DJ Henderson

Capitol Hill is abuzz with talk of the “Athena” plan for NASA

duffy, isaacman, nasa administrator, Space / DJ Henderson / November 3, 2025

In recent weeks, copies of an intriguing policy document have started to spread among space lobbyists on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The document bears the title “Athena,” and it purports to summarize the actions that private astronaut Jared Isaacman would have taken, were his nomination to become NASA administrator confirmed.

The 62-page plan is notable both for the ideas to remake NASA that it espouses as well as the manner in which it has been leaked to the space community.

After receiving a copy of this plan from an industry official, I spoke with multiple sources over the weekend to understand what is happening. Based upon this reporting there are clearly multiple layers to the story, which I want to unpack.

In the big picture, this leak appears to be part of a campaign by interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy to either hold onto the high-profile job or, at the very least, prejudice the re-nomination of Isaacman to lead the space agency. Additionally, it is also being spread by legacy aerospace contractors who seek to protect their interests from the Trump administration’s goal of controlling spending and leaning into commercial space.

The Athena plan’s origin

The leaked document is 62 pages long and, according to sources, represents a pared-down version of a more comprehensive “Athena” plan devised by Isaacman and his advisors early in 2025, after President Trump nominated him to become NASA administrator.

The Athena plan lays out a blueprint for Isaacman’s tenure at NASA, seeking to return the space agency to “achieving the near impossible,” focusing on leading the world in human space exploration, igniting the space economy, and becoming a force multiplier for science.

Isaacman’s nomination was pulled in late May, largely for political reasons. Trump then appointed his Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, to oversee NASA on an interim basis in early July. As a courtesy, in August, Isaacman’s team edited a shorter version of the plan down to 62 pages and gave a copy to Duffy and his chief of staff, Pete Meachum.

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AT&T sues ad industry watchdog instead of pulling ads that slam T-Mobile

AT&T, national advertising division, Policy, T-Mobile / DJ Henderson / November 2, 2025

Self-regulation breakdown

National Advertising Division said AT&T ad and press release broke program rule.

Credit: Getty Images | AaronP/Bauer-Griffin

AT&T yesterday sued the advertising industry’s official watchdog over the group’s demand that AT&T stop using its rulings for advertising and promotional purposes.

As previously reported, BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD) found that AT&T violated a rule “by issuing a video advertisement and press release that use the NAD process and its findings for promotional purposes,” and sent a cease-and-desist letter to the carrier. The NAD operates the US advertising industry’s system of self-regulation, which is designed to handle complaints that advertisers file against each other and minimize government regulation of false and misleading claims.

While it’s clear that both AT&T and T-Mobile have a history of misleading ad campaigns, AT&T portrays itself as a paragon of honesty in new ads calling T-Mobile “the master of breaking promises.” An AT&T press release about the ad campaign said the NAD “asked T-Mobile to correct their marketing claims 16 times over the last four years,” and an AT&T commercial said T-Mobile has faced more challenges for deceptive ads from competitors than all other telecom providers in that time.

While the NAD describes AT&T’s actions as a clear-cut violation of rules that advertisers agree to in the self-regulatory process, AT&T disputed the accusation in a lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. “We stand by our campaign to shine a light on deceptive advertising from our competitors and oppose demands to silence the truth,” AT&T said in a press release.

AT&T’s lawsuit asked the court for a declaration, stating “that it has not violated NAD’s procedures” and that “NAD has no legal basis to enforce its demand for censorship.” The lawsuit complained that AT&T hasn’t been able to run its advertisements widely because “NAD’s inflammatory and baseless accusations have now intimidated multiple TV networks into pulling AT&T’s advertisement.”

AT&T claims rule no longer applies

AT&T’s claim that it didn’t violate an NAD rule hinges partly on when its press release was issued. The carrier claims the rule against referencing NAD decisions only applies for a short period of time after each NAD ruling.

“NAD now takes the remarkable position that any former participant in an NAD proceeding is forever barred from truthfully referencing NAD’s own public findings about a competitor’s deceptive advertising,” AT&T said. The lawsuit argued that “if NAD’s procedures were ever binding on AT&T, their binding effect ceased at the conclusion of the proceeding or a reasonable time thereafter.”

AT&T also slammed the NAD for failing to rein in T-Mobile’s deceptive ads. The group’s slow process let T-Mobile air deceptive advertisements without meaningful consequences, and the “NAD has repeatedly failed to refer continued violations to the FTC,” AT&T said.

“Over the past several years, NAD has repeatedly deemed T-Mobile’s ads to be misleading, false, or unsubstantiated,” AT&T said. “But over and over, T-Mobile has gamed the system to avoid timely redressing its behavior. NAD’s process is often slow, and T-Mobile knows it can make that process even slower by asking for extensions and delaying fixes.”

We’ve reported extensively on both carriers’ history of misleading advertisements over the years. That includes T-Mobile promising never to raise prices on certain plans and then raising them anyway. AT&T used to advertise 4G LTE service as “5GE,” and was rebuked for an ad that falsely claimed the carrier was already offering cellular coverage from space. AT&T and T-Mobile have both gotten in trouble for misleading promises of unlimited data.

AT&T says vague ad didn’t violate rule

AT&T’s lawsuit alleged that the NAD press release “intentionally impl[ied] that AT&T mischaracterized NAD’s prior decisions about T-Mobile’s deceptive advertising.” However, the NAD’s public stance is that AT&T violated the rule by using NAD decisions for promotional purposes, not by mischaracterizing the decisions.

NAD procedures state that companies participating in the system agree “not to mischaracterize any decision, abstract, or press release issued or use and/or disseminate such decision, abstract or press release for advertising and/or promotional purposes.” The NAD announcement didn’t make any specific allegations of AT&T mischaracterizing its decisions but said that AT&T violated the rules “by issuing a video advertisement and press release that use the NAD process and its findings for promotional purposes.”

The NAD said AT&T committed a “direct violation” of the rules by running an ad and issuing a press release “making representations regarding the alleged results of a competitor’s participation in BBB National Program’s advertising industry self-regulatory process.” The “alleged results” phrase may be why AT&T is claiming the NAD accused it of mischaracterizing decisions. There could also be more specific allegations in the cease-and-desist letter, which wasn’t made public.

AT&T claims its TV ads about T-Mobile don’t violate the rule because they only refer to “challenges” to T-Mobile advertising and “do not reference any decision, abstract, or press release.”

AT&T quibbles over rule meaning

AT&T further argues that a press release can’t violate the prohibition against using NAD decisions “for advertising and/or promotional purposes.” While press releases are clearly promotional in nature, AT&T says that part of the NAD rules doesn’t apply to press releases issued by advertisers like itself. Specifically, AT&T said that “the permissibility of press releases is not governed by Section 2.1(I)(2)(b), which applies to uses ‘for advertising and/or promotional purposes.’”

But the NAD procedures also bar participants in the process from issuing certain kinds of press releases. AT&T describes the rule about press releases as being in a different section than the rule about advertising and promotional purposes, but it’s actually all part of the same sentence. The rule says, “By participating in an NAD or NARB proceeding, the parties agree: (a) not to issue a press release regarding any decisions issued; and/or (b) not to mischaracterize any decision, abstract or press release issued or use and/or disseminate such decision, abstract or press release for advertising and/or promotional purposes.”

AT&T argues that the rule only bars press releases at the time of each NAD decision. The rule’s “meaning is clear in context: When NAD or NARB [National Advertising Review Board] issues a decision, no party is allowed to issue a press release to announce that decision,” AT&T said. “Instead, NAD issues its own press release to announce the decision. AT&T did not issue a press release to announce any decision, and indeed its advertisements (and press release announcing its advertising campaign) do not mention any particular NAD decision. In fact, AT&T’s press release does not use the word ‘decision’ at all.”

AT&T said that because it only made a short reference to NAD decisions, “AT&T’s press release about its new advertising campaign is therefore not a press release about an NAD decision as contemplated by Section 2.1(I)(2)(a).” AT&T also said it’s not a violation because the press release simply stated the number of rulings against T-Mobile and did not specifically cite any of those 16 decisions.

“AT&T’s press release does not include, attach, copy, or even cite any specific decision, abstract, or press release either in part or in whole,” AT&T’s lawsuit said. AT&T further said the NAD rule doesn’t apply to any proceeding AT&T wasn’t involved in, and that “AT&T did not initiate several of the proceedings against T-Mobile included in the one-sentence reference.”

We contacted the NAD about AT&T’s lawsuit but the group declined to comment.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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Measles outbreak investigation in Utah blocked by patient who refuses to talk

arizona, contact tracing, health, measles, outbreak, Utah / DJ Henderson / November 1, 2025

A measles investigation amid a large, ongoing outbreak at the Arizona-Utah border has hit a roadblock as the first probable case identified in the Salt Lake City area refuses to work with health officials, the local health department reported this week.

There have been over 150 cases collectively across the two states, mostly in northwestern Mohave County, Arizona, and the southwest health district of Utah, in the past two months. Both areas have abysmally low vaccination rates: In Mohave County, only 78.4 percent of kindergartners in the 2024–2025 school year were vaccinated against measles, according to state records. In the southwest district of Utah, only 80.7 percent of kindergartners in the 2024–2025 school year had records of measles vaccination. Public health experts say vaccination coverage of 95 percent is necessary to keep the disease from spreading in a community.

While the outbreak has largely exploded along the border, cases are also creeping to the north, toward Salt Lake County, which encompasses the city. Utah County, which sits just south of Salt Lake County, has identified eight cases, including a new case reported today.

Uncooperative case

Salt Lake County likely has a new one, too—the first for the county this year—as well as possible exposures. But, they can’t confirm it.

County health officials said that a health care provider in the area contacted them late on Monday to tell them about a patient who very likely has measles. The officials then spent a day reaching out to the person, who refused to answer questions or cooperate in any way. That included refusing to share location information so that other people could be notified that they were potentially exposed to one of the most infectious viruses known.

“The patient has declined to be tested, or to fully participate in our disease investigation, so we will not be able to technically confirm the illness or properly do contact tracing to warn anyone with whom the patient may have had contact,” Dorothy Adams, executive director of Salt Lake County Health Department, said in a statement. “But based on the specific symptoms reported by the healthcare provider and the limited conversation our investigators have had with the patient, this is very likely a case of measles in someone living in Salt Lake County.”

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NASA test flight seeks to help bring commercial supersonic travel back

Space, supersonic flight, supersonic travel, syndication, X-59 / DJ Henderson / October 31, 2025

The X-59 has successfully completed its inaugural flight.

Credit: Lockheed Martin/Michael Jackson

About an hour after sunrise over the Mojave Desert of Southern California, NASA’s newest experimental supersonic jet took to the skies for the first time on Tuesday. The X-59 Quesst (Quiet SuperSonic Technology) is designed to decrease the noise of a sonic boom when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier, paving the way for future commercial jets to fly at supersonic speeds over land.

The jet, built by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, took off from US Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. Flown by Nils Larson, NASA’s lead test pilot for the X-59, the inaugural flight validated the jet’s airworthiness and safety before landing about an hour after takeoff near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

“X-59 is a symbol of American ingenuity,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement. “It’s part of our DNA—the desire to go farther, faster, and even quieter than anyone has ever gone before.”

Commercial planes are prohibited from flying at supersonic speeds over land in the US due to the disruption that breaking the sound barrier causes on the ground, releasing a loud sonic boom that can rattle windows and trigger alarms. The Concorde, which was the only successful commercial supersonic jet, was limited to flying at supersonic speeds only over the oceans.

When a plane approaches the speed of sound, pressure waves build up on the surface of the aircraft. These areas of high pressure coalesce into large shock waves when the plane goes supersonic, producing the double thunderclap of a sonic boom.

The X-59 is capable of reaching supersonic speeds, without the supersonic boom. Credit: Lockheed Martin/Gary Tice

The X-59 will generate a lower “sonic thump” thanks to its unique design. It was given a long, slender nose that accounts for about a third of the total length and breaks up pressure waves that would otherwise merge on other parts of the airplane. The engine was mounted on top of the X-59’s fuselage, rather than underneath as on a fighter jet, to keep a smooth underside that limits shock waves and also to direct sound waves up into the sky rather than down toward the ground. NASA aims to provide key data to aircraft manufacturers so they can build less noisy supersonic planes.

A jet like no other

The X-59 is a single-seat, single-engine jet. It is 99.7 feet long and 29.5 feet wide, making it almost twice as long as an F-16 fighter jet but with a slightly smaller wingspan. The X-59’s cockpit and ejection seat come from the T-38 jet trainer, its landing gear from an F-16, and its control stick from the F-117 stealth attack aircraft. Its engine, a modified General Electric F414 from the F/A-18 fighter jet, will allow the plane to cruise at Mach 1.4, about 925 mph, at an altitude of 55,000 feet. This is nearly twice as high and twice as fast as commercial airliners typically fly.

Perhaps the most striking change on the X-59 is that it does not have a glass cockpit window. Instead, the cockpit is fully enclosed to be as aerodynamic as possible, and the pilot watches a camera feed of the outside world on a 4K monitor known as the eXternal Visibility System.

“You can’t see very clearly through glass when you look at it at a very shallow angle, and so you need to have a certain steepness of the view screen to have good optical qualities, and that would develop a strong shock wave that would really corrupt the low-boom characteristics of the airplane,” says Michael Buonanno, the air vehicle lead for the X-59 at Lockheed Martin.

The X-59 has repurposed components of other NASA aircrafts. Credit: Lockheed Martin

For this first flight, the X-59 flew at a lower altitude and at about 240 mph, according to NASA. During future tests, the jet will gradually increase its speed and altitude until it goes supersonic, NASA said, which occurs at about 659 mph at 55,000 feet, or 761 mph at sea level. The speed of sound varies according to temperature and to a lesser degree pressure, causing it to decrease at higher altitudes.

“The primary objective on a first flight is really just to land,” James Less, a project pilot for the X-59 who will be conducting future flights, tells WIRED. Less flew an F-15 fighter jet in formation with the X-59 as a support aircraft during the flight, observing the new experimental jet for any issues.

“I’m looking for anything external to the airplane that the pilot can’t see,” Less says. Generally the first thing he would check for is that the landing gear retracted successfully, but on this initial flight the X-59 intentionally left the landing gear down. “If the aircraft is leaking any kind of fluids, be it fuel or hydraulics, as a chase pilot, you can usually see that… Also I’m looking for other traffic, air traffic, just to point that out to him.”

Following the X-59’s successful touchdown at Armstrong, NASA and Lockheed Martin engineers will review the flight data to prepare for the jet’s future, faster flights.

The design of the X-59 includes a nose that makes up most of the length of the craft, designed to help reduce noise. Credit: NASA/Steve Freeman

The future of supersonic flight

The eXternal Visibility System is just one of the modern technologies needed to build a low-boom airplane like the X-59. Decades of computational fluid dynamics research and wind tunnel testing were also required to arrive at the final design.

“We’ve really had the opportunity to spend a lot of time on the computational fluid dynamics application to these low-boom aircraft,” Lori Ozoroski, the commercial supersonic technology project manager at NASA, tells WIRED. “We’ve gone from this computational domain around an aircraft of something that’s got a couple of million cells as you divide up the space around it to… things with a couple million cells, and now we’re pushing a billion cells.”

Once the X-59 gets up to speed, the next step will be to make sure the quieter sonic thumps really are tolerable for people on the ground.

“We have been planning a test campaign where we will fly over various communities in the US, polling them with a survey and understanding how annoyed people are,” Ozoroski says. The flights will produce both loud and quiet sonic booms to see how people react, she explains.

“Our plan is to gather all this data, doing approximately one-month tests in a couple of locations around the country, and then providing all that data to the FAA and the international regulatory community to try to establish a sound limit, rather than the speed limit.”

If the program is a success, it could pave the way for new commercial supersonic aircraft that would cut travel times in half, something that companies such as Boom Supersonic are trying to achieve.

The jet has joined the ranks of innovative NASA X-planes, dating back almost 80 years to the Bell X-1 that Chuck Yeager piloted on the first faster-than-sound flight in 1947.

“I grew up reading Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and reading about the X-planes out at Edwards, and never imagined that I’d be in a position to do something like this,” says Less, who is eagerly awaiting his turn at the X-59’s stick. “This will be the highlight of my career.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

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New study settles 40-year debate: Nanotyrannus is a new species

Nanotyrannus, paleontology, Science, Taxonomy, tyrannosaurs / DJ Henderson / October 30, 2025

For four decades, a frequently acrimonious debate has raged in paleontological circles about the correct taxonomy for a handful of rare fossil specimens. One faction insisted the fossils were juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex; the other argued that they represented a new species dubbed Nanotyrannus lancensis. Now, paleontologists believe they have settled the debate once and for all due to a new analysis of a well-preserved fossil.

The verdict: It is indeed a new species, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. The authors also reclassified another specimen as a second new species, distinct from N. lancensis. In short, Nanotyrannus is a valid taxon and contains two species.

“This fossil doesn’t just settle the debate,” said Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University and head of paleontology at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “It flips decades of T. rex research on its head.” That’s because paleontologists have relied on such fossils to model the growth and behavior of T. rex. The new findings suggest that there could have been multiple tyrannosaur species and that paleontologists have been underestimating the diversity of dinosaurs from this period.

Our story begins in 1942, when the fossilized skull of a Nanotyrannus, nicknamed Chomper, was excavated in Montana by a Cleveland Museum of Natural History expedition. Originally, paleontologists thought it belonged to a Gorgosaurus, but a 1965 paper challenged that identification and argued that the skull belonged to a juvenile T. rex. It wasn’t until 1988 that scientists proposed that the skull was actually that of a new species, Nanotyrannus. It’s been a constant back-and-forth ever since.

As recently as 2020, a highly influential paper claimed that Nanotyrannus was definitively a juvenile T. Rex. Yet a substantial number of paleontologists still believed it should be classified as a distinct species. A January 2024 paper, for instance, came down firmly on the Nanotyrannus side of the debate. Co-authors Nicholas Longrich of the University of Bath and Evan Saitta of the University of Chicago measured the growth rings in Nanotyrannus bones and concluded the animals were nearly fully grown.

Dueling dinosaurs

Lindsay Zanno, associate research professor at North Carolina State University and head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, with the Dueling Dinosaurs fossil. — Lindsay Zanno of North Carolina State University, who also heads paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, with the “dueling dinosaurs” fossil. Credit: N.C. State University/CC BY-NC-ND

Furthermore, there was no evidence of hybrid fossils combining features of both Nanotyrannus and T. rex, which one would expect if the former were a juvenile version of the latter. Longrich and Saitta had also discovered a skull bone, archived in a San Francisco museum, that did belong to a juvenile T. rex, and they were able to do an anatomical comparison. They argued that Nanotyrannus had a lighter build, longer limbs, and larger arms than a T. rex and likely was smaller, faster, and more agile.

New study settles 40-year debate: Nanotyrannus is a new species Read More »

The chemistry behind that pricey cup of civet coffee

chemistry, coffee, Food science, kopi luwak, Science / DJ Henderson / October 29, 2025

A sampling of scat

Kopi luwak is quite popular, with well-established markets in several South and East Asian countries. Its popularity has risen in Europe and the US as well, and India has recently become an emerging new market. Since there haven’t been similar studies of the chemical properties of kopi luwak from the Indian subcontinent, the authors of this latest study decided to fill that scientific gap. They focused on civet coffee produced in Kodagu, which produces nearly 36 percent of India’s total coffee production.

The authors collected 68 fresh civet scat samples from five different sites in Kodagu during peak fruit harvesting in January of this year. Collectors wore gloves to avoid contamination of the samples. For comparative analysis, they also harvested several bunches of ripened Robusta coffee berries. They washed the scat samples to remove the feces and also removed any palm seeds or other elements to ensure only Robusta beans remained.

For the manually harvested berries, the authors removed the pulp after a natural fermentation process and then sun-dried the beans for seven days. They then removed the hulls of both scat-derived and manually harvested berries and dried the beans in an oven for two hours. None of the bean samples were roasted, since roasting might significantly alter the acidity and chemical composition of the samples. For the chemical analysis, 10 distinct samples (five from each site where berries were collected) were ground into powder and subjected to various tests.

The civet beans had higher fat levels, particularly those compounds known to influence aroma and flavor, such as caprylic acid and methyl esters—contributing to kopi luwak’s distinctive aroma and flavor—but lower levels of caffeine, protein, and acidity, which would reduce the bitterness. The lower acidity is likely due to the coffee berries being naturally fermented in the civets’ digestive tracts, and there is more to learn about the role the gut microbiome plays in all of this. There were also several volatile organic compounds, common to standard coffee, that were extremely low or absent entirely in the civet samples.

In short, the comparative analysis “further supports the notion that civet coffee is chemically different from conventionally produced coffee of similar types, mainly due to fermentation,” the authors concluded. They recommend further research using roasted samples, along with studying other coffee varieties, samples from a more diverse selection of farms, and the influence of certain ecological conditions, such as canopy cover and the presence of wild trees.

Scientific Reports, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-21545-x (About DOIs).

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Nvidia hits record $5 trillion mark as CEO dismisses AI bubble concerns

AI, AI chips, AI infrastructure, Apple, Biz & IT, Blackwell chips, data centers, Donald Trump, GPUs, Jensen Huang, machine learning, microsoft, Nokia, NVIDIA, openai, palantir, semiconductors, Uber / DJ Henderson / October 29, 2025

Partnerships and government contracts fuel optimism

At the GTC conference on Tuesday, Nvidia’s CEO went out of his way to repeatedly praise Donald Trump and his policies for accelerating domestic tech investment while warning that excluding China from Nvidia’s ecosystem could limit US access to half the world’s AI developers. The overall event stressed Nvidia’s role as an American company, with Huang even nodding to Trump’s signature slogan in his sign-off by thanking the audience for “making America great again.”

Trump’s cooperation is paramount for Nvidia because US export controls have effectively blocked Nvidia’s AI chips from China, costing the company billions of dollars in revenue. Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research told Reuters that “Nvidia clearly brought their story to DC to both educate and gain favor with the US government. They managed to hit most of the hottest and most influential topics in tech.”

Beyond the political messaging, Huang announced a series of partnerships and deals that apparently helped ease investor concerns about Nvidia’s future. The company announced collaborations with Uber Technologies, Palantir Technologies, and CrowdStrike Holdings, among others. Nvidia also revealed a $1 billion investment in Nokia to support the telecommunications company’s shift toward AI and 6G networking.

The agreement with Uber will power a fleet of 100,000 self-driving vehicles with Nvidia technology, with automaker Stellantis among the first to deliver the robotaxis. Palantir will pair Nvidia’s technology with its Ontology platform to use AI techniques for logistics insights, with Lowe’s as an early adopter. Eli Lilly plans to build what Nvidia described as the most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company, relying on more than 1,000 Blackwell AI accelerator chips.

The $5 trillion valuation surpasses the total cryptocurrency market value and equals roughly half the size of the pan European Stoxx 600 equities index, Reuters notes. At current prices, Huang’s stake in Nvidia would be worth about $179.2 billion, making him the world’s eighth-richest person.

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Man accidentally gets leech up his nose. It took 20 days to figure it out.

bleeding, bloodletting, case report, health, leeches, parasites, poison / DJ Henderson / October 29, 2025

Leeches have a long medical history. Here’s what happens if one gets in your nose.

Since the dawn of civilization, leeches have been firmly attached to medicine. Therapeutic bloodsuckers are seen in murals decorating the tombs of 18^th dynasty Egyptian pharaohs. They got their earliest written recommendation in the 2^nd century BC by Greek poet and physician Nicander of Colophon. He introduced the “blood-loving leech, long flaccid and yearning for gore,” as a useful tool for sucking out poison after a bite from a poisonous animal. “Let leeches feed on [the] wounds and drink their fill,” he wrote. Ancient Chinese writing touted their medicinal potential, too, as did references in Sanskrit.

Galen, the physician for Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, supported using leeches to balance the four humors (i.e. blood, phlegm, and yellow and black bile) and therefore treat ailments—as initially outlined by Hippocrates. Leeches, doctors found, provided a method for less painful, localized, and limited bloodletting. We now understand that leeches can release an anesthetic to prevent pain and a powerful anticoagulant, hirudin, to prevent clotting and keep blood flowing.

In the centuries since the Roman era, leeches’ popularity only grew. They were used to treat everything from gout to liver disease, epilepsy, and melancholy. The very word “leech” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word “laece,” which translates to “physician.”

It wasn’t until the early 1900s, amid advances in medical knowledge, that leeches fell out of favor—as did bloodletting generally. That was for the best since the practice was rooted in pseudoscience, largely ineffective, and often dangerous when large quantities of blood were lost. Still, the bloodsuckers have kept a place in modern medicine, aiding in wound care, the draining of excess blood after reconstructive surgery, and circulation restoration. Leech saliva also contains anti-inflammatory compounds that can reduce swelling.

What leeches do in the shadows

But there’s also a darker side to leeches in medicine. Even Nicander realized that leeches could act as a kind of poison themselves if accidentally ingested, such as in contaminated water. He described the slimy parasites clinging to the mouth, throat, and opening of the stomach, where they might cause pain. For this poisoning, he recommended having the patient ingest vinegar, snow or ice, salt flakes, warmed salt water, or a potion made from brackish soil.

Nicander was right. While external leeches are potentially helpful—or at least not particularly harmful with controlled blood feasting—internal leeches are more problematic. They are happy to slither into orifices of all kinds, where they’re hard to detect and diagnose and difficult to extract, potentially leading to excessive blood loss. Luckily, with advances in sanitation, accidental leech intake doesn’t happen that often, but there are still the occasional cases—and they often involve the nose.

Such is the case of a 38-year-old man in China who showed up at an ear, nose, and throat clinic telling doctors his right nostril had been dripping blood for 10 days at a rate of a few drops per hour. He was not in pain but noted that when he coughed or spat, he had blood-tinged mucus. His case was published in the week’s edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Doctors took a look inside his nose and saw signs of blood. When they broke out the nasal endoscope, they saw the source of the problem: There was a leech in there. And it was frantically trying to wriggle away from the light as they got a glimpse of it.

As it turns out, the man had been mountain climbing a full 20 days prior. While out in nature, he washed his face with spring water, which likely splashed the sucker up his schnoz.

Lengthy feast

While 20 days seems like a long time to have a leech up your nose without noticing it, a smattering of other nasal leech cases report people going several weeks or even months before figuring it out. One 2021 case in a 73-year-old man in China was only discovered after three months—and he had picked out a chunk of the leech himself by that point. A 2011 case in a 7-year-old girl in Nepal took four weeks to discover, and the girl needed a blood transfusion at that point.

In 2014, BBC Radio Scotland interviewed a 24-year-old woman from Edinburgh who had picked up a nasal leech on a trip to Southeast Asia. She had nosebleeds for weeks before realizing the problem—even after the leech began peeking out of her nose during hot showers.

“Obviously my nasal passages would open up because of the steam and the heat and the water, and it would come out quite far, about as far as my lip,” she said. Still, she thought it was a blood clot after a motorbike accident she had been in recently, not a blood-sucking worm.

“Your initial reaction isn’t to start thinking, oh God, there’s obviously a leech in my face,” she said.

Of course, if the leech gets into a place where it causes more obvious problems, the discovery is quicker. Just last month, doctors reported a case in a 20-year-old woman in Ethiopia who had a leech stuck in her throat, which caused her to start vomiting and spitting blood. It took just a few days of that before doctors figured it out. But nasal leeches don’t tend to produce such dramatic symptoms, so they’re harder to detect. And a lot of other things can cause mild, occasional nosebleeds.

Exorcising the sinuses

Once a nostril Nosferatu is finally identified, there’s the tricky task of removing it. There’s not exactly a textbook method for extraction, and the options can be highly dependent on the location in which the leech has lodged itself. Various methods used over the years—many echoing Nicander’s original recommendations—include salt, saline, vinegar, and heat, as well as turpentine and alcohol. Saltwater in particular has been reported to be effective at getting the leech to relax and release, though such attempts to coax the leech out can be time-consuming. A variety of local and topical anesthetics have also been used to try to paralyze the leech, including the startling choice of cocaine, which acts as a local anesthetic, among other things.

The removal must be done with care. If the leech is pulled, it could regurgitate its blood meal, risking infection and more bleeding. There’s also the risk that pulling too hard could result in the worm’s jaws and teeth getting left behind, which could lead to continued bleeding.

In the mountain climber’s case, doctors were able to use the topical anesthetic tetracaine to subdue the shy leech, and they then gently extracted it with a suction catheter. It came out in one piece. The man had no problems from the removal, and a week later, his symptoms had entirely resolved.

Fortunately, reports of nasal leeches are rare and tend to have happy endings. But the cases will likely continue to splatter through the medical literature, keeping Nicander’s lore of leeches as both antidote and poison undying.

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

Man accidentally gets leech up his nose. It took 20 days to figure it out. Read More »

Westinghouse is claiming a nuclear deal would see $80B of new reactors

Energy, nuclear energy, nuclear power, reactors, Science, Westinghouse / DJ Henderson / October 29, 2025

On Tuesday, Westinghouse announced that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration that would purportedly see $80 billion of new nuclear reactors built in the US. And the government indicated that it had finalized plans for a collaboration of GE Vernova and Hitachi to build additional reactors. Unfortunately, there are roughly zero details about the deal at the moment.

The agreements were apparently negotiated during President Trump’s trip to Japan. An announcement of those agreements indicates that “Japan and various Japanese companies” would invest “up to” $332 billion for energy infrastructure. This specifically mentioned Westinghouse, GE Vernova, and Hitachi. This promises the construction of both large AP1000 reactors and small modular nuclear reactors. The announcement then goes on to indicate that many other companies would also get a slice of that “up to $332 billion,” many for basic grid infrastructure.

So the total amount devoted to nuclear reactors is not specified in the announcement or anywhere else. As of the publication time, the Department of Energy has no information on the deal; Hitachi, GE Vernova, and the Hitachi/GE Vernova collaboration websites are also silent on it.

Meanwhile, Westinghouse claims that it will be involved in the construction of “at least $80 billion of new reactors,” a mix of AP1000 and AP300 (each named for the MW of capacity of the reactor/generator combination). The company claims that doing so will “reinvigorate the nuclear power industrial base.”

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Man takes herbal pain quackery, nearly dies, spends months in hospital

case report, cortisol, health, herbal supplements, hormones, supplements / DJ Henderson / October 25, 2025

Deadly doses

The supplements were: Artri King, Nhan Sam Tuyet Lien, and Linsen Double Caulis Plus. All are known to contain unlisted glucocorticoids, according to the Food and Drug Administration. And testing of two of the man’s supplements by the hospital confirmed the presence of the steroids.

Doctors determined that the man had essentially overdosed on the glucocorticoids—he had taken doses that exceeded the normal levels of glucocorticoids in the body. The steroids likely suppressed immune responses, leading to his infections and GI ulcers. But, more significantly, the excess steroid levels also caused his HPA axis to essentially shut down. While it’s possible to get the HPA axis back up and running after withdrawal from excessive steroid use, the amount of time that takes can vary. Further, if a person stops taking large doses of glucocorticoids abruptly, rather than gradually—as in the man’s case—and particularly after chronic use—also as in the man’s case—it can lead to an adrenal crisis. In retrospect, the man had all the signs of a crisis.

The doctors started treating him with hydrocortisone (medication cortisol) to get him out of danger. But it took six weeks before his HPA axis showed signs of recovery on tests. By that time, he had developed recurrent bacterial infections in his blood and had persistent delirium. It was only after several months in the hospital that he was able to be discharged back home.

In the end, the doctors describe the man’s case as a cautionary tale. Many Americans use supplements, but their efficacy is largely unproven, and they are not rigorously regulated for safety. And even though, in this case, the FDA had issued warnings specifically about the three supplements the man took, his case highlights that public awareness of such dangers remains low.

“Clinicians must remain vigilant in assessing supplement use and educate patients on potential risks, particularly regarding hidden glucocorticoids, to prevent serious health complications such as adrenal insufficiency,” the doctors conclude.

Man takes herbal pain quackery, nearly dies, spends months in hospital Read More »

Clinical trial of a technique that could give everyone the best antibodies

antibodies, Biology, DNA, electroporation, medicine, plasmid, Policy, Science / DJ Henderson / October 25, 2025

If we ID the DNA for a great antibody, anyone can now make it.

One of the things that emerging diseases, including the COVID and Zika pandemics, have taught us is that it’s tough to keep up with infectious diseases in the modern world. Things like air travel can allow a virus to spread faster than our ability to develop therapies. But that doesn’t mean biotech has stood still; companies have been developing technologies that could allow us to rapidly respond to future threats.

There are a lot of ideas out there. But this week saw some early clinical trial results of one technique that could be useful for a range of infectious diseases. We’ll go over the results as a way to illustrate the sort of thinking that’s going on, along with the technologies we have available to pursue the resulting ideas.

The best antibodies

Any emerging disease leaves a mass of antibodies in its wake—those made by people in response to infections and vaccines, those made by lab animals we use to study the infectious agent, and so on. Some of these only have a weak affinity for the disease-causing agent, but some of them turn out to be what are called “broadly neutralizing.” These stick with high affinity not only to the original pathogen, but most or all of its variants, and possibly some related viruses.

Once an antibody latches on to a pathogen, broadly neutralizing antibodies inactivate it (as their name implies). This is typically because these antibodies bind to a site that’s necessary for a protein’s function. For example, broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV bind to the proteins that help this virus enter immune cells.

Unfortunately, not everyone develops broadly neutralizing antibodies, and certainly doesn’t do so in time to prevent infections. And we haven’t figured out a way of designing vaccinations that ensure their generation. So we’re often found ourselves stuck with knowing what antibodies we’d like to see people making while having no way of ensuring that they do.

One of the options we’ve developed is to just mass-produce broadly neutralizing antibodies and inject them into people. This has been approved for use against Ebola and provided an early treatment during the COVID pandemic. This approach has some practical limitations, though. For starters, the antibodies have a finite life span in the bloodstream, so injections may need to be repeated. In addition, making and purifying enough antibodies in bulk isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and they generally need to be kept refrigerated during the distribution, limiting the areas where they can be used.

So, a number of companies have been looking at an alternative: getting people to make their own. This could potentially lead to longer-lived protection, even ensuring the antibodies are present to block future infections if the DNA survives long enough.

Genes and volts

Once you identify cells that produce broadly neutralizing antibodies, it’s relatively simple to clone those genes and put them into a chunk of DNA that will ensure that they’ll be produced by any human cell. If we could get that DNA into a person’s cells, broadly neutralizing antibodies are the result. And a number of approaches have been tried to handle that “if.” Most of them have inserted the genes needed to make the antibodies into a harmless, non-infectious virus, and then injected that virus into volunteers. Unfortunately, these viruses have tended to set off a separate immune response, which causes more significant side effects and may limit how often this approach can be used.

This brings us to the technique being used here. In this case, the researchers placed the antibody genes in a circular loop of DNA called a plasmid. This is enough to ensure that the DNA doesn’t get digested immediately and to get the antibody genes made into proteins. But it does nothing to help get the DNA inside of cells.

The research team, a mixture of people from a biotech company and academic labs, used a commercial injection setup that mixes the injection of the DNA with short pulses of electricity. The electricity disrupts the cell membrane, allowing the plasmid DNA to make it inside cells. Based on animal testing, doing this in muscle cells is enough to turn the muscles into factories producing lots of broadly neutralizing antibodies.

The new study was meant to test the safety of doing that in humans. The team recruited 44 participants, testing various doses of two antibody-producing plasmids and injection schedules. All but four of the subjects completed the study; three of those who dropped out had all been testing a routine with the electric pulses happening very quickly, which turned out to be unpleasant. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to make any difference to the production of antibodies.

While there were a lot of adverse reactions, most of these were associated with the injection itself: muscle pain at the site, a scab forming afterward, and a reddening of the skin. The worst problem appeared to be a single case of moderate muscle pain that persisted for a couple of days.

In all but one volunteer, the injection resulted in stable production of the two antibodies for at least 72 weeks following the injection; the single exception only made one of the two. That’s “at least” 72 weeks because that’s when they stopped testing—there was no indication that levels were dropping at this point. Injecting more DNA led to more variability in the amount of antibody produced, but that amount quickly maxed out. More total injections also boosted the level of antibody production. But even the minimal procedure—two injections of the lowest concentration tested—resulted in significant and stable antibodies.

And, as expected, these antibodies blocked the virus they were directed against: SARS-CoV-2.

The caveats

This approach seems to work—we can seemingly get anybody to make broadly neutralizing antibodies for months at a time. What’s the hitch? For starters, this isn’t necessarily great for a rapidly emerging pandemic. It takes a while to identify broadly neutralizing antibodies after a pathogen is identified. And, while it’s simple to ship DNA around the world to where it will be needed, injection setups that also produce the small electric pulses are not exactly standard equipment even in industrialized countries, much less the Global South.

Then there’s the issue of whether this really is a longer-term fix. Widespread use of broadly neutralizing antibodies will create a strong selective pressure for the evolution of variants that the antibody can no longer bind to. That may not always be a problem—broadly neutralizing antibodies generally bind to parts of proteins that are absolutely essential for the proteins’ function, and so it may not be possible to change those while maintaining the function. But that’s unlikely to always be the case.

In the end, however, social acceptance may end up being the biggest problem. People had an utter freakout over unfounded conspiracies that the RNA of COVID vaccines would somehow lead to permanent genetic changes. Presumably, having DNA that’s stable for months would be even harder for some segments of the public to swallow.

Nature Medicine, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-025-03969-0 (About DOIs).

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

Clinical trial of a technique that could give everyone the best antibodies Read More »

DNA analysis reveals likely pathogens that killed Napoleon’s army

Biology, DNA analysis, forensic archaeology, history, Napoleon Bonaparte, pathogens, Science / DJ Henderson / October 24, 2025

State-of-the-art methodologies

Rascovan and his co-authors note in their paper that the 2006 study relied upon outdated PCR-based technologies for its DNA analysis. As for the virus family detected in the Kalingrad dental pulp, they argue that those viruses are both ubiquitous and usually asymptomatic in humans—and thus are unlikely to be the primary culprits for the diseases that wiped out the French army. So Rascovan’s team decided to use current state-of-the-art DNA methodologies to re-analyze a different set of remains of Napoleonic soldiers who died in Vilnius.

“In most ancient human remains, pathogen DNA is extremely fragmented and only present in very low quantities, which makes it very difficult to obtain whole genomes,” said Rascovan. “So we need methods capable of unambiguously identifying infectious agents from these weak signals, and sometimes even pinpointing lineages, to explore the pathogenic diversity of the past.”

An 1812 report from one of Napoleon’s physicians, J.R.L. de Kirckhoff, specifically noted typhus, dysentery, and diarrhea after the soldiers arrived in Vilnius, which he attributed to large barrels of salted beets the starving troops consumed, “greatly upsetting us and strongly irritating the intestinal tract.” Rascovan et al. note that such symptoms could accompany any number of conditions or diseases common to 19th-century Europe. “Even today, two centuries later, it would still be impossible to perform a differential diagnosis between typhus, typhoid, or paratyphoid fever based solely on the symptoms or the testimonies of survivors,” the authors wrote.

Imperial Guard button discovered during excavation. Credit: UMR 6578 Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, EFS

Over 3,200 individual remains, almost all men between the ages of 20 and 50, were excavated from the mass grave at Vilnius. Rascovan et al. focused on 13 teeth from 13 different individuals. To compensate for the degraded nature of the 200-year-old genome fragments, co-authors at the University of Tartu in Estonia helped develop a multistep authentication method to more accurately identify pathogens in the samples. In some cases, they were even able to identify a specific lineage.

DNA analysis reveals likely pathogens that killed Napoleon’s army Read More »

Author name: DJ Henderson