The science news of the week: One of the main tasks of the Perseverance rover, which landed in the Jezero crater on February 18, 2021, is to collect soil samples from the Martian surface and return them to Earth. However, just before the New Year, there was a hitch in this particular mission. The problem was that the rover’s sensors detected unusually strong friction as the next sample was being transferred from the drill manipulator to the special storage chamber. Perseverance shut down as a precaution and sent distress signals to the operators. The control center requested additional data to understand the cause of the failure, but it took the rover about a week to transmit the necessary information. Engineers then ordered the rover to act as a mechanic, disconnecting the manipulator from the drill and taking a picture of its own internal parts.
Selfie of the Mars Rover with pebbles inside. On this selfie, a problem was discovered: small stones in the carousel mechanism, which had come there during the extraction of another sample and got stuck, hindering the operation of the drill. The carousel mechanism is designed to operate successfully in contaminated conditions, but NASA engineers do not want to risk expensive equipment. “This is not the first challenge that Mars has thrown at us,” wrote Louise Zhandura, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is responsible for collecting Martian soil samples, in her blog. “And we already know that when such a challenge is thrown hundreds of millions of kilometers away from Earth (to be precise, Mars is currently about 350 million kilometers away from us), it is better not to rush and to do everything carefully.”
We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what happens next. Episodes The End of the Story Podcast Advertisement At first glance, it might seem that it makes no difference whether your surgeon is male or female, since the main thing is knowledge and experience, right? But that’s not the case. Canadian scientists have found that the chances of a successful outcome are much higher if the patient is a woman and the operation is performed by another woman. Researchers still cannot say why this is happening, but the fact remains: of more than 1.3 million planned surgeries performed in the Canadian province of Ontario from 2007 to 2019, when a male surgeon was involved and a woman ended up on the operating table, the likelihood of complications increased by 16%, the risk of a longer hospital stay increased by 20%, and the likelihood of a fatal outcome was 32% higher than in cases where the surgery was performed by a woman. And male patients operated on by women were 13% less likely to die than if they had been operated on by a male surgeon, although their risk of complications increased by 2%. But agree, what is a complication compared to a fatal outcome? It is interesting to note that the authors of previous studies have already noted that the relationship between the doctor and the course of treatment can be highly dependent on the gender of the patient. For example, a 2018 study of female patients in Florida hospitals who had suffered a heart attack found that their mortality rate was higher when they were treated by male doctors. In addition, there was almost no difference in outcomes between female and male physicians, regardless of the gender of the patient. Incidentally, the indicators for male surgeons who have close communication with female colleagues and patients are much better when it comes to operations on women. In addition, previous studies suggest that female physicians require different postoperative analyses and prescribe different medications than their male counterparts, which may partly explain such a significant difference in surgical outcomes. However, scientists acknowledge that this version requires additional analysis. However, as the authors of the study acknowledge, even if you dream of being in the hands of a female surgeon, you may not always have a choice. The fact is that in Canada, women will make up only 27% of the total number of general surgeons in 2020, and in the U.S., the percentage is even lower. And the salaries of women in both countries are significantly lower than those of male surgeons, so they have no special motivations (other than purely noble ones) to enter such a difficult profession. So if you have the misfortune to find yourself on an operating table in North America, pray that you are in the hands of a woman.
Depression affects people of all ages, but as Dr. Paul O’Connor of Exeter University has found, many middle-aged people who have learned to skateboard claim that this sport allows them to fill their lives with spiritual meaning and increases their sense of enjoyment of life. Not to mention that skateboarding also brings them closer to the younger generation, increasing physical strength and self-confidence. Dr. O’Connor based his conclusions on 30 interviews conducted in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, as well as personal experience. “Skateboarding serves as a good emotional outlet for people who have experienced deep personal turmoil as a result of divorce after many years of living together, career failure, the burdens of parenting, or even substance abuse,” the researcher said. Many second-wave skateboarders are driven by their own children, who manage to get their parents interested in the sport and join a fairly large skateboarding community.
“The ‘second wave’ of skateboarders are often encouraged by children and even grandchildren. “For the people I talked to, skateboarding was much more than just a way to maintain their physical fitness and health,” says O’Connor. According to him, skateboarding gives them a new face, something they do not have in other areas of their lives. Also, in skateboarding, “success” and “mastery” are much more flexible concepts than in other sports, and failure can always be seen as another bold experiment without leaving an unpleasant feeling of defeat. “On at least two occasions, when I asked interviewees to explain what skateboarding meant to them, I observed adult men barely holding back tears, unable to find the words to express the immense role skateboarding plays in their lives,” the researcher admits.