostatistics Branch, the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, and Information Management Services, conducted a study to estimate trends in U.S. lung cancer death rates from 1991–2018. They found that both smoking-attributable and smoking-unrelated lung cancer death rates declined over this period. The findings were published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on December 9, 2023.

Cancer registries and death certificates do not collect the smoking status of every person diagnosed with or who died from lung cancer. Thus, to estimate trends in lung cancer death rates by smoking status, the researchers needed another way to determine the age-specific trends in lung cancer deaths attributed to smoking, and unrelated to smoking. They estimated age-specific annual percentage of lung cancer deaths that could be attributed to smoking using smoking status data from the National Health Interview Survey linked to death certificate data. These population attributable fractions were then multiplied by national data on lung cancer mortality to estimate trends over time in smoking-attributable and smoking-unrelated deaths. The researchers found that the fraction of lung cancer deaths attributable to smoking decreased from 82% in 1991 to 75% in 2018. Over this same period, smoking-attributable lung cancer death rates declined 2.

Adam Stern is Founder and CEO of Infinitely Virtual, provider of cloud technology solutions, based in Los Angeles. Twitter: @iv_cloudhosting

Back in the 1960s, when the U.S. faced off against the Soviets, MAD Magazine initiated a snarky proxy war in the form of a recurring comic strip that pitted two animated spies attempting to outsmart each other. In “Spy vs. Spy,” there were no permanent victors.

Fast forward to the ChatGPT generation. In cybersecurity, it’s AI vs AI now, and the black-hatted figure versus the guy in the white hat is no longer as binary as it once was.