Problems with a new digital European system for certifying fishing catches are hampering producers and delaying exports, according to ministers from several EU member states.…
Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) employees who had their details exposed in a significant 2023 data breach will each receive £7,500 ($10,279) as part of a universal offer of compensation.…
Vorig jaar kregen bijna 135.000 nieuwe patiënten de diagnose kanker. Dat is bijna evenveel als het jaar daarvoor. Volgens het Integraal Kankercentrum Nederland (IKNL) werd de ziekte vastgesteld bij zo'n 72.100 mannen en 62.700 vrouwen.
Huidkanker komt het vaakst voor, gevolgd door prostaat-, borst-, long- en darmkanker. Het aantal nieuwe diagnoses van prostaatkanker neemt de laatste jaren toe. "Dit komt vooral door een ouder wordende bevolking, maar ook door veranderingen in de opsporing van prostaatkanker", meldt IKNL.
Bij darmkanker daalt het aantal diagnoses al een aantal jaar, terwijl door de vergrijzing eerder een stijging werd verwacht. Met name uitgezaaide darmkanker komt minder vaak voor. Dit heeft volgens het IKNL te maken met het in 2014 gestarte bevolkingsonderzoek, waardoor darmkanker vaak al in een vroeg stadium wordt opgespoord.
"De daling bij darmkanker onderstreept het belang van bevolkingsonderzoek en vroege opsporing", zegt Carla van Gils, directeur KWF Kankerbestrijding. "Door mee te doen vergroot je de kans dat kanker in een vroeg stadium wordt ontdekt, en dat redt levens."
Het MDL Fonds, voorheen bekend als Maag Lever Darm Stichting, pleit ervoor de leeftijdsgrens voor het bevolkingsonderzoek met vijf jaar te verlagen. "De cijfers van IKNL laten zien dat het bevolkingsonderzoek levens redt. Dat vraagt om verlaging van de startleeftijd naar 50 jaar en mogelijk verhoging van de stopleeftijd", reageert directeur Mariël Croon. Nu is het onderzoek beschikbaar voor mensen van 55 tot en met 75 jaar. Zij krijgen iedere twee jaar een zelftest thuisgestuurd. In een lab wordt onderzocht of ingestuurde ontlastingsmonsters bloed bevatten, wat kan duiden op darmkanker. In dat geval is nader onderzoek nodig.
Meer dan een miljoen mensen in Nederland hebben in de afgelopen twintig jaar te horen gekregen dat ze kanker hebben.
Health secretary Wes Streeting says Labour members feel ‘bitterly’ betrayed by Mandelson revelations in Epstein scandal
PMQs is starting soon. Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
The Reform UK MP Lee Anderson has dismissed claims that his party’s plan to support the pub industry would cost far more than the £3bn it claims.
To be honest with you, we’re not interested in who you’ve been talking to. We’re more interested who we’ve been talking to, and we’ve been talking to landlords and small businesses up and down the country, and every landlord that I speak to … they want this VAT cut.
We can go on all day about the numbers. I’m not interested in the numbers that the BBC have sourced. You’re hardly a bastion of truth at the BBC when it comes to things like this.
This doesn’t add up. This is an unfunded tax cut which also pushes hundreds of thousands of children into poverty.
Reform says that reinstating the two-child limit for most, but not all, families would save £2.29bn in 2026/27. The party claims its package of tax cuts would also cost £2.29bn – making it cost neutral – with the bulk coming from a proposal to halve VAT on hospitality, which it estimates would cost £1.7bn.
Continue reading...europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This view is taken from a Mars Express flyover video of Flaugergues Crater on Mars.
This image shows the beginning of the video, which begins by tracking along a swathe of ground enclosed by two steeply sloping and roughly parallel cliffs – or escarpments – named Scylla Scopulus and Charybdis Scopulus (to the left and right, respectively). A large crater named Bakhuysen Crater can be seen to the left. Flaugergues Crater itself can just about be seen to the keen eye, shrouded by haze in the distance.
View the video here
Processing notes:
The video uses data from the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC20W), an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the mission’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic image, centred at 20°S/17°E, was combined with topography information from the digital terrain model to generate the three-dimensional landscape seen here.
For every second of the video, 50 separate frames are rendered following a pre-defined camera path in the scene. The vertical exaggeration used for the animation is three-fold. Atmospheric effects, like clouds and haze, have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at a distance of 250 km.
[Image description: A sweeping view of the Martian surface under soft, hazy light. The terrain is entirely reddish‑brown and heavily cratered. To the middle-left of the scene lies a very large, ancient impact crater with steep, jagged walls and a relatively smooth floor. Its rim forms an uneven ring of raised cliffs and slopes. Surrounding this main crater is a broad landscape scattered with countless smaller craters of different sizes. Some are shallow and eroded, while others have sharp rims that cast long shadows. Ridges and low hills run diagonally across the scene, giving the surface a rugged, weathered appearance. In the distance, the landscape fades into a pale, dusty horizon, where the details soften and blend into a pinkish atmospheric haze. The overall impression is of an expansive, ancient, and deeply scarred Martian plain.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This view is taken from a Mars Express flyover video of Flaugergues Crater on Mars. It shows the final scenes of the video, which culminates with a bird’s-eye view of the 240-km-wide crater itself.
View the video here
Processing notes:
The video uses data from the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC20W), an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the mission’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic image, centred at 20°S/17°E, was combined with topography information from the digital terrain model to generate the three-dimensional landscape seen here.
For every second of the video, 50 separate frames are rendered following a pre-defined camera path in the scene. The vertical exaggeration used for the animation is three-fold. Atmospheric effects, like clouds and haze, have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at a distance of 250 km.
[Image description: A wide, oblique view of the surface of Mars, focused on a large, ancient impact crater. The scene is dominated by warm reddish‑brown terrain with many textures and shadows created by the low angle of sunlight. In the centre of the image is an enormous, shallow crater with a broad, mostly smooth floor. The rim of the crater is broken and eroded, forming a rough, uneven ring of raised terrain. Smaller impact craters of many sizes dot both the crater interior and the surrounding plains. Around the crater rim, the ground is rugged and heavily sculpted, with ridges and sloping hills that stretch outward in irregular patterns. The foreground shows more rough terrain with clusters of small craters and uneven surfaces. The background fades into a relatively flat plain with many distant craters scattered across the horizon. Overall, the landscape looks ancient, dry, and worn down by billions of years of impacts and erosion.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
On 3 February, NASA concluded a wet dress rehearsal for their Space Launch System rocket ahead of the Artemis II launch. The test consisted of loading cryogenic propellant into the rocket's tanks and safely draining it. To allow teams to review the data from this test and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal ahead of launch, NASA has decided to postpone the Artemis II mission to the next launch opportunities in March.
In local time, the opportunities run from 6 March to 11 March late in the evening. In Central European Time (CET), the potential launch windows open at the following times:
- 7 March 02:29
- 8 March 02:57
- 9 March 04:56
- 10 March 04:52
- 11 March 05:48
Artemis II will be the first crewed mission of the Artemis programme, carrying four astronauts on a journey around the Moon and back to Earth for the first time in over half a century. At the heart of this historic mission is ESA’s European Service Module, which provides the Orion spacecraft and its crew with life support, power and propulsion, enabling safe human travel beyond Earth orbit.
Credits: ESA-M. Born
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This image shows the region featured in ESA’s Mars Express video journey around Flaugergues Crater.
As with this image, the video is based on data from Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera. It begins by following a swathe of ground enclosed by two sloping and roughly parallel escarpments named Scylla Scopulus and Charybdis Scopulus; skirts past the large Bakhuysen Crater; and ends by looping around the even larger Flaugergues Crater.
All of these features are labelled here. The blue line marks the location and direction of motion of the camera perspective in the full-length (broadcast quality version) of the video.
North is up, and the image is centred at 20°S/17°E.
View the video here
[Image description: A colour map of a region on Mars, shown in shades of reddish‑brown. The terrain is covered with many circular impact craters of different sizes. Some craters are deep and sharply defined, while others look worn down with softer edges. The map is oriented with north at the top. Along the left and right edges, latitude and longitude markings are shown. Several major features are labelled directly on the map in white text: Flaugergues (a large, roughly circular crater located in the upper‑right area of the map), Noachis (a region name in the upper‑left), Terra (marked across the lower‑left area), Bakhuysen (another large crater positioned below the centre, Mosa Vallis and Evros Vallis (valley systems near the top), Wislicenus (another large crater) and Scylla Scopulus and Charybdis Scopulus (parallel cliffs). A white rectangular outline highlights part of Flaugergues Crater, marking an 'elevated terrain' area and a 'channel' feature inside the crater wall. Another smaller white rectangle near the lower‑right marks an 'ejecta' region. A turquoise curved line traces a path from the bottom of the map (marked Start) to the upper‑middle area (marked End). The line bends smoothly and crosses several labelled regions and terrain features along the way. A scale bar in the lower‑right corner shows a length of 100 kilometres. The entire map is placed on a solid brown background, slightly lighter than the map itself.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin & NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
The journey of ESA's second European Service Module, from creation to launch on Artemis II.
Orion is NASA’s next spacecraft to send humans into space and part of the Artemis programme. It is designed to send astronauts farther into space than ever before, beyond the Moon and to the lunar Gateway.
ESA has designed and is overseeing the development of Orion’s service module, the part of the spacecraft that supplies air, electricity and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.
The Orion spacecraft is built by NASA with ESA providing the service module. The arrangement stems from the international partnership for the International Space Station. NASA’s decision to cooperate with ESA on a critical element for the mission is a strong sign of trust and confidence in ESA’s capabilities.
More than 20 companies around Europe are now building the European Service Modules as NASA works on Orion and the Space Launch System.
Learn more about Orion and Europe’s involvement here. Follow the latest updates via the Orion blog.
Credits: ESA-A. Brancaccio
