For some people, the term “black box” brings to mind the recording devices in airplanes that are valuable for postmortem analyses if the unthinkable happens. For others it evokes small, minimally outfitted theaters. But black box is also an important term in the world of artificial intelligence.
AI black boxes refer to AI systems with internal workings that are invisible to the user. You can feed them input and get output, but you cannot examine the system’s code or the logic that produced the output.
Machine learning is the dominant subset of artificial intelligence. It underlies generative AI systems like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2. There are three components to machine learning: an algorithm or a set of algorithms, training data and a model. An algorithm is a set of procedures. In machine learning, an algorithm learns to identify patterns after being trained on a large set of examples – the training data. Once a machine-learning algorithm has been trained, the result is a machine-learning model. The model is what people use.
For example, a machine-learning algorithm could be designed to identify patterns in images, and training data could be images of dogs. The resulting machine-learning model would be a dog spotter. You would feed it an image as input and get as output whether and where in the image a set of pixels represents a dog.
Any of the three components of a machine-learning system can be hidden, or in a black box. As is often the case, the algorithm is publicly known, which makes putting it in a black box less effective. So to protect their intellectual property, AI developers often put the model in a black box. Another approach software developers take is to obscure the data used to train the model – in other words, put the training data in a black box.
Black box algorithms make it very difficult to understand how AIs work, but the situation isn’t quite black and white.
The opposite of a black box is sometimes referred to as a glass box. An AI glass box is a system whose algorithms, training data and model are all available for anyone to see. But researchers sometimes characterize aspects of even these as black box.
That’s because researchers don’t fully understand how machine-learning algorithms, particularly deep-learning algorithms, operate. The field of explainable AI is working to develop algorithms that, while not necessarily glass box, can be better understood by humans.
Why AI black boxes matter
In many cases, there is good reason to be wary of black box machine-learning algorithms and models. Suppose a machine-learning model has made a diagnosis about your health. Would you want the model to be black box or glass box? What about the physician prescribing your course of treatment? Perhaps she would like to know how the model arrived at its decision.
What if a machine-learning model that determines whether you qualify for a business loan from a bank turns you down? Wouldn’t you like to know why? If you did, you could more effectively appeal the decision, or change your situation to increase your chances of getting a loan the next time.
Black boxes also have important implications for software system security. For years, many people in the computing field thought that keeping software in a black box would prevent hackers from examining it and therefore it would be secure. This assumption has largely been proved wrong because hackers can reverse-engineer software – that is, build a facsimile by closely observing how a piece of software works – and discover vulnerabilities to exploit.
If software is in a glass box, then software testers and well-intentioned hackers can examine it and inform the creators of weaknesses, thereby minimizing cyberattacks.
Extreme weather caused by climate change has damaged food production across Europe.
Confronted with a deteriorating situation, divided European Union decision-makers are debating new rules for genetically modified crops.
Last year's drought ravaged the continent's farms, starving everything from Spanish olive harvests to Hungary's maize and sunflower crops, Italian and Romanian corn fields to France's dairy production.
Some argue the answer to Europe's problems is deregulating gene modification techniques to produce better crops. Others claim this would be a "smokescreen" to avoid having to radically change the way the bloc farms.
Supporters say seeds produced using gene editing techniques are less vulnerable to drought and disease -- and require less water.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, will propose a law in July that will loosen the rules on plants produced by certain new genomic techniques (NGTs), branded by critics as simply "new genetically modified organisms (GMOs)".
The proposals will open a new battlefront among the EU's 27 member states -- with drought-hit countries especially in favour -- and between EU lawmakers.
The new techniques are a mix of genomic editing tools that alter a plant's genetic make-up without the addition of foreign genetic material, unlike "transgenic" GMOs that include DNA from other species.
The commission says the current rules on GMOs including permission and labelling are "not fit for purpose" for the new technology.
"Plants produced by new genomic techniques can support sustainability," the EU's health commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, said last month.
The proposals, she said, "will strongly signal to farmers, researchers and industry that this is the way forward in the EU".
'Magnificent tool'
In a document from February seen by AFP, the commission looked at whether it should treat traditional seeds and those produced using the new techniques, with modifications that could in theory have happened naturally, as the same.
France, severely affected by drought last summer, backs changing the rules.
In April, French Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau expressed his concerns over what he called Europe's "delay", arguing there should be a push to allow biotechnology that gives Europe the tools to deal with climate change by producing more resistant seeds.
Late last year, his Spanish counterpart, Luis Planas, hailed the techniques as a "magnificent tool to have seeds that need less water and fertilizer".
Other countries are more wary.
In March, Austria criticized a commission study that it claimed was based on "assumptions" rather than scientific data and called for a comprehensive analysis of any environmental and health risks.
Cyprus, Germany, Hungary and Luxembourg support that position.
The powerful European farming lobby group Copa-Cogeca supports the new rules.
"If we need to supply society with food in Europe, and if we want to be self-sufficient, then we need to adapt rules," said Thor Gunnar Kofoed, chair of the seed working group at Copa-Cogeca.
Parliament divided
A majority of EU lawmakers support relaxing the rules.
The European Parliament's biggest political group, the conservative European People's Party (EPP), opposes any binding target to cut pesticides but pushes for new rules on the "innovative" technology that would "stimulate research, investment and jobs".
Pascal Canfin, a French centrist MEP and the chairman of the parliament's environment committee, said the new biotechnology could "be part of the useful solutions for the agricultural transition" if they help avoid using chemical pesticides.
But unlike the EPP, he supports a cap on pesticides.
Left-wing parties in the EU parliament are resisting specific laws for NGTs, insisting that the new technology already comes under current wide-ranging rules on GMOs.
The forthcoming battle over the draft law, which will have to be negotiated between the member states and parliament, is likely to focus on safeguards.
The Greens want a full risk assessment to avoid unintended effects and force producers to ensure detection and traceability methods, and make labelling compulsory.
Labelling would put off consumers who prefer GMO-free food, said Mute Schimpf, a campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, who criticised the reform.
"This proposal is a smokescreen to avoid the debate we should have on shifting to a truly sustainable farming system," she told AFP.
More than 236,000 people are estimated to drown every year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It's one of the leading causes of death globally for children and young people ages 1–24, and the third leading cause of injury-related deaths overall.
Here are six things you may not have known - but should - about such tragedies:
What are the biggest misconceptions about drowning?
"The Baywatch syndrome," says Benjamin Taitsch, deputy chairman of the Bavarian Water Rescue Service in Germany. A reference to the former American TV series about lifeguards that became popular around the world, it's the common assumption - abetted by portrayals on "Baywatch" - that someone who's drowning will splash about and cry out loudly for help.
"In fact, it usually happens very, very quietly," Taitsch says.
Often the person no longer has the strength to frantically wave their arms. "They have other things to do than draw attention to themselves - they're fighting for their life," remarks Philipp Pijl, head of the deployment team at the federal office of the German Lifesaving Society (DLRG).
Another common misconception, says Pijl, is that most drowning victims are non-swimmers. "Whether the person can swim or not is hardly the only factor," he says. Statistics - at least in Germany - show that if you thought most victims were children and adolescents, you'd be wrong.
"They're mostly middle-aged or older men," points out Pijl, explaining that carelessness, alcohol consumption or sudden circulatory insufficiency can put even experienced swimmers in peril.
What happens exactly when someone drowns?
It could be underestimating a river current's strength, swimming too far from shore in an intoxicated state, or a child slipping and falling face-first into the water. Whatever the circumstances of a drowning, death is due to a lack of oxygen caused by being unable to breathe under water.
All of the body's organs - primarily the brain - can only function when they're adequately supplied with oxygen.
Using the example of a water sports enthusiast on a stand-up paddleboard (SUP) in summer, Philipp Wolf, a physician for the Bavarian Water Rescue Service, describes how a drowning might occur:
It's hot, and the young man's body is heated up. "If he unexpectedly falls into the water, he experiences a cold shock, even though the water may not be particularly cold," Wolf says.
In a kind of paralysis, the paddleboarder reflexively inhales deeply with a gasp, as one does when plunging into an ice bath after a sauna session. "This allows water to get to the glottis [the thin opening between the vocal cords at the top of the larynx, or voice box] and vocal cords, which then close."
Called laryngospasm, this seizing up of the vocal cords is a protective reflex that seals off the airway inlet at the throat and prevents water from entering the lungs. But it makes the paddleboarder unable to cry out. He panics.
"He can't breathe, and doesn't have any air left," Wolf goes on. Deprived of oxygen, the man loses consciousness after a short while and goes under. "In cases like this, generally no water is found in the victim's lungs - it's a 'dry' drowning."
In other cases, lots of water enters the lungs, for example if the person has a medical emergency such as a heart attack while swimming. "If it's a mild heart attack, they may still be able to swim, and panic. If it's severe, they're under water in just a few seconds," says Pijl.
How can you tell when someone is drowning?
While it's not very easy for a non-expert to have an eye for this, Taitsch points to some possible signs of a critical situation: "The person's swimming motions are desultory. They're still there in spirit, but the person's head quickly goes under water, making breathing impossible."
Another possible sign, adds Pijl, is when someone's swimming motions suddenly become much faster or slower.
Children are different. "You typically don't see a panic reaction from them. They become rigid and simply go under," Wolf says. Sometimes mere seconds separate happy play on the shore and life-threatening immersion, which is why parents should never let their children play at waterside without supervision.
What should you do if you see someone drowning?
The earlier a drowning person is pulled from the water, the better their chances of surviving and not suffering permanent injury. So "as soon as you have the feeling that something's amiss, don't hestitate to call the local emergency number," Taitsch says.
It's important to state your precise location and remember where the person went under. And if a manned lifeguard station is nearby, inform the lifeguard(s).
If no professional life-savers are yet on site, you've got to gauge what actions you're capable of yourself. Maybe a lifebelt is at hand, or you could paddle out to the spot on an SUP so that arriving rescuers can see where it is. Or you might be a good enough swimmer to try to bring the person to safety yourself.
"It's important that you only do what you're confident in doing," emphasizes Taitsch. Otherwise you could easily endanger your own life, because a drowning person in panic clings for dear life to whatever - or whomever - offers hope of rescue.
How should you go about making a rescue attempt yourself?
"If the person is still responsive, as you swim over to them you can tell them you'll be there straightaway to help," advises Pijl. This can have a calming effect.
A standard guideline is to swim to a drowning person from behind so that they don't pull you under water. Pijl rejects it though. "If the person is still conscious, they'll panic even more if they're simply grabbed from behind."
He therefore recommends approaching head-on at a safe distance at first, and explaining you're about to swim over from behind and grasp them behind their arms.
There are other ways to help a drowning person - and keep your distance. Wolf recommends tossing a sweater, jacket, large stick or bath towel towards them.
"The object doesn't have to be able to buoy the person," he says. "But they can grab onto it, and you'll have a better chance of pulling them somewhere - if only to swallow water where you can stand."
What should you do once the person has been pulled out of the water?
If the person is unconscious, a knowledge of emergency first aid is necessary - more specifically, chest compressions to enable the oxygen remaining in the person's blood to circulate throughout their body.
Ideally this should be combined with mouth-to-nose or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Wolf advises first artificially ventilating the person five times: "When no oxygen remains in the person's lungs, chest compressions alone are insufficient. Oxygen has to get into their lungs somehow."
You should continue your resuscitation efforts until professional rescuers arrive and take over.
The best thing to do when you notice someone drowning is to call the experts - if they are on site. Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/dpa/dpa
A person splashing about for dear life: there are several common misconceptions about drowning, not least thanks to popular American TV series "Baywatch." Here are six things you should know. Christin Klose/dpa
CAPE CANAVERAL (AFP) — The second-ever private mission to the International Space Station (ISS), organized by Axiom Space, blasted off from Florida Sunday, carrying the first two Saudi astronauts to travel to the orbiting laboratory.
Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher, is the first Saudi woman to voyage into space and is joined on the mission by fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni, a fighter pilot.
The Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) crew took off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in the southern US state of Florida at 5:37 pm (2137 GMT).
The team also includes Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who will be making her fourth flight to the ISS, and John Shoffner, a businessman from Tennessee who is serving as pilot.
"Thanks for putting your trust in the Falcon 9 team," SpaceX chief enginer Bill Gerstenmaier told the crew minutes after lift-off.
"Hope you enjoyed the ride to space. Have a great trip on Dragon," he added, referring to the spacecraft. "Welcome home to zero-g, Peggy."
The crew is due to spend around 10 days on board the ISS, where they should arrive around 9:25 am Monday.
"Being the first Saudi woman astronaut, representing the region, it's a great pleasure and honor that I'm very happy to carry," said Barnawi at a recent press conference.
She added that, aside from excitement for the research she will carry out on board, she was looking forward to sharing her experience with kids while on the ISS.
"Being able to see their faces when they see astronauts from their own region for the first time is very thrilling," she said.
A career fighter pilot, Al-Qarni said he has "always had the passion of exploring the unknown and just admiring the sky and the stars."
"It is a great opportunity for me to pursue this kind of passion that I have, and now maybe just fly among the stars."
The mission is not Saudi Arabia's first foray into space.
In 1985, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force pilot, took part in a US-organized space voyage.
But the space mission involving a Saudi woman is the latest move by the oil-rich Gulf kingdom, where women only gained the right to drive a few years ago, to revamp its ultraconservative image.
The kingdom established the Saudi Space Commission in 2018 and launched a program last year to send astronauts into space.
Experiments
The four-member team is set to carry out some 20 experiments while on the ISS.
One of them involves studying the behavior of stem cells in zero gravity.
They will join seven others already aboard the ISS: three Russians, three Americans and Emirati astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi, who was the first Arab national to go on a spacewalk last month.
The mission to the ISS is the second in partnership with ISS keyholder NASA by Axiom Space, a private space company, which offers the rare voyages for sums that run into the millions of dollars.
The company oversees training the astronauts, chartering their means of transport and ensuring the smooth management of their stay.
Axiom Space carried out its first private astronaut mission to the ISS in April 2022, sending three businessmen and former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria to spend 17 days in orbit as part of Ax-1.
Some astronauts on the ISS at the time said they had to take time out of their day -- precious in zero gravity -- to care for the space tourists.
"My time is actually a lot less constrained than Mike Lopez-Alegria's time was on the first mission," said Whitson. "I'll be available to help the crew members a lot more as they need assistance."
Private space stations
For Axiom Space, these missions are a first step toward an ambitious goal: the construction of its own space station, with the first module expected to launch in 2025.
The station would at first be attached to the ISS before separating and orbiting independently.
NASA plans to retire the ISS around 2030 and to instead send astronauts to private stations, which will also host their own clients, leading the US space agency to encourage the development of programs by several companies.
Russia recently agreed to extend its use of the ISS until 2028, having threatened an earlier pullout last year as ties unraveled between the Kremlin and the West over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
The other international partners -- Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency -- have committed themselves, like the United States, to continue operations until 2030.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A series of experiments at the University of South Carolina in Columbia involving rats, cocaine and electric shocks has been stopped following a university investigation into complaints about lab-animal welfare. The experiments involved laboratory rats receiving electric shocks as punishment for seeking cocaine, according to records from the National Institutes of Health, which provided the experiment with grant funding. The experiments have been halted because the electric shocks were administered for longer periods of time and at greater strength than had been approved, acco...
ROME (Reuters) — Flights serving the eastern Sicilian city of Catania were halted on Sunday after an eruption from nearby Mount Etna spewed volcanic ash onto its runways, airport authorities said. The 3,330 metre (10,925 ft) high volcano can burst into spectacular action several times a year, firing lava and ash high over the Mediterranean island. The last major eruption was in 1992. Flights to and from Catania, a popular tourist destination, would be suspended until normal safety conditions could be guaranteed, the airport said on Twitter.
PARIS (Reuters) - Governments should consider vaccinating birds against bird flu to avoid the virus - which has already killed hundreds of millions of birds and infected mammals worldwide - turning into a new pandemic, the head of the World Animal Health Organisation (WOAH) said.
The severity of the current outbreak of avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, and the economic and personal damage it has caused, has led governments to reconsider vaccinating poultry. However, some, like the United States, remain reluctant mainly because of the trade curbs this would entail.
"We are coming out of a COVID crisis where every country realised the hypothesis of a pandemic was real," WOAH Director General Monique Eloit told Reuters in an interview.
"Since almost every country that does international trade has now been infected, maybe it's time to discuss vaccination, in addition to systematic culling which remains the main tool (to control the disease)," she said.
The WOAH is holding a five-day general session from Sunday, and will be focus on global control of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI.
A WOAH survey showed only 25% of its member states would accept imports of products from poultry vaccinated against HPAI.
The European Union's 27 member states agreed last year to implement a bird flu vaccine strategy. France is set to be the first one, starting with ducks in the autumn.
"If a bloc like the EU, which is a large exporter, starts moving in that direction, it will have a ricochet impact," Eloit said.
The U.S. department of Agriculture (USDA) told Reuters on Friday that "in the interest of leaving no stone unturned in the fight against HPAI, USDA continues to research vaccine options that can protect poultry from this persistent threat".
However, it still considers biosecurity measures to be the most effective tool for mitigating the virus in commercial flocks, it said in emailed answers.
The risk to humans from bird flu remains low but countries must prepare for any change in the status quo, the World Health Organization has said.
Eloit said vaccination should focus on free-range poultry, mainly ducks, since bird flu is transmitted by infected migrating wild birds. Vaccinating broilers, which account for about 60% of global poultry output, makes less sense, she said.
The H5N1 strain that has been prevalent in the current HPAI outbreak has been detected in a larger number of mammals and killed thousands of them, including sea lions, foxes, otters and cats.
(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI
Washington (AFP) - The explosion of generative AI has taken the world by storm, but one question all too rarely comes up: Who can afford it?
OpenAI bled around $540 million last year as it developed ChatGPT and says it needs $100 billion to meet its ambitions, according to industry media The Information.
"We're going to be the most capital-intensive startup in Silicon Valley history," OpenAI's founder Sam Altman told a panel recently.
And when Microsoft, which poured billions of dollars in investment into OpenAI, is asked about how much its AI adventure will cost, the company answers with assurances that it is keeping an eye on its bottom line.
Building something even near the scale of what OpenAI, Microsoft or Google have on offer would require an eye-watering investment on state-of-the-art chips and recruiting prize-winning researchers.
"People don't realize that to do a significant amount of AI things like ChatGPT takes huge amounts of processing power. And training those models can cost tens of millions of dollars," said Jack Gold, an independent analyst.
"How many companies can actually afford to go out and buy 10,000 Nvidia H100 systems that go for tens of thousands of dollars a piece?" asked Gold.
The answer is pretty much no one and in tech, if you can't build the infrastructure, you rent it and that is what companies already do massively by outsourcing their computing needs to Microsoft, Google and Amazon's AWS.
And with the advent of generative AI, this dependency on cloud computing and tech giants deepens, leaving the same players in the driver's seat, experts warned.
'Heavily underestimated'
The unpredictable costs of cloud computing, "is a heavily underestimated problem for many companies,” said Stefan Sigg, Chief Product Officer at Software AG, which develops software for businesses.
Sigg compares cloud costs to electricity bills and says companies that don’t know better are in for "a big surprise" if they let their engineers run up bills in the mad rush to build tech, including AI.
Microsoft’s signature cloud offer is Azure and some observers believe the giant’s all-in bet on AI is really about protecting Azure success and guaranteeing the cash cow's future.
Azure has been the giant's unsexy bread-winner for years, bringing in huge profits but without attracting the headlines of an iPhone or social media that go straight to the consumer.
For Microsoft, "the golden goose is monetizing cloud with Azure because we're talking about what could be a $20, $30, $40 billion opportunity annually down the road if the AI bet is successful,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella insists that generative AI is "moving fast in the right direction."
Deeply respected on Wall Street, Nadella will have a six- or nine-month grace period to show his bet is a winner, Ives predicted.
Microsoft acknowledges the risk, but insists that on AI, it must "lead this wave," CFO Amy Hood told analysts this month.
"We will charge for those AI capabilities, and then ultimately, we’ll deliver operating profit," she said.
'Squashed out'
Piling up profit at the company founded by Bill Gates can only mean passing on the cost of AI to customers.
From Main Street to Fortune 500, the dependency on the AI-amped will be an expensive one and companies and investors are drumming up alternatives to at least reduce the bill.
"AI training, GPT training will become a very important cloud service going forward," said Spectro Cloud CEO Tenry Fu.
His company, like many others in the sector, helps companies optimize cloud technology to reduce expenses.
"But after training, a company will be able to get their model back for real AI application" and the dependence on the cloud giants will hopefully be reduced, he added.
Regulators are hoping that they can keep up, and not leave the giants in charge, imposing their terms on smaller companies.
"Law enforcers (must) ensure that... opportunities and openings for competition... are not getting squashed out by the incumbents," FTC chairwoman Lina Khan told CNBC.
But it might be too late, at least when it comes to which companies have the means to provide the groundwork of generative AI.
"It is absolutely true that the number of companies that can train the true frontier models is going to be small just because of the resources required," OpenAI’s Altman told a US Senate panel on Tuesday.
"And so I think there needs to be incredible scrutiny on us and our competitors," he added.
When we look at human faces, our brain has different responses depending on how attractive we find them, according to new research published in Biological Psychology. However, these responses are only observed when looking at faces of the gender that you are sexually attracted to. The study also discovered that these responses to facial attractiveness occur in a specific sequence, which suggests that our brain goes through distinct stages of processing when evaluating how attractive a face is. The authors of the new study were interested in studying the perception of attractiveness and its imp...
Two years after awarding Elon Musk's SpaceX a contract to ferry astronauts to the surface of the Moon, NASA on Friday announced it had chosen Blue Origin, a rival space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, to build a second lunar lander.
Blue Origin's lander was selected for the Artemis 5 mission, currently scheduled to take place in 2029. The company will first have to demonstrate it can safely land on the Moon without a crew.
Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon, said on Twitter he was "honored to be on this journey with @NASA to land astronauts on the Moon -- this time to stay."
The contract amounts to $3.4 billion, but John Couluris, vice-president in charge of lunar transport at Blue Origin, said during a press conference that the company would itself contribute "well north" of that amount to develop the craft.
The Artemis program marks NASA's return to the Moon after more than 50 years and is made up of several missions, each with increasing complexity.
In 2021, the US agency chose SpaceX to build a lander for Artemis 3, the first mission in the series to have actual astronauts set foot on the lunar surface.
The contract was worth $2.9 billion, although SpaceX is supplementing that amount with its own funding.
Blue Origin had also competed for the first contract, and filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against NASA when SpaceX was chosen as the sole lander provider.
The space agency had originally intended to offer two contracts, a practice commonly used to guard against the possibility one fails, but said it had been constrained by budget concerns.
NASA in 2022 also chose the SpaceX lander for its Artemis 4 mission, but at the same time requested submissions from other companies for the rest of the program.
"We want more competition. We want two landers," NASA boss Bill Nelson said on Friday. "It means that you have reliability. You have backups."
Blue Origin's lander, dubbed Blue Moon, is being developed with several partner companies, including Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, Honeybee Robotics, and Lockheed Martin.
The latter will be responsible for developing a crucial element. Once in lunar orbit, Blue Moon will need to be refueled before it can descend and collect the astronauts from the surface of the Moon.
Therefore Lockheed Martin has to develop a kind of shuttle to refuel Blue Moon around the Moon.
Blue Origin plans to use its New Glenn rocket, which has never flown before, to launch both its lander and this refueling shuttle.
Artemis 4, scheduled for 2028, and Artemis 5 a year later will both land on the Moon, but will first pass through a new space station in lunar orbit, called Gateway, which has yet to be constructed.
Prelude to Mars
Artemis astronauts will take off aboard NASA's Orion capsule, propelled to the Moon by the agency's new SLS mega-rocket.
Both these elements were tested uncrewed when Artemis 1 took place six months ago, and will be tested with crew during Artemis 2.
For Artemis 3, Orion will dock directly to SpaceX's lander. Two astronauts will then descend on the Moon for about a week, while two others will remain on board Orion.
Once their experiments are over, the two adventurers will go back in the lander to Orion, which will bring the four crew members back to Earth.
Afterwards, Orion will attach to the Gateway space station, and the astronauts will pass through it before boarding the SpaceX lander, for Artemis 4, or Blue Origin for Artemis 5.
All of these missions target the south pole of the Moon, where there is water in the form of ice.
SpaceX's lander will be a modified version of its Starship spacecraft, currently under development in Texas. It exploded in flight during a first major test in April.
The goal of the Artemis program is to learn to live on the Moon, in order to test out all the technologies necessary for an even more perilous journey: to Mars.
It was a regrettable mistake. But Kim Sylvester thought she was doing the right thing at the time.
Her 80-year-old mother, Harriet Burkel, had fallen at her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, fractured her pelvis, and gone to a rehabilitation center to recover. It was only days after the death of Burkel’s 82-year-old husband, who’d moved into a memory care facility three years before.
With growing distress, Sylvester had watched her mother, who had emphysema and peripheral artery disease, become increasingly frail and isolated. “I would say, ‘Can I help you?’ And my mother would say, ‘No, I can do this myself. I don’t need anything. I can handle it,’” Sylvester told me.
Now, Sylvester had a chance to get some more information. She let herself into her mother’s home and went through all the paperwork she could find. “It was a shambles — completely disorganized, bills everywhere,” she said. “It was clear things were out of control.”
Sylvester sprang into action, terminating her mother’s orders for anti-aging supplements, canceling two car warranty insurance policies (Burkel wasn’t driving at that point), ending a yearlong contract for knee injections with a chiropractor, and throwing out donation requests from dozens of organizations. When her mother found out, she was furious.
“I was trying to save my mother, but I became someone she couldn’t trust — the enemy. I really messed up,” Sylvester said.
Dealing with an older parent who stubbornly resists offers of help isn’t easy. But the solution isn’t to make an older person feel like you’re steamrolling them and taking over their affairs. What’s needed instead are respect, empathy, and appreciation of the older person’s autonomy.
“It’s hard when you see an older person making poor choices and decisions. But if that person is cognitively intact, you can’t force them to do what you think they should do,” said Anne Sansevero, president of the board of directors of the Aging Life Care Association, a national organization of care managers who work with older adults and their families. “They have a right to make choices for themselves.”
That doesn’t mean adult children concerned about an older parent should step aside or agree to everything the parent proposes. Rather, a different set of skills is needed.
Cheryl Woodson, an author and retired physician based in the Chicago area, learned this firsthand when her mother — whom Woodson described as a “very powerful” woman — developed mild cognitive impairment. She started getting lost while driving and would buy things she didn’t need then give them away.
Chastising her mother wasn’t going to work. “You can’t push people like my mother or try to take control,” Woodson told me. “You don’t tell them, ‘No, you’re wrong,’ because they changed your diapers and they’ll always be your mom.”
Instead, Woodson learned to appeal to her mother’s pride in being the family matriarch. “Whenever she got upset, I’d ask her, ‘Mother, what year was it that Aunt Terri got married?’ or ‘Mother, I don’t remember how to make macaroni. How much cheese do you put in?’ And she’d forget what she was worked up about and we’d just go on from there.”
Woodson, author of “To Survive Caregiving: A Daughter’s Experience, a Doctor’s Advice,” also learned to apply a “does it really matter to safety or health?” standard to her mother’s behavior. It helped Woodson let go of her sometimes unreasonable expectations. One example she related: “My mother used to shake hot sauce on pancakes. It would drive my brother nuts, but she was eating, and that was good.”
“You don’t want to rub their nose into their incapacity,” said Woodson, whose mother died in 2003.
Barry Jacobs, a clinical psychologist and family therapist, sounded similar themes in describing a psychiatrist in his late 70s who didn’t like to bend to authority. After his wife died, the older man stopped shaving and changing his clothes regularly. Though he had diabetes, he didn’t want to see a physician and instead prescribed medicine for himself. Even after several strokes compromised his vision, he insisted on driving.
Jacobs’ take: “You don’t want to go toe-to-toe with someone like this, because you will lose. They’re almost daring you to tell them what to do so they can show you they won’t follow your advice.”
What’s the alternative? “I would employ empathy and appeal to this person’s pride as a basis for handling adversity or change,” Jacobs said. “I might say something along the lines of, ‘I know you don’t want to stop driving and that this will be very painful for you. But I know you have faced difficult, painful changes before and you’ll find your way through this.’”
“You’re appealing to their ideal self rather than treating them as if they don’t have the right to make their own decisions anymore,” he explained. In the older psychiatrist’s case, conflict with his four children was constant, but he eventually stopped driving.
Another strategy that can be useful: “Show up, but do it in a way that’s face-saving,” Jacobs said. Instead of asking your father if you can check in on him, “Go to his house and say, ‘The kids really wanted to see you. I hope you don’t mind.’ Or, ‘We made too much food. I hope you don’t mind my bringing it over.’ Or, ‘I wanted to stop by. I hope you can give me some advice about this issue that’s on my mind.’”
This psychiatrist didn’t have any cognitive problems, though he wasn’t as sharp as he used to be. But encroaching cognitive impairment often colors difficult family interactions.
If you think this might be a factor with your parent, instead of trying to persuade them to accept more help at home, try to get them medically evaluated, said Leslie Kernisan, author of “When Your Aging Parent Needs Help: A Geriatrician’s Step-by-Step Guide to Memory Loss, Resistance, Safety Worries, and More.”
“Decreased brain function can affect an older adult’s insight and judgment and ability to understand the risks of certain actions or situations, while also making people suspicious and defensive,” she noted.
This doesn’t mean you should give up on talking to an older parent with mild cognitive impairment or early-stage dementia, however. “You always want to give the older adult a chance to weigh in and talk about what’s important to them and their feelings and concerns,” Kernisan said.
“If you frame your suggestions as a way of helping your parent achieve a goal they’ve said was important, they tend to be much more receptive to it,” she said.
A turning point for Sylvester and her mother came when the older woman, who developed dementia, went to a nursing home at the end of 2021. Her mother, who at first didn’t realize the move was permanent, was furious, and Sylvester waited two months before visiting. When she finally walked into Burkel’s room, bearing a Valentine’s Day wreath, Burkel hugged her and said, “I’m so glad to see you,” before pulling away. “But I’m so mad at my other daughter.”
Sylvester, who doesn’t have a sister, responded, “I know, Mom. She meant well, but she didn’t handle things properly.” She learned the value of what she calls a “therapeutic fiblet” from Kernisan, who ran a family caregiver group Sylvester attended between 2019 and 2021.
After that visit, Sylvester saw her mother often, and all was well between the two women up until Burkel’s death. “If something was upsetting my mother, I would just go, ‘Interesting,’ or, ‘That’s a thought.’ You have to give yourself time to remember this is not the person you used to know and create the person you need to be your parent, who’s changed so much.”
We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.
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