NASA’s colossal Space Launch System rocket lifted off at 3:35 p.m. Pacific time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the start of the 10-day Artemis II mission.

In the hours and minutes leading up to launch, as the astronauts waited aboard, NASA engineers troubleshooted minor issues with the 30-story-tall rocket. First, the teams identified an issue with the hardware that communicates with a system designed to detonate the rocket to protect public safety if the rocket veers off course. Next, there was a fluke temperature reading on the Launch Abort System, designed to pull the crew to safety during such an event. Finally, they managed a brief telemetry issue with the capsule.

All were ultimately resolved, and the agency proceeded.

“On this historic mission, you take with you the heart of this Artemis team, the daring spirit of the American people and our partners across the globe, and the hopes and dreams of a new generation,” Artemis II launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said to the crew minutes before launch. “Good luck. Godspeed, Artemis II. Let’s go.”

In a few days’ time, the four astronauts aboard will perform a flyby of the moon — they will not land on the surface nor will they enter the moon’s orbit. Instead, the flyby is designed as an essential stepping-stone mission to test the rocket, human life support systems and flight procedures ahead of a lunar landing, which NASA hopes to pull off in 2028.

This includes studies on the astronauts’ sleep and mental health, as well as how deep-space radiation and microgravity affect organs and immune system. The crew will also practice manually piloting the spacecraft while still close to Earth.

NASA expects the crew to reach the moon Monday morning, around 10 a.m. Pacific time. As the astronauts pass the far side of the moon, NASA expects to temporarily lose communication with the crew, who will focus on documenting and analyzing the rugged lunar surface. Around this point, NASA anticipates the crew will break the Apollo 13 crew’s record for the farthest distance any human has traveled from Earth.

The crew will then begin their four-day return. The crew capsule is set to slam into the Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 30 times the speed of sound — potentially making it the fastest reentry of a crewed capsule in history — on April 10. NASA anticipates the crew will splash down off the coast of San Diego around 5 p.m. Pacific time.

The mission, made possible by scientists, engineers and support crews across the country and world, has a touch of Southern California, too.

Victor Glover, the astronaut piloting the mission, was once a kid in the Pomona Valley, watching the space shuttle launch on TV and dreaming of driving the thing. He cut his teeth as a test pilot out in the Mojave, attending test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base and serving on a Navy test pilot squadron in China Lake, Calif.

If the mission is successful, Glover will become the first Black person to travel to the moon. With him will be the first woman to do so, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, and the first non-American to do so, Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. Not to be outdone by his crewmates, mission commander Reid Wiseman, at 50, will be the oldest to do so.

NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center inside Edwards Air Force Base is also conducting critical research and testing for the mission. They supported two tests of the rocket’s Launch Abort System — designed to accelerate from 0 to 500 mph in just two seconds to literally outrun the debris of an exploding rocket — in the 2010s. (The rocket discarded the abort system after the crew safely escaped the majority of Earth’s atmosphere.)

During reentry, the center will participate in a high-speed relay of military and civilian planes to chase the capsule and measure how the heat shield performs with high-tech telescopes and sensors. Artemis II is testing out a new reentry trajectory after an uncrewed test mission in 2022 resulted in unexpected damage to the heat shield.

Finally, once the capsule safely splashes down off San Diego, NASA and U.S. Navy divers will secure the capsule, with medical staff from both on standby. A Navy ship will then bring the capsule back to Naval Base San Diego, right next to the city’s downtown.

The Artemis program ultimately aims to land humans back on the moon, help the space agency establish a lunar base and serve as the testing grounds for future missions to Mars.

NASA plans to launch Artemis III, a mission in Earth’s orbit to test docking the NASA spacecraft with SpaceX’s and Blue Origin’s lunar landers, in 2027. It aspires to launch Artemis IV, which would put humans on the surface of the moon, in 2028.

“Artemis II is the opening act,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman shortly before launch. “We’re going into the golden age of science and discovery right now.”

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Many years ago, scientists saw a dense, bright spot near a young star called Fomalhaut. They thought it could be a planet and continued to track it.

But in 2023, Hubble’s pictures revealed something strange. The bright spot had vanished — and a new one had appeared — a sign that it wasn’t a planet after all.

Scientists had stumbled on the dusty debris from two cosmic crashes. Massive space rocks slammed together to create clouds of dust that were thick enough to masquerade as planets. Over time, the remains spread out and eventually disappeared altogether.

Scientists think the space rocks involved in the collision were at least 37 miles (60 kilometers) wide. It’s rare to capture such clashes on camera, especially since theories suggest they only happen in the same vicinity about once every 100,000 years.

It’s “highly unexpected” that this area “has now exhibited two, unique, massive collisions inside 20 years,” said Joshua Lovell with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in an email. He had no role in the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Science.

The new observations could just be a lucky find. Or, they could mean that such smashups happen more often than scientists thought. It’ll take more data to know for sure.

Collisions of large space rocks are essential to how planets like ours form and what they’re made of. Studying them is “like taking a toddler picture of our solar system,” said astrophysicist Meredith MacGregor with Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved with the study.

Researchers plan to track the new dust cloud in the coming years to see how it changes and eventually disintegrates.

The star near the collision site is in our cosmic neighborhood, just 25 light years from Earth. A light year is nearly 6 trillion miles.

By keeping an eye on it, scientists are “catching these violent explosions in real time,” said study author Paul Kalas with the University of California, Berkeley.

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The directive was sent to all 50 states and will cancel roughly $12 billion in funding. California officials said they couldn’t immediately say how the cuts would affect state services.

“We are working to evaluate the impact of these actions,” Erica Pan, the state department’s director and state public health officer, said in a statement.

The funding was awarded during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to aid the state with its respiratory virus monitoring, testing and response, immunizations and vaccines for children, and to help address health disparities, Pan said.

The cuts were reported earlier by NBC News, which quoted a statement from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon saying that the “COVID-19 pandemic is over, and H.H.S. will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

It is unclear how much funding the state had been awarded and how much is now being pulled, but a 2023 news release shows that the CDC awarded the state a $37-million grant to help strengthen the state’s health infrastructure, workforce and data systems.

According to the release, the grant award’s start date was Dec. 1, 2022, and was set to last through Nov. 30, 2027.

It couldn’t immediately be determined how much of the award has already been spent, but much of it was designated to support county health departments, including the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Riverside County Department of Public Health, Long Beach Health Department, Orange County Health Department and San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.

In addition, two other large awards were provided by the CDC to California in the immediate wake of the COVID pandemic: a $555-million grant during 2020 and $1.7 billion as part of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021.

The state Department of Public Health didn’t immediately respond for a request for comment on what programs could be affected by the CDC’s cancellation of funding, nor how the state’s infectious-disease monitoring, testing, response and immunization programs could be affected.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health received notices from the federal government that COVID-associated funding was going to be rescinded, a spokeswoman for the department said. It also received an informal notice from the state that COVID-related grants for vaccination services probably would be terminated.

“In total, these actions to rescind … COVID-associated funding will impact more than $45 million in core L.A. County Public Health funding,” the spokeswoman said. “Much of this funding supports disease surveillance, public health lab services, outbreak investigations, infection control activities at healthcare facilities, and data transparency. We are working to determine the impacts of the announcement of the loss of this funding.”

According to 2025-26 state budget figures, Gov. Gavin Newsom allocated $5.1 billion to the state’s health department; about $2.3 billion of that comes from federal funding.

Although Congress initially authorized the money for state health programs as part of its COVID relief bills, it has since been allowed to be targeted to other programs, such as testing and surveillance for other respiratory viruses.

California has been ground zero for the H5N1 bird flu since last March. Thirty-eight people in the state have been infected with the virus, most of them dairy workers who were exposed working with infected cows or milk. However, two of the people were children; the cause of their infection has not been determined.

The virus has also infected 756 dairy herds; more than 75% of the state’s total dairy herds.

In addition, there have been eight measles cases since the beginning of the year, in addition to thousands of seasonal flu, COVID-19, norovirus and RSV cases.

Pan said the state will continue to advance public health and work to protect people.

“All Californians deserve to live in healthy and thriving communities, which is the role of public health,” she wrote in her statement, saying her department is “committed to seeking the resources required to support the critical, lifesaving infrastructure needed to keep people healthy and protect them against infectious disease, vaccine-preventable diseases and health emergencies.”

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Research published in 2020 on children with a rare mutation of their CLCN6 gene included four patients. Two of those patients, both young children, have died. There’s currently no treatment or cure. Today, Paxton, who was previously diagnosed with autism, is just one of 30 known cases.

“We’ll follow up with you in two years,” a genetics counselor told them.

“Your whole world comes crashing down. You’re in shock. You start going through the stages of grief — everything except for acceptance,” Paxton’s father, Paul Purdy told Patch. “You don’t know what the future holds for your child. You don’t know how much time they have.”

Despite this devastating news, Purdy and his wife Kristin refused to give up. After being told there was no cure, they set out to fund a first-ever clinical trial to treat the effects of the mutation.

Since he was a toddler, Paxton, now 8, has been receiving therapy for autism — including speech, occupational and physical therapy. His sister, Aria, also has a form of autism, so the Purdy’s felt they had a handle on the type of care Paxton would need. But around age 5, Paxton’s condition took a dramatic turn when he began suffering severe seizures that intensified over time. Even with multiple medications, Paxton was hospitalized in early 2023. Soon after, further testing revealed that his mutation on the CLCN6 gene was likely driving both his seizures and a broader neurodegenerative process.

Paxton’s challenges extend far beyond his seizure disorder. He has significant difficulty with motor planning; everyday tasks like climbing stairs, holding a cup or feeding himself require assistance. Anti-seizure medications often leave him groggy during the day and can trigger more seizures whenever he dozes off. At school, the 8-year-old attends special education classes, but he needs support in nearly every aspect of daily life — from using the bathroom to transitioning between activities.

Still, Paxton’s parents describe him as a happy child who lights up around other kids, even if his ability to communicate and play with them is limited.

“He just likes being around people,” Purdy said.

Last year, Purdy began researching gene therapies when he discovered work at the University of Massachusetts Horae Gene Therapy Center. Scientists agreed to study Paxton’s specific mutation using a specialized mouse model funded through the National Institute of Health. The goal? To design a first-of-its-kind gene therapy vector to help halt or reverse the effects of Paxton’s condition.

Developing the treatment, however, comes with a daunting price tag — an estimated $1.5 million. Purdy and his wife have formed a nonprofit — Cure CLCN6 — to raise funds and drive further research. To date, the family’s GoFundMe campaign has raised $60,828.

The nonprofit is hosting two fundraisers, including one on Friday, Feb. 1, at Mountain Mike’s Pizza in Temecula. The restaurant donating 40% of each purchase when customers mention “Cure CLCN6, Inc.” for dine-in, takeout, or direct delivery orders (third-party apps are not included).

Cure CLCN6, Inc. is also running a shoe drive through March 27 in collaboration with Funds2Orgs. New and gently used shoes will be collected and distributed to micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries. The Purdys’ nonprofit can earn up to 50 cents per pound of donated footwear. Those interested in hosting a shoe drop-off box or scheduling a shoe drive can email contactus@cureclcn6.org.

Despite the immense challenges, Paul Purdy says the new effort has given their family something they had lost: hope.

“The good news is there is a plan in place to develop this,” Purdy said. “The bad news is that it takes a while to fully develop…probably about three years.”

Since going public, the Purdys were contacted by families in Alabama and Mexico who have children who also have the ultra-rare neurodegenerative mutation.

Like the Purdys, those families also reported being brushed off by medical professionals and told, “We’ll follow up with you in a couple of years.”

“That’s not a conversation any parent ever wants to have and frankly, never should have,” Purdy said. “Because now we know that the ability, the technology, the knowledge to create effective treatments…does exist — but unfortunately, families have to be the ones that fund it.”

In the meantime, Paul and Kristin Purdy’s day-to-day life revolves around therapy appointments, special education support, medication adjustments, and the ever-present worry of when the next seizure might strike.

While Paxton’s future remains uncertain, Purdy is determined to spare other families the same hopelessness he felt upon learning of his son’s diagnosis. His nonprofit aims not only to help Paxton but also to provide a resource for others who may discover they, too, have this rare mutation.

“This gene therapy, it’s going to be a first in the world,” Purdy said. “This little boy right here will be the first in the world to undergo this gene therapy. He’ll be in the history books.”

For Purdy, the motivation behind developing a first-of-its-kind therapy extends well beyond his immediate family.

“While Paxton is our son —and yes, we are doing this for him — since these other families have come forward…we do feel an additional obligation and motivation to get this done for them as well.”

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The last time Donald Trump was president, his health care policies chipped away at the Affordable Care Act and helped eliminate federal abortion rights, leaving states to fill the gaps. In his second term, experts predict Trump’s agenda to be similar and warn that health care will get more expensive and harder to access for millions of people. 

Congressional Republicans, newly empowered by Trump’s victory and the Senate moving to GOP control, have made it clear that they intend to try to implement long-standing conservative goals that include decreasing government spending on health care and further dismantling abortion rights, which are currently protected in about half of the country, including California.

Newly nominated Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also pushed erroneous claims about vaccine hazards and exaggerated the risks of water fluoridation that could have ripple effects across state public health efforts. 

The Democratic supermajority in the California Capitol, however, has spent the past several years passing laws to stymie future conservative administrations on health care, said Mia Bonta, chairperson of the Assembly health committee and a Democrat from Oakland. 

Legislators have protected insurance coverage of abortion and transgender care. They have expanded health insurance programs to low-income undocumented immigrants and paid for it with state funds. They have taken pieces of the Affordable Care Act and written it into state law, expanding the enrollment period and banning lifetime limits on coverage. And they’ve invested millions of dollars into public health after the system languished for a decade.

“We were able to be very deliberate in the past several years to Trump-proof our health system moving forward,” Bonta said.

Not all state lawmakers have been happy with California’s health care expansions. Senate Republican Minority Leader Brian Jones, for instance, said public insurance for undocumented immigrants, which as of this year is available to all income-eligible immigrants, is too expensive and should be “delayed or repealed entirely.”

But Democratic lawmakers and health care advocates say they are better prepared than the first time Trump took office — though they expect the new administration to put California’s new laws to the test.

“We have their playbook from 2017, and almost everything they tried to do, California helped stop through our advocacy … or through court cases,” said Rachel Linn Gish, communications director for Health Access California. “In that way we are in a much stronger position than before.”

Affordable health care at risk

During his first term, Trump tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has said for his second term that he has “concepts of a plan” for the program that insures more than 21 million Americans. 

Republican lawmakers in general have shifted away from talking about eliminating the program entirely, but some leaders, including Vice President-elect J.D. Vance have suggested changes that would make insurance more expensive. Vance during the campaign said he wanted to increase choices for consumers and “make the health insurance marketplace function a little bit better.”

Eliminating the health insurance marketplace, which is also known as Obamacare, has grown deeply politically unpopular even among Republican constituents. Since Trump’s first term, the number of people enrolled has grown by more than 9 million nationally. That political leverage is something that California advocates believe will help protect the program. 

“More people are enrolled in (Affordable Care Act) marketplaces than ever before,” Linn Gish said.

But in many ways the state’s Achilles heel is federal funding. Federal spending on California health care programs is more than three times greater than the state’s share. That’s more than $117 billion from the federal government to support Medi-Cal and the Affordable Care Act compared to $35 billion from California’s general fund for all state health spending, which includes public health, state hospitals and social services.

And much of California’s policies can only be fully realized with sufficient money in the bank.

With the state grappling with a third consecutive deficit next year, the most immediate and likely federal health care cut will be difficult to prevent: financial assistance for middle-class families. 

Outgoing President Joe Biden approved two rounds of Affordable Care Act subsidies during his presidency, making assistance available to middle-class families for the first time. Those  subsidies will expire at the end of 2025, and Trump and congressional Republicans have signaled that they don’t want to renew them.

Without them, premiums will increase by an average of $1,000 annually for residents with insurance through Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act program. Premiums are already set to increase by about 8% next year, and without federal assistance other out-of-pocket costs such as deductibles and copays will most likely spike as well. 

Prior to Biden’s push to lower health care premiums, many Californians paid upwards of 18% of their income on health insurance, according to Covered California data. Federal assistance capped that expense at 8.5%.

“You’re talking about a world where we’re doubling how much people pay,” Linn Gish said.

In 2023, California lawmakers established a backstop of state funding to help more people afford health insurance, but those reserves can’t make up the gap if federal funding stops.

Health care for immigrants

Medi-Cal, the state Medicaid program, offers expansive benefits to all low-income individuals regardless of immigration status.  The program could face uncomfortable cuts with a less-than-friendly federal administration. 

Federal dollars cover about 70% of Medi-Cal’s program costs, while the state invests approximately $30 billion in general fund spending. 

“The largest concern many of us have who have worked with our state budget is the resources we will be receiving from the federal government this upcoming year,” said Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, a Democrat from Fresno who has focused on expansions for undocumented workers. “There are many who are struggling who need their government to help.”

About 7 million more Californians qualified for Medi-Cal after Affordable Care Act rules allowed the state to bump up income limits in 2014, and about 1.8 million undocumented immigrants have gotten Medi-Cal coverage after the state began expanding eligibility for them  in 2015.

Some California Republicans have strayed from the party platform when it comes to health care for undocumented immigrants. The Central Valley relies heavily on immigrant labor, and a handful of state Republicans from those communities supported expanded access to health insurance for undocumented residents. 

The state GOP, however, still officially opposes coverage for undocumented immigrants and several Republican lawmakers want the state to undo that health care expansion.

Gov. Gavin “Newsom and Democrat lawmakers insist on expanding free health care for illegal immigrants to the tune of $5 billion per year. In the midst of a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, hospitals and maternity wards shutting down, and a massive influx of migrants illegally crossing our open border, we should not be expanding this costly government program,” Jones, a Republican from San Diego said.

Immigrants who came to the United States in their youth and who are protected by the Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for the first time can enroll in Covered California thanks to expanded eligibility under the Biden administration.

Liberal lawmakers and policy advocates hailed the expansions as a long-sought-after victory, but they remain controversial among California Republicans. Many lawmakers and advocates expect these expansions to be challenged over the next four years. 

“Anything that has Biden’s fingerprints on it is going to be the first touched. The DACA expansion is going to be high on the list,” Linn Gish said.

This year a bill expanding Covered California to all undocumented immigrants, not just those who came to the U.S. as children, stalled in committee. That measure would have allowed immigrants who make too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal to purchase insurance.

Arambula, who authored the bill, said those populations are “unjustly excluded” from buying insurance at full price even if they want to. He plans on reintroducing the measure, which could be implemented without federal approval. 

Family planning and abortion cuts

On the campaign trail Trump took credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who ended the national right to abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, but he said he would not support a national law banning abortion.  

Still, California Democrats aren’t taking any chances on abortion rights. They passed more than two dozen laws to protect access to abortion, contraceptives and gender-affirming services in the last three years.

In 2022, voters also protected abortion as a right in the state constitution. 

Democratic lawmakers say they have more work to do. 

Bonta said she plans on introducing bills to further protect reproductive rights on the first day of the legislative session. Those bills would require hospitals to provide emergency abortions, protect birth control for Medi-Cal recipients and ease the regulation of birth centers. Bonta said lawmakers are working quickly and she expects many of the bills introduced in December to have urgency clauses that allow immediate implementation.

“It’s going to be a huge change within the health care space,” she said.

The first time Trump was president, he also dismantled Title X regulations that fund the federal family planning network by instituting a “gag rule” prohibiting clinics from performing or referring for abortions. The clinics funded have historically provided contraceptives, abortion care, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, gynecology services and postpartum care. After the rule change, the number of people served by Title X clinics dropped 60% nationally as a result of clinics exiting the program, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent health policy research center..

In California the number of people served dropped from 1 million to fewer than 200,000, said Amy Moy, co-CEO of Essential Access Health, which administers the state’s Title X money. 

California dedicated $10 million to bridge the gap, but Moy said if there is another federal cut, clinics say to expect longer wait times and fewer providers.

“We will be having to test the bounds of our guardrails and see what we can do here, but we are committed to working with partners and state leaders to do everything possible,” Moy said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

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The state’s department of health, the CDPH, said the new case was from the Clade I strain – different from the Clade II strain that has been in circulation in the US since 2022.

The person in question, who is now isolating at home, had recently travelled to Africa and the CDPH said their case was “related to the ongoing outbreak of Clade I mpox in Central and Eastern Africa”.

Mpox was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization earlier this year.

The CDPH said that while Clade I cases had tended to cause more severe illness than Clade II in the past, “recent infections from Clade I mpox may not be as clinically severe as in previous outbreaks”.

Mpox is caused by a virus in the same family as smallpox but is usually much less harmful.

It was originally transmitted from animals to humans but now also passes between humans.

Initial symptoms include fever, headaches, swellings, back pain and aching muscles. A rash can then develop, which can be extremely itchy or painful.

The infection can clear up on its own and lasts between 14 and 21 days, but in some cases has been fatal, particularly for vulnerable groups including small children.

Mpox is most common in remote villages in the tropical rainforests of West and Central Africa, in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), where it has been seen for many years.

Hundreds of people died during an initial outbreak in DR Congo earlier this year, and the disease has since spread to areas of Central and East Africa.

Outbreaks can be controlled by preventing infections with vaccines, though these are usually only available for people at risk or those who have been in close contact with an infected person.

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Our very universe has (super) entities whose origin story is shrouded in mystery. These are the supermassive black holes, which are powerful objects that occupy the centers of nearly every galaxy in the universe. These black holes are believed to have been around for billions of years (some were even formed when the universe was very young) and are some of the most massive and luminous objects in the universe. However, we still don’t understand how the first black holes formed. The enthusiastic astronomy community has been hard at work trying to come up with an origin story. Some astronomers believe that the first black holes formed when the first stars in the universe died, while others believe they formed when dense gas in the early universe directly collapsed into black holes without forming stars first.

So, how can we determine the true origin story of the black hole? We look for clues in the universe that we see through our telescopes. One way is by looking at the masses of certain black holes called intermediate-mass black holes. These are believed to be relics of early black holes that have survived relatively unscathed to our present universe. If most of these black holes have low masses (10² – 10⁴ solar masses), they were likely to have formed from the collapse of early stars. If they instead have masses around 10⁴– 10⁵ solar masses, then they were formed from the collapse of dense gas. This difference in mass is a likely consequence of the conditions involved in the collapse scenario.

It is challenging to detect intermediate-mass black holes in the first place, let alone measure their masses. The authors of today’s article set out to achieve this mighty task! They first identify a sample of hyper-luminous X-ray sources. As the name suggests, these are highly luminous X-ray sources, and they are detected at off-center locations in a galaxy. This characteristic makes it likely that they are linked to intermediate-mass black holes. Intermediate-mass black holes are more likely to wander and can be found in different parts of a galaxy, as opposed to supermassive black holes, which are always found at the centers of galaxies. The authors then use the Hubble Space Telescope to look at these hyper-luminous X-ray sources and their surroundings to understand them better. Let’s see the clues the authors gather to formulate their theory of the formation mechanism of black holes.

Clue No. 1: Violent Disruptions Found at the Scene of the Crime!

The authors find that the strongest X-ray sources are associated with systems showing signs of mergers between galaxies. The hyper-luminous X-ray sources do not reside in a definite galaxy (Figure 1) but rather in a compact source that more closely resembles the core or center of a galaxy. The authors also measure the masses of the objects that host the X-ray sources using spectral energy distributions and the flux measured by Hubble. They find that nearly all the masses of the objects are larger than typical globular clusters and, thus, they are more likely to be the leftovers of dwarf galaxies that have merged or are merging with the more massive galaxy.

Clue No. 2: What Are the Masses of Those Black Holes?

The authors then use several scaling relations and different Eddington ratios (which give a sense of how quickly the black hole is accreting based on its luminosity) to determine the mass of the black hole. Looking at the lowest-mass black holes (as they are more similar to the early seed black holes) (Figure 2), they conclude that 28% of their samples agree with the direct collapse scenario (which forms more-massive black holes) and 21% with the formation in dense stellar clusters (which forms less-massive black holes).

The Plot Thickens!

Looking at the larger masses of the intermediate-mass black holes, it is tempting to conclude that we have narrowed the origin story of black holes to the direct collapse scenario. However, since most of the hyper-luminous X-ray sources are found in galaxies closely associated with merger events, the authors argue that the gas falling into the black hole during the galaxy merger could have triggered the increase in the size of the black hole seeds from their original mass. They determine that the low-mass X-ray sources all have larger X-ray luminosities than expected from their host stellar masses. This could hint that accretion likely increases the size of the black hole, which leads to enhanced luminosity. The original black hole seeds were thus likely much smaller, suggesting they were formed from stars.

Well, that was full of twists and turns! This article has added some evidence favoring the stellar collapse formation mechanism. With more data and further analysis, we will one day end up with convincing numbers to help us determine how the first black holes in the universe formed. And hey! If I could sit through all of those 7 hours and 1 minute to find out how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, I think I would be fine waiting a couple more years (hopefully!) to uncover the origin story of these mighty black holes!

Original astrobite edited by Storm Colloms.

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The human brain, more than any other attribute, sets our species apart. Over the past seven million years or so, it has grown in size and complexity, enabling us to use language, make plans for the future and coordinate with one another at a scale never seen before in the history of life.

But our brains came with a downside, according to a study published on Wednesday. The regions that expanded the most in human evolution became exquisitely vulnerable to the ravages of old age.

“There’s no free lunch,” said Sam Vickery, a neuroscientist at the Jülich Research Center in Germany and an author of the study.

The 86 billion neurons in the human brain cluster into hundreds of distinct regions. For centuries, researchers could recognize a few regions, like the brainstem, by hallmarks such as the clustering of neurons. But these big regions turned out to be divided into smaller ones, many of which were revealed only with the help of powerful scanners.

As the structure of the human brain came into focus, evolutionary biologists became curious about how the regions evolved from our primate ancestors. (Chimpanzees are not our direct ancestors, but both species descended from a common ancestor about seven million years ago.)

The human brain is three times as large as that of chimpanzees. But that doesn’t mean all of our brain regions expanded at the same pace, like a map drawn on an inflating balloon. Some regions expanded only a little, while others grew a lot.

Dr. Vickery and his colleagues developed a computer program to analyze brain scans from 189 chimpanzees and 480 humans. Their program mapped each brain by recognizing clusters of neurons that formed distinct regions. Both species had 17 brain regions, the researchers found.

These maps then let the researchers calculate how much bigger each of the 17 regions were in the human brain. They found a number of regions that were roughly the same size in both species. But a few areas were much larger in people. One of them was the orbitofrontal cortex, a region that sits directly behind the eyes and is essential for decision-making.

Dr. Vickery and his colleagues then looked at what happened to aging brains. Neuroscientists have long known that by the time people reach their 30s, their neurons start losing some of their connecting branches. As a result, their brains start to shrink. But it’s tricky to compare our dwindling brains to those of other apes, because we live so much longer than they do. Along with the normal loss of brain volume, old people may also have diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that can wipe out more neurons.

Since chimpanzees rarely live beyond 50, the scientists picked out humans of comparable age to examine how their brains grow old. They analyzed human volunteers ages 20 to 58, as well as chimpanzees ages 9 to 50. In both species, the researchers found, the brain shrinks over the years. But some regions shrink faster than others. In humans, the fastest-shrinking regions were the orbitofrontal cortex and other parts of the brain that have expanded the most over the past few million years.

The new study is “the next rung in the ladder that we’re climbing to understand the aging brain,” said Caleb Finch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Southern California who was not involved in the work. But he noted that research has yet to show why recently expanded parts of the brain are so vulnerable to shrinking as we get older. “It’s not clear at all,” he said. “The neurons don’t have any chemical differences.”

One possibility, Dr. Vickery said, has to do with the fact that the fastest-expanding parts of our brain facilitate our most complex thinking. It’s possible that the neurons that carry out this thought wear out quickly, causing the regions to shrink.

Aida Gomez-Robles, an anthropologist at University College London who was not involved in the study, cautioned that 189 scans of chimpanzees can only provide a fuzzy picture of their aging brains. “Similar studies of aging in humans tend to include thousands of individuals,” she said.

What’s more, the new study only found a modest link between expanded regions and rapid aging. “It’s true for some of those regions, but we don’t know if it is true for all of them,” Dr. Gomez-Robles said.

Ironically, it’s our big brains that help us to live decades longer than chimpanzees. They allowed our species to ensure a steadier supply of food, to figure out the importance of clean water and to invent new kinds of medicine. But in our extra years, our brains continue to shrink. And Dr. Vickery’s study suggests that the very regions that help us live longer are shrinking fastest.

In other words, the frustrations of growing old — trouble with recalling words, for example, or switching from one task to another — may just be a legacy of our evolution. “You have this amazing brain,” Dr. Vickery said, “but it comes at a cost.”

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Two Kaiser Permanente Northern California hospitals are among the top cardiothoracic surgery hospitals in the United States after being recognized by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) with the highest rating for isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures.

In the latest STS ratings, Kaiser Permanente San Francisco and Santa Clara received an overall three-star rating for CABG procedures from January 2021 to December 2023. Kaiser Permanente Sacramento’s cardiovascular surgery team also received an overall three-star rating for CABG procedures. Kaiser Permanente Northern California has three cardiac surgical programs in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Santa Clara.

The STS three-star rating, which denotes the highest category of quality, places Kaiser Permanente San Francisco and Santa Clara along with the Kaiser Permanente Sacramento’s cardiovascular surgery team among the top 23% of participants performing heart bypass surgery in the United States and Canada.

“This recognition highlights our commitment to cardiac-care excellence, which saves lives and sets a remarkable standard for health care professionals nationwide,” said Maria Ansari, MD, FACC, chief executive officer and executive director of The Permanente Medical Group. “I’ve witnessed the commitment, dedication, and expertise of our cardiac teams, and it gives me great pride to see all of our centers of cardiac excellence achieve this milestone again.”

Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara and San Francisco have performed approximately 2,800 CABG procedures over the past three years. Kaiser Permanente Sacramento’s cardiovascular surgery team has performed approximately 1,100 CABG procedures over the past three years. CABG is a procedure used to treat coronary artery disease and improve blood flow to the heart. The procedure is also known as bypass surgery, coronary artery bypass surgery, and heart bypass surgery.

Cardiac care specialists in Kaiser Permanente Northern California perform a full array of adult cardiac surgical procedures, including coronary artery bypass, valve repair or replacement, aortic dissection and aneurysm repair, repair of adult cardiac anomalies, and surgical treatment of cardiac tumors, leading to excellent patient outcomes. In our communities, Kaiser Permanente members are 33% less likely to experience premature death due to heart disease, according to a 2022 research study.

“Our Kaiser Permanente teams are committed to providing the highest quality of care leading to positive outcomes for our patients as they chart their journey back to good health,” said Carrie Owen Plietz, FACHE, president of Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California region. “Receiving this three-star rating speaks to the outstanding skills of our cardiac surgical teams and the excellence of our cardiac program throughout Northern California.”

The STS Star rating system is one of the most sophisticated and highly regarded overall measures of quality in health care, rating the benchmarked outcomes of cardiothoracic surgery programs across the United States and Canada. The star rating is calculated using a combination of quality measures for specific procedures performed by an STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database participant.

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“We are delighted to bring online the Victory Pass and Arica solar and energy storage complex and begin providing cost-competitive clean energy for California homes and businesses with these projects,” said Valerie Wooley, SVP of Origination at Clearway. “This pair of solar and storage projects will enhance the state’s energy grid by providing reliable power when it’s needed most. We are immensely grateful to the eight Victory Pass and Arica customers, whose long-term commitments to procuring clean, reliable energy made this all possible.”

Victory Pass is contracted with Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE) and Central Coast Community Energy (3CE). Arica is contracted with Clean Power Alliance (CPA), Peninsula Clean Energy(PCE), MCE, Southern California Edison (SCE), an affiliate of NRG Energy, Inc., and PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP).

“Increasing our 24/7 renewable power capabilities is critical to helping our region address a rapidly changing climate,” said Peninsula Clean Energy CEO Shawn Marshall. “This project helps us by producing and storing emission-free solar power that can be used day or night throughout the year.”

Together, Arica and Victory Pass represent a $1 billion investment in Riverside County. In addition, over the life of the projects, Arica and Victory Pass will contribute a combined $25.8 million in taxes that support local schools, hospitals, emergency response and other public services. During construction, the projects created 1,000 union jobs and will support a permanent workforce throughout operations.

These projects add to Clearway’s footprint in Riverside County, where the company now has over 1.2 GW of operating renewable and storage assets across five utility-scale solar projects and four distributed solar installations, in addition to the Arica and Victory Pass solar and storage complex.

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