September 17, 2024: We're covering astronauts returning to the moon, neuroscience insights into advanced meditation and the summer breakdancing routine that went viral. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | Humanity is a year away from sending astronauts back into deep space for the first time in more than 50 years. At least, that's the latest plan. The Artemis II mission, carrying four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon, is set to lift off in fall 2025 and represents the first crewed test of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion space capsule. The Artemis program's collaborators include Japan, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and the European Space Agency. The half-century gap in crewed missions beyond low-Earth orbit is due to converting old technologies and integrating new ones, cost overruns, leadership changes and logjams that can arise in collaborative mega-projects, reports Scientific American contributing editor Sarah Scoles.
Why this is so cool: The mission might sound familiar as it resembles the Apollo 8 flight of 1968 that carried Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders into lunar orbit and back to Earth. It is meant to lead the way to a space station orbiting the moon, habitable camps on its surface and astronauts traveling to Mars.
What the experts say: "Artemis has scientific purposes. But it also is a way of shaping the international environment for space," says Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. | | | NASA and its partners plan to send astronauts back to the moon on the Artemis II mission scheduled for 2025. Mondolithic Studios, Chris Wren and Kenn Brown | | | Neuroscientists who study the health effects of meditation and its mental mechanisms are taking this research into a new direction. The approach involves exploring "advanced meditation," which requires far more than "observe your breath" training and helps practitioners achieve intensely altered mental states, write neuroscientist Matthew D. Sacchet, and psychiatrist and neuroscientist Judson A. Brewer. Findings to date include an MRI-generated map of brain activity during a practice called advanced concentrative absorption meditation (ACAM). Mapped patterns of brain activity correlated with ACAM-induced experiences of joy, mental ease and out-of-body sensations.
Why this matters: Many lay people now use meditation as a coping tool, but it can do more, research suggests. Applications could include new ways to treat mental health conditions, opening our minds to more meaningful lives and interventions to make advanced meditative states accessible without extensive training.
What the experts say: "Future research may benefit from examining how ACAM and other forms of advanced meditative states relate to psychedelic experiences and how they may similarly help to alleviate symptoms of psychopathology," the authors write. | | | • Global attention to a widely panned breakdancing routine performed at the Summer Olympics this year is potentially undermining scholarship about hip-hop and has fueled damaging stereotypes, writes A.D. Carson, a hip-hop artist and associate professor at the University of Virginia. Carson's 2017 doctoral dissertation, "Owning My Masters," described as a digital archive of original music and spoken word poetry, drew a mixture of praise, sincere interest and negative attention from people who disdain Black art and Black scholarship, he writes. "Misguided assumptions about rap and rappers lead audiences to believe that hip-hop and academic achievements are at odds with one another," he adds. | 5 min read | | | Some people, apparently, are unable to eructate, that is, to burp. An injection of Botox into the upper cricopharyngeal muscle, a sphincter at the top of the esophagus, can help these folks burp, thereby relieving painful bloating and uncomfortable gurgling, reports health writer Rae Ellen Bichell for KFF Health News. Hat tip to Scientific American contributing editor Steve Mirsky for alerting me to this news. Who else?
On a more serious note, we have a correction. "Programmer Number One," in the September 12, 2024, Today in Science newsletter, should have said that Ada Lovelace translated a research paper written by an Italian engineer in 1842, not 1942. | —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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