To the Stars with Data: December 5 2021
Nasal Alzheimer's vaccine enters human trials, exoplanets galore, painting pictures with words, and more
Hello Datanauts!
I’m back after a week's hiatus due to the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. For those who celebrated, I hope you had a rejuvenating and joyous break.
In this week’s issue, I dig into a lot of exoplanets (including an awesome interactive starmap!), painting pictures with words and AI, a nasal Alzheimer’s vaccine that’s entering human trials, and much more.
Let’s go to the stars with data!
Thought-Provoking Data Viz
🪐 Eyes on Exoplanets
Quick hits. Being the awesome communicative scientists they are, NASA has created an interactive map of all confirmed exoplanets and their stars called Eyes on Exoplanets. As NASA notes, there are estimated to be more exoplanets than stars in the known universe. Considering that there are billions of stars in each galaxy and hundreds of billions of galaxies, that’s a lot of exoplanets. Currently, however, NASA only lists 4576 confirmed exoplanets because of the difficulty of detecting and confirming exoplanets with our current technology.
Digging deeper. Have you ever had an aching urge to explore other worlds? Now is your chance! There are a number of methods for detecting exoplanets, including the “transit method”, or detecting an exoplanet because of the dip in illumination it causes when passing between its star and us (this was the primary purpose of the Kepler Space Telescope, for instance), the “wobble method”, or detecting planets due to the wobble their gravity causes in a star, and direct imaging.
Earth News
🖼 NVIDIA shows how GauGAN AI paints pictures when given words
Quick hits. NVIDIA recently unveiled their GauGAN AI which allows users to utilize multiple modalities (text-to-image, sketch, style, and semantic segmentation) to achieve their goals of creating scenery and other artwork. The "paint me a picture" AI now operates with words, where you can paint a basic picture and add context (like "rainy" or "cloudy") or just type in plain words the picture you want and it'll make what you're looking for. Here's a video.
Digging deeper. To a layperson, this tech may not seem that difficult to achieve. However, just the text-to-image technology alone is stunning because it involves at least two very difficult tasks: natural language processing (AKA correctly understanding the text input) and content generation (AKA correctly generating an applicable image). Though it seems easy for a human to do both, that’s because our brains are naturally hard-wired to be able to accomplish these tasks. That’s not the case for computers, which is why we are only commercially achieving such technology within the past few years.
💉 Nasal Alzheimer’s vaccine to start human trials for first time
Quick hits. The first nasal vaccine for Alzheimer’s is starting human trials. The vaccine is an adjuvant (meaning it enhances the efficacy of medical treatment) and targets a human's immune response that already removes amyloid plaques (which induce inflammation and reinforce neurodegeneration) in the brain. The trial consists of 16 participants between the ages of 60 and 85 who have been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's. They will take two doses of the vaccine, one week apart. The human trial is meant to determine whether the vaccine is safe and can be tolerated at the dosages planned.
Digging deeper. Alzheimer’s Disease is an insidious affliction that literally deteriorates people’s brains. (I’ll save you from having to see the pictures of affected brains, but there are some frightening images on Wikipedia if you are curious.) Thankfully, there are a number of Alzheimer’s vaccines and treatments being developed by researchers around the world. As noted by researchers, there were approximately 50 million people living with Alzheimer’s worldwide in 2020. I’m hopeful that, by the time I reach the age where Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases are more prevalent (typically after the age of 65), they will be treatable/curable.
Space News
🛰 First commercial mission to the International Space Station to occur in Feb 2022
Quick hits. For the first time, a commercial mission—led by Axiom Space—will launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2022. During the mission, researchers will conduct over 100 hours of microgravity experiments. Additionally, they will also prepare for Axiom Space’s own space station, the first module of which they hope to launch in 2024. Later, Axiom Space plans to attach more modules and eventually detach the modules to become its own space station once the ISS retires in ~2030. Notably, the crew launching in Feb contains only 1 Axiom employee; the other 3 people are paying $55 million each.
Digging deeper. Up until now (and for the next few years), the only space stations in orbit have been owned and operated by governments. However, that looks to be changing in the coming years. For example, Axiom Space was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating a commercial space station. Other plans for commercial space stations include Sierra Space & Blue Origin (Orbital Reef), Voyager Space, Nanoracks, & Lockheed Martin (Starlab), and Northrop Grumman. NASA has even signaled they plan to allow commercial space stations to take over once they retire the ISS.
🪐 ExoMiner validates 301 new exoplanets
Quick hits. ExoMiner, a deep learning algorithm that runs on NASA's Pleiades supercomputer and is based on expert exoplanet spotters, has validated 301 new exoplanet candidates. The exoplanet candidates originated from NASA's Kepler Science Operations Center and Kepler Science Office. ExoMiner's makers are very confident in its abilities, claiming that "when ExoMiner says something is a planet, you can be sure it's a planet". Awesomely, ExoMiner isn't a black box (unlike most other AI algorithms); it's very clear why ExoMiner validates a candidate as an exoplanet.
Digging deeper. Considering that NASA only lists ~4500 confirmed exoplanets, 301 new exoplanet confirmations represent a significant expansion! As I mentioned above in the thought-provoking data viz section, there are a number of methods for detecting exoplanets. For NASA to confirm/validate an exoplanet, it has to have been confirmed by 2 or more separate methods. Conveniently, NASA also lists the number of “unconfirmed” exoplanets—those that have been detected with only 1 method—at nearly 8000, which means we have a lot more candidates to sift through. As NASA notes, on average, we have doubled the number of confirmed exoplanets every 27 months since the mid-1990s.
Future-Thinking Companies
✈ Jetson. They produce the Jetson One, a personal, DIY electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle that can be compactly stored. If you have $22,000 laying around, there are still build slots available to reserve. See the above promo video to see it in action!
👖 Huue. They derive blue dye from bacteria that process it from sugars. They’re taking this approach because indigo dye typically used for jeans and other clothing can be very polluting and toxic.