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NASA’s James Webb space telescope is almost ready to get to work. The telescope’s mirrors are perfectly aligned. The team is currently finishing up the final calibrations of the spacecraft’s various instruments. Once that is done, Webb will be ready to get to work. One of the first things NASA plans to do with it is study two “super-Earth” planets known as 55 Cancri e and LHS 384 b.

Of note, both planets are located in our own Milky Way galaxy.

ZeroHedge — On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.


DuckDuckGo, the search engine which claims to offer ‘real privacy’ because it doesn’t track searches or store users’ history, has come under fire after a security researcher discovered that the mobile DuckDuckGo browser app contains a third-party tracker from Microsoft.

Researcher Zach Edwards found that while Google and Facebook’s trackers are blocked, trackers related to bing.com and linkedin.com were also being allowed through.

You can capture data within the DuckDuckGo so-called private browser on a website like Facebook’s https://workplace.com/ and you’ll see that DDG does NOT stop data flows to Microsoft’s Linkedin domains or their Bing advertising domains.

Starliner’s path to success has been turbulent.


This flight has been a long time coming. It brings NASA one step closer to a goal it’s had for some years now: To rely on multiple private space companies to transport astronauts and supplies between the ground and the ISS. But Starliner’s path has been turbulent. For NASA, even if the ascent was a success, it was still well behind schedule.

This mission, evocatively named Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2), launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral on May 19 and arrived at the ISS on May 21. The capsule received a warm welcome from the astronauts currently aboard the station: three Russians, three Americans, and Italian ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

Summary: Researchers have designed a new method of converting non-neural cells into functioning neurons that are able to form synapses, dispense dopamine, and restore the function of neurons undermined by Parkinson’s associated destruction of dopaminergic cells.

Neurodegenerative diseases damage and destroy neurons, ravaging both mental and physical health. Parkinson’s disease, which affects over 10 million people worldwide, is no exception. The most obvious symptoms of Parkinson’s disease arise after the illness damages a specific class of neuron located in the midbrain. The effect is to rob the brain of dopamine—a key neurotransmitter produced by the affected neurons.

In new research, Jeffrey Kordower and his colleagues describe a process for converting non-neuronal cells into functioning neurons able to take up residence in the brain, send out their fibrous branches across neural tissue, form synapses, dispense dopamine and restore capacities undermined by Parkinson’s destruction of dopaminergic cells.