When most people think of polluted skies, they often think of smog.
But there’s another source of pollution that disrupts natural wildlife patterns, damages human sleep, contributes to the increase of CO2 in the air and obscures the stars at night.
Light
CREDIT: Apostolos Kyriazis, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE. This photo is available to download in high resolution here.
Streetlights, neon signs, car headlights and even the lamp at your window all contribute to light pollution. But there are things people can do as individuals and communities to prevent light pollution’s harmful effects.
In 2001, Flagstaff, Arizona, home of the Lowell Observatory and the Pluto Discovery Telescope, became the first city designated as an International Dark Sky Place. The U.S. city instituted progressive codes to prevent unnecessary lighting and preserve the integrity of the night sky for casual stargazers and professional astronomers alike.
The Pacific island of Niue in 2020 became the first country to be designated as a Dark Sky Place, as defined by the International Dark-Sky Foundation. But the foundation isn’t the only group promoting the concept. Oman’s leadership, for example, in 2019 decreed the formation of the Western Hajar Reserve, southwest of Muscat.
CAPTION: This photo is an excellent example of how much light pollution obscures the night sky. The bright areas below are city glows that can be visible from hundreds of kilometers away. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Apostolos Kyriazis, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.
But even if they don’t live in an area with codes to protect against light pollution, individuals can do their part if they:
CAPTION: While the moon is quite bright, capturing such a photo is a bit tricky. Astrophotographers use multiple techniques to generate a final image, like stacking to enhance the details and reduce noise and abertation, and multi-exposure to capture both the bright and dark side of the moon. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Darya Kawa Mirza, Irbil, Iraq.
These steps will help protect the beauty of a starry night as captured here by some of the Middle East’s best amateur astrophotographers:
CAPTION: The Spaghetti Nebula is the remains of a dead star that exploded 40,000 years ago. It spans around 3.5 degrees across the night sky. It appears in the sky as big as seven full moons side to side. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Maroun Habib, Lebanon.
CAPTION: Our closest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), is considered to be right next door on a cosmic scale, yet the light in this photo took over 2.5 million years to reach us. Talk about a blast from the past. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Abdullah Alharbi, Kuwait. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on March 22, 2023.
CAPTION: The NGC 2264 area has lots of star formations such as the Cone and Fox Fur nebulas and the Christmas Tree and Snowflake clusters. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Anas Albounni, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.
CAPTION: Not all nebulas are created equal. Some emit light and some obscure it. In this case, the opaque dust clouds of the Horse Head and Flame nebulas obscure our view of glowing ionized gases. The brain’s ability to identify shapes helps us name them. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Wissam Ayoub, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on Nov. 3, 2021.
CAPTION: A composite image of the Milky Way core includes many nebulas such as the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas on the left and Rho Ophiuchi nebula in the Scorpius constellation on the right. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Amr Abdulwahab, White desert, Egypt. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on May 10, 2023.
CAPTION: M78, a nebula located in the Orion constellation, is a cosmic cloud of glowing gas and dust where new stars are born. When you look at it, you see the light from these young stars bouncing off the surrounding dust. It’s a bit like a celestial nursery where stars are taking their first steps into the universe. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Arun Vijay & Souhayl Ben Khaled, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.
If you were active on social media in the final months of 2022, odds are good you noticed a spike in avatars of your friends as fairies or anime characters or figures from a high-fantasy video game.
The images were from a company called Lensa, which uses artificial intelligence to turn selfies into art. And they had more than the social-media influencers buzzing. The technology set off a new wave of debate about the role of artificial intelligence in art as well as ethical issues involving racism, stolen images and revenge porn. But others look ahead to a future where AI assists artists instead of competing with them.
LISTEN TO THE DEEP DIVE
The Lensa app, which uses the Stable Diffusion deep-learning model to render images in various art styles, was not the first use of AI technology to disturb artists worried about being replaced by computers.
In 2018, a piece of digital art called Edmond De Belamy, which was generated by a machine-learning algorithm, sold at a Christie’s art auction for U.S.$432,500, well above its U.S.$10,000 estimate, setting off alarm bells among creatives fearing for jobs and the nature of art itself.
A similar cry erupted in September 2022 when Jason M. Allen won first prize in a digital category at the Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition with an AI-generated piece called Théâtre D’opéra Spatial. Allen used Midjourney, which translates text descriptions into digital artwork (and has been used to produce images in KUST Review).
CAPTION: Training apps with a wide variety of pictures of people from a wide range of ethnicities will help reduce AI bias, says Mutale Nkonde, founder and CEO of AI for the People.
But both images show that computer-generated art has more human involvement than the AI tag and Christie’s promotional language for Edmond De Belamy (“This portrait … is not the product of a human mind”) might lead you to believe.
Both pieces were products of humans: Edmond De Belamy by a Parisian art collective called Obvious. Both were initiated, selected, printed and promoted by those humans. And humans created the code that built them, infusing the final works with human aesthetics, biases and potential moral issues.
HUMANS BEHIND THE CODE
Remembering that it’s humans, not soulless code, ultimately behind the AI product is important to keep in mind, says Ziv Epstein, a Ph.D. student in MIT Media Lab’s Human Dynamics group who has an eye on the emerging technology.
“When we talk about AI as a creator instead of a tool, it undermines credit and responsibility to the artists involved in the creation of AI art,” Epstein tells KUST Review. “Anthropomorphizing AI can undermine our capacity to hold people responsible for the wrongdoings of sociotechnical systems when an AI system commits a moral transgression: The perceived agency of the AI could be a sponge, absorbing responsibility from the other human stakeholders.
“We must be careful how we talk about AI and fight the current conceptualization of AI, typified by corporate-metaphysical circuit brains or embodied androids, lit by blue light and here to take your job. These narratives are not neutral and often cut along lines of power.”
BAKED-IN BIASES
A wrongdoing Epstein might have in mind: Among initial users of the Lensa avatar generator, some people who wear hijabs and/or have dark skin reported that their images seemed to have more glitches than others’ or didn’t look much like them. And this cuts to deeper issues of racism and sexism baked into the code and reported on frequently in recent years.
“AI bias in art hurts Black and other communities of color in two very specific ways,” says Mutale Nkonde, founder and CEO of AI for the People and a UN advisor on AI and human rights. “The app Lensa used AI to create ‘artist’ impression avatars for users and a beauty filter that made non-white women appear more European. This may seem innocuous, but there is data that shows algorithmic recommendation systems used within the image-sharing app Instagram has been found to increase mental-health complaints among young girls because it amplifies images of women with unhealthy bodies.
“This could be true of women with non-European features who watch their physical appearance being erased and devalued,” she tells KUST Review. “This ethnic erasure contributes to the sales of skin-lightening creams in countries in Asia, Africa and the Gulf region and could result in women in these regions engaging in even more self-harming behavior.
A piece of digital art called Edmond De Belamy, which was generated by a machine-learning algorithm, sold at a Christie’s art auction for U.S.$432,500.
“The second concern is the data privacy of the people using these apps in order to work,” Nkonde says. “Users have to upload pictures, and in doing so give the company their biometric data which could be shared and/or sold to data brokers and then used to develop technologies like facial recognition. Facial-recognition systems in the West being used by law-enforcement agencies have problems recognizing people with dark skin and have led to the wrongful arrest of Black men.”
Again: Blame the humans behind the code.
EXPANDED DATASETS
Nkonde sees a solution, however.
“The best way to reduce these biases is by expanding the training datasets used to develop each app. In terms of the Europeanization of visual culture that means training those apps with a wide variety of pictures of people from a wide range of ethnicities. That way an Arab woman using it will be given an image that shows her unique beauty,” she says.
Without expanded datasets, apps and AI risk reflecting – and perhaps amplifying – biases.
“The Stable Diffusion model was trained on unfiltered internet content. So it reflects the biases humans incorporate into the images they produce,” Lensa says in its FAQ.
That unfiltered content used to train the model is also concerning to artists who fear their work is being used without their consent – and may damage their livelihoods by allowing the masses to replicate their style without paying for it.
ARTISTS WORRY
One of them is Greg Rutkowski, a Polish artist whose high-fantasy digital illustrations of defiant wizards and rampaging orcs are familiar to fans of such games as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
His style was commonly requested on Stable Diffusion before the model in November 2022 changed its code to make it harder to copy specific artists’ styles.
“It’s a cool experiment,” he says of the people who used his name as a prompt. “But for me and many other artists, it’s starting to look like a threat to our careers,” he tells the MIT Technology Review.
When we talk about AI as a creator instead of a tool, it undermines credit & responsibility to the artists involved in the creation of art.
Artists have countered with a site called Have I Been Trained, which allows creatives to search for examples of their own work among the 5.8 billion images scraped from the internet, including sites such as Pinterest, to train Stable Diffusion and Midjourney.
Some groups have responded by banning AI-generated art, including online artist community Newgrounds and visual-media company Getty Images, which cited fears of future copyright claims as laws eventually catch up with technology.
Among the laws catching up with the accelerating technology: The United Kingdom in November 2022 announced plans to criminalize the sharing of pornographic deepfakes, often created as a form of revenge porn victimizing primarily women who don’t know their faces have been digitally attached to others’ bodies.
At the same time it changed its code to make copying styles harder, Stable Diffusion also introduced changes that make creating pornographic content more difficult. AI systems Midjourney and DALL-E 2 had previously banned adult-content creation. But other systems remain accessible to deepfake abuses.
A PROMISING TOOL
Still, some creators remain optimistic about AI-assisted art.
Alexander Reben used a machine-learning algorithm called GPT-3 to slough off a creative slump during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The algorithm, a language model trained by OpenAI like ChatGPT, which came later, writes original text – essays, fiction, news articles, even dad jokes – from a prompt. Reben played with the tool until he learned he could prod it to write the sort of text one might find on a label next to a piece of art on a gallery wall.
Reben poured through the outputs until he found some he liked, then created in real life the art they described. A whimsical story about an anonymous art collective known as The Plungers that created art with actual toilet plungers, for example, became an IRL installation as part of a series the AI titled “AI Am I?”
CAPTION: AI training encompassing billions of images allows tools to produce a wide variety of styles. Artists, however, are concerned that their work has been scraped from the internet without their consent, possibly threatening their livelihoods.
“As technology becomes more of an extension and amplification of our minds – just as a wrench is an extension of our hands and amplifies our physical ability – AI becomes more of a collaborator rather than a calculator,” he writes for BBC.com. “Unlike creative tools of the past, such as Photoshop, photographs or pigments, we are now working with tools that seem to have generative imagination, but perhaps no ‘taste.’ The human in the loop adds an important curatorial role in determining the ‘good’ versus ‘bad.’”
Or as AI-avatar creator Lensa says in a tweet: “As cinema didn’t kill theater and accounting software hasn’t eradicated the profession, AI won’t replace artists but can become a great assisting tool.”
Architecture student Qasim Iqbal, for example, uses Midjourney to visualize his designs.
“With Midjourney primarily being a text-to-image generator, it encourages you to summarize and define ideas through words and teaches you to be specific,” he tells My Modern Met.
He says it helps him “test concepts, ideas and directions for projects,” but “it should never be the originator of the idea.”
COLLABORATORS, NOT COMPETITORS
Others are embracing the technology by trading the pen or the brush for the word to create visual art. This is the emerging domain of “promptology” or the “prompt engineer,” using a new set of skills to coax a desired image out of the models with carefully crafted text.
And then there is the utility of the technology for, well, anyone.
NightCafe, launched in 2019 and named after Vincent Van Gogh’s The Night Café, is one of the systems looking to fulfill the tech’s promise of democratized art:
“We create tools that allow anyone — regardless of skill level — to experience the satisfaction, the therapy, the rush of creating incredible, unique art,” it says, with the caveat that it does not seek to “make artists redundant.”
But for the “but is it art?” crowd, there’s still opportunity to invest skill, thought, talent and effort beyond the push of a button to create with AI tools.
Allen, the Colorado State Fair winner, spent 80 hours on Midjourney and sifted through 900 images before he settled on a picture to print on canvas.
Remembering that it’s humans, not soulless code, ultimately behind the AI product is important to keep in mind, says Ziv Epstein, a Ph.D. student in MIT Media Lab’s Human Dynamics group
Other artists take much longer for their process, investing considerable time and brainpower to learn the technology and make tweaks to the code for the specific result they seek.
“Using machine learning is such a steep learning curve for me,” says Jake Elwes in the paper “AI and the Arts: How Machine Learning Is Changing Artistic Work.
“I understand enough of the technology to use it and hack it, but I’m not writing algorithms myself, so it often takes months of research to work out how to use a model and get it to do what I want it to do. To be able to see some of my artistic voice coming through a black box or a ready-made, and then find an interesting way of subverting it. It’s a long process, not something you can just play with lightly.”
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption rates are growing globally, which is great for the environment. But current parking structures and roads might struggle to support the vehicles’ weight.
According to Sustainability by Numbers, the average car weighs approximately 1,600 kilograms. Not light by any means, but electric vehicles of the same capacity weigh in significantly more. For example, a Tesla Model 3 weighs 1,830 kilograms.
But why the weighty difference? And is it good or bad?
It’s all in the battery. A Tesla Model 3 car battery weighs in at approximately 489 kilograms, whereas a typical car battery weighs between 11 and 25 kilograms. This Tesla is one of the heavier car batteries out there but it’s also Tesla’s biggest seller.
There are definitive pros to the heavyweight EV, such as a lower center of gravity, increasing road stability and handling ability. Ultimately this makes the car safer and less likely to roll during an accident. Rolling accidents were responsible for 21 percent of car-occupant deaths in 2021.
The safety benefits coupled with environmental betterment makes the EV sound like a great option. So, what’s the downside?
IMAGE: Unsplash
Well it could be a parking garage.
An overload of vehicles on the roof was the cause of a 2023 parking garage collapse in New York City. And as we see more EVs on the roads, this could be an issue going forward.
This particular parking garage had structural issues prior to the collapse, but countries with older infrastructures and codes might have to address these risks.
The typical parking structure is designed to last up to 40 years. An aging parking garage will struggle under the weight of automotive load that is 30 percent heavier than it was built to sustain.
The average vehicle weight — not just for EVs but for all vehicles — has been on the rise every year since 1981, reports the Environmental Protection Agency. And we’re not just looking at parking garage issues — roads are also at risk.
The American Society of Civil Engineers’ infrastructure report for 2021 indicates that “43 percent of … (United States) public roadways are in poor or mediocre condition.” It also says that “federal, state and local governments will need to prioritize strategic investments dedicated to improving and preserving roadway conditions that increase public safety on the system we have in place, as well as plan for the roadways of the future, which will need to account for connected and autonomous vehicles.”
After all, no one wants to fall into a pothole in their new Tesla.
IMAGE: Unsplash
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, an axle-weight increase from 8,000 kilograms to 9,000 kilograms — increasingly likely as more semi trucks switch to electric — causes 50 percent more pavement damage.
But what’s the solution?
A 2024 article in Structuremag.org suggests that the codes need an upgrade to support the increasing demand of EVs, especially since charging stations are typically grouped together. This means extra and consistent weight constraints in the same areas of a parking structure.
The article concludes, “It is possible that the risk of catastrophic structural failures in the future could jeopardize the viability of EV technology as part of national efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Engineers and contractors have an opportunity to contribute to providing sound infrastructure to enable EV technology to be part of the fight against climate change.”
The authoring engineers, led by principal James McDonald of Simpson, Gumpertz and Heger, a U.S. structural engineering firm, recommend a comprehensive preventative plan that includes: monitoring parking garages typically inhabited by EVs; limiting EV access to areas in the structure that can better manage excess weight; imposing a weight limit; and even distribution of EV parking spots.
Forbes Magazine in 2022 reported that preventative measures are much less costly than reactive action. The cost of repaving 1 mile of road ranges from U.S.$100,000 to U.S.$1,000,000.
Astronaut health care — prior to, during and post mission — has historically been served by specialized medical doctors called “flight surgeons.” While the name suggests surgeries are taking place in the air, it is rather misleading. But with longer space missions on the horizon, flight surgeons may soon be aptly named.
The role of flight surgeons, or aerospace medicine specialists, is varied but they are primarily responsible for the care of crews whether they are flying in space or in the air.
The current protocol is to stabilize the patient and send him or her back to Earth for medical intervention. That won’t work for a seven-month journey from Mars, so is it time for flight surgeons to up their game with actual surgery?
LISTEN TO THE DEEP DIVE
But what could go wrong? Doing surgery. In space. In microgravity.
The problem: There is little knowledge and even less experience. To date, there have been only minor procedures in space. But there is a lot of research focused on medical obstacles to deep-space, moon and Mars missions to come.
PREVENTING BLOOD LOSS
IMAGE: Freepik
What happens to the human body in space?
On Earth, we spend our days walking from room to room, home to car, car to office, running around the office, exercising and running errands. Every single step includes flexion and extension at the hip, knee, and ankle, involving 200 muscles. Read more›››
Strong muscles contribute to bone density health. The stronger a muscle is, the more it pulls on the bones it’s attached to, making them stronger.
This also means the weaker the muscles, the weaker the bones. So imagine if you were just floating about your day and not using any of the muscles or joints your body was designed for. What might happen to those muscles? And those bones?
According to NASA, lengthy stays in space can lead to muscle atrophy (loss) — a condition that astronauts aim to avoid with intensive strength-training sessions during missions on the International Space Station. Astronauts on a mission from five to 11 days can lose up to 20 percent of their body’s muscle mass. Short-term missions don’t have much impact on bone-density loss but longer missions do — and the effects are really noticeable upon return to Earth.
The normal weight bearing on the skeletal system on Earth can be a shock to weakened bones and would put them at higher risk of breakage and for osteoporosis. This risk factor continues to be an obstacle for long-term space stays for astronauts, with a monthly average of 1 to 2 percent bone mineral density loss. The World Health Organization says that an osteoporosis diagnosis is based on a 25 percent deficit on the average bone density of a 30-year-old. And osteoporosis is not reversible.
The International Space Station orbits the Earth at 400 kilometers from sea level and can be reached in anywhere from four hours to several days. NASA estimates a journey to Mars will take approximately seven months. This means by the time astronauts reach Mars, they could experience a 20 percent mineral loss.
But flight surgeons counter this with rigorous cardiovascular exercise and resistance training up to two hours daily. And after a six-month stay on the International Space Station, astronauts return with minimal loss.
Dr. Sergi Vaquer Araujo of the European Space Agency says the hydraulic resistance machines to maintain muscle mass and strength enable the astronauts to walk very quickly after their return to Earth.
“They all lose bone, but the amount is always within a very big safety margin that would classify as a normal human bone mineral density,” Vaquer Araujo tells KUST Review.
“All in all, what I’m trying to say is that if you look at the commonalities on how to treat those three things, bone, muscle and heart and vessels, they all benefit from exercise, our main drug, and we treat it as a drug.
“So that means what we’re doing in space works for six months, the one-year mission (on the Russian and American side) showed that, yes, it (effects of time in microgravity) is more pronounced, but still within manageable ranges.”‹‹‹ Read less
Innovations are underway to prevent blood or other fluids escaping the surgical site in microgravity conditions.
A surgical fluid management system developed by the astrosurgical team at University of Louisville in the United States was tested in 2021 aboard a Virgin Galactic flight. The technology, funded by NASA’s program to prepare for long missions, is basically a dome that fits over the surgical site to contain fluid. It is fitted with specific points where surgical instruments can be inserted without fluid escaping.
The fully automated test included injecting a blood-like fluid into the dome and manipulating the pressure within it to control bleeding. But the technology is multi-faceted and included tests of its irrigation abilities, suction and ability to vacate fluids from the dome. The dome keeps fluid in but also protects the surgical site from contaminants.
George Pantalos, head of the University of Louisville’s astrosurgery team, said the device operated as expected. “There was a little bit of variation in how things worked compared to gravity on Earth, but they weren’t showstoppers by any means.”
The team is also working on ways to allow non-surgeons to perform emergency surgeries as well as a space-saving 3D printer that will print recyclable surgical tools.
SURGICAL ROBOTS
Another potential path to success: robotic surgeries.
Remotely operated surgical robot MIRA (Miniature In-Vivo Robotic Assistant), created by Virtual Incisions’ Shane Farritor, will make a jaunt to the International Space Station for testing in 2024.
The tiny MIRA robot will conduct small surgical-type functions inside a small compartment with simulated materials.
Robotic surgeries contain the internal organs and bodily fluids while reducing contamination. They also offer less invasive procedures with quicker recovery time, which means lower risk of infection – especially important considering microgravity’s damaging effects on the human immune system.
MICROGRAVITY AND WOUNDS
Microgravity also appears to have an effect on wound healing. Current research indicates slowed cellular growth and decrease in collagen fibers. A 2022 paper published in Nature suggests that time spent in space leads to a reduction in red blood cell count in astronauts — a condition known as anemia. Oxygen-rich red blood cells are instrumental in building tissue for wound healing.
Space anemia was originally thought to be caused by initial exposure to microgravity resulting from bodily fluids shifting upward. Further research, however, shows that the anemia is present during and after exposure. This also should be considered for surgical aftercare on long-term missions.
These are only a handful of challenges.
Then there is the matter of who is going to perform such surgeries. Currently medical officers on board spacecraft aren’t doctors — they are flight crew with 60 hours of medical training. Flight surgeons monitoring the health of astronauts currently do so from the ground.
Flight surgeons for astronauts aren’t typically astronauts themselves or surgeons for that matter. If flight surgery is in your path, however, you are in for a bit of a long haul. On top of a four-year degree, four years of medical school and three years of residency, it will be another two years of specializing in space medicine to reach the final frontier, says NASA flight surgeon Rick Sheuring in an interview with the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.
That’s a 13-year journey, plus astronaut training. But it could just land you on the cutting edge of space-medicine development.
THE CURE
Though many of these developments are in process, Dr. Sergi Vaquer Araujo, intensive care medicine specialist and leader of the European Space Agency’s space medicine team, says there will be limits to what can be done. This means astronauts will have to accept that there are health issues that simply can’t be properly addressed in space.
But some conditions can be anticipated and prepared for.
Vaquer Araujo’s team works closely with NASA to prepare a kit that will address as many likely emergent scenarios as possible. Not necessarily open-cavity surgeries, but treating illnesses and performing procedures, such as suturing small wounds or extracting teeth, that have been performed on the International Space Station.
“Imagine a micrometeorite penetrates the vehicle and penetrates the chest of an astronaut, for instance, and then not having the tools to manage that. That would be a pity, and the person dies because I didn’t have the tools,” Vaquer Araujo says.
What tools to take to space can be a high-stakes guessing game.
“That’s a very frustrating thing, but one has to be also realistic, and if you cannot have everything you need to assess the chances of that happening and if the chances are low, you need to take a gamble,” he tells KUST Review.
IMAGE: Abjad Design
He says astronauts are well aware of the risks, but as a doctor, there are still ethical concerns with sending people on a mission without every possible means to maintain their health and safety.
The European Space Agency and NASA have different approaches to how they build their medical kits, but they are complementary. The organizations continue to work to combine them.
The philosophy goes something like this: It’s not what happens, it’s what the body needs to solve the problem.
“For example, if I’m bleeding, what I need is to stop the bleeding and administer fluids. But if I have septic shock, meaning I have a completely uncontrolled infection, I also need fluid and I will also need the same tools for both things to know the status,” he says.
“What this all means is when you’re in a critical medical situation and conditions escalate to a failure of a system, those failures are diagnosed with almost the same tools. So, our approach is to try to find all those commonalities and build our kit, so at least we have something to treat those commonalities. So, you do not think whether this could be a micrometeorite that penetrates the chest — you just know that if you have insufficient lung function, you will need oxygen,” Vaquer Araujo says.
OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER
He is encouraged by the fact that the ESA’s kit and NASA’s are in line up to 90 percent now. They also agree that at this stage, major surgery in space is not feasible. And the challenges of microgravity are not necessarily the major concerns.
For complicated open surgeries, a full operating room is imperative, which means more space in space is required.
But this space would also require an amount of flammable oxygen that would put the entire crew at risk.
Also to consider are the sterilization capabilities, which Vaquer Araujo believes is the biggest concern.
You also need the skill of an actual surgeon on board, but what if that surgeon is the patient? And what type of medical doctor do you put on board as the surgeon? What if you place an internal medicine doctor in the field and there is a trauma issue? And that ”surgeon” spends the two years prior to the mission training as an astronaut but not treating patients — what risks does two years away from practicing pose?
The list of questions is unending. The cure, it seems, is time, innovation and a lot of money.
According to the World Health Organization, right up there with climate change, air pollution and pandemics, growing resistance to antimicrobials is one of the top 10 threats to public health globally. But the solution may lie in a tiny honey bee.
Antimicrobials are medications used to remedy and avert infections. You might be familiar with some of them — antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals — to name a few. Some have been described as the most effective medicines created. The antibiotic penicillin is approaching its 95rd birthday on Sept. 28, and in 2021, it was estimated to have saved over 200 million lives.
The problem is antimicrobials are overused and misused, and this causes bacteria and other disease-causing organisms to develop resistance to their effects. Also at risk are areas where resistant microbes spread due to lack of clean water and public sanitation. So it is imperative to understand where the resistance exists to combat the problem.
This is where our friends the bees come in.
Bees come in contact daily with natural substances like water, soil, air and pollen — all containing evidence of antimicrobial resistance. A 2023 study revealed that honey bees, because they live where humans live, are an effective indicator of whether microbial resistance affects a population. And with an estimated 10 million annual deaths due to antimicrobial resistance expected globally by 2050, these small biomonitors could save a lot of lives.
The team from Macquarie University in Australia tested 144 European honey bees from 18 hives and determined that 83 percent tested positive for one or more antimicrobial resistance targets and 39 percent tested positive for two or more.
The short lifespan of the honey bee of only four to eight weeks and its 2.5 kilometer foraging area means the data is current and local. And with 700,000 deaths annually from drug-resistant diseases, the data needs to be accurate.
While honey bees can be found in almost every country in the world, the team acknowledges there are flaws in nearly every method of antimicrobial monitoring, and a global system of combined monitoring results would be most effective in combating the issue of antimicrobial resistance. Consistency in the methods would also enhance accuracy.
IMAGE: Pixabay
Antimicrobial resistance isn’t limited to humans — plants and animals are also at risk. So, it’s imperative to also determine the sources of the resistant bacteria. The study reports, “It is crucial to determine the major sources that introduce resistant bacteria into the environment, which include sewage and sewage treatment plants, industrial sources, as well as agriculture and aquaculture.” It also indicates that there is far too little research in this area.
So, knowing whether these bacteria are picked up at the beach, local swimming pool or from eating local fruits and veggies could be a catalyst for temporary interventions.
Across the board, the team concludes a rounded and effective program includes a comprehensive surveillance system; determination of the extent of the resistance; understanding where monitoring is required; the most effective method of monitoring; and testing of microorganisms at the genetic level.
Regardless of the ”what,” everyone needs to be on the same page so the world needs a consistent and controlled handle on antimicrobial resistance and it needs to extend to areas where resistant bacteria have high risk of transmission.
Essentially, there is a ways to go before there is a cohesive system of monitoring and testing antimicrobial resistance, but the honey bees, with more than 3 billion colonies in the United States alone and an increase in the population by 80 percent since the 1960s, are a reliable and abundant resource.
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CAPTION: This photo is an excellent example of how much light pollution obscures the night sky. The bright areas below are city glows that can be visible from hundreds of kilometers away. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Apostolos Kyriazis, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.
CAPTION: While the moon is quite bright, capturing such a photo is a bit tricky. Astrophotographers use multiple techniques to generate a final image, like stacking to enhance the details and reduce noise and abertation, and multi-exposure to capture both the bright and dark side of the moon. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Darya Kawa Mirza, Irbil, Iraq.
CAPTION: The Spaghetti Nebula is the remains of a dead star that exploded 40,000 years ago. It spans around 3.5 degrees across the night sky. It appears in the sky as big as seven full moons side to side. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Maroun Habib, Lebanon.
CAPTION: Our closest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), is considered to be right next door on a cosmic scale, yet the light in this photo took over 2.5 million years to reach us. Talk about a blast from the past. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Abdullah Alharbi, Kuwait. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on March 22, 2023.
CAPTION: The NGC 2264 area has lots of star formations such as the Cone and Fox Fur nebulas and the Christmas Tree and Snowflake clusters. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Anas Albounni, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.
CAPTION: Not all nebulas are created equal. Some emit light and some obscure it. In this case, the opaque dust clouds of the Horse Head and Flame nebulas obscure our view of glowing ionized gases. The brain’s ability to identify shapes helps us name them. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Wissam Ayoub, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on Nov. 3, 2021.
CAPTION: A composite image of the Milky Way core includes many nebulas such as the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas on the left and Rho Ophiuchi nebula in the Scorpius constellation on the right. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Amr Abdulwahab, White desert, Egypt. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on May 10, 2023.
CAPTION: M78, a nebula located in the Orion constellation, is a cosmic cloud of glowing gas and dust where new stars are born. When you look at it, you see the light from these young stars bouncing off the surrounding dust. It’s a bit like a celestial nursery where stars are taking their first steps into the universe. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Arun Vijay & Souhayl Ben Khaled, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.
